awkwardly

Wednesday

If gun restrictions are totally ineffective, why didn't the LV shooter's collection include a machine gun?

Follow my line of reasoning here and let me know if my premises or conclusions are wrong.

1. The LV shooter had 47 guns between the hotel room where he perched and his two homes.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/guns-loaded-high-capacity-magazines-found-vegas-shooters/story?id=50228093

2. No outlets are reporting that any of the weapons were illegal. They included semi-automatic weapons and at least a dozen "bump stocks," which can turn semi-auto into fully automatic or nearly fully automatic. No illegal purchases of weapons by the shooter have been reported from what I've heard or read, but they haven't vetted all his purchases.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/10/02/video-from-las-vegas-suggests-automatic-gunfire-heres-what-makes-machine-guns-different/

3. Investigators haven't determined exactly which weapons were used in the shooting. Witnesses and people who listened to audio of the event said it sounded like fully automatic gun fire, so they were probably hearing semi-automatic weapons with bump stocks attached.

4. The LV shooter was a multi-millionaire.
http://6abc.com/brother-las-vegas-gunman-was-wealthy-real-estate-investor/2480222/

5. It is possible to own fully automatic weapons, but they are more heavily restricted than semi-automatic or other types.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/12/17/1171047/-There-are-240-000-fully-automatic-guns-in-the-US-and-only-2-deaths-in-80-years

6. No one has reported that any of the LV shooter's 47 weapons were built as fully automatic.

7. The purpose of a bump stock is to effectively turn a legal semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic weapon. It's an end-run around the laws that restrict fully auto weapons. Bump stocks are generally legal, but banned in a few states (see article below). They may make parts of the weapon wear out sooner. They're also cheaper than all the registration and fees and cost of a fully automatic weapon.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/can-a-bump-stock-make-a-ar-15-fire-full-auto-like-a-machine-gun-yes-and-its-relatively-cheap-pretty-easy-and-completely-legal/article/2636432
Conclusion: Fully automatic weapons aren't even banned, they're just more difficult to get because of restrictions. Yet this rich, retired gun enthusiast did not get one. Maybe he just wanted a cheaper alternative. Come on, really? Do you know people who own guns? Did you grow up with guns? Do you currently own guns? We're supposed to be exempt from discussing gun regulations if we haven't spent at least 10,000 hours at a range and field dressed 500 pounds of game with our dads or moms.

Anyway, can you imagine someone who owned 47 weapons and had plenty of money but wouldn't own a machine gun if he had the chance? Someone who would be satisfied with a device stuck on the back of a rifle to make it nearly equivalent to a machine gun? If you haven't fired one yourself (which you can do legally at various gun ranges), you've probably seen videos of people using real machine guns. Everybody says they're fun. Seems implausible that this guy wouldn't have bought a fully automatic weapon if he had been able to.

This makes me think the current restrictions on fully automatic weapons prevented him from getting one, or were enough of an obstacle that he wanted to get around them. Sounds like some gun regulations are effective obstacles to some people. So don't let people tell you gun regulations are useless or that anyone who's committed will find a way around them. (By the way, no laws are 100% effective, so anyone who tells you gun laws are useless because they're less than 100% effective is arguing against all laws. They may be surprised if you point out that their argument is anarchist.)

But wait! Aha! The shooter got around this gun regulation by using a bump stock. So this proves anyone who's sufficiently committed will find a way around them, right? No. The reason he was able to purchase a bump stock legally and easily was because NRA lobbies against almost all restrictions, and because ATF and other government agencies have been stocked full of gun maximalists over the years. Here's a page from the NRA's website explaining how wrong it was to restrict fully automatic weapons over the years, and how they're obviously itching to remove restrictions as soon as they can.
https://www.nraila.org/articles/19990729/fully-automatic-firearms

So you can't give a person an easy way around the law and then say, "See, gun laws don't work!"

I'm running out of energy. The other question I wanted to explore was whether the NRA was culpable for the number of casualties. I haven't been able to find if there have been legal battles or discussions about bump stocks since they've been available, or whether the NRA defended their legality. If they did, would it be impossible for them to foresee that this could be the result? Would it be a stretch to say the actions of the NRA allowed the LV shooter to kill or wound more people, even if he would have killed some with semi-automatic weapons? Sorry, that's a statement cloaked as a question. Let me put it plainly. I think there were more casualties in Las Vegas because of the actions of the NRA. I think there are more casualties around the country, every day of every year, because of the actions of the NRA. Hell, around the world, because weapons are manufactured in the US and the NRA fights to help them sell everywhere around the world. Even though they have a large body of grassroots supporters, you'd almost get the impression that the NRA is mainly fighting for manufacturers instead of citizens. You could almost follow the money.

Supporting webpages were accessed Oct 4, 2017.