Is The NFL Ready For A Stadium Attack On A Las Vegas Scale?

My first novel, Enemies Foreign and Domestic, published in 2003, begins with a sniper shooting into a packed football stadium. Ninety bullets are fired from long range into an upper deck, precipitating a stadium-wide panic stampede that results in over a thousand deaths. In the book, a combat veteran holding a semi-automatic rifle is quickly located by a SWAT counter-sniper in a helicopter, after a citizen’s tip is phoned to the police. However, the veteran is just a patsy, and the true perpetrators of the massacre are a pair of mid-level federal law enforcement agents who are seeking to increase their departmental budgets and overall bureaucratic power. The liberal mainstream media accept the false narrative without close examination. Right-leaning military veteran “gun nuts” are universally tarred as potential mass murderers. Within a week, semi-automatic so-called “assault rifles” are banned. (A link to the first chapter is below.)

My goal with the plot of Enemies Foreign and Domestic was to encourage news consumers not to blindly accept convenient official explanations after traumatic national events. Since the release of this novel, we have, in fact, seen federal agents and bureaucrats at a much higher level than my two fictional villains conspire to commit mass murder with the intention of spinning a false news narrative. We know this intentional mass murder plot as “Operation Fast and Furious”, whereby thousands of semi-automatic rifles from Southwestern gun dealers were deliberately sold to criminals with the expectation that they would be transported to violent cartels in Mexico. This resulted in mass carnage which would then be blamed on the Second Amendment and lax American gun laws. Honest gun dealers were coerced by the ATF into making otherwise illegal straw purchases to criminals in bulk quantities. No attempt was made to track the guns once they left ATF observation at the point of sale. The Mexican government was never informed of the murderous gun-running plan. Operation Fast and Furious was not a legitimate law enforcement operation gone wrong. It was a covert murder plan from start to finish, conceived and carried out for political purposes.

Before the evil scheme was exposed after the shooting death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and Secretary of State Clinton were regularly touting as fact the lie that 90% of the guns found at Mexican murder scenes had originated in the USA. Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress after stonewalling their attempts to investigate Operation Fast and Furious, when the half-hearted investigation was leading directly to his office. None of the principals behind this murderous plan have ever been held accountable. I revisit Fast and Furious in case any readers of this article learn the premise of my first novel and declare that federal law enforcement officials would never be involved in a mass murder scheme concocted for political ends. That Rubicon was already crossed with Operation Fast and Furious.

Since then, we have witnessed other scandals which involved selling the American public a false narrative. One example is the lie that the deadly attacks on our nearly undefended diplomatic missions in Benghazi were the result of an angry local response to an obscure video about the life of Mohammed. My point in recounting this history is to encourage Americans to always search beyond the “official narrative,” which, as we have seen, can sometimes be manufactured from whole cloth for public consumption. If the false narrative coincides with the liberal mainstream media’s underlying biases and preconceptions, you can be certain that very little honest journalism will be done to expose the lies and reveal the truth to the public.

This brings me to Las Vegas, with its ever-changing timelines and other dark mysteries, such as the motive of Stephen Paddock, the presumed shooter. Columnist Mark Steyn proposes a theory of the case that, in the absence of any declared motive or connections to international terrorism, “the medium is the message.” (Link is below.) In Las Vegas, then, the message would be that the ready availability of semi-automatic firearms constitutes a menace to American society, and the Second Amendment must be curtailed to prevent future massacres. Limiting the right of Americans to keep and bear arms has been a long-standing goal of the Left. So-called progressives well understand that their dream of imposing a “socialist utopia” cannot be achieved while Americans possess sufficiently effective weapons to mount a furious armed resistance. If Paddock had left a note declaring this end to be his true motive, he would have discredited his own purpose.

Of course, Paddock might have simply been a deranged psychopath, bent, for his own twisted reasons, upon topping the record books as America’s most successful mass shooter. We’ll never know because he’s conveniently dead and, apparently, he left no departing message. The lack of a declared motive, the ever-shifting timeline, and the fact that it took more than an hour after the shooting had ceased for the police to enter Paddock’s suite means that mystery may cloud the Las Vegas Massacre for years or decades to come.

One outcome is certain: millions of Americans are unlikely to accept any “official narrative” released after the investigation has concluded, and with good reason. The FBI and other federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies have squandered their reputations for honesty and integrity in recent years, and we can no longer assume that politics and corruption have not trumped even-handed truth telling.

This brings me to the NFL. In 2017, we are in a season of national discord, with American politics more radically polarized than since the 1960s, or perhaps even the years before the Civil War. The Las Vegas Massacre has shown us that billion-dollar corporations like MGM, as well as the Las Vegas police, were woefully unprepared to deal with a sniper standing in the window of a hotel overlooking an open-air concert.

Should we assume that the NFL is any better prepared to deal with a stadium sniper similar to the one described in the first chapter of my first novel?

Bear in mind that my fictional sniper was not perched high up in a stadium light tower, or hidden in the stands, but was located in a separate building three-quarters of a mile away. His rifle was aimed just over the near side of the stadium, dropping plunging fire into the opposite upper deck. Perimeter security measures taken to prevent firearms from being smuggled into a stadium will do nothing to hinder a distant sniper using this area-fire tactic. In my novel, a SWAT counter-sniper in a helicopter is able to kill the patsy left holding the rifle, but only after the shooting had ceased. But do NFL stadiums have police helicopters with counter-snipers standing by, ready to protect the fans who are packed in like sardines? And not only at the Super Bowl, but at each of the dozen or so weekly NFL games played in uncovered stadiums, or the hundreds of college games?

Greatly increasing the likelihood of a long-range sniper attack on a stadium is the fact that the distant sniper will have a good chance of getting clean away. In my first novel, three rifle magazines, ninety rounds, are enough to precipitate a panic stampede that kills over a thousand fans. If the distant shooter escapes, he can easily leave false clues at the scene, blaming his ideological enemies for the massacre. The Left can blame the Right, or black can blame white, or vice versa. Current events demonstrate that many, if not most, purported “hate crimes,” such as painted swastikas and nooses left at colleges, have been false-flag operations done to discredit the political enemies of the left-wing hoaxers.

Imagine the national outrage after a stadium massacre if overtly racist anti-black hate literature is found among the expended brass shells in the sniper’s lair, calling the mostly-white victims “race-traitors” for attending the NFL game in the wake of ongoing anthem-kneeling protests. The resulting social explosion would make the aftermath of the Las Vegas Massacre seem like a church picnic by comparison. This prospect must certainly be tempting to malefactors bent upon driving the United States toward civil war and anarchy. And, of course, an Islamic terrorist would need no reason beyond spreading terror among the infidels.

At an absolute minimum, large open air concerts and stadium events need a police helicopter with counter-snipers ready to launch on a moment’s notice. Acoustic gunshot detection systems must be installed around these venues to immediately locate a distant sniper’s location. Vectored to the area by the acoustic system, the helicopter’s onboard FLIR can rapidly find the sniper, and the airborne police counter-snipers can finish the job. Stopping a sniper after just a few minutes is a far better outcome than allowing him ten or more minutes of uninterrupted carnage, as in Las Vegas. Bear in mind that Paddock ceased shooting for his own reasons. The police did not stop him.

All the necessary elements (SWAT, counter-snipers, and police choppers) are typically already located in close proximity to these outdoor events. These elements need to be staged together, ready to fly, and able to detect gunshot locations as well as the FLIR signatures of open or broken-out windows in line-of-sight buildings, muzzle flashes, and humans hiding in unoccupied structures. The fatal fiasco of Desert One in 1980 largely resulted from a lack of coordination and practice between the disparate elements of the ad-hoc Iranian hostage rescue mission. In the aftermath, the U.S. military created the Joint Special Operations Command. Similarly, American law enforcement needs to rethink and revamp its approach to providing security for large outdoor events before a predictable tragedy occurs.

In addition, fans attending stadium and other large outdoor public events must be repetitively instructed to avoid blindly attempting to flee in the event of an emergency. Airline pre-flight safety instructions can be used as a model. In Las Vegas, most of the non-fatal injuries resulted from trampling, not from bullets.

A final note: in this article I chose a method of attack (indirect plunging fire from long range) that is simple, but would not be easy to pull off without considerable thought, planning, and practice. There are other tactics that I chose not to describe that would be equally as devastating, but would be much easier for an average maniac to employ. Law enforcement needs to think out of the box, and anticipate novel forms of attack.

Matthew Bracken was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1957, and attended the University of Virginia, where he received a BA in Russian Studies and was commissioned as a naval officer in 1979. Later that year, he graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training and in 1983 he led a Naval Special Warfare detachment to Beirut, Lebanon. Links to his five novels, short stories, and essays may be found at EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com and at Matt’s Amazon page.

Up until age 62 Paddock had bought only two or three guns.

but after Trump is elected Paddock is Galvanized into a frenzy of gun-buying activity.

I find that interesting.

I think the notion that has to be either entirely antfa OR Islam is wrong; it could be both of those to put together.

many progressive activists have a strange attraction to Islam, which they romanticize as the de facto Teligion of Resistance.

Exactly, And no one seems to hold accountable the league of rogue federal agencies. We’re just an upscale posh looking banana republic constantly being sold out to the highest bidder.

***WHAT did the USA get in exchange for forfeiting 20% of our uranium reserves? ***

Fine, the Clinton Crime Family got 2 million bucks for paving the way, but what about the US Treasury? Suppose the Clintons got zilcho. Why would we sell off our uranium to any nation, whether it be Russia, Cuba, or Zimbabwe. Where’s the beef?

There’s no transparency; plenty of darkness. Vegas may very be another false narrative to sell the anti-RKBA agenda. We’ll likely never discover the truth and have been conditioned to accept a whole lot of BS.

We need to pray for DJT’s safety and that we get 7 more years with POTUS cleaning up our government.

Lord-willing, Trump will be followed by another 4-8 years with another righteous leader at the helm.

I suspect stadiums have drone jammers. No insight on that, but it would seem to be prudent to have them. However, the incompetence we’ve seen these days says probably not.

A Mad Mo follower could easily take a large sized civilian drone, add a simple device or two and scare enough people into panic to kill hundreds. The device could also be armed with a lethal gas spray or bomb combined with dropped explosives. Make it a dozen drones and a 75,000 seat stadium could easily have thousands dead.

Do that at an airport terminal or two and shut down air traffic for weeks. Massive economic hit.

Do that on a freeway, and panic would have it shutdown for days. Do that around the country and vehicle travel would be significantly curtailed.

Fact is, if we let the bastards in they will find a means to their savage ways.

One has only to recall the all too many soccer stadium stampedes triggered by actions other than gun fire:

May 24, 1964, 318 died and 500 injured during match between Argentina and Peru when referee disallowed a goal scored at last minute which ignited crowd protest. Police fired tear gas into the crowd, causing a panic and a rush for the exits at National Stadium, Lima, Peru

October 20, 1982, Luzhniki disaster occurred when 340 people dead due to a stampede followed by the collision between exiting and returning viewers when a goal was scored at Lenin Stadium, Moscow, Russia.

May 29, 1985, Heysel Stadium disaster 39 people were killed and 600 injured when escaping fans were pressed against a collapsing wall in the Heysel Stadium in Brussels, Belgium.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_soccer_stampede_disasters

I can imagine several scenarios involving quadcopter swarms and balloons that no amount of snipers could fully thwart to prevent a stampede.

Every stadium and arena is a potential kill sack. Indeed, any place of public assembly that draws huge crowds, such as the Bataclan club, the promenade truck and shooting even.

Initiator has the advantage, especially an ideologue prepared to die, either on his own initiative or one set up as a patsy.

Today, most of the National Felon League games would not be played in a packed stadium.

ESPN is planning another round of layoffs just six months after the network fired more than 100 employees, Sporting News reports.

Multiple sources told the sports news site that 40 to 60 people including on-air talent and radio personalities may be sent packing.

The layoffs could come as soon as late November or early December.

ESPN declined Fox News’ request for comment.

Excerpted, for full story go to the link below:

http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/10/27/espn-preparing-for-more-layoffs-report-says.html

The public answer is, for the most part yes.

The real answer, if you speak to anyone involved in Emergency Planning, is that you are never ready for it. You can drill with scenarios and dummies...and it will never make anyone ready for it.

Training for these things is horribly expensive.

Working in a hospital within a one hour radius of the Boston Marathon Bombing, I can assure you the system worked—we were able to get up to speed pretty quickly. But the lack of knowledge by the Senior Management Team was palatable. They had never found it useful to participate in the drills.

In the end, they DID know enough to get out of the way. And, we just walking wounded who were not as traumatized as those closest to the bombs.

But it was a wakeup call to say the least.

We are never going to be “ready” to the satisfaction of the public or the media.

I’m going to disagree with the premise of this topic... but only slightly.

Many NFL stadiums are in the middle of giant parking lots with few significant buildings in their immediate area. Even those not so are typically domed (Toronto, New Orleans come to mind immediately). That’s not universal (Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte is within a roughly 1000 feet of a high-rise building), but it at least reduces the options.

Baseball stadiums, however... a lot of those are built in downtown areas amidst high-rises - with many more home dates to choose from.

>>>Dozens if not 100s of ATF and FBI agents knew all about the mass murder plan called Operation Fast and Furious, and there were no whistleblowers<<<

That’s a great point. So many here and in our Republic are dismissive of criticism of our federal agencies and believe they are beyond reproach. They have been conditioned to revere authority and gullibly swallow the msm official politburo explanation - regardless of the irrationality. They want to believe no one can keep a secret and that collusion and corruption is unfathomable.

Occam’s Razor has proven to be non-applicable for politicians, terrorists or governments since they typically don’t concoct their plans on a whim. The tentacles and webs of manipulation and deceit are quite long, not short. The past administration, the Clintons and the msm routinely demonstrate their corruption.

Like you said, I wouldn’t put anything past them.

"Official Narrative".

I have come to understand that the wildest, kookiest, most bizzarre conspiracy theories (i.e., Sandy Hook was a government plot) are no more crazy than beleiving the "official narrative" the State feeds us. Especially as that narrative conflicts with the story they told us the day before, and as it will conflict with the "facts" that will be released tomorrow.

Will anyone really be surprised that with the release of new JFK info this week, we will learn that many official narratives from the last 50 years were just lies?

“In Las Vegas, then, the message would be that the ready availability of semi-automatic firearms constitutes a menace to American society, and the Second Amendment must be curtailed to prevent future massacres.”

This is why I’m inclined to dismiss the LV attack as a “false flag”: there has been no serious attempt to shove thru anti-RKBA legislation. Media coverage of the event waned within days, some half-assed bills were proposed, and AFAIK the whole issue is pretty much dead except for the detailed investigation (which itself is trying to make sense of the mundane nonsense of everyday life; the “shifting timeline” seems more a matter of “people are stupid” than conspiracy).

HAD it been a “false flag event”, the MSM would not have let the story go, legislators would have focused on banning semi-autos (not “bump stocks”) with ready-to-go bills, and Congressional leaders would have made an enormous stink about “pass this at all costs”.

There’s a small chance it was ISIS related, but insofar as he left no statement to that effect (no screaming “Aloe Snackbar”, no calls to 911 explaining exactly what & why a la Pulse Nightclub, no other not-easily-suppressed statements) I’m not inclined to accept that theory.

All I can figure is he was the Dr Jekyll “black swan”, presenting a “livin’ the dream” public life and cleverly concealing a Mr Hyde indulgence of evil (requiring a long & confusing investigation as we’re seeing), until the latter became either so unsatisfying or intolerable that he decided to go out in a blaze of glory.

All that said, does remain the point: high-profile mass targets do exist, and we have concrete reason to believe influential people might very well invoke a “black flag” event for whatever reason - in current context, likely to get our current President out of power and rapidly disarm those who would kinetically object thereto. The NFL does seem an obvious target, though fortunately they’re doing their part to render themselves undesirable as such.

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