1 hour ago, TheDivineHustle said:

Yes I'm aware, hence the reason I said the original debate subject and not just the original subject. Is this an indication to end the debate?

 

Yeah, I think the gun control debate has run its course.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41907943 shooter escaped from a mental health hospital in El Paso in 2012

23 minutes ago, Narcissus said:

My understanding is that gun control comments had ran it's course... or does that simply mean that only people making snide quips are allowed to post?

 

It has, we've hidden those posts.

My apologies. My quote and his post weren't removed when I posted that. Again, my sincere apologies.

 

To get the subject back on track...

 

I watched an interview with the man that stopped the killings. He was interviewed by Stephen Crowder (find it on youtube) and I warn you, it is heart wrenching. My family was crying during the telling of his story.

1 minute ago, Narcissus said:

My apologies. My quote and his post weren't removed when I posted that. Again, my sincere apologies.

 

To get the subject back on track...

 

I watched an interview with the man that stopped the killings. He was interviewed by Stephen Crowder (find it on youtube) and I warn you, it is heart wrenching. My family was crying during the telling of his story.

 

Thanks, all is okay - I can certainly understand your confusion.

 

Do you have the link for that video?

 

Took me a minute to find...

 

BE WARNED... it is quite emotional. Not for the easily upset. Again, we, especially towards the end, were crying like babies.

Had another couple of posts about the great gun debate in here (which have since been removed) - just wanted to quickly clarify that we realized that the debate was taking away from the topic at hand and everyone involved was getting somewhat distracted/carried away by it so we decided that it'd be better to get back on the actual topic itself.  It's no secret that most of our team hold relatively liberal views as far as politics is concerned, but please don't be under the assumption that those views have anything to do with that (and indeed one of the very key elements of liberalism, at least in classical form, is the preservation of liberty and henceforth the ability to debate and be welcoming of other points of view).

 

As such, if you want to make a separate topic about the gun debate then by all means feel free to do so, although it'd be good if posts here could be about the shooting itself and perhaps anything more specifically of interest to this community like developments in the investigation (e.g. I know just now that the FBI is being accused of blundering something to do with unlocking a phone of interest)

On 5.11.2017 at 9:01 PM, qwertyK said:

WHEN WILL IT END!

When we stop giving attention to it :/

1 hour ago, Arhub said:

When we stop giving attention to it :/

 

Kind of impossible.  Everything big that happens has to be in the news, if not for the media to get their ratings, for people to be informed.  None of us want something major to happen and have zero idea about it. 

On 11/10/2017 at 9:52 PM, Kallus Rourke said:

 

Kind of impossible.  Everything big that happens has to be in the news, if not for the media to get their ratings, for people to be informed.  None of us want something major to happen and have zero idea about it. 

I think what he/she means is that when a tragedy happens, we publicize the individual that committed the act to the extent that they're practically some sort of international superstar. If I understand @Arhub correctly, he/she is saying that we should not give extreme attention to the actual suspect because that's probably what they were after.

I, personally, would take a different route. I'd give them all the publicity they want. On an adult only channel, created for just such a purpose, have these lunatics face the worst atrocities man's sick mind can invent.

24/7/365

A racist? Live streaming of being sodomized by whatever race you despise (with sentence decreases as reward for those who volunteer). A Muslim? Wrapped in bacon while female inmates beat you. A rapist? Slow castration. Murderer? The victim's family can choose/participate. Etc...

Think of the revenue that would generate as well... can anyone else say 'bye bye deficit'? We wouldn't even have to end all the entitlement programs the left loves!

 

All joking aside. There is a noted difference in the way that these things are covered by the news. Ask one hundred people off the street about the following names and see what names they recognize:

Devin Patrick Kelley (The murderer)

Stephen Willeford (The hero who stopped him)

Frank Pomeroy (The pastor of the church)

Annabelle Pomeroy (The pastor's 14 year old daughter who died that day - or any other victim's name)

 

I don't think there is any doubt which name or picture would be recognized by almost all questioned and others would get zero recognition at all. Many of the ideologically driven could care less, but many of the others do these things for fame and recognition.

 

EDIT: Also forgot to mention that my mother, bless her heart, told me that the pastor will be holding service today. That he wants the congregation to relocate and start having services again, immediately. Can you imagine?!? My heart aches for him and the others who have lost so much.

Edited November 12, 20178 yr by Narcissus

On 11/5/2017 at 2:13 PM, thegreathah said:

Completely false. If that were the case, countries like Australia, the UK, France, etc which initiated programs to stopping gun violence would be seeing mass shootings, or shootings in general, at a similar rate that we were.

 

How is it that many Americans (including myself) feel perfectly content with not owning a vast array of firearms. The only place they'd even be applicable is in my home, where by the time I even heard or got up to stop someone I would likely be dead, or the intruder would be gone. It's completely nonsensical to believe that in the chaos of a public mass shooting civilians will be able to figure out where the fire is coming from and effectively put that threat out, without harming others in their way.

 

 

The UK/ Australia never had similar mass shooting rates to the United States. One should only compare a country to itself, before and after a gun confiscation.

The mass shooting in Australia was a statistical anomaly, you cannot credit that to gun control. In fact, you also need to look at overall homicide rate and violent crime rate. After the gun confiscation/control in the UK, their homicide rates increased as well as their violent crime.

Everyone feels bad, and everyone says "No one will do anything about this", so what is your specific proposal?

Many people want to ban AR-15's, but the deadliest school shooting in U.S history was done with 2 pistols, the Virginia Tech Shooting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting

"Assault rifles" only commit 1% of gun homicides each year, should't we look a the bigger picture here with statistics? 

 

The 2 safest states in the United States are Vermont and New Hampshire, they have the least restrictive gun laws in the country. 

AR-15's, and AK47's have been in civilian hands since the late 1950's, but mass shootings have only occurred in the past 2 decades, my point is that there are many other factors. The largest factor is not gun laws, or gun ownership rates. The collective gun ownership rate per household has declined in the last decade, while mass school shootings have increased. 

Edited March 5, 20188 yr by SpikeTerm

I will make an account later but I wanted to chime in....

I am a survivor of Las Vegas. I was at Route 91, I was at that country festival all 3 nights.
I was a member of the Civil Air Patrol then, the all volunteer civilian Auxiliary of the US Air Force. I do search and rescue and responded to medical calls throughout my CAP membership

What you folks fail to realize (especially the person who made a comment carrying a Glock and IFAK, good for you but I'll get to why I brought that up specifically, keep in mind I only got as far as the end of page 3 before I made my comment)  is that at the time of the shots fired, as well as throughout the festival, the venue WAS a GUN FREE ZONE. We were searched, as were bags, and we were wanded and those of us wearing cowboy/western/southern/country/whatever the hell you want to call them, our boots were patted down. So yes while "shame on us for relying on others" (that comment pissed me off but I'm not one to let it bother me, just as somebody who was there I'm like "really?! wow...") I follow the law and I follow security instructions. I left my knife in the vehicle, I did not have a handgun at the time (however to support the point I read that victims of crimes are the ones to have firearms, since that event I got my CCW and have 1, soon another Beretta handgun for CCW, and I have a Mossberg 590M Mag fed 12GA pump action shotgun, and soon a POF Puritan 7.62 rifle I'm buying from a friend, it's an AR-15/AK-47 type rifle, it takes a little bit of both into one rifle)

I had the opportunity of working WITH USAF Security Forces (USAF Military Police. throughout this comment I will make it clear I -WAS- a CIVILIAN VOLUNTEER in A VOLUNTEER USAF program) I know what gunfire sounds like. Stephen Paddack had a full auto, select fire rifle. Possibly multiple. But yes, he had select fire. No bump stocks were used (they found some equipped in the room but they were not used during his actual rampage) He started off with single shots trying to blow up an airport fuel tank at McCarran International across the way from one of the fence lines. His intentions were to blow up this tank to get ALL 22,000 of us along that fence line going "WTF?" then open up in a dense crowd. Sure we were a dense, target rich area as it was but with us all along one fence it would have been literally spray and pray into a nice packed crowd (granted, that's what it was anyways but like I said, we would ALL be on ONE fence, much easier than all of us spread out in the open) I was in the bring your own chair area in the rear as soon as I heard the single shots I yelled for my area to get down, those are gun shots, everybody thought it was firecrackers or show effects, it was not. People were in shock and couldn't believe it. The few LVMPD officers that were there for concert security instantly drew their service weapons and started scanning the crowd. It wasn't until the evacuation came and more LVMPD SUVs showed up that they realized it was at altitude. At that point EVERYBODY ran for their cars and broke into their "oh shit kits" and threw on their body armor and rifles. At this point all the street/patrol officers had gone into their kits and broke them out. This was about 10:30 maybe 10:45ish PM 10-1-17 (as response lasted until 10-2 in the wee hours of the morning. Here locally in Vegas the event is known as "1 October, or One October".

Me personally my training from CAP kicked in as we're sometimes called up for security for various different events around town. I was helping marshal people to safety with LVMPD motioning people out. I am the first person to get through to 911 as the police dispatchers are separate from the civilian 911 call takers. When I got through to the emergency center (as our fire, medical, and PD 911 call takers are all in one combined facility) they couldn't believe what I told them but as soon as I said shots fired Las Vegas Village I heard a Metro Dispatcher come running over to their desk and confirm it and they took the call. So I was then talking to somebody who normally deals with the LEOs and other services as she dispatches public services out. She told me LVMPD officers who were  there radio'd it in and the service dispatchers were aware of it while the civilian call takers were NOT aware of what was going on, that's why she came running over when she heard a civilian who was there was on the phone. I gave her my name, what I was wearing, and asked her some emergency management related questions as I have federal disaster experience with FEMA and have ICS-300 which is a high level class you have to take in person. This class is for mid-level management staff of an incident, not a lot of then 20 year olds, now 22 year olds have it, I've never met anybody my age with ICS-300 other than those in CAP. She told me to stay strong and STICK WITH METRO. I embedded with a Fire and PD Strike Team and went to work. I was given a vest and went to do what I was trained to do and work medical. I worked medical with EMT's improvising tourniquets and doing what we could do until 5-5:30 AM when the initial FBI team came  in and declared a crime scene in conjunction with Metro CSI when they showed up. I walked up to the lead agent in charge ID'd myself as a civilian and asked if I could grab my things before I was escorted to the Thomas and Mack UNLV Sports Arena that was activated as an emergency shelter. When everything first went down I ditched my pack and everything I had. They asked me to leave it as it was evidence, everything there, all our ditched property was evidence. I was taken to UNLV, that was alphabet soup from EVERY. SINGLE. AGENCY. local, state, and federal. You even had USAF Security Forces with snipers on the roof of UNLV and Thomas and Mack. They were NOT playing around. I stayed there for maybe half an hour before my Civil Air Patrol commander came and called me and asked where I was as he knew I was there. He came and grabbed me from T&M and took me home. It was a wild night of response.

I've met families of the 58, I'm friends with somebody's cousin who died in my arms. I blame myself for not being able to do better even though I know goddamn well we did all we could do that night. Metro had NO playbook so to speak and they were writing it on the fly for future events, god forbid. Officers who had JUST GRADUATED on Friday day one of the festival were thrown into hell on Sunday, trial by fire quite literally. Firefighters and EMTs who weren't even DONE with academy yet were thrown into the worst medical scene Vegas has ever seen. They were all trainees off duty.

For me personally....as an LVMPD Police Explorer of 5 years who went through the full program I lost a dear friend and a mentor, somebody I admired and somebody I looked up to. LVMPD lost an officer that night. Off duty US Army National Guardsman and LVMPD Officer Charleston "Chucky" Hartfield, P9008 took his last watch One October. Off duty. Doing what he himself was trained to do and help people get to safety. He told his wife and kids to move and go. And he perished with 57 others. I went to his funeral and bawled so hard in USAF Service Blues. He was posthumously promoted and made First Sgt of his unit. Both the NV Guard General as well as LVMPD Sheriff Lombardo were in attendance. His final call was done at his funeral as well. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever listened to as a young 22 year old due to my personal connection with Hartfield. 

I share my first hand account not to toot my horn but to despell some of the things I saw in this post. 2017 at the time of Route 91 I worked at Amazon in the newest facility in the whole company. Now I work as an unarmed security officer in Downtown Vegas working the Fremont Street Experience "armed" only with OC/Pepper Spray and my hand to hand training. I have aspirations as an executive protections plainclothes CCW type officer maybe working for the likes of Pinkerton. I had aspirations for Metro (hence my explorers participation) but this event unfortunately closed that door for me. I still have aspirations of "public service" in a way as my time in CAP following the USAF core values of "Integrity First, Service Before Self, and Excellence in All We Do" still guide me through my professional and personal life. CAP adds a fourth which is Respect but that should come in everyday life too I find.

And since Route 91 we unfortunately at the end of 2018 in Novmeber at the Borderline Bar Thousand Oaks Shooting in CA, we had some Route survivors go through their 2nd incident as well as one survivor perishing then at that 2nd incident who was ALSO military, a Navy Veteran, Telemachus "Tel" Orfanos

I'll go create my account now, but that's my recollection of Route 91

Edited March 19, 20197 yr by Shieldel
Typos and adding additional background