Wednesday, October 11, 2017

the finger gun...

so there i was yesterday, innocently helping my parents with whatever... and i get a text from a woman i know...

a glorious and beautiful woman, a dedicated mother, with a smile like a spotlight that would normally light up a room.

she was not smiling...

because her 7 year old had been written up at school that day and given detention... the official reason was "inappropriate language" - but the real reason was that he made a gun out of his fingers.

wait, what?

yes, you read that right - the same thing EVERYONE HAS DONE, is now a problem in schools... gone are the days of play, farewell to 'cops & robbers', no more acting like James Bond...

and why?

she was told, "because other students may feel threatened"

WAIT - WHAT??

now, let's look deeper into this....

we can't let our kids play because it's depicting something violent... and that supposedly violent depiction in play could cause other students such mental anguish that they... what?  can no longer function at school? 

do we need to send in counselors?  should we start therapy for the PTSD?

all because a kid made a gun shape out of his fingers??

so here i want to blame the school for being paranoid - but then i have to wonder...

what kind of children are you people raising that we can't let kids play like this any more??

what kind of kids are we raising that an obvious non-threatening play act is now treated like a potential threat?

are we trying to encourage our kids to overthink everything?  do we want them to be afraid of even the idea of something bad??

the drama of play has now become so traumatic that a finger pointed at another student is a problem, what??

...the story, gets better...

my friend later found out that when her child asked why he was in trouble, the educators explained to the SEVEN YEAR OLD all about how sometimes people show up at schools and shoot people, so we shouldn't joke about it.

yes, that's correct... the solution for not letting a child play like he has a gun... was to tell him that people come to schools and shoot people.

i guess the logic here is that we can traumatize one child with reality so that he doesn't risk traumatizing the other kids with play.

ya know... a lot of people don't want to hear my opinions because i don't have kids... because i can't know what it's like to have a child, and i can't know what it's like to have a child in these troubling times.

here's what i know:  if we are raising a nation of people we want to function in this troubling world, we better let them know that life is not easy, and that sometimes things go south, but first maybe we should let them know that it's ok to play.

now many will ask 'where do we draw the line??' and certainly someone will say, 'you can't understand what it's like to have kids that don't understand how serious things are and see them make jokes about it when they shouldn't have to deal with such pain!'

and ya know, i'm not going to say that on some level those aren't valid points - but what kind of world are we living in when a 7 year old child can't play?  he's not supposed to understand - he's SEVEN YEARS OLD, do you want to live in a world where kids can't play??  i get it, you try to keep young kids from seeing violence and sadness, and those things should be taken seriously, but this isn't Columbine - this is a seven year old making a finger gun!

and now you want to raise kids who are afraid of a finger gun?  is that the kind of parents you want to be?  are you proud of that?  i'd like to hope we aren't proud to raise kids who are emotionally stressed at the idea of a finger gun.

because none of us wants to live in a country where our future law enforcement and military is filled with people who as children couldn't handle the trauma of having a finger gun pointed at them.




Wednesday, October 4, 2017

pt 2 - a gun nut's assessment of vegas

the first videos i saw from the Las Vegas Massacre were all from the first few seconds...  

the gunfire was not normal

it was too steady, it was automatic, and it was way more than 30 rounds.

i believed it was a modified semi-automatic AK, made to fire automatically, and using drum magazines.

my reason was the steady fire, the reliability, and the amount of ammunition.

the news claimed it was 'bumpstocks' - but i've fired those, they are impossible to use consistently, you're basically attaching a spring to the back of the weapon and bouncing it off your shoulder to fire over and over again, while trying to hold on to the front - you become part of the automatic fire system.

but - i had only heard the first minute or less of gunfire - and my experience with bumpstocks is limited because they are so difficult that i didn't want to bother with them.

i have seen videos online of people shooting with a bumpstock and doing very well with it - but that takes time, you actually have to learn how to do that in a fashion that can be so constant... and at that point you're basically holding on to an explosion as it rattles you over and over again, you need to be in shape to hold that for 11 minutes!

so, i concluded it wasn't a bumpstock.

then a friend of mine who i believe is equally as informed as i am told me he thought it was a bumpstock - and that i should watch the 'cab driver video', so i did.

this video is 10min long and starts after the gunfire... and you have to go a few minutes into it before you start to hear the gunfire well.

the gunfire in that video is NOT constant, it does vary in speed, and it is in bursts... still not 3 round bursts, but the kind of bursts that take place when you're a 65 year old accountant trying to hold on to a tempest of explosions.

basically what i was hearing WAS bumpstock use... but i was hearing someone who had gotten tired after knowing how to use it very well at first.

i will stand by my original assessment now in this fashion:  this was not as simple as a mass shooting.

this was more bataclan than sandy hook.

this man wanted to create destruction, and we should all grasp the depth of that.

this 65 year old man took the time to equip many weapons in a fashion that is very difficult to use, then learn how to use that as best as possible.  then he prepared a dozen or more weapons to this capacity and learned how to use all of them.

news estimates claim his arsenal at the hotel and at home cost him over $100,000.00

i can tell you it took years to research, assemble, and test...  and HE DID IT WITHOUT ANYONE NOTICING.  i havent heard anything more than records from 2 gun purchases, and i've heard nothing about testing at any gun ranges.

here's my point:  this was not as simple as 'we can pass some gun laws and this will never happen again' - no, we need to find a solution to people who perform outside the boundaries of law.

this man did all this without anyone noticing...  this man was a one man sleeper cell.

the simple will see this as gun violence.  they will be foolish and put this in the same category as a drug deal gone wrong where 6 are shot.  that's not what this was.

don't be simple, don't rattle around thinking that anything we do with gun control will control someone like this.  on some level, be happy that someone like this was lazy enough to choose guns.

as i said in my previous post - do not be lazy, do not be simple, so not approach this with the mentality that if he didn't have access to guns then it wouldn't have happened.  because this kind of person would have gone with a UHaul or a pressure cooker.

that's what we are fighting here, grasp it, and don't let your issues with street thugs and suburban madmen get confused with it.  

if you want to fight the NRA and the gun lobby, feel free... but don't do it because of this.  understand this person wasn't interested in shooting up some people, he wanted to create chaos.

and there is a massive difference.

to put all this together and manage to use it will took more effort than any of you can imagine.

i'm not sure how to solve this problem without eventually ending up in a police state, but i can say this:  the man was driven, he had the time, the money, and the talent... and if he had chosen another method like explosives under a hotel or sabotage of the Hoover Dam, this could actually have been much worse.







Tuesday, October 3, 2017

i'm a gun nut, and we should be concerned...

I'm a gun nut, I like guns, and I'll ague with people all day long about how more people die from cars and fast food than guns all day long... but then Sunday night happened.

This is a lot to read, but you might learn something.  This man planned this, and used advanced skill over time to do as much damage as possible, and probably knew that in the end it he would be trapped and take his own life.

This was not comparable to gun violence, this is comparable to someone wearing a well engineered explosive vest.

Read on to understand...

I got home around 3am Monday morning... where I was is unimportant, if you know me, you can guess where I was, and yes, it was glorious.

I got into bed and the footage was typical for a catastrophic event, a bunch of reports describing exactly what we could already see in a manner that makes you wonder if they were hoping for an Oscar instead of an Emmy.

But then it happened... they had video from the event, from the moment things went wrong.  And they played it.

Everyone has seen it by now, and the vast majority of you heard gun fire, some of you could even tell it was more than someone pulling a trigger, and guns and violence and bullets and...

I heard something different... something I fear that the majority of people are not going to notice, and worse, won't understand the importance of.

Yes, it was gunfire, and yes, it was a machine gun.  Eventually anyone can figure that out.

But it wasn't normal.

'Normal'?  what's normal about any of this?

Well, nothing about the Vegas massacre was normal, but worse, this wasn't 'normal' for what we should be hearing from the average assault weapon - even an automatic one.

I realize that most people don't have my knowledge on the topic, but it wasn't normal... and now I will try to explain why.

The average soldier in the United States military carries some version of the M16, which decades ago was recognized to be hard to control when it is set to fire full auto... so the modern version, what most of our soldiers carry, fires in 3 round bursts.

And the magazines only hold 30 rounds, after that there's a longer pause for reloading

What I heard in that footage was not 3 round burst, and it was a a LOT more than 30 rounds - this is not normal.

OK, so now whatever is shooting is fully automatic, and carries a lot more than a 'normal' magazine.

NOT a normal assault weapon, even for the U.S. military.

I listened to it over and over, and by 4am I was waking up people to verify what I noticed... this weapon was either fed by a really large (and usually unreliable) magazine, or a belt feed.

Belt feed weapons are advanced, even for the military.

Then I started to think about what kind of weapon it was...

This was either a belt fed fully automatic weapon, or a heavily modified assault weapon.

>> Here's where you should start to be concerned. <<

If this was a belt fed weapon, that almost guarantees it was stolen from our military or smuggled into the country.  While it's possible for people to have things like this they are VERY rare, and VERY well tracked by our government.  No one just has one in the garage at their house in the retirement village.

And, if we find out this was a belt fed weapon - prepare for a wall, a travel ban, an import ban, and all kinds of other craziness... if this was a belt fed weapon we have bigger problems than mass shootings... I know that's hard to believe, but belt fed weapons are massive and... just, no... if this was belt fed our government was involved.

If this was a modified assault weapon...  hmm... well, it's really hard to modify an AR variant to do this, even for a skilled gunsmith... but the AK-47... that's easier, but...

Then I realized, this was (and as of my writing this on 10/3/17 this is a guess) probably an AK modified for full auto and being fed by a drum magazine.

These weapons are really hard to aim with any level of accuracy, but from 400 meters above, such a configuration could rain down bullets on an epic level with no need for accuracy.

>> Here is where you should be really concerned <<

Fully automatic AKs (really, fully automatic anything owned by the public) are well documented, they all came into the country before 1986, they are well tracked - so someone had to MAKE this weapon.  Someone had to take the time to learn how to do it, then gain the skill needed to machine the weapon, then gain the skill to make the needed internal parts, and then get the equipment to actually do it, and then test things without being noticed.... and then do it all over again for however many weapons he had.

Why is this something that should concern you?

This event is the equivalent of a pressure cooker or car bomb, this event is not a simple mass shooting.  And worse, I think he expected to die.

What happened in Las Vegas on Sunday October 1, 2017 was a tragedy.  But what happened was not as simple as gun violence.  This was not a street thug with an illegal hand gun, it wasn't even as simple as a madman shooting up a school with rifles he stole from his parents.

This was advanced weaponry - already illegal - more advanced than found on the average U.S. soldier - and I believe it was made privately by someone with advanced machine skills.

We have actually seen these before.  What is often referred to as the 'North Hollywood Shootout' involved two bank robbers who modified AK's to fire automatically, then put on full body armor to attempt to rob a bank... the cops were wildly out gunned.

That was 20 years ago.

Here's my point - this was not simple... this took epic levels of prep time and either involved stolen/smuggled belt fed weapons or AKs modified in a fashion that requires advanced skills.

Sunday October 1 2017 was not a Chicago shootout, it was not Sandy Hook, I think it surpasses the Aurora theater...  this was a next level Boston Marathon, Ted Kaczynski, Bataclan, Oklahoma City bombing level work.  It took time, and more importantly it took skill.

You will want to pass laws, and you can try, I'm not writing this to dissuade you from your efforts.  But you're going to try to control guys with handguns and crazies with store bought weapons, and if that's your thing, that's your thing... you will not be impacting people who do things like this.

This was not normal.  I realize people want to feel like they have some form of control, they will want answers they will want solutions, they will say this was based on guns and so we will control the guns.

Making this about gun violence is like making the delivery of a bomb in a rental truck a transportation issue.

No, if we have people floating around that are quietly making bombs in their kitchen - that is the problem, it's bigger than UHaul getting more advanced paperwork.

Do what you feel like you must - but please do not over simplify this.  This was not a simple mass shooting.  This was an advanced production that involved time and skill and planning which cannot be compared to anything we want to compare this to.  And your efforts should reflect that.


FOLLOW UP -

First, I've had a lot of people mention that they saw on the news that this guy got legal guns and made an easy $50 conversion with parts he got online.  These are called 'bumpstocks' and yes, they are easy and cheap.  But they don't fire like what I heard on Sunday night... they are not reliable, they are junk, and while the media would love to sell you on the armies of crazies who are ready to run the streets shooting off 1000 bullets a minute, this is not reality.

Second, please grasp the importance of this being fully automatic gunfire... fully automatic guns are already heavily regulated, having one illegally is a massive violation of federal and state law, so what was used is not only already illegal, but most probably HOME MADE... and that's why this is concerning.

Third, the home made aspect of this... I can't stress how advanced this is.  20 years ago the 1997 North Hollywood Shootout involved weapons that I think were used on Sunday night.  Those weapons were acquired during the assault weapons ban, and then modified.  So please understand what I'm saying here in two parts... when we had more advanced laws, the base weapon used were banned, but were still acquired and then modified illegally.  But the process is so complex that law has since been rescinded and it still hasn't happened again until now.

This was a next level event, this was not a simple mass shooting, this was choreographed carnage.

I guess what I'm trying to hit home here is this:  please understand the magnitude of what happened for Sunday night to take place.  Please do not be simple and boil this down to something like, 'guns are bad, we just need to make more laws and this will stop'.  Because Sunday night is a sign of a bigger problem.  Sunday night was not a mass shooting, Sunday night was well planned and the result of tedious work meant to devastate a nation.  You may want to blame the guns, and if you want to be anti-gun then be that person, but this person wasn't about shooting up people, this person wanted to create chaos.

Don't think I won't see your argument that he used a gun to do it, so you want to ban guns, I get it.  And really, while I don't agree, I see you point when you're talking about Chicago street violence and other stupidity.  But this wasn't some stick up kid using a weapon to rob a convenience store.  This was someone who wanted to create destruction.   And we should be concerned, because he violated laws already in place, took the time to plan it all out, managed to do things that require advanced skills, and did it all at home quietly without raising any suspicion.

Fight the gun lobby, do whatever you want.  But incidents of this magnitude are not something we can legislate with gun laws - the laws are already in place - and to prevent things like this in the future, we need to think past the guns... we need to think of how we would have stopped Timothy McVey, the Nice truck driver, or the Tsarnaev brothers.

If you really want to stop events like this in the future - find that level of solution.  Don't pacify yourself with a lot of talk about what WalMart sells and think you made a difference because you posted some anti-NRA article online.  This event is more advanced than that, and the solution will be as well.