UPDATE: 2:30 PM 10/2/17: The death toll has risen to 58, with more than 500 injured. Though it was first reported that Paddock was killed by police it now appears he shot himself before the police entered his room. There are still no details as to Paddock’s possible motives. The original post follows.
As I write this, the media is reporting that 50 have been killed and more than 400 others have been injured in a mass shooting at an open-air concert in Las Vegas. Police have identified the shooter as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, who opened fire on concertgoers from a hotel room in the Mandalay Bay complex overlooking the venue, killing dozens before himself being shot dead by police.
The staggering death toll, which seems sure to rise, makes this the worst mass shooting in American history. At this point we know very little about the shooter or what his motives may have been, but that hasn’t stopped 4Channers and far-right “media” sources from spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories.
We’ll know more soon enough, I assume. In the meantime, here are a few useful tweets I’ve gathered up so far.
A couple of thread on on the disinformation being spread about the shooting by many of the usual suspects.
For easier retrieval, I'm threading together the disinformation I've seen about the #MandalayBay Casino shooting in Las Vegas.
/1/
— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) October 2, 2017
Here Are All The Hoaxes Being Spread About The Las Vegas Shooting #MandalayBay https://t.co/L79J6iLuqU via @BuzzFeedNews pic.twitter.com/l2p9KOt8M7
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) October 2, 2017
The execrable right-wing Gateway Pundit remains dedicated to getting everything wrong the fastest.
The @gatewaypundit wrote up Geary Danley as the #mandalaybay shooter and then deleted their post. pic.twitter.com/ocXtTOX6rL
— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) October 2, 2017
Other relevant tweets:
https://twitter.com/NivenJ1/status/914795331241484288
This week Congress is deciding to end background checks for silencers. No joke. #opposeSHAREact
— Jillzie 🟧 (@jcindc2002) October 2, 2017
Here is a rundown of Nevada gun laws. It’s lawful to possess a machine gun that is legally registered https://t.co/BjdQm68crz
— Sam Stein (@samstein) October 2, 2017
Just a reminder that it's only been 16 months since the last worst mass shooting in US history. https://t.co/jHQnDy30Lv
— Abigail Nussbaum (@NussbaumAbigail) October 2, 2017
My heart goes out to all those affected by this senseless tragedy. If you’re a WHTM reader who lives in or around Las Vegas, or if you’re visiting there, please let us know how you are doing.
I can kill a person with a hammer, just as I can kill a deer with a two-foot length of 2×4 pine… but I would have a rough time killing 58 people from 300+ yards away in 10 minutes with either of those “tools”.
Similarly, I would have a rough time killing 58 people from 400 yards away with that Remington 700BDL.
To do that “job”, the “tool” I need is one designed for killing large numbers of people efficiently from a distance… say… an AR-15 modified to automatic fire, or any of the other dildo-fetish military weapons prized by the people who believe the 2nd Amendment begins “dot, dot, dot”.
Apologies if I have offended any of my fellow Mammotheers.
The things I am tempted to say would almost certainly not fly here.
I just hope those who have friends and family in Vegas have only good news about them.
(Although I do find it speculative that this event was targeted because country music fans are conservative. I have read this theory from alt-righters, and I feel that THESE types of generalizations are basically useless.)
No offense taken. I’m banging rocks together here, but there ARE precedents that suggest that this type of shooting is far more likely to be perpetrated by people affiliated with the Right wing.
It is speculative, however I am at a loss in regard to the motive. I mean… this was a country music concert. Someone was pointing out in another thread that an AR-15 weighs 60 lbs and the shooter had 10 weapons. Not likely that he carried all of them in one go up to the 32nd floor, meaning this had to be premeditated.
From there I can only guess there was a political motive, but what was it? I’m still leaning towards the guy being Right wing, considering it has been reported that he lived by himself and was a bit of a loner. That seems to fall in line most likely with the isolationist type of Libertarian, as far as radical political extremism goes in recent years.
@Skeptic,
Now would be a great time to turn your skepticism on yourself. And I don’t mean that aggressively or rudely in the slightest! Tearing yourself down is the first task of any skeptical enterprise.
(the american constitution is hundreds of years old. it’s hot garbage and needs to be rewritten. just my opinion.)
“Majority populations should be free to aggress on, shout at, sneer at, revile and rebuke minorities, because free speech.”
That’s not some sort of hyperbolic reframing of your position, either. That’s what’s actually happening down in the States, right now.
Do you really think people should be allowed to do that without consequence?
I’m not sure if I want your answer to that question. I’m glad to live in a country where we have reasonable hate speech laws, though. We have a better chance of locating and dealing with self-radicalizing assholes before they go on murder sprees in attempts to make their dreams reality.
Why do you think that minorities should have to shoulder the burden of that abuse? Because they’re the ones that shoulder it more heavily than anyone else by far.
Why would you need to point that out? Pointing out that a gun is a tool is of the same class of statements as pointing out that a dog is a mammal – true, and completely obvious to anyone over the age of six.
Personal reflection time, my duck. Be hard on yourself. What drives you to make these small, simple, obvious statements that everyone already knows? I don’t have an answer to that, and I’m not implying anything by that. That answer’s for you and you alone, and I’ll suggest that it’s vitally important for you to know what it is.
<3 Weird Eddie. That's certainly a point that is worthy of anger. Take care of yourself, though! Let some of that anger drain out of you, it isn't healthy in the long term.
A correction to my earlier post. I assumed you can own a fully automatic machine gun legally in the USA. I was mostly wrong.
Apparently, they were de facto banned in 1986, although there is a “grandfather clause” that allows weapons owned before the 1986 ban. It is unlikely the shooter owned a fully automatic gun legally.
What is more likely is that he had semiautomatic illegally modified to fully automatic, e.g., An AR-15 modified to a pseudo-“M-16.”
>>>>FINE, YA DUMBSHIT, IT’S A FUCKING TOOL!!! WHAT IS IT USED FOR??? IT’S USED FOR KILLING!!!
Indeed it is. But who denied that? In fact, the earliest tools humans ever made, milions of years ago, were weapons.
I should also point out that gun control =/= ending access to all firearms. If he’s the big military man gun expert type he’s implying he is, Skeptic knows perfectly well that while a rifle that hunters take out to deer hunt or a handgun that people carry for self defense can be plenty deadly, they are not what’s used by gunmen who are trying to kill large numbers of people. I know very little about guns and even I know that. So he’s being pretty disingenuous by presenting the arguments of people who are pro gun control as wanting to ban all guns ever. And in thinking that those who wrote the constitution would’ve necessarily been for free access to high capacity magazine guns that didn’t exist back when the constitution was written. Guns have come a long way since revolutionary war muskets.
As far as the victimology discussion, I’m not reading anything into the whole targeting country music fans thing at this point. His “companion” as the media are calling her that lives with him is out of the country right now and not suspected to be involved in this. I’d say it’s likely that this music festival just happened to be held on dates in which he could easily take his weapons to Las Vegas by himself without her noticing and being suspicious.
Can we just…not pull hypotheses about “motives” out of our hats while the bodies are still warm? Can’t we just wait 12-to-24 friggin’ hours, before trying to pigeonhole him into one or another comfortable political box? You know, when we actually know something about him other than the stats on his driver’s license?
@WWTH
Of course he’s being disingenuous, he’s just trying to stir things up.
As far as I’m concerned the only form of acknowledgement he should receive is in the form of a banhammer.
Thanks all for your kind words. I know intellectually that there’s nothing wrong with my response. I’m not a friend to all living creatures, my priorities will always fall with my friends and family. But I get occasionally plagued with guilt and shame over a stupid thing I did when I was like 10 (and that was more than 30 years ago). It’s just a stupid part of my makeup.
Skeptic,
Please. Stop.
Diego,
Thank you for being so gracious.
agreed
There doesn’t seem to be anything jumping out as a possible motive. The shooter’s brother said he was well off financially and while he liked to gamble, it sounds like a cripplingly bad night at the tables is less likely. Additionally, if he was well off financially, that makes other economic anxiety equally less likely. The target seems more like a target of opportunity than a political statement, though I’m purely speculating here. Politically motivated killers leave manifestos.
there is a dumpster fire in the white house because 63 million people saw the opportunity to make it socially acceptable again to publicly abuse anyone who don’t look and act like them.
(note, it always was socially acceptable in most of society, however these people feel that if there is any objection, then their rights to freeze peaches are being denied)
This is hate speech. That’s not “just how I define it”. The determining factor is whether the speech has any purpose other than to promote hatred.
Who the fuck is Skeptic and how/why did we get from “maybe let’s think about gun control” to “BUT HATE SPEECH IS BULLSHIT”?
Skeptic sounds like someone with an agenda and a couple of axes to grind. You know what we call someone like that when they jump into a discussion about an atrocity? A tool.
WaPo has a story up about the shooter and how he seemed like such a quiet neighbor, but little mention of his relationship with his girlfriend. I will be very shocked if there is no domestic violence in his background. The main theme of the story as it is, however, is that he was aggressively antisocial and a professional gambler whose game of choice was … video poker. Which is totally not a way to lose shit tons of money!
*sigh*…
when is??
>>>the american constitution is hundreds of years old. it’s hot garbage and needs to be rewritten. just my opinion.
It was rewritten. 27 times, in fact, the last time as recently as 1992. It can be rewirtten more, if enough people agree with you. For example, had the supreme court decided against gay marriage in its famous decision, it is likely there would have eventually (and probably pretty soon) been a gay-marriage 28th amendment.
And, yes, majority populations SHOULD have the right to sneer at, revile and rebuke minorities – because free speech implies anybody has the right to sneer at or revile or rebuke anybody else. That is, in fact, part of the right of free speech.
Morally, I 100% agree that it is an abuse of such a right. But it is nevertheless a legal right. Just like you do not cancel elections even if it is clear that one candidate is less moral than another. You may certainly have a moral duty to vote for X, but you have a legal right to vote for Y.
>>>>Personal reflection time, my duck. Be hard on yourself. What drives you to make these small, simple, obvious statements that everyone already knows?
I don’t know. I must be a horrible, terrible, no good monster.
OMG.
>>>>>>Has 4Chan assholes infiltrated WHTM?!?
The usual story of “he seemed such a quiet neighbor” is the start of a lot of pornography. I would not say that it is pure coincidence that it’s also how most mass shooters are described : both gun violence and actual sex give a big bad hard on to way too many people.
I am ambivalent toward “I am sure he was violent with his partner” and other ad-hoc explanation. It’s unlikely to be the root cause, more like another symptom of the same problem ; and solving thoses problem will likely be easier if they are not lumped with serial killer.
Then again, it’s likely his shittiness wasn’t limited to wanting to shoot bystanders.
More seriosly, it is a minor point, but I was puzzled by replies to the effect of “A GUN IS NOT A TOOL. PERIOD” in this thread. I pointed out that this is not true.
Yeah, I think this asshole has overstayed his welcome. There is nothing to say to the argument that it should be acceptable to publicly abuse other people.
I vote banning the troll before he completely derails everything.
Ohlman – it was just discovered he was the son of someone who used to be on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list. Somehow I cannot say I am shocked. No doubt many more little discoveries about his life are in store.
Feeling the need to say this
shows how much you have misunderstood what people are trying to show you.
Diego:
Excuse me? I live by myself and I’m a loner, but I can assure you that I’m not right wing, libertarian, a gun hoarder, or a potential mass murderer. Can we please not stigmatise people who prefer a solitary life?
Skeptik : and what is the point exactly ? Being an abuser is an actual offense ; being addicted to gambling is, if not a disease, at least a real problem ; so thoses two have a path in that they are linked problems. but being the son of someone infamous, be it a most wanted man, Pablo Escobar, or a Khmer rouge, is just being unlucky. I can vouch for more anti-abuse efforts, but not for imprisoning people based on their fathers.