Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Question of the Day: Politicizing Tragedy
As soon as news came in on the Las Vegas shooting, politicians, celebrities, and journalists demanded stricter gun control. The Question of the Day: Will Sunday’s shooting result in any new gun control legislation?
The Ricochet Question of the Day poses a question about the news, then at the end of the day, we’ll post the best comments. Join the conversation!
Published in General
I’ll say “Yes”, but only in places where guns are already heavily restricted.
I will partially echo Stad and say “yes,” but really what new laws short of confiscation/banning would have prevented this? From what I have seen–and admittedly it is limited–they guy had no criminal record and seemed like the type of guy who could have successfully acquired ATF permission to have the weapons used legally.
The gun control crowd will never relent, will use every tragedy to push their agenda, and get angrier and more determined with each new tragedy. People who should know better and the usual political cowards will gradually accommodate and restrictions will creep forward. But of course restrictions will make gun violence worse and confiscation will be the next target after prohibition of inter state transport or some such. The effort to collect guns will divide and give rise to greater violence. If the anti gun folks had a magic wand and could make all guns disappear we’d then have a robust illegal trade across all borders and decentralized fabrication. The people who have guns would be a couple of notches worse, like drug thugs. Three dimensional printers would enjoy robust growth and the materials a technical boom. Lets face it guns can be broken down, transported in pieces and we can’t even stop fully grown humans who choose to penetrate our border and are far more difficult to break into pieces, but such arguments mean nothing to the far left because it’s never about the the thing in question. It’s always about power and, of course, popular fantasy used to enhance it.
The bump-stock will be banned.
I read Paddock was a Democrat. It’s time we took guns away from those maniacs.
I don’t think there will be new legislation, for a couple of reasons. First, people think that a gun will protect them from crazy people like the one in Las Vegas. I wouldn’t be surprised to see gun sales pick up again, and Conservatives aren’t the only ones buying them. Of course, carrying a gun in this most recent situation would not have helped. Second, there will be much hand-wringing and ranting about the need for gun laws. But at some level, people (I think) are just beginning to understand that all the gun laws in the world will not protect them from this kind of situation. Over and over again we realize that the shooters would not have been stopped by any of the current legislation, and they won’t be held in check by any proposed laws either. So we can watch people rant and rave, get it out of their systems, and let them feel righteous. The gun legislation, if proposed, will fail.
No.
I remember going to work the morning after Sandy Hook. The night guy was absolutely gleeful about it. He said “They’ve finally had their Port Arthur Moment!” he was certain that Sandy Hook would drive a movement to get rid of the 2nd amendment.
If a maniac can kill children and nothing much changes – a maniac killing adults won’t change anything.
We shouldn’t politicize tragedy when it’s raw, but afterward, it’s an opportunity – we keep getting opportunities to change things and don’t. Like the gun issue – those types of assault rapid fire guns developed for military don’t belong in civil society. You don’t need to fire 50 rounds into a home intruder or a deer. It’s also obvious we can no longer have open air events without much stricter preparations.
I also don’t believe this guy did this for gambling debt – he could jump out a window – but that kind of preparation, hate and evil to rein down on innocent people is not just gambling debt. There’s more to the story. The people closest to him knew something.
No idea whether this will actually result in any meaningful legislation.
But if the left can manage to reign in its emotions enough to play this one strategically, it will go after bump stocks.
The best thing the left can do is make gun rights supporters defend the seemingly absolutely indefensible, so that the left can say “see, these guys really are madmen”. Commercial devices which allow legal firearms to fire at automatic weapons rates fit that bill pretty well – little plausible need for them in self-defense or hunting, they are now implicated in the largest mass killing in US history, and automatic weapons are already illegal (a prohibition with which many gun advocates agree).
However, there is always a segment on the right that opposes any and all new restrictions on firearms on principle alone. And the left will have a field day holding those people up as exemplary of the entire population of gun owners.
Logically the answer should be no. The public supports gun rights and Republicans control the House, Senate, and Presidency.
Then again, this Congress has already sold out the base on Obamacare and is busy selling them out on immigration. They also know that their base can do nothing to them because they would be replaced by a Democrat Congress that would be full progressive. The Republican establishment is betting that fear of a Democrat-created language police and re-throttling of the economy will protect Republican incumbents. And gun control legislation would make Republican lawmakers more popular at D. C. parties. So, new gun control legislation in three . . . two . . .
Seawriter
My suspicion is that the Left is in a rush to create as much of a smoke storm as they can before the real facts in the case are known. This looks more and more to me like the shooting at the Congreassional ballgame. The furor of the Left over the loss of the election and the election of Trump has made them go from the sublime to the ridiculous. The fact that Country music is often associated with right wing politics leads me to speculate that the shooter, enraged by the anti-Tump rhetoric, chose to attack a large group of what he perceived as Trump supporters.
My belief is that once the facts are known, the Left and the Media will be seen as the cause of this latest outrage, and even though they are unlikely to accept blame, their cries for more gun-controls will slowly die away as they have in the past until there is another incident. Then, history forgotten, they will once again drag out their banners and outrage and try again.
I really wish the country would stop focusing on the weapon the shooter chose and look at other pieces of the crime. A mass murderer has many weapons to choose from these days–from biological agents to chemical agents to bombs. To me, it’s really important to look at the psychology of the crime more than the weapon.
I’d look at television shows and movies, for example. I’m not saying they cause crime, but do they plant suggestions in people’s minds?
My husband and I are fans of NCIS and have watched it for years. There were one or two episodes a few years ago that dealt with “exsanguination”–in other words, the murderer killed his victim by draining the blood out of the victim while the victim was alive. Horrible to contemplate even for a second, and the nightmares ensued.
I was quite shocked to skim (not read–and I urge readers to do what I did, lest you have nightmares too) this story that appeared a couple of weeks ago, particularly this statement made by the Los Angeles medical examiner:
Could this crime have been inspired by those episodes of NCIS?
More broadly, are our television, movie, and crime novel writers concocting “recipes” for criminals to act on?
“Copycat” murders have been around for a long time, about as long as the printing press and Jack the Ripper.
I’m not proposing an answer. Just asking that we widen our search for the cause of the mass shootings and other horrifically violent crimes that we see.
Variations of the Slide-Fire stock that this loser used have been around for decades (see “Hellfire trigger” for one of the more common ones). They can ban such things, and human ingenuity will then come up with something else to get around the ban and produce the same results.
Better yet … let’s outlaw Democrats.
No but you do need them to repulse an oppressive government. Look I don’t think we should be selling bazookas or M1-Abrams tanks to individuals, but at the very least our small arms need to be comparable to oppressors in Washington. Who are you to say what I need for home protection?
Probably true. And which will do absolutely nothing. See @franksoto ‘s youtube video … http://ricochet.com/459428/can-someone-explain-this-bump-stock-thing-to-me/#comment-3933843
Yeah of course, his lawyers are going to plea that he is mental unfit for trial.
Like the free speech issue – the type of rapid fire media developed for the government doesn’t belong in civil society. You don’t need to fire off 50 words in a post or on Twitter.
FIFY.
I’m worried about how to prevent crimes like this.
You’ll note Democrats when they have power never bring out this legislation
It’s almost always triangulation to get Republicans to sell out their base.
No. But I would not be surprised if Jared and Ivanka’s lefty tendencies whisper some things in Donald’s ear.
Well I think in your comment lies a problem: prevent crimes. How does a state prevent crimes without become dictatorial? Are we to treat the whole despotically just to catch the very few?
The issue is not prevention of crimes but of full prosecution of crimes when they are committed. In the story you linked to, we are dealing with someone who has an obvious depraved heart, which is one of the common law traits of murder. Whether he is mentally capable to stand trial or not should not be the issue when measured against his actions, which certainly display a cruel nature that needs to be punished. His lawyers are trying to mitigate his sentencing from, what was it, life in prison to a conviction more or less like life in psychiatric evaluation. My view on this is why do we need to preserve this guy’s life at all? If he is a nutjob capable of this kind of seriously depraved act–he scalped the mother of his child such that the skull was bare all the way to the neck!–then he is no less deserving of death to remove him from society as is a “normal” depraved murderer.
No. I’ll be astounded if any legislation is passed by the house and senate about anything at all. Regarding firearms this is a good thing.
They will try, they always do. But they will not succeed in getting anything passed.
I thought of Designated Survivor. A rich white guy is the villain. I totally agree with you about the danger of copycat crime.
But if they could blame this on right-wing views, we’da heard about it by now. I saw a forensic psychologist on Fox this AM. He says “spectacle killings” like James HOlmes, are “a young man’s game”. A sixtyish killer is more likely to have had a cause in mind. Like James Hodgkinson.
Maybe Paddock thought this would be the gun massacre to end all gun massacres, force action on gun confiscation.
Maybe attacking a casino crowd has something to do with Trump.
The other awful possibility is just that Paddock is s sociopath who thought, hey, I could do whatever I want. Why don’t I go out on a mass murder, that’s something I’ve never done….from what I’ve read, sociopaths dont always kill, but it’s a toss up whether they will or not, because they don’t have the empathy and fellow-feeling that makes most of us reluctant to torture other people.
No. Every time there is a mass-shooting, cries for more gun legislation begin again. But none are ever enacted. At the federal level, there is no chance of any legislation any time soon given the Republican control of Congress. As the state level, Republicans dominate most states, and even many Democrats silently favor gun ownership. So, I don’t foresee any significant new legislation being enacted as a result of this tragedy.
Yup. In fact, the thought crossed my mind that if he is the person his brother describes him to be, without any history of anything to explain it, that it might be a case similar to the central plot line of the Steve McQueen movie The Thomas Crown Affair, in which a rich guy simply wants to prove he can do it. McQueen plays a good guy, but suppose this evil Paddock is watching all these mass shootings over the years and thinking he could “pull it off” somehow. As crazy as that sounds, if you are that evil and you want to cause mayhem and terror and you want to kill and wound a lot of people because you are inhumanly sadistic, which I should have put first, the game of it may be motive enough.
I am not the only person to worry about the impact of seeing a steady dose of unthinkable violence on television shows and in the movies. When 24 was on the air, the military called Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) to task for showing such horrific torture on the show. From the first article that popped up on Google with respect to this problem with 24:
Next door to my apartment building is a Rexall Drug store where I may purchase various chemical reagents found in household cleaning products. Anyone who has completed high school chemistry could mix these to create poison gas capable of causing grievous injury and death to many people. Firearms, while sufficient, are not necessary for someone with evil intentions to create a mass causality event.