US versus the rest

[Admin]

And any idiot, or even any decent guy who can "just snap" can buy this stuff..

In Nevada, where Paddock lived, anyone who is at least 18 years old can own a firearm. Nevada does not license gun owners, require guns to be registered, limit the number of guns a person can purchase in one sale, or impose a waiting period on gun purchases. Nevada allows the sale of high-capacity magazines, high-caliber weapons and ammunition, and military-style weapons, though they are prohibited in other states.

But one of Nevada's few restrictions is on the sale or manufacture of automatic weapons, and the Associated Press reports that Paddock used a legal device to effectively circumvent that. The device, known as a "bump stock," replaces the shoulder rest of a rifle with a device that bounces the weapon back into the shooter's trigger finger. Effectively, the semiautomatic weapon still fires one bullet for every pull of the trigger, but the bump stock automates the trigger-pull process, allowing shooters to fire at a rate of 400 to 800 rounds a minute. Gun users can achieve a similar, though less controlled effect by sticking their finger through their belt loop or simply by holding a stick between the trigger and the trigger guard.

Las Vegas gunman used a 'bump stock' rifle to fire automatically - Business Insider

[Admin]

He's at it again, Rush..

the NRA probably works harder than anybody to prevent events like this. "What do you mean, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard, you can't say that" -- I just did say it and it's true. There is no more gun safety-oriented group than the NRA.

Rush Limbaugh claims the NRA "probably works harder than anybody to prevent" mass shootings

In the wake of a mass shooting in Las Vegas, NV -- the deadliest in U.S. history -- The Associated Press and other news outlets reported that terror group ISIS had claimed responsibility for the attack. The claim was based on no evidence and was later denied by the FBI. But the denial didn’t deter right-wing radio host and conspiracy theorist Rush Limbaugh from complaining that American media were refusing to discuss the debunked story because they “do not want ISIS being credited with this stuff.”

Rush Limbaugh complains media outlets don't want to tie Las Vegas gunman to ISIS

And millions actually take this guy serious..

[Admin]

You've got to be kidding...

Kellyanne Conway, top counselor to President Donald Trump, said that the White House and many Republican lawmakers welcome "thoughtful conversations" about gun control in the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history, but then laid blame with the Obama administration for not regulating a device that allowed the shooter to mow people down with rapid fire. The shooting at a Las Vegas music festival left 59 dead and over 500 injured on Sunday night. "We always welcome thoughtful conversation about policy and issues," Conway told "Fox & Friends" on Thursday morning, adding that the right to bear arms is "a bedrock within our Constitution" and "must be protected."

Kellyanne Conway blames Obama for not regulating bump stocks - Business Insider

We don't even need to comment here.. and while Kellyanne "alternative facts" Conway is criticizing Obama:

But many conservative media outlets, which often mirror sentiments among the base and help stoke action, aren't convinced. The Wall Street Journal editorial board dismissed the argument that gun control — and banning bump stocks specifically — would stop mass shootings, writing that the practice of bumping a trigger manually with one's finger "long predates bump stocks or other accessories." Other sites more aligned with the conservative grassroots went further.

Breitbart News has run several articles in the last several days criticizing Republicans for considering legislation to ban the gun modifications. In a headline on the site on Thursday, Breitbart framed an Associated Press story about GOP leaders considering a bump stock ban as a "widespread cave," while the top story on the site described White House counselor Kellyanne Conway as "weak" for telling CNN that the administration is open to a gun control conversation.

The Federalist repeatedly mocked gun control proponents on the left advocating for banning bump stocks, pointing out that individuals could teach themselves to bump-fire without the stocks. 

The Daily Caller, the right-leaning digital site founded by Tucker Carlson, hasn't outright endorsed bump stocks, but has taken to trolling gun control proponents and chastising outlets like CNN for their coverage of bump stocks. In separate posts, the site wrote that host Chris Cuomo spread "fake news" about bump stocks and that host John Berman "flaunted his lack of firearm knowledge" by saying that the bump stock converts a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic weapon.

Conservative media against banning 'bump stocks' after Vegas shooting - Business Insider

[Admin]

More bizzaro GOP deflection:

In the aftermath of two recent acts of gun violence, the House GOP caucus has been inspired not to pursue gun control legislation that could prevent future mass shootings, but instead to crack down on reproductive rights. “As we mourn the lives lost in Las Vegas this week, and welcome Whip Scalise back to Capitol Hill, we are reminded just how precious life is,” the GOP caucus writes in a blog post about new anti-abortion legislation approved by the House on Tuesday. “This message weighed heavily on the hearts of House Republicans as we spoke of the potential of life — especially lives cut short through abortion.”

House GOP says Las Vegas massacre inspired them to crack down on reproductive rights – ThinkProgress

[stpioc]

A guy shoots 58 people dead and wounds 500+ others for no reason at all and we do.... nothing. 

What if this guy would have been from another country, say a Muslim country..

The US would start building walls, exclude people from these countries from immigration, build a multi-billion dollar homeland security and surveillance system, suspend certain civil liberties, perhaps even invade a few foreign countries. All costing hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars. 

And to give you some perspective: the casualties from foreign terrorism on US soil since 9/11 are perhaps a couple of 100 people. that's a couple of hundred too many of course, but it pales with the 150,000 people who fell victim to gun violence since 9/11.

And yet we spend hundreds of billions, trillions perhaps on one and do nothing on the other problem.

It's simply insane.

[Admin]

On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked the NRA’s chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, about the 72-hour limit for gun background checks. Under current law, if the federal government isn’t able to complete a check within 72 hours, the dealer can proceed with the sale. This loophole is what allowed Dylann Roof to obtain a gun, which he later used to murder 9 people in a South Carolina Church.

Wallace asked Cox if he would support extending the waiting limit so more people like Roof wouldn’t slip through the cracks. Cox dodged the question but argued that the NRA has fought to make the National Instant Criminal Background Check System more comprehensive. “The National Rifle Association has worked to include every mental health record, every court adjudication, every criminal record to make sure people don’t fall through the cracks,” Cox said.

As Wallace noted, this is a lie. In February, Trump signed legislation that “blocked the Social Security Administration from reporting mentally impaired recipients to a national background-check database.” The NRA supported the legislation. The move mean the background check system will not include information on people who the Social Security Administration have determined “lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs.” The designation is given to people as a result of “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease.” The NRA mocked the effort to include Social Security Administration information in the gun database. “Grandma got run over by Obama,” the NRA sneered last December.

NRA’s chief lobbyist called out for blatant lie on Fox News – ThinkProgress

A forensic psychiatrist told Fox News on Tuesday morning that CNN was to blame for mass shootings like what transpired in Las Vegas. “I think that CNN’s going to have to answer how they demonize gun enthusiasts and how CNN actually contributes to mass shooting,” Michael Welner said. “And I think that they do.” Welner appeared on Fox & Friends to try to answer the question as to why Stephen Paddock opened fire on a Las Vegas concert Sunday night. Offering his perspective that Paddock did not seem to fit the profile of many other mass shooters, he concluded that he must have had a cause, and that cause must have been guns themselves.

Psychiatrist featured on Fox News blames CNN for mass shootings – ThinkProgress

A lying NRA guys is nothing new, but let the latter fragment sink in for a moment. Here is a psychiatrist blaming CNN for mass murderers because they demonize gun enthusiasts..

Amazing stuff..

[stpioc]

LOL

Trevor Noah, host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show," is ripping Fox News’s response to the Las Vegas shooting in which a lone gunman killed at least 59 people and wounded hundreds more. Noah focused his ire on Fox News host Sean Hannity. “According to Sean Hannity, what really stops a bad guy with a gun is a Sean Hannity with a gun,” Noah said. Hannity on Tuesday spoke about his experience using firearms and his view that mass shootings can be prevented if civilians are armed. “If it’s happening within a crowd … you want Sean Hannity who’s trained in the safety and use of a firearm in that room, so when they drop the clip and they start to reload, you’ve got a shot,” Hannity said.

Noah argued that the circumstances in Las Vegas, in which the shooter rained fire down on a crowd from a room on the 32nd floor of a hotel, argued against Hannity's claims. “The shooter was 400 yards away, in a hotel room 32 floors up," Noah said. "That’s like saying, ‘if Tyra Banks had no money, and I had all the money, and she was like, really hungry, I might have a chance.’ It’s not reality.”

Noah also joked that the Las Vegas shooter was a more difficult figure for the ire of Fox News personalities. Stephen Paddock, 64, has been described as a wealthy former businessman. He is believed to have shot himself as police moved in on his hotel room. “He’s not Muslim, he wasn’t known to be mentally ill, he doesn’t kneel for the anthem,” Noah said, arguing he represented a challenge to Fox News. “He’s just a rich white guy who shot people at a country music concert. How do you hate him? There’s nothing to hate.”

Trevor Noah blasts Fox News response to Las Vegas shooting | TheHill

[stpioc]

President Donald Trump tweeted about a rise in crime in the UK on Friday and made a shaky connection to "radical Islamic terror." Trump tweeted that "United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror," adding that "we must keep America safe."

Trump links rise in UK crimes to rise in 'radical Islamic terror' - Business Insider

This is about as absurd as it gets:

1. There is no link in the UK between the rise in crime and the rise in Radical Islamic Terror
   
2. "Keep America safe" How about the 30,000 gun deaths a year in the US, which is several orders of magnitude larger than the victims of Radical Islamic Terrorism, which are less than 100 in the 15 years since 9/11.
   
3. Yet we spend billions, if not trillions (wars and interventions all around the world) on the latter and do nothing about the former..
   

[Admin]

President Donald Trump said Monday he believed the Texas church shooting was caused by a "mental health problem," and not because of a problem with domestic gun laws. When asked whether U.S. gun control measures could have been the key to the Texas shooting, Trump replied, "Mental health is your problem here." "This isn't a guns situation," he said, before adding, "This is a mental health problem at the highest level. It's a very, very sad event." At least 26 people were killed and about 20 others were wounded after a gunman opened fire during a Sunday service at a Texas church. The victims ranged in age from 5 to 72-years-old. Speaking at a joint press conference in Tokyo, Japan, alongside Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump described the shooter as "a very deranged individual."

Trump says Texas church shooting caused by 'mental health problem' not guns

• Yes, let's give everybody with mental health problems an assault rifle. It's their right! No background checks!!
  
• And he says this in Japan, a country which has similar mental health problems but negligible gun deaths
  

From 2008 to 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, background checks prevented 556,496 gun purchases. In the last six months, about that many people have been removed from the national database and are newly eligible to buy a gun. The FBI's national instant criminal background check system, which screens such transactions, is not quite perfect: It has an accuracy rate of more than 99 percent. President Donald Trump appears determined to make it less effective.

In February, Trump reversed a recently adopted regulation designed to restrict access to guns by the mentally impaired. He stopped the Social Security Administration from sending to the database the names of thousands of Social Security beneficiaries who are too impaired to handle their own affairs. As of 2013, more than 400,000 beneficiaries were prohibited from gun possession and would have had their records reported to the database.

Trump’s Quiet Campaign to Undermine Background Checks - Bloomberg

[stpioc]

About 35,000 people died in car crashes in 2015, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s most recent data, and the United States has the highest rate of crash deaths in the developed world, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The U.S. also ranks near the bottom of 20 nations for front-seat seatbelt use and has the second-highest level of accidents involving drunk drivers. Families are no less ripped apart by deaths involving a drunk driver. In 2013, nearly a third of traffic deaths involved a driver operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol, yet a president has never declared a public health emergency to force the auto industry to make cars safer; encourage drivers and passengers to be more conscientious; entice drivers off the road with better public transportation; or to make drunk-driving punishments harsher. Trump played fast and loose with the number of Americans who have died because of gun violence. Homicides actually account for only a third of the 34,000 annual deaths involving guns. The other two-thirds, more than 21,000 a year, are from suicide. 

Why Trump chose to ignore gun suicides is unknown. Is it because he wanted to blow out the embers from a gun control debate that got reignited after Las Vegas? Was he afraid that spotlighting the high U.S. gun death rates would anger the National Rifle Association? Did the president want to downplay a racial issue? It’s well known that the opioid crisis has ripped through rural and low-income white communities. Less commonly known, because the NRA and their puppets in Congress make sure there is little or no funding for federal gun studies, is that white men account for seven out of every ten suicides, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Or did some White House officials simply realize that Trump’s fudging of the numbers on gun and motor vehicle deaths and comparing those figures to the numbers of opioid deaths was flat out wrong? 

Facts Again Go Missing as Trump Declares Opioid Addiction a National Health Emergency