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.
@PreuxFox,
I just saw this link in my email; it’s a GoFundMe set up by Steve Sisolak, Clark County Commission Chair from Las Vegas. The target amount is 2.5 million and they’re at about 2.3 in just 24 hours or so.
USians, pls correct me if this is not a worthy/ reliable source, and apologies if someone’s already posted about it.
Out of morbid curiosity I looked up countries that had fewer murders in a year than Las Vegas saw last night. Some examples:
Switzerland (57 in 2015)
Denmark (56 in 2015)
New Zealand (41 in 2014)
Ireland (30 in 2015)
Norway (29 in 2014)
Singapore (14 in 2015)
Also Japan, which has extremely tough gun control laws, and a population of 127 million people, had a total of 395 murders in 2014. It is truly horrifying to see what a single individual with a gun can do–and also now much less violence there is in these countries than there is in the US, a country with incredibly lax gun control laws which saw 15,696 murders in 2015.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
These are being reported as fully automatic weapons, which are not only illegal everywhere in the US, but extremely difficult to obtain on the black market.
@wwth Mind if I grab that freeze peach bear meme?
Thanks oogly, wonderful animal gifs.
Duck, duck, duck, goose?
Corgi-wheel, yay
@Mish It’s hard to verify gofundme campaigns, though Twitter does blue-check verify Steve Sisolak exists, and the campaign link is pinned on top of Steve’s Twitter account. So it’s probably him. I don’t know that he is a candidate for Governor, though he claims to be. Someone in Nevada might be more sure.
*Snerk*
I needed that, thanks.
JS,
I didn’t make the meme. I just saw it somewhere a few years ago and post it as needed. So feel free!
Sigh. Tom Petty has passed away. His manager said it was peacefully.
?
On the question of automatic weapons, the Independent says sources tell them he didn;t have automatic weapons but did have devices that allowed him to convert semi-automatic weapons to automatic weapons.
@Scildfreja Unnyðnes Exactly. 🙁 And because of the media storm surrounding this shooting, the terror attack in Edmonton, the shooting in Kansas, the police violence in Spain and the bombing in Damascus are getting very little media attention. Not to mention the ongoing situations in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Houston, Florida, etc. etc. etc.
Thank goodness for cute animal pics. Not to mention all the people doing the good work of helping and agitating for what’s just.
On the question of automatic weapons, the Independent says sources tell them he didn;t have automatic weapons but did have devices that allowed him to convert semi-automatic weapons to automatic weapons.
Thank you David. It were either that or a gat crank – full autos are a little bit out of reach for most retired accountants.
There is absolutely ZERO justification for anyone in any capacity (civilian, police, or military) having a bumpstock – legal though they may be.
@JS,
Thanks for the info about the gofundme. Have an adorbs in return:
Just a note to say how deeply sorry I am about this whole thing. I didn’t comment yesterday, partly because I was processing this (so much of the footage reminded me of the Manchester attack, which was very close to home for me) but also because we’re dealing with something quite big in the school I work at. We recently lost a student and it’s the funeral this week, and there is huge anger and sadness here. We’re dealing with the emotional aftermath of one death and it’s affecting all, staff and students – I can only begin to imagine what everyone in Las Vegas will be dealing with. Really sorry that this is happening again.
@Mish Kitten/owl spooning is brilliant!
Just pondering the whole gun violence/mental illness association and got to thinking. In general, the people who end up doing the mass shootings don’t tend to be people who seem that bad off. Like, unless their family were the ones stockpiling guns, they seem to be making enough to afford gun collecting as a hobby. How often is the shooter someone who only has that one gun, for instance?
My point being, they seem like people who could relatively easily afford and access mental health care if they actually cared to get it. Sure, society’s stigma of it gets some of the blame for steering away some people who might actually benefit from it, but still, these are usually people who, if they are mentally ill, chose shooting a bunch of people over even considering seeking help.
Is that fair to say?
“Enrollment forms can be found in a defunct lavatory in the unlit basement, inside a locked filing cabinet labeled with the sign ‘BEWARE OF THE LEOPARD EATING PEOPLE’S FACES'”
@ Arctic Ape. Riff on Douglas Adams ? Trumpanzee Repubs are reminiscent of Vogons these days…
Shortly after the Newtown shooting, I remember a UK journalist writing that it was too late for meaningful gun control to be put in place in the US. His reasoning was that if Americans were willing to accept the massacre of first graders rather than institute gun control, then the door was irrevocably shut.
Irrevocably shut?
It seems the congress might, just might, have the decency to not go ahead with that no-regulation-at-all-of-silencers-of-all-guns-everywhere legislation they were planning for this week or next. There’s also the possibility for senators to propose restriction-regulation-permit legislation on various technologies, gizmos and gadgets that allow people to make some guns more lethal than they already are.
@mildlymagnificent
I don’t know if I believe the journalist in question, and of course I hope he’s wrong. His remarks stuck with me, because often outsiders see things with a fresh eye. Sometimes, we can’t see the forest for the trees, if you know what I mean.
From a UK perspective, I don’t know if it helps any, but this time, I’ve been more struck by how very tired of events like this those in the US seem. Of course, there’s still no reasoning with the gun nuts, any change would have to come in spite of them, which I know would be very difficult, maybe impossible. But others do seem more fed up, and less resigned to things continuing like this, Scalzi summed up something in the public mood. Maybe with Trump’s presidency and the way it brings into focus the issues in US culture, it’s become closer to hitting a point where people realise things have to change? Can only hope.
It’s a terrible tragedy, I hope those injured and the families are coping Ok, and RIP for the lives lost.
@Amnesia
I’m doubtful they’re mentally ill in the first place when it’s planned like this, and it won’t have been the main factor here – being a white man is. Being able to afford access to healthcare for mental illness also doesn’t mean someone will think to do so, or that it will actually help, as it doesn’t always. It can even make things worse, it has for me at times.
Even just 10, 15 years ago it seemed that marriage equality was never going to happen. Then it did happen. And quickly. Progress can be sudden like that. It’s silly to say that just because something is entrenched, it’s going to be like that forever.
I’m sure every positive change that ever happened at many points seemed impossible.
It’s great to be home again!
@Mish
OMG that is so so so so adorable!
<3 Jesalin, I hope you're doing well!
@Scildfreja
So far, so good! ~^.^~
Is it time to throw the mentally ill under the bus again?
Every time we have a mass shooting I have to have the following conversation.
Some Asshat I know: Forget gun control, what we really need to do is lock up/register/punish the mentally ill!
Me: I’m mentally ill
Asshat: No, not like you, like the people who are *really* mentally ill!
Every. fucking. time.
@Kat, from the quoted comment:
This is the big thing that a lot of the ‘second amendment solution’ types really don’t get. No, you’re probably not going to save the day, but you may look like part of the threat to police officers already on edge. And they already know they will probably walk free if they ‘accidentally’ kill you.
I seem to recall that something similar to this happened at the Gabrielle Giffords shooting. Somebody managed to take down the shooter and got the gun away from him, and almost got shot by police himself for his success because he was the one holding the weapon.
The person behind this had obviously been planning this for a while, and had deliberately set things up so he could do a massive amount of damage and make himself so difficult to track down from the high window that he would have the maximum amount of time before anybody could get to him. This was an attempt to cause as much damage as possible with no real thought as to who was going to get hurt; it’s not like he could target specific people from that height. Just pure notoriety.
And as others have noted, the last time that gun control was taken seriously in the U.S. was caused by the Black Panthers actively getting armed. A white guy going on a shooting spree? Not the time to politicize it.