Mass Shooting overnight in Orlando, FL

[CptHowdy]

obama not willing to call a spade a spade, whats new? wants assault weapons ban. havent we banned these things after every mass shooting? guess they want assault weapon defined as every thing except a single shot weapon! obama also says killer radicalized by internet. incoming ban in 5,4,3,2,1......

[Steelgrave]

Great post, Boggit. You cut away the BS and get to the matter at hand. You're very right....a serious and mature discussion needs to happen. What we'll likely get instead is more misdirection and political hay-making, all while turning our anger in the wrong direction. You are showing way too much common sense, brother.

[Boggit]

Thanks Steelie. I appreciate your kind comments. :)

Like you, I am sick and tired of switching on the TV, asking myself what atrocity has happened today, then seeing the media and politicians revelling in it with their false concern, photo opportunities, playing to hobby horse agenda, and all the while avoiding the thorny issues .

It's not just the US. We see the same bullshit being peddled over here, whichever political topic you look at. It's just so disheartening. If I can see it, why can't our so called leaders with all the advice and resources they have? I don't have power, but they do, and they just don't use it for the betterment of the nation.

I have a whole lot of empathy with JudgeDredd for his criticism of the way the Brexit debate is being handled. There is one basic question to be asked : "Do you want an unelected, unaccountable group of people to make your laws legitimised by the most tenuous link to democracy?" Instead both sides go off on a tangent of their own, which only incidentally touches on the core question. The referendum is not about immigration, or economics, or world war 3. These are all incidental to the core question, and frankly you see enough guessing and false doom and gloom from both sides of the argument.

Coming back to the Orlando killings... Do you want to see it again? Yes? - make it an issue for mourning, coming togetherness, sympathy and ultimately do nothing about the reasons WHY it happened in the first place. The left, for example, have said oh it's the availability of guns, and maybe the point that assault weapons are designed to kill lots of people in a war setting.

Maybe there is a case to restrict access to that "type" of weapon. BUT, how many people in the US have guns (of all sorts), and how many of them have killed other people with them? Arguably, a tiny percentage of non-criminal users? If you do own an assault rifle, and I'm pretty sure some of the people in our forums do, then are we arguing that you are a ticking time bomb, and are going to do something bad simply as an incidental of ownership? I don't think that makes sense. My wife said to me why would you need one? I said you don't, but if you enjoy shooting you might have one at a gun club. Also I get why people keep guns for self defence in a country where help can be a long way away, and to be unarmed before a criminal leaves you and your family vulnerable.

I can argue this one way or another, but at the end of the day a man walked into a club and killed a lot of people. He didn't need an assault rifle to do it, a fire bomb would be just as effective, perhaps more so, if he'd taken steps to block the emergency exits he probably would have killed and injured more people. It isn't about the methodology of the killing. It's about the intention and motivation to do the killing. Address that and you are solving the problem of why sane people (at least) commit acts of terror. Crazies... you can't do much about that unless you identify them and prevent them from getting a legal weapon, making it - perhaps??? - harder than obtaining an illegal one. Even then an organised terror cell composed of sociopaths is usually pretty rare, they are usually motivated, but sane people.

If the answer to the question is "No. I don't want to see any more acts of terror", then you have to engage with the why. One incident is not enough to form an opinion. You have to look at all these incidents - at home and abroad - and determine what the common denominators are in order to make any sense of it. What is the motivation, and why have people who commit such atrocities become so motivated that in many cases it also leads to their own death? Once you have figured that out, you need to confront the movers and shakers of any common belief set that leads to this behaviour - in the open where they can be publicly challenged in their beliefs, and held to account.

I'm not saying this is easy. A lot of indoctrination is covert, in private conversations, and in closed internet forums. But it also has people preaching toxic views quite openly, which go unchallenged for a variety of reasons, but often because people are frightened of being ostracised, labelled as discriminatory, racist, Islamophobic, or whatever. This is just a smokescreen for challenging a set of views that may not stand scrutiny if they are openly debated. We have seen this reticence to engage with the police in the UK over their reticence to tackle Asian (predominantly Muslim) paedophile gangs for much the same reasons. It is difficult to challenge communities as to core values, but they need to be challenged for the sake of all. I think it is especially important for Muslims to have the courage to engage in open self reflection and debate, simply because, like it or not, they are the usual suspects in cases like the present one. Is it fair? No. But it is the apparent reality for the wider community.

I don't suggest for a second that the vast majority of Muslims are terrorists, but ask yourself: "If it happens again, how is it that yet another Muslim commits such another atrocity?" And as an identifiable group who then will get blamed? Is it fair that all within that group are guilty? If people then retaliate on the basis of self preservation of their society (or perhaps even maliciously), then who will not say (if not to themselves) - "well they've brought it on themselves, we've had enough" - which endorses further injustice on innocent people. Of course, that outcome doesn't deal with the root cause of the problem, and all that is likely to happen is that more innocent people will be persecuted and harmed, except just from the Muslim community instead. That doesn't resolve the issue, arguably it makes it worse as a vendetta mentality results for all parties.

What the politicos and media need to do is start ramping up public debate and challenging religious-cultural norms of the perpetrators, and adherents of the religion at a national and trans-national level much more than ever. Muslim communities that produce Islamist terrorists must see that the principles of killing, or oppressing people who have different views (even within their faith) is morally wrong. Only then will you start to kill the cancer that is taught to thrive in the minds of those who go on to kill in the name of their faith.

Of course, this will put Muslims on the back foot in the sense they may feel as a matter of injustice (which in a sense it is), that they are under attack, or under scrutiny when as individuals they have done nothing wrong. But the failure to engage with the issue is a far worse issue if socially it degenerates into a 'them and us' issue, whereby non-Muslims say "you people think you can just kill us because we live different lives", and retaliate in kind.

Didn't Hitler justify his increased anti-Semitic violence to the German people in part on the basis that the Jews had attacked Germany (the Reichstag fire etc - when a Jewish Communist apparently admitted liability, so providing the smoking gun (so to speak. [I know an unfortunate use of words in relation to a fire.])), and previous government had done nothing? No debate, no open arguing about the issues to get to the truth (which would expose he was talking rubbish [I guess he wouldn't as a dictator, but we notionally live in a democracy with free speech]). This is just the thing we need to pre-empt.

I'd rather see the fight against extremism being carried out on the battlefield of open, public debate and questioning of religious and cultural norms to find common ground and build on it - however, brutal in argument getting there might be. Bruised egos are much better than killing, or persecution if it changes intolerant mindsets and ultimately saves lives.

[BanzaiCat]

We'll never have politicians that are out for anything resembling the common good or common sense government, because they're too busy trying to tap into the graft and corruption pipeline, and getting re-elected to continue the gravy train. I've said it many times - we've totally lost our way in letting "politician" become a job title. It should be a badge of honor, not something that is universally despised, and should really be open to anyone with the common sense, leadership, and organization skills necessary to do the office they're running for, justice.

With regards to the shooting, the media, not to mention Obama, have been utterly despicable during this entire thing. The media especially has been disgusting; they just absolutely LOVE horrific mass events like this because they know people will be tuning in. (Yes, I know, people themselves are probably not that sick, but the organization as a whole is enamored with these things, which is just awful.) The fact that they had some local CARE representative on camera literally within hours wringing his hands and telling people to not jump to conclusions made it pretty obvious the guy was a radical Muslim, even before I'd seen any other coverage. I know some news organizations did come out and say this eventually, but still, the ability they have to avoid the truth as Boggit so well said is extraordinary.

[JasonPratt]

Too many +1000s to count.  O0

[JasonPratt]

From "Being Classically Liberal"

[airboy]

Boggit:

Your points are all reasonable.

Another factual observation.  The shooting occurred in a "gun free zone" where there were no metal detectors or armed guards.  The shooter was guaranteed to have a target rich environment where the targets were not armed.  Different day, same story.  Mass shootings in the US are much more likely to occur in a gun free zone with no metal detectors or armed guards.

As you pointed out, the shooter was radicalized seemingly without 2-way communication.  The (ex)wife is being interviewed about her knowledge.  The Iman you bring up seems highly relevant.

Gun Free Zones without guards and active surveillance can become death traps.  Very rare, but death traps if you get very unlucky.  Still, a nightclub with booming sounds and flashing lights would be a very difficult environment for a good guy with a gun.  But I'm still betting that if a couple of people had been carrying concealed the death toll would have been far lower.

As far as the gun control stuff goes.  Rifles are responsible for almost no homicides in the USA.  There are a huge number of Ar-15 variants in circulation in the USA.  And yes, they are used for hunting as well as recreational shooting.  AR-15 variants are responsible for almost no US homicides.  The round the evil scum used was a .223 which is more likely to wound than kill without a straight kill shot (head, heart, spot where there is a lot of blood loss).  See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.223_Remington


"Assault Weapon" is a scary word about guns that look scary.  The only thing that could have possibly made any difference is a limit on clip sizes.  A limit on clip size increases the number of times you must reload.

The shooter had been thoroughly checked by the feds and worked as an armed guard. No background check would have caught him.

There are occasional terrorist attacks by radical Muslims in the US and Europe.  Far more occur in Muslim countries.  Although the are a small minority of Muslims, this is still a defining characteristic.  Those circles and websites need to be carefully monitored.  Not using rational thought for fear of "profiling" is idiotic.  But non-violent Muslims are the key information source for police and national security people.  You need to do this in a way that you don't stigmatize all Muslims while being realistic about the threat.

[Boggit]

@Airboy :)

Likewise I agree with almost all of what you are saying. Your point about avoiding the stigmatisation of the Islamic community is perhaps best tackled from within the Islamic community, so as to encourage an alternate mindset to traditional norms which is why I mentioned it in this post,  http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=17185.msg452085#msg452085 since much is embedded in cultural and religious interpretation as justification for aberrant behaviour...

I do beg to differ a little with you on some technical aspects you raise with the AR15 including the lethality of its round, which you mentioned as a gun control issue (and if I've misinterpreted what you have said, then I apologise at this point). FWIW, my take on the 'assault rifle', was from the description from the media. Whenever I used automatic weapons in the past like submachine guns I was taught to fire in short bursts rather than spray as you have a better chance to hit something before you run out of ammo. If this guy had any similar training, he might be slightly more frugal with his rate of fire. Even so, a semi automatic rifle is a bloody dangerous weapon in the wrong hands, and you can clear a clip pretty fast if you really want to - I had one (a 7.62mm L1A1 SLR) when I served in the British army. If you want to make one automatic at the risk of breaking the firing pin, you can do it by sticking a matchstick, or similar behind the firing pin, and I guess that might work too with an AR15. The point you make about reloads is fair, but again if you want quick reloads you can always tape magazines back to back effectively doubling up.

As to the ammo, you do realise that the .223 round for the AR15 roughly equates to a 5.56x45mm round used by many militaries in NATO? I agree with your point about the lesser hitting power, but lighter rounds can be pretty bad too depending where they hit. We had this discussion way back when the L1A1 SLR gave way to the SA80 which uses a 5.56mm round. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SA80 If you hit someone with the SLR (7.62mm round) say in the wrist, you had a good chance of taking the hand off, but with the SA80's lighter round - depending on the angle hit - it might travel even along the arm and come out through the neck, which is usually fatal. Obviously a torso hit with a 7.62mm is usually fatal with a big exit hole, but the lighter 5.56 especially if it hits something hard like a bone, deforms, or cavitates on impact can go whizzing round the internal organs doing all sorts of mischief.

Given that the .223 round you mention is pretty similar to the round that the SA80 uses, then at close range with a high velocity rifle it will maintain a lot of killing power through kinetic energy, which otherwise gets lost over distance. I'd suggest in those circumstances, a .223 (5.56x45mm) round will be lethal at close range and will not require the accuracy of hit you suggest. At close range, with a high velocity weapon, even if you miss an organ you can still kill just from the hydrostatic shock on the body.

I know the broad theory of the heavier vs lighter round from back in the day as it was discussed at length. Thankfully I have never shot and killed anyone, so the reality of truly knowing the actual effect of hitting someone with a 5.56mm round at different distances is outside my experience. I know you hunt, and I wonder what you have noticed as substantial differences in the nature of fatal wounds occasioned by different calibres of round? As a matter of your practical experience do you really need to be as accurate at close range with 5.56mm round as at long range to obtain a kill?

[Silent Disapproval Robot]

Has it been announced that he was using .223?  I know they've retracted their original statements (not that the agenda driven media is paying any attention) and said the killer used a Sig-Sauer MCX rather than an AR-15 variant as was originally reported.  The MCX is a modular carbine and can be set up to fire .223, .300 blackout, or 7.62x39. 

I know it's reasonably popular here in Canada even though it's classified as restricted due to its barrel length.  I briefly looked into one but with with the Ar in .204 because I'm an idiot.

[airboy]

I got the data on the weapon from the Wall St. Journal and they usually have their facts right.

Boggit - I don't want to get shot with anything. 
You did misinterpret one small thing.  The gun was a semi-automatic and not an automatic rifle.  The term "assault weapon" used in the mainstream press and by almost all Democrats is a scare word.  Automatic weapons have very strict procedures to obtain one - quite similar to the process used to obtain explosives.

[Greybriar]

"....Wielding an AR-15 semi-automatic [emphasis added] rifle...." He killed and wounded all those people with a semi-automatic!

Thanks for mentioning the Wall Street Journal, airboy. I didn't check that source. O0

[Boggit]

I got the data on the weapon from the Wall St. Journal and they usually have their facts right.

Boggit - I don't want to get shot with anything. 
You did misinterpret one small thing.  The gun was a semi-automatic and not an automatic rifle.  The term "assault weapon" used in the mainstream press and by almost all Democrats is a scare word.  Automatic weapons have very strict procedures to obtain one - quite similar to the process used to obtain explosives.

I hope you never get shot too!  :o :)

You make a fair comment. Like I said, I used the term "assault rifle" because that was what we were initially told was used. As it turns out, you are quite right that it was a semi-automatic, and yet again you are right that the terminology of "assault weapon" has its own set of connotations used to manipulate opinion in the media (and usually by people who really don't know much of what they are talking about). Even so, I did mentioned in my last post that a semi-automatic can be a bloody dangerous weapon in the wrong hands, as Greybriar in the post above also points out. Plus you can empty a mag pretty quick if you really want to with arguably much more accurate fire. At close range you could kill a lot of people within a minute, even getting through a couple of clips in that time.

Did you agree with my view on the effect of the ammunition at close range, or does your hunting experience make you conclude otherwise? I agree with you that at long range a 5.56 doesn't have the stopping power of a larger calibre, but at close range surely the kinetic power of the round, and its behaviour (contact deformation, cavitation etc) is a different matter?

To clarify, I don't want you to think that I think these killings are down to gun ownership. It is an efficient method for killing, but there are other equally, and perhaps more lethal methods that could have been used. I don't know of the media, nor the anti-gun lobby calling for the ban on pressure cookers, nor of pipes - both legitimate items on their own, but also capable of conversion into effective bombs... and which also have a track record in terrorist atrocity.

These shootings are, in my opinion, down to a toxic ideology underpinned with the fanaticism of the religious zealot. More than anything, it is this which needs addressing rather than the means to achieve the atrocity. This is why I say the gun issue being played up by the media and politicians is incidental to why a mass killing occurred. In the absence of a gun this guy could still have carried out a mass killing. He would have just had to use a different method to achieve his purpose.

I'll also make this general point, about focusing the terrorism debate on a political agenda area, which really is incidental to the crime happening. Here in the UK full bore gun ownership is generally illegal (shotguns and some target weapons excepted), but it hasn't stopped gun violence. Gun violence is arguably more prevalent now than before when we could legally own full bore fire arms because of the relative availability of illegal weapons. Today, we had one of our own members of Parliament shot and stabbed, and as I say guns are mostly illegal in the UK. Sadly, it didn't prevent the MP getting shot. http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/mp-jo-cox-dies-after-being-shot-and-stabbed/ar-AAh87zG?OCID=ansmsnnews11

[airboy]

The general lethality of a .223 is less than a .308 or a .30-06.  The most dangerous short range weapon I own is a .12 gage semi-auto shotgun.  If I take out the plug I have 6 rounds.  But in general I fear dangerous people more than dangerous weapons.

I'm really against "fake gun free zones."  The only way to enforce a true gun free zone is detection (metal, scanner, etc....) and armed guards.  In the USA an airport or a courtroom is a true "gun free zone."  My university in Alabama is a "gun free zone."  We have stickers on the doors.  And that is it.  It is insane.

[Boggit]

The general lethality of a .223 is less than a .308 or a .30-06.  The most dangerous short range weapon I own is a .12 gage semi-auto shotgun.  If I take out the plug I have 6 rounds.  But in general I fear dangerous people more than dangerous weapons.

I'm really against "fake gun free zones."  The only way to enforce a true gun free zone is detection (metal, scanner, etc....) and armed guards.  In the USA an airport or a courtroom is a true "gun free zone."  My university in Alabama is a "gun free zone."  We have stickers on the doors.  And that is it.  It is insane.

+1. You're right about the dangerous people. O0

As to the "gun free zone" stickers on the doors... :o You must have a lot of trust with that one... do you see the university relying on it as a legal defence if someone gets shot, and a claim is then made against the university for being vicariously liable in failing to adequately enforce the "gun free zone"? I'm surprised it hasn't been an issue at the university senate?

[OJsDad]

When President Obama and the Left starts enforcing immigration laws, when they start deporting those here illegally that are arrested and jailed for committing other crimes, when they start deporting those killing Americans while driving vehicles without ever having taken a single driving class, when they start cutting off all federal funds to those local governments that have openly declared themselves sanctuary's, when they started dropping the hammer on employers that do not use E-Verify, then we can begin to have discussion on gun control.  Until then, they can get off their high-horse and shut the hell up.