In the Las Vegas shooting thing, some huge number of firearms, we were told, were brought along, with the only possible result being a hindrance of the crime.
Similarly bizarre, or more so, the Manafort & Mueller thing was telegraphed days, if not longer, in advance. If the law is serious about kicking in your door to look for evidence against you, they aren’t going to call you on Thursday to notify you of a raid scheduled for the following Monday. Not if the raid is all on the up and up. Yet that is essentially what happened.
I suppose someone more privy to the process will tell me that I don’t understand how it works. Fair enough, but it’s still retarded at best– Basic logic says that a raid for seizure of evidence and arrest of a suspect is done before the suspect has any idea what’s about to happen, not after it’s been in the Drudge Report headlines for days and all the pundits have been talking about it.
Manafort had his home searched months ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fbi-conducted-predawn-raid-of-former-trump-campaign-chairman-manaforts-home/2017/08/09/5879fa9c-7c45-11e7-9d08-b79f191668ed_story.html
White collar is different. If you have an attorney already (and Mueller raided Manafort months ago) then they negotiate you turning yourself in. Chances are, they already got his atty to agree to hold Manafort’s passport at the time of the original raid. It’s the white collar thing of the “don’t leave town” deal from the old Dragnet style investigations. (It’s a standard agreement for the atty to hold his client’s passport in lieu of other restrictions.)
“Give your passport to your attorney, don’t try to leave the country, don’t start moving around a bunch of money or shredding documents, and we won’t have to arrest you.” Same way, Manafort likely won’t have to pay bail, because he will be on his attorney’s bond. He’s not a flight risk.
Rules for big fish vs rules for little fish.
The reason for the large number of firearms in the Las Vegas shooting is pretty obvious, if you have any experience with guns, and you think about why would someone bring that many in those circumstances.
Put succinctly, the shooter had a large number of essentially identical rifles fitted with essentially identical bump stocks in order to maintain a very high rate of fire.
The AR-15 isn’t designed for very high rates of fire. If you fire it at full auto (ie., cyclic) rates of fire, only pausing to reload, you will quite rapidly destroy the gun. There are a number of YouTube videos that show that kind of thing.
But if you bring multiple identical rifles, you can swap out a “hot” one for a “cold” one, and keep your rate of fire very high, like “water cooled Maxim gun” rates of fire (which is very high). By the time you’ve cycled through the rifles, the first one you’ve fired is likely cooled down enough that you can start all over again.
This is why the shooter in Las Vegas had so many identical guns. He couldn’t wield them all at the same time, but by wielding them sequentially, swapping a “hot” gun for a “cold” one, he could maintain a high rate of fire. The added side benefit is that if one of them breaks or has a stoppage, he still has all the other guns available so it’s not a “show stopper”.
There is no way to protect against a person who puts that level of planning and forethought into an attack. Any thing you might try to do to mitigate a further occurrence will only result in a new kind of attack, just as deadly, but one you couldn’t possibly anticipate.
“If you have any experience with guns” he says.
Yeah, two or three in the same configuration and caliber would make sense. He had what, seventeen, and some in different configurations and even different chamberings?
And that’s why all special forces or rangers take seventeen rifles along for each man?
Don’t make the mistake of presuming to be in a position to school us here. Or are you a spambot who isn’t sure where you are or who you’re addressing?
I have a pretty good idea how many rounds my various ARs and AKs can take, and it’s not from watching YouTube videos.
“Any thing you might try to do to mitigate a further occurrence will only result in a new kind of attack, just as deadly, but one you couldn’t possibly anticipate.”
Wrong; you return fire. Well, you don’t of course. You’d leave it up to someone else.
You’re doing an excellent job there, spambot dittybopper, of emulating a leftist troll or a jihadist (except you don’t seem to realize you’re on a gun enthusiasts’ and engineers’ blog where people actually test these things).
Roll over and cower in your hiding place then, because for you it’s all hopeless. I’ll remain in the sunlight, breathing the free air.
This. The photos show that maybe 3 rifles were used, which is exactly how many I would expect to need to rotate through.
You’ve mischaracterized dittybopper. He has 50 comments on this blog going back about 4.5 years. I just reviewed them and none of them fit your assessment of him as a spambot, leftist troll or jihadist. I’m in general agreement with the first third of your comment, but the last two thirds are a little over the top.
I can confirm that I am indeed not a bot, spam or otherwise.
This article suggests that 12 of the guns in the hotel room were outfitted with bump-stocks:
http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/06/us/stephen-paddock-47-guns/index.html
Note that the quote is from an ATF Special Agent.
Also I’d note that Rangers and Special Forces don’t generally continually fire their rifles continuously on full-auto unless there is absolutely no alternative.
In addition, firing back at someone like this, with what? Are you going to carry a rifle with you to a concert? It’s over 300 yards from where he was shooting to the concert area. Your Glock, Lyle, simply isn’t going to cut it.
But my larger point is that someone smart enough is going to account for armed victims and either avoid the possibility like shooting from far away, outside of effective handgun range, or striking in an area where guns are not allowed, or indeed by simply engineering the circumstances so they aren’t in a position to be injured or killed during their attack.
My apologies for lashing out, and for assuming.
I do not consider 300 or 400 yards to be a long way, when modern rifles are in play. The AR carbine’s lowest setting is “0 – 2” for up to 200 yards, and 300 isn’t a lot different. The carbine’s iron sights are calibrated for up to 600, and the rifle up to 800. At 500, a silhouette is an easy target from a supported position. It is too much for a pistol of course. I’ve tried my Glock at 500, and that was out of even decent “harassment range” against a single shooter in a hotel window. A hundred yards or less? If I can see you and have the time to take aim, you’re mine. At 200? I’ll make you pause and re-think your situation if nothing else. I do keep an AR carbine in the pickup.
The matter of security guards, yes, with rifles, at a concert should be broached here. By “returning fire” I don’t mean every attendant at a concert should have a rifle slung over his shoulder (though I wouldn’t be opposed to it). A couple of roadies working for a band could double as armed guards, or rather, armed guards for roadies, for example, and why couldn’t they be back stage with ARs handy? I did the sound for a band for years, and carried a pistol, so it’s a tiny leap for an armed guard to serve as one of the crew.
Part of your comment, as I saw it, was of the nature of, “There’s no hope, and anything you do will only make it worse”, and I do see that as defeatist – something a leftist from Europe would say, or akin to the old assertions of strength being a provocation.
Sorry for the accusation. I should be better able to criticize a comment without criticizing the commenter.
Major thread drift here, but why not? I hold to the point that 17 rifles is a burden only. Give a person two or three that he doesn’t care about ruining, and a bucket of water, and he’ll be able to keep the noise going at full tilt for hours. Poor man’s water-cooled. I’ve done that too, by the way.
There are TWO factors that I have not seen explained yet:
1) The incredibly LONG pauses between strings of fire.
2) The absolutely perfectly measured cadence of those strings.
Was he handloading each mag before use?
On point 2, I see lots of bull about sound reflections and bad microphones. And it is bullshit. I have never seen anyone display perfect results like that with a bumpstock, with smaller mags.
On point 2, how long are the strings of fire? I don’t remember if the number of shots fits the size of the magazines reported to be there.