Can this bloody nightmare possibly be free of ruling class intrigue ? What a diabolic way to scare common people from assembling to protest stupid imperialist wars and mass economic misery-not just going to and enjoying an outdoor concert .

Did Stephen Paddock 's private insanity serve the insane agenda of the war mongering American power elite ?

Fear of THE MOB is a common ruling class trait . And " basic insensitivity toward others "

. A bored American plutocracy wants to gamble on nuclear World War III ? And prepare the public for " The Day After " ?

Can you please explain just WTF you are talking about? Thanks.

The " shadow government " of the US plutocracy with the collusion of the Democratic and Republican parties is fiendishly capable of ANY atrocity in preparation for the fascist American police state and nuclear World War III .
Thank God for Wiki Leaks and Edward Snowden. WE THE PEOPLE don't have to obey the ruling class VOICE OF INSANITY - now the MAINSTREAM capitalist news media. WE should be in the streets - along with the people of Europe - shouting BAN THE BOMB !
Don't think for a moment that the demented rich guy-and maniac gambler- Stephen Paddock - and possibly his " Asian " ( ? ) girlfriend- were not involved in American ruling class intrigue. Follow the money !

Okay. Got it. Have a nice day.

Grump prefers to stick with the evil he knows.

Great comment, but, um, lose the caps lock promiscuity and it'll be more convincing.

Too much inspiration from the BEAT GENERATION and Ginsberg's HOWL. In their day the " Beats " were branded : " the only rebellion in town ".
We certainly have the right to howl about nuclear World War III. OUR " way of life "- the American working class- has nothing in common with the malevolent agenda of the American Empire.

You GO, girlfrien' !!

Yup. Who would have thought the U.S. would maintain its one-time sole-superpower status for such a short eye-blink of history.

Stephen Paddock was brainwashed by the U.S. ruling elite to be a merchant of death.

The NRA aided, abetted, and enabled this massacre.
Some of the blood of the Las Vegas victims is on their hands.

It should not be legal for private citizens to own fully automatic weapons.
There should also be a limit to the number of lethal weapons that an individual can own.
One does not need a fully stocked arsenal to defend one's self and family.

So far, there is no evidence that a full auto we used, quite the contrary; every report has them as legally acquired and not NFA weapons. The Second Amendment does not specify how many weapons one may have, or not infringed upon. Note that a 'Bump Stock" does not violate BATF rules.

Any weapon that is capable of firing more than 2 rounds per second should be considered a fully automatic weapon, and private ownership of such weapons should be illegal.

Maybe some exceptions could be made for gun clubs or businesses that allow people to shoot them, provided that these organizations bear responsibility for their misuse. Other exceptions could be made for those who can reasonably justify why they need them for self-defence.

At the time when I wrote this comment, it was widely believed that the weapons were automatic given the rate of their fire, but the details of how Paddock (legally) modified his weapons had not been made public. Part of the problem is the narrow, legalistic use of the term "fully automatic" which would not apply to the Las Vegas murders, such that the death toll would not be attributed to fully automatic weapons.

It is obscene that a Bump Stock does not violate BATF rules. The reason that there is not a long list of murders attributed to legally defined "fully automatic" weapons is because these have been illegal in this country since the 1930s.

The criteria of the BATF on what is an automatic weapons, your opinion notwithstanding, is that if one pull of the trigger produces one shot it is not an automatic weapon (pistol or rifle). If one trigger pull produces more than one shot, it is an automatic weapons. The Government has prosecuted many people using this definition, even if the discharge was accidental or due to a defect, and has imposed fines and jail time on conviction.
Further, strictly speaking, possession of automatic weapons is not illegal under the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934. But it requires a cumbersome paperwork approvals and a Federal Tax and Registry.

The BATF is supposed to have the technical expertise, and knowledge to regulate firearms within the outline of law, to protect honest citizens with rational regulations. It appears they have few of the requisites for such work.

It means that the BATF legal definition needs to be broadened -- it needs to be a functional definition rather than one based on a particular trigger mechanism.

I say again that it is obscene (and really stupid) that a Bump Stock does not violate BATF rules. The loophole involves the kind of narrow, legalistic weasie crap that lawyers feed on.

Effectively Paddock had a number of fully automatic weapons at his disposal. It matters not a whit whether the weapons were Class III machine guns or legally modified semiautomatic weapons.

Sixty human beings are dead, 500 wounded, 300 million terrorized.

You have the defective scruples of a morbidly psychopathic person to malign the NRA that way. The NRA is a fine organization dedicated to defending, in "big tent" fashion, your civil liberty as ensconced in the second amendment of the august, time-proven U.S. Constitution's "Bill of Rights".

No one says the NRA is right on every issue. Sometimes, they are too timid to bring important test cases, like the recent DC case, to the courts, despite a voracious appetite for fund-raising where they purport to defend 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms in the courts, and not just on the floor of a deliberative body via lobbying.

You may be correct to oppose permitting private citizens to own full-auto weapons, but since 1934, in the U.S. there have only been two homicides in which the victims were killed by a legally-registered class III machine gun. Two. So quit hyperventilating. You have a greater likelihood in Las Vegas of being mauled by a Siberian tiger than you do of being murdered with an assault rifle.

The legalistic "full auto/class III" argument is specious and inane. The reason that only 2 people have been murdered in the US since 1934 is because that class of weapons has been banned. It is a strong argument for banning all weapons and modifications that permit high rates of fire (I would say above 60 rounds per minute).

I agree that one's chances of being killed by lightning may be higher than being gunned down by some angry man, whether it be an Islamicized radical or a psychopathic gun fetishist or a cop with an anger management problem.

But avoiding being hit by lightning is fairly easy -- precautions can be taken. The thing about random mass murder is that one has next to no control over the risk factors.

These mass murders terrify everyone, because we can and do imagine ourselves at that music concert in Las Vegas. They have a corrosive effect on everyone by promoting generalized fear and uncertainty.

The NRA is anything but a "fine organization" -- they are a front for the gun industry. In the ad that they released over the summer, the NRA adopted blatant fascist rhetoric that echoes Nazi propaganda. Many of their supporters are heavily armed, angry, and paranoid, and that gives the rest of us real cause for worry, not necessarily right now, but in the longer run.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

The NRA is the main reason that the US is at the top of the list of industrialized nations (with the possible exception of Brazil), in terms of fewest legal restrictions on lethal weapons, most guns per capita and the highest rate of gun-related deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

As far as I know, we don't allow private citizens to own hand grenades or bazookas or rocket-propelled grenades or surface-to-air missiles or tanks or any number of military weapons. Why should private ownership of small arms that are capable of dealing comparable amounts of human death be allowed?

Private ownership of weapons does not constitute a "well-regulated"militia, and it is well within the Constitution to regulate ownership of guns.

Gun control will not by itself end mass murders, but it will mean that it will take much more effort to acquire the requisite weapons, and this means that fewer unhinged and angry individuals will access them. With the exception of a few gun manufacturers and dealers, we will all be better off.

Note the Lame-Steam media's crocodile tears -- why, at CNN and NBC they're giving virtual tutorials on how to attach a so-called bump stock to a nominally semi-auto weapon to simulate the firepower of a class III weapon. Perfect.

What's wrong with the cowards in the press, the so-called 4th estate? Why do they hate America so?

I'd be leery of an "expert" who still uses term "commit suicide." It's a term from the Middle Ages.

What term do you propose? Auto-homicide?

OK, here's the drill. We'll discuss mental health issues in depth for the first time since the last large mass shooting. We won't do anything about the overall issue of how our major strategy to deal with mental health issues is incarceration. We'll dance around the issue of gun control until it becomes clear that Congress is a totally owned subsidiary of the NRA and the gun industry. Time will pass and the issue will subside. We'll continue to ignore mental health as an issue and gun sales will increase. Then there will be another mass shooting and we'll repeat. Maybe we'll discuss video games and rock music lyrics as a potential cause just for laughs and giggles.

"...Congress is a totally owned subsidiary of the NRA and the gun industry".

Boo hoo. In polls, only a paltry 13% of people say they approve of the job our members of Congress are doing, and that's been a consistent low-rated attribute for quite some time.

They should stop electing dopes.

Research of shooters is banned in the US? Doesn't that give you major insight into the core of the problem?

This is a dumb remark even by your hunter/gatherer level of customary discourse.

What the great German physicist Werner Heisenberg posited about measuring position versus the velocity of a particle with precision similarly, that is to say such research would be roughly analogous to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle that there are going to be some things in life that cannot be measured to the desired precision, as the measurement itself is inherently intrusive into the outcome.

Your pedantic comment using Heisenberg to essentially argue against research of any kind speaks for itself and warrants no comment. The argument of an idiot is unassailable.