Yeah that’s fair, the guy was armed to the teeth. The bump stock is just the icing on the shit cake.
Not trying to minimize the bump stock thing but I would wager that having 23 different guns and hundreds of rounds of ammo is why so many people got shot that night. This guy had it all planned out including bipods, red dots, cameras etc. this guy even went as far as to nailing his door shut so in any case someone got to his hotel before he was done, he would have extra time.
Yeah the bump stocks made a difference but I don’t think it was by that much.
Witchfire@lemmy.world 7 months ago
CapeWearingAeroplane@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
Can someone who’s more into gun stuff tell me why people are always talking about the amount of guns someone has?
What makes 23 different guns better than one good one? I can see the point of having like two, in case the first jams, but based on my (limited) experience I would much rather have a single HK416 than a dozen of anything else.
Also with fewer guns you need fewer ammo types (unless you for some reason have 23 guns with the same ammo, which to me makes even less sense).
aidan@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Can someone who’s more into gun stuff tell me why people are always talking about the number of guns someone has?
Can be one of several things, or usually a combination:
- to show how prepared they were
- to imply the person was crazy because they had that many guns
- to imply people having that many guns somehow itself makes them more dangerous
A lot of it is just rhetoric
CeruleanRuin@lemmings.world 7 months ago
But it also does raise the question: why did the shooter think he needed a lot of guns?
aidan@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That is true, maybe he thought he was going to have a multiday standoff, but I don’t know why he’d need so many guns for that.
phoneymouse@lemmy.world 7 months ago
He brought all those guns to the hotel room he shot from. I imagine it was so he could shoot as many rounds at the crowd with out the need to reload.
skyspydude1@lemmy.world 7 months ago
But that really makes no sense. Unless you have them all set up in a row pointed exactly where you want, you’re probably not even saving half a second vs reloading. The old “switching is faster than reloading” thing doesn’t apply nearly as much when you’re at a static position and can have all your mags out in the open at arm’s reach.
24_at_the_withers@lemmy.world 7 months ago
He was operating a significant number of his weapons on bump stocks. Bump stocks allow firing at a much higher rate than the weapons were designed for. Operating at a higher rate causes the weapons to overheat. Overheating causes misfires and jams (and inaccuracy and can permanently damage weapons, but I doubt he was particularly concerned about those things). He did have them all set up in a row and many on mounts. He broke out the overlooking windows of his hotel room before he started shooting. It seems he was shooting with one until it jammed and then moving on to the next rather than trying to clear misfires.
OpenStars@startrek.website 7 months ago
Except they can jam up - otherwise as you said it would be better to reload one than to switch?
skyspydude1@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Because it grabs attention and sounds scary, which really what media outlets care about. My other favorite is when they talk about someone having being caught with “hundreds of rounds of ammunition”, which clearly indicates that’s how many people they were planning on murdering, and isn’t just a pretty typical range day, or in the case of reallly common stuff like 9mm, 22LR, or even 223, can literally be a single box of ammo.
PatFussy@lemm.ee 7 months ago
The guy just had a lot of guns. He had 23 with him and he had like another 20 at home.
But I would also imagine that him having them all loaded put into a row in his suite is faster than reloading.
CapeWearingAeroplane@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
A lot of people this thing about reloading, but honestly, my reload time after a couple weeks of basic training was under the five seconds you need to pass, and after a couple months of service plenty of people were closer to three seconds. I have a hard time imagining that swapping weapons is quicker. I guess the reloading thing might be the reason to have many guns, but it strikes me as a strange one.
And really, I’m not only talking about this specific case, I get the feeling that people that are into guns will often focus on the number of guns someone has, also outside this case, which seems a bit of a strange metric to be talking about in general.
orcrist@lemm.ee 7 months ago
One life is that much, though.
Mr_Blott@lemmy.world 7 months ago
For those of us who don’t wank ourselves to sleep every night to pictures of guns and have no idea what the fuck a bump stock is -
Syn_Attck@lemmy.today 7 months ago
Interesting observation, I’d have thought anyone old enough at the time to follow news of the largest mass shooting in history would have known, especially since bump stocks became one of the largest causes of gun debate at the time, before Glock switches. Since you don’t
watch news about gun violencewank yourself to sleep watching gun videos every night, here’s what that is:Mr_Blott@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Ha ha you seem to misunderstand that most other countrys’ entire discussion of the matter was “Fucksake the backwards yanks are at it again, must be a day with a ‘Y’ in it” 🙄
Syn_Attck@lemmy.today 7 months ago
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