The Threat is Real, very real.

[Klem]

How many shootings happen and someone armed is close by ? and does not act ? no way of knowing, I would bet a lot....Just because you have a gun does not mean you jump into the middle of something and end up dead...name one guy with a wife and kids who would have rushed shooters room ? would you have ? no.....what person carrying a gun in that hotel would have ? No way of knowing how many shooters were in the room, if door was booby-trapped......even LE or Military would not tried to charge through the door.....they would have set charges on the door, blew it, tossed in several flash bangs and gas before even thinking about entering....Seems odd that no LE who are usually at this big events and now mostly carry AR15's or similar locked in trunk never fired any rounds ? Surely at least one LE car had a rifle of some sort ? and tell me how many guns are in California ? How come the shootings in California were not stopped by people in California ? or any state ? Guns are in every state and how many shooting get stopped ? You can't compare 2A Rights to any shooting, 2A Rights give someone, anyone at least a chance to save themselves or others....You nor anyone else will ever for see the situation where you may need or use a gun, or what kind of gun would be best....

To be fair I don't think the average police officer carrying iron-sight AR15's at the venue could have done much, if anything.

It is 150M from his suite to the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Giles St. Another 150M to the centre of Las Vegas 'Village', which is where the Route 91 concert was being held. That is 300 metres (Ref; Google Maps). Wikipedia is claiming he was shooting 400yds or 365metres.

Looking back from the venue to his suite is 32 stories up. Using the standard height calculator for a hotel I make it 108M up. That extends the distance from 300 to about 320metres.

Police shooting back from ground level and correctly estimating the range to his windows will need to account for the angle, 20degrees. The cosine multiplier for that angle is 0.94 so 320 metre angled shot becomes equivalent to a 300 metre level shot.

Wind speed according to national Weather Service was averaging 6.4mph on the day from the NE, so no practical influence to either shooter or police.

Factor in a whole bunch of people in adjacent hotel rooms probably at the windows wondering what's happening and that is where a long difficult shot with iron sights becomes potentially deadly to civilians. While he can blaze away into a packed crowd any Police shooting back with long guns would have to be a whole lot more careful.

[HowaGrendel]

To be fair I don't think the average police officer carrying iron-sight AR15's at the venue could have done much, if anything.

It is 150M from his suite to the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Giles St. Another 150M to the centre of Las Vegas 'Village', which is where the Route 91 concert was being held. That is 300 metres (Ref; Google Maps). Wikipedia is claiming he was shooting 400yds or 365metres.

Looking back from the venue to his suite is 32 stories up. Using the standard height calculator for a hotel I make it 108M up. That extends the distance from 300 to about 320metres.

Police shooting back from ground level and correctly estimating the range to his windows will need to account for the angle, 20degrees. The cosine multiplier for that angle is 0.94 so 320 metre angled shot becomes equivalent to a 300 metre level shot.

Wind speed according to national Weather Service was averaging 6.4mph on the day from the NE, so no practical influence to either shooter or police.

Factor in a whole bunch of people in adjacent hotel rooms probably at the windows wondering what's happening and that is where a long difficult shot with iron sights becomes potentially deadly to civilians. While he can blaze away into a packed crowd any Police shooting back with long guns would have to be a whole lot more careful.

So you are saying the LE who may have had rifles kept under cover or did not have any skills to at least try and disrupt shooter by firing back ? An AR15 in the hands of someone trained can be very effective at 300, hitting a man sized target is not too difficult, so hitting in his general area and slowing him down was very possible....that fire would have also helped the LE who were working towards the room before they went in.....up to that point people were already dead and dying....LE would not been have spraying the whole side of the hotel, they knew where the fire was coming from....the window lickers looking down would have quickly run and hid if a bullet did hit close...If they could not figure out someone was shooting down on the crowd and then be smart enough to get away from the windows ? well you can't fix stupid.....I would like to think several LEO's should have been trying to at least slow down the shooter....maybe a LEO did shoot back ? time will tell IF we ever get the truth....

[howl]

Shooting back wouldn't have made the top ten of possible reactions in that situation. #1 would be to get to the hotel room. I'm not even thinking gun. I'm thinking get to the room and fill it with concussion grenades. Also, I think people in general do not understand how poorly trained most LEO are. These are not law school graduate/Navy SEALs. I would wager the worst shot who regularly visits this board would out-shoot a freshly trained cop. Getting our police to the level people seem to think they are would involve loads more training and money.

AND, I really thing everyone is getting hung up on on the guns. This is not a gun issue. It is a hatred and evil issue. We are a divided people; easily conquered.

[bj139]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bw4vvf59Js

[JASmith]

Adding to Klem's excellent assessment in post #106 above, remember the shooting was at night and the lights were largely focused on the venue and crowd. It would have been hard to see the windows.

Iron sights would have been useless, and scopes only marginally effective.

[JASmith]

Perhaps the biggest failure was neglecting to have even basic counter-sniper assets in place for an event of this size.

Yes hundreds and thousands of these events occur each year but we live in an era where these are soft targets in a world of terrorism.

That mistake is unlikely to be repeated over the next six months to a year. The problem is that the very effectiveness of these countermeasures leads the bad guys to other, frequently more carnage generating, methods. Then, as we leap to counter a repeat of those "surprises" we let our guard down and fail to deploy counter sniper assets more and more frequently

The cycle repeats over a short enough time that the goal of discrediting the effectiveness and stability of our government is attained.

[bj139]

Be afraid... be very afraid. That is the intent of the people attacking our rights. You have more chance of dying in a traffic accident than being shot.

What do you think is the ultimate goal of having a government sniper on every corner?

[bj139]

Hey, Texas.

GeorgeWashington2ndAmendment.jpg

[Double Naught Spy]

How many shootings happen and someone armed is close by ? and does not act ? no way of knowing, I would bet a lot....Just because you have a gun does not mean you jump into the middle of something and end up dead...name one guy with a wife and kids who would have rushed shooters room ? would you have ? no.....what person carrying a gun in that hotel would have ? No way of knowing how many shooters were in the room, if door was booby-trapped......even LE or Military would not tried to charge through the door.....they would have set charges on the door, blew it, tossed in several flash bangs and gas before even thinking about entering....Seems odd that no LE who are usually at this big events and now mostly carry AR15's or similar locked in trunk never fired any rounds ? Surely at least one LE car had a rifle of some sort ? and tell me how many guns are in California ? How come the shootings in California were not stopped by people in California ? or any state ? Guns are in every state and how many shooting get stopped ? You can't compare 2A Rights to any shooting, 2A Rights give someone, anyone at least a chance to save themselves or others....You nor anyone else will ever for see the situation where you may need or use a gun, or what kind of gun would be best....

This was a no-win situation for your basic folks on the ground. No, cops in the US typically do not carry around patrol rifles. If they had rifles in their cars, their cars were too far away to get to in a reasonable amount of time given the shooting that was going on and the confusion with the crowd.

So you are saying the LE who may have had rifles kept under cover or did not have any skills to at least try and disrupt shooter by firing back ?

I will say it. Yeah, not only may they have not had the skills to shoot at unknown (to them at the time) distance at a barricaded individual moving between windows, but that there was no way in hell that they were going to risk shooting into a major hotel at an unknown distance with at a room 32 floors up in the low light situation that was present at the time of the shooting.

Tell me this, in all the video that you have seen of the shooting where cameras are pointed at the hotel, could you ever actually spot the guy in the window or did you just see muzzle flash? Could you tell how many hostages the shooter had with him? Did you know who was in the rooms surrounding him? Did you know the extent of the room/suite/condo that he had?

Just like the vast majority of cops never shoot at distances beyond qualification ranges, most cops with rifles never shoot at distances beyond qualification distances with rifles either and I don't know of any police departments off hand that have their officers qualifying at 350-500 yards.

Just as an aside, did you know that the average police sniper shot in the US is under 100 yards and most are less than 70 yards?

Remember, and this is critical. The issue isn't so much as to whether or not the cops could physically shoot back to try to stop the target, but whether or not the cops would be willing to shooting into a backstop and risk harming other civilians in adjoining rooms.

[HowaGrendel]

This was a no-win situation for your basic folks on the ground. No, cops in the US typically do not carry around patrol rifles. If they had rifles in their cars, their cars were too far away to get to in a reasonable amount of time given the shooting that was going on and the confusion with the crowd.



I will say it. Yeah, not only may they have not had the skills to shoot at unknown (to them at the time) distance at a barricaded individual moving between windows, but that there was no way in hell that they were going to risk shooting into a major hotel at an unknown distance with at a room 32 floors up in the low light situation that was present at the time of the shooting.

Tell me this, in all the video that you have seen of the shooting where cameras are pointed at the hotel, could you ever actually spot the guy in the window or did you just see muzzle flash? Could you tell how many hostages the shooter had with him? Did you know who was in the rooms surrounding him? Did you know the extent of the room/suite/condo that he had?

Just like the vast majority of cops never shoot at distances beyond qualification ranges, most cops with rifles never shoot at distances beyond qualification distances with rifles either and I don't know of any police departments off hand that have their officers qualifying at 350-500 yards.

Just as an aside, did you know that the average police sniper shot in the US is under 100 yards and most are less than 70 yards?

Remember, and this is critical. The issue isn't so much as to whether or not the cops could physically shoot back to try to stop the target, but whether or not the cops would be willing to shooting into a backstop and risk harming other civilians in adjoining rooms.

A muzzle flash is a Target and would be in this situation....An AR15 does not require a lot of hold over at 300 yards.....even if they aimed at the muzzle flash they would have hit close enough to possibly disrupt shooter.....or someone may have got lucky and hit him.....no way to know unless someone tried....even in the little under 10k population town I live in every car has a rifle.....A town of under 5k near me even publicized in the Newspaper about buying new AR15's for every Officer's Car.....Vegas LEO's would be well armed due to population and crime....would not have been hard for a Supervisor to have gotten to area with a proper rifle....

[HowaGrendel]

Adding to Klem's excellent assessment in post #106 above, remember the shooting was at night and the lights were largely focused on the venue and crowd. It would have been hard to see the windows.

Iron sights would have been useless, and scopes only marginally effective.

Iron sights useless at night ? lol........hardly, and it is not like you could not move to a better vantage point to see.....In almost any shooting the LEO's have to move to get an advantage to be able to stop a shooter....if something is in your way you move around it or whatever it takes so you can fire to stop the shooter.....was this a very sudden unforeseen incident ? yes, but with the current situation in the World this incident looks like the shooter knew Vegas LE would not be an obstacle to worry about until he did his damage....I would bet the Hotel is already interviewing and hiring a few Ex-Military Shooters for the newly formed Security Team.....and buying some metal detectors....and upgrading camera system.....even if just to make everyone feel good.....

[Klem]

Let's think this through...Someone is advocating shooting in his direction in the hope it's going to slow him down. Next you'll be saying 'shoot first, ask questions later' is an acceptable active shooter policy. If, in your heart of hearts cannot identify your target and know what's behind it, DON'T SHOOT. I'd hate to have booked the adjacent room and have you behind a gun 300 metres away all fired-up and frustrated. Be interesting to know how much room lighting he chose to leave on during the rampage but I'm thinking that unless you had a scoped rifle you just would not have even seen him inside the room at 300 metres. 'A muzzle flash is a Target', well, frankly that is crazy talk from someone who has a semi-auto, high-power firearm. Good luck later in court explaining why you shot a fellow police officer entering his room. "No your Honor, I could not ID the target 300 metres away so I decided to kill whoever was flashing.' You don't believe iron sights are useless at night? Go out and try hitting a torso at 300M. You might be able to identify a target but looking through an aperture rear sight at a front sight is fraught. We used to use one of those yellow squeezy ear protectors jammed in between the front sight protectors and look over the rear sight down the barrel in an effort to shoot at night. And that was not an urban environment with potential civilians casualties if you miss. Sure, maybe the Las Vegas PD has tritium iron sights but I very much doubt it.

No, unfortunately as DN said, he had all the cards stacked in his favour and there's little the concert authorities could do in 600 seconds except crowd control until the cavalry arrived at his door.

[BjornF16]

...much less engaging a 4th floor target (mistakenly) since many have indicated they saw muzzle flash from there...(but no busted windows on 4th floor).

[HowaGrendel]

Let's think this through...Someone is advocating shooting in his direction in the hope it's going to slow him down. Next you'll be saying 'shoot first, ask questions later' is an acceptable active shooter policy. If, in your heart of hearts cannot identify your target and know what's behind it, DON'T SHOOT. I'd hate to have booked the adjacent room and have you behind a gun 300 metres away all fired-up and frustrated. Be interesting to know how much room lighting he chose to leave on during the rampage but I'm thinking that unless you had a scoped rifle you just would not have even seen him inside the room at 300 metres. 'A muzzle flash is a Target', well, frankly that is crazy talk from someone who has a semi-auto, high-power firearm. Good luck later in court explaining why you shot a fellow police officer entering his room. "No your Honor, I could not ID the target 300 metres away so I decided to kill whoever was flashing.' You don't believe iron sights are useless at night? Go out and try hitting a torso at 300M. You might be able to identify a target but looking through an aperture rear sight at a front sight is fraught. We used to use one of those yellow squeezy ear protectors jammed in between the front sight protectors and look over the rear sight down the barrel in an effort to shoot at night. And that was not an urban environment with potential civilians casualties if you miss. Sure, maybe the Las Vegas PD has tritium iron sights but I very much doubt it.

No, unfortunately as DN said, he had all the cards stacked in his favour and there's little the concert authorities could do in 600 seconds except crowd control until the cavalry arrived at his door.

You have an active shooter and you do nothing but allow him to kill.....I will guess none of you ever served in Iraq or Afghanistan ? Iron sights are NOT useless at night.....To do nothing is the same as helping....I never said shooter did not have an advantage.....he obviously did....many of you like to twist what others post to suit your opinion.....The failure of LE in this situation is obvious in today's world.....and LE should at all times in todays world be ready for an active shooter for all such large events.....the past shootings should have dictated better security.....saying basically nothing could have been done is far from the truth....

[SHORT-N-SASSY]

What happened yesterday can't help us retain our rights.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/christ...&newsletterad=

More than a week has passed, since this horrific event. And, we're now getting a change in the timeline --- raising other questions!



(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...velations.html)