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2017.10.03

UPDATED: Tragedy in Las Vegas

Nearly 60 Dead; Nation in Shock


Photo of the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Resort, Las Vegas, NV.
Photo of the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Resort, Las Vegas, NV.

 

Yesterday a man staying at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada opened fire on a crowd gathered outside at a country music festival. Nearly 60 are dead and well over 500 are wounded. The man was armed with multiple assault weapons. He basically fired the weapons out of the windows of his hotel suite onto the helpless crowd of 22,000, some 30 stories below.

We can only guess at what motivated the shooter — his name is well known by this point, but I like the approach the Mayor took in her interview on NBC's TODAY show, denying him posthumous notoriety by refusing to speak it — to do such a horrific thing.

I heard yesterday that ISIS actually claimed responsibility. Why wouldn't they? I believe ISIS is sure to use his name as propaganda regardless of whatever the truth actually is. They'll spin whatever yarn they need to recruit and to further their cause. But reporting by CNN suggests law enforcement still must discover his motive before any connection to terrorism can be established. 1

Multiple news outlets reported this morning that the shooter was a retired accountant, who had 23 weapons in the hotel room and another 19 in one of at least two homes...

image advertising The Accountant (2016), starring Ben Affleck. Image credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment
Image credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment

Clearly the actions of Affleck's character in The Accountant aren't the same as the shooter in Las Vegas. I'm only drawing the comparison on the similarites of the career choice and the weapons. Still... I do wonder if the movie was some sort of motivator, or if there were similarities beyond the two I've drawn upon. Pure speculation.

On Why and How

And I think in times like these there is a line between healthy and unhealthy speculation. I've seen criticism on social media over the latter — some make the point that why he did what he did is completely irrelevant; yet the public wants answers. Answers about everything. We do so love our infoporn. So, there's a demand for the irrelevant, I guess because it makes us feel like it's helping us to understand... to process. It's why I'm writing this.

I feel like the question we should be trying to answer isn't the why; it's the how. And the how gets directly to the heart of gun control and our freedoms under the Second Amendment.

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
The Second Amendment is not specific about the types of armament a private citizen is allowed to have. So the question really isn't about the Second Amendment per se as much as it is how to regulate munitions the amendment permits. This is where we get into interpretation — specifically, collective rights theory vs. individual right theory — and into examples of individual cases, perhaps including United States v Miller (307 U.S. 174) and District of Columbia v Heller (07-290); but note that the court reasoned the sawed-off shotgun that was the subject of the former and referenced in the latter is not an instrument that "has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia . . . ."; automatic weapons are actually built specifically for that purpose. Learn more about these cases.

An internet meme featuring an image of President George Washington
President Washington didn't actually say that.

A Federal Ban

If we're getting into the how of the Second Amendment, we'll likely end up somewhere between Machiavelli and Orwell. But I don't think this is likely to happen — primarily because laws governing firearms — with exception of the National Firearm Act (NFA)— are the province of state law. By the way, the few state law entries I've read with regard to ownership of machine guns acknowledge the NFA.

(UPDATE: When I started writing this post, I imagined a scenario in which the Republic of Texas starts secession planning in response to a federal ban on machine guns, and imagined the economic impact on the US on the loss of it's second strongest economy. But then I looked into Texas' laws regarding assault weapons (see below), and discovered they're already not allowed!)

The National Firearms Act

Machine guns and silencers are registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) under the National Firearms Act. 2  The purpose of the act was to tax and regulation of machine guns, silencers, modified weapons (like sawed-off shotguns) and explosive devices.

These weapons are registered by the manufacturers, importers, and certain governmental agencies — not by private citizens. 3  The ATF must even be notified of even temporary transportation of an NFA-registered firearm across state lines. 4

State Laws May Be the Right Answer

I think it's more likely that states will continue to peform regulatory functions than we'd see any kind of federal legislation on the matter.

According to the NRA-ILA website, it is illegal in the State of Kansas to possess an automatic weapon: 5

"It is unlawful to possess... any firearm designed to discharge or capable of discharging automatically more than once by a single function of the trigger."
Persons in law enforcement are exempt, as are weapons "rendered unserviceable," and those registered in accordance with the National Firearms Act. 6.  (UPDATE: The ATF confirmed and offered some clarification to that final point: In Kansas, as long as the weapon, say, a machine gun, was registered with the NFA before the law went into effect in 1986, a private citizen is allowed to legally own that machine gun in Kansas. No further qualification is required.)

The base Kansas and Texas laws are two examples of state legislation that could work for curbing unbridled access to assault weapons. By contrast, the Nevada law simply states ownership of legally acquired and registered machine guns is lawful. 7

Perhaps if more states establish stricter automatic weapons control, we could finally leave episodes like this one behind us.



personal statement

Humor posts aside, I only seek to understand the events I describe in these posts, and to form an opinion after considering the material I've gathered. I believe we need leaders in Washington to act in the best interest of the United States as a citizen nation of the world, and who represent the interests of the people they serve above the interests of party affiliation.