Heroes And Zeros: Vegas

I'll start with the heroes. Among them was the unarmed hotel security guy who attempted to interdict the shooter but could not get through the door because the shooter had driven screws into the frame. He took a round to the leg when the shooter blindly emptied a mag through the door of the suite but he'll be ok.

Next up is the ex-service member who stole a truck and used it to transport injured people out of the kill zone. If they prosecute that guy, and you know they're thinking about it, everyone involved in attempting to do so needs to hang from a public gallows in the middle of the Las Vegas strip. This guy put himself in harm's way, he saved lives, he did it at great personal risk and he made a decision that the jackbooted ****heads in our government can and might attempt to use to destroy him. He in fact took more risk than dying in that if they come after him a felony grand theft auto conviction will ruin him for life, and his only defense to the charge is drawing a jury that refuses to convict him.

Not far behind that guy are the multiple reports of others, some active duty service members on leave, some off-duty officers and others who are just ordinary people, who (1) dragged, carried or otherwise got others out of the kill zone or behind hard cover where they could not be shot (again), (2) used their bodies as shields over the top of others, in some cases with tragic results and (3) took other actions that made them easier to hit but shielded or otherwise saved others. There have been multiple reports of such people; they put their own life on the line for others. Some of them were severely injured and I do not doubt that some number of them died.

There are undoubtedly many more than can be readily identified who took similar actions.

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Las Vegas had spent years planning for the worst: training its police force according to an anti-terrorism protocol it adopted in 2009 to respond to mass shootings, chemical attacks, suicide bombings, and planes flying into buildings, according to city officials and security professionals.

But when it came to Sunday night’s attack that killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more at an open-air concert in the city, police found themselves with few options to stop the gunman quickly, they said. It underscored the difficulty American cities face in protecting citizens from attacks that can take unpredictable forms.

Reuters even had the gall to run a photo of these guys posing on a balcony somewhere in the city. I don't recognize the exact vista, but it doesn't matter. That they would laud these people is outrageous; not one of them did one effective thing to end the attack.

At 9:59 p.m., Campos (e.d. The unarmed security guard above) was shot in the leg after Paddock fired 200 shots into the hallway. Paddock began shooting into the crowd six minutes later, contradicting original reports that Campos’ arrival is what stopped Paddock’s mass shooting.

Between the time that Campos was shot and Paddock began shooting, Campos notified authorities of what happened, which Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said Friday was “absolutely critical” as it gave police Paddock’s exact location.

**** you Kevin McMahill. Your ******n department is directly responsible for the deaths of these people because your officers are cowards.

Those primped-up clowns up-armored, up-armed and then sat in the ****ing stairway for over an hour despite knowing this dickhead was loaded up and actively shooting innocent, unarmed and defenseless civilians from above.

The cops sat on their asses while the gunman shot and killed all the people in the crowd despite having every ability to stop it before it ever happened while knowing exactly where he was.

If you, in the military, sat and cowered behind hard cover while the enemy shot up your unit your ass would sit in front of a court martial for cowardice before the enemy under Article 99, you'd be convicted, you would go to Leavenworth as you'd be charged with those deaths due to your intentional inaction and then you'd get a dishonorable discharge when your sentence was served.

It is in fact possible under Article 99 to get the death penalty for cowardice of this sort in a military unit.

When these cowards finally blew the door open to the suite the shooter had ceased shooting (presumed dead of a self-inflicted gunshot) for roughly an hour. Their "action" consisted of showing up to mop up his blood and sweep up his cartridges. They saved exactly zero lives and took exactly zero effective actions to end or otherwise limit the assault. They might have actually saved at least one life if they had gone into the crowd and attempted to stabilize those who had been shot rather than prance around in their body armor and play TV-style SWAT.

LET ME SAY IT AGAIN IN CASE YOU MISSED IT THE FIRST TIME: The effective actions of the police with regard to stopping the jackass during this incident number an exact zero. They are ALL outrageously arrogant, cowardly *******s in that they posed for photos instead of apologizing and offering to resign for their utter failure to do one single effective thing with all the money, equipment and alleged "training" the people of Las Vegas and the State of Nevada have showered upon them in anticipation of exactly this sort of event. The only thing those ****heads cared about was getting their ******n pension and every penny of it should be forfeit along with their job -- right damn now. These rat bastards shouldn't be able to show their faces in public ever again without seeing the bird.

“Our officers showed incredible restraint. They can fire that distance. It’s not safe to do so,” said Robert Chamberlin, a member of the Las Vegas police department’s counter-terrorism force. “You are firing 32 floors up, from 500 meters (yards). So the trajectory of our rounds...even if we were accurate, they’re going to go up into the ceiling, up into the next floor.”

That is a knowing lie. The floors (and of course ceilings, since the ceiling in your room is the floor of the one above) are poured reinforced concrete. All high-rise buildings of reasonably-recent construction are put together this way and Mandalay Bay is no exception; the "grid" is made of steel and then the floors themselves are poured in place. The rounds thus fired, if any had been fired and if fired accurately enough to go in the broken window were most-certainly not going to go up into the ceiling and next floor because the surface they would impact is reinforced concrete. The arrogant doucheface who made that statement knows this; his claim is thus not a mistake or an error, it is a lie told to attempt to excuse his personal lack of action, probably because they had staged exactly nobody and thus had no one in a reasonable position to immediately attempt to engage the shooter.

Now it is true that to get him you'd probably have to have a line of fire somewhere close to level because he was likely prone on the floor. So what? These ****heads didn't even try to get in; they cowered in the stairwell! Even if they had challenged the gunman and he didn't at that moment kill himself for every second you distract him and either force him to keep his head down or induce him to shoot back at the cops with his weapons that had severely-degraded accuracy that is one second he cannot use to shoot at the compact mass of civilians below where hits are nearly certain!

In addition there were all sorts of zeros at and before the incident itself, but expecting a 100% correct response and interdiction by authorities is not reasonable. It won't happen. The hotel missed him hauling two dozen weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition into his room, for example. Roughly 1,000 rounds of 5.56 will fit in a military-surplus "ammo can" that is under a foot on a side but all that lead is heavy; 8 of those stacked on a luggage cart is definitely going to draw attention. Sticking the same contents in a big suitcase would make it impossible to lift; said suitcase would weigh over 200lbs! The weapons themselves aren't all that heavy (~11lbs each) but 20 of them are and they're also relatively large -- civilian-legal 16" barrels are, well, 16" long -- minimum, of course, plus the rest of the mechanism assuming they're assembled. So figure a rifle has a 2', roughly, minimum length dimension broken down. Hauling 20 of them into a room again, is not impossible but will take multiple trips and some planning.

Then there's "where the hell do you put all of that where the cleaning crew won't find it by accident?" We're talking about more guns than fit in most residential gun safes and a good part of a closet full of ammunition. There's plenty of closet space in a hotel suite, of course, but guns look like, well, guns.

This guy was a known high-roller so him being there wasn't odd, and apparently we now have reports his room was comp'd. Ok, but how'd he get that room? The hotel was full. Special request? Made when, may I ask? No answers on that so far. But let's just leave the hotel thing this way: The hotel missed multiple opportunities, but this guy did apparently attempt to get rooms with this sort of view over festivals over the previous few months, did succeed, and nobody thought it was odd. That's sort of like 9/11 -- nobody really thought boxcutters were weapons to be afraid of on airplanes. They were wrong, and that points out the simple fact that unless you notice that something is odd and dangerous you're not going to be bothered by it. The world is full of odd people and you can't arrest or detain someone for being strange; the strange has to also be accompanied by something that appears to be harmful.

Just like with 9/11, however, there were multiple additional things that were missed and those we can properly charge to the authorities in specific terms since they continually have, use and demand a nearly-airtight "surveillance state" in the US.

Prior to 9/11 the FBI received actual reports of suspicious activity at a flight simulator in Florida. They ignored those reports and, as it turns out, those were the hijackers. Florida's Governor Bush issued driver licenses to several of the hijackers despite exactly zero of those being issued to citizens; in other words, he issued Florida Driver Licenses to foreign nationals who did not have green cards. He was never held to account for this nor was the Secretary of State. Those credentials were used to board the planes. If either of those two things hadn't happened neither would have 9/11 and that's a fact so we can properly charge all 3,000 deaths to both the FBI and Governor Bush because in both cases there was no legitimate excuse for refusing to investigate the report nor is there one for issuing state identification credentials (driver licenses) to non-permanent residents.

Similarly, in this case if the hotel had paid attention to a guy hauling multiple large and heavy items up to his suite, vastly out of character for someone who is coming to gamble for a few days, there would have been no attack. But they didn't. The only real difference is that Las Vegas hotel security postures aren't really set up for this purpose and it's not really their job either, when you get down to it. Their posture has always been about not getting robbed with the crazy amount of money they have in the counting room and the cage, and with good cause. That might change a bit now, of course.

The bottom line when it comes to what is now showing up in the light of day is this:

For a rage-monster attack, which this appears to have been thus far, the most-important thing is to offer resistance to his assault immediately.

To offer resistance you must be armed in some fashion and be there, which means the most-effective way to stop these attacks and limit their body count is for everyone to be armed all the time. Had just one person in an adjoining room had a gun and used it, even ineffectively in this instance it is a near-certainty that the shooter would have killed fewer than 10 people and injured less than 50.

He got more than five times the body count and ten times the injury rate because (1) nobody in the immediate vicinity, all of whom were ordinary civilians, were armed and the LEO response was their usual SWAT-style chicken**** nonsense of up-arm and up-armoring first to "coordinate" and "protect themselves" instead of immediately storming the floor despite knowing exactly where the shooter was several minutes before he started shooting at the crowd.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT PROVIDES THE IMMEDIATE AND NECESSARY ANTIDOTE TO THESE SORTS OF ATTACKS. THE POLITICIANS AND OTHERS WHO HAVE CONTINUALLY DESTROYED BOTH ITS INTENT AND THE BLACK LETTERS IN WHICH ITS WORDS ARE WRITTEN MUST BE HELD TO ACCOUNT FOR THESE DEATHS ALONG WITH THE RANK COWARDICE OF THOSE WHO DARE CALL THEMSELVES POLICE OFFICERS BUT ARE IN FACT COWARDLY *******S WHO ARE SO MORALLY AND ETHICALLY BANKRUPT THAT IT WOULD BE AN INSULT TO SWINE TO CALL THEM "PIGS".

THE LATTER'S COWARDICE, WHICH WOULD BE A CRIMINAL ACT IF A MEMBER OF THE MILITARY DID THE SAME THING IN A COMBAT ZONE, IS WHY THIS JACKASS MANAGED TO KILL 50+ AND WOUND MORE THAN 500.

THE BLOOD AND LIVES OF THOSE INJURED AND KILLED IN LAS VEGAS ARE LITERALLY ON THE HANDS OF EVERY LAST ONE OF THOSE COWARDS. NOW I KNOW WHY ALL THOSE LOCAL COPS LOOKED SO DAMN SCARED ON THE TEE VEE -- THEY KNEW WITHIN HOURS OF THE ATTACK THAT THIS WOULD COME OUT AND WHEN IT DID THEY WOULD BE EXPOSED FOR THE COWARDS THAT THEY ARE AND THAT THEY ARE WHY THE SHOOTER MANAGED TO KILL MORE THAN 50 AND WOUND MORE THAN 500.

LET ME BE CLEAR JUST IN CASE YOU HAVE TROUBLE WITH READING: THE LAW ENFORCEMENT COMMUNITY IN LAS VEGAS WAS DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERY ONE OF THOSE DEATHS AND INJURIES BECAUSE THEY COWERED IN A STAIRWELL AND LET THAT ******* SHOOT CIVILIANS UNTIL HE WAS BORED, THEN KILL HIMSELF AT HIS LEISURE, INSTEAD OF DOING THEIR ****ING JOB AND IMMEDIATELY STORMING THE ROOM.

WE NEED A FEDERAL ARTICLE 99 THAT APPLIES TO EVERY LAST LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY AND WE NEED IT NOW SO THOSE WHO ARE COWARDS UNDER FIRE INSTEAD OF MANNING UP AND DOING THEIR JOB CAN BE TOSSED IN PRISON, THEN STRIPPED OF THEIR PENSIONS AND REPUTATION AFTER THEIR JUST SENTENCE HAS BEEN SERVED.

IN ADDITION THE SECOND AMENDMENT MUST BE RESTORED VIA FEDERAL PREEMPTION TO ITS ORIGINAL WORDS IN FULL ON AN IMMEDIATE BASIS SO THAT EVERY SINGLE CITIZEN CAN CARRY OPENLY OR CONCEALED AS HE OR SHE CHOOSES EVERYWHERE AND ALL THE DAMN TIME, THUS PROVIDING THE ORDINARY PERSON A FAIR CHANCE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES. THIS IS MADE NECESSARY BY THE FACT THAT THE SO-CALLED "POLICE OFFICERS" HAVE REPEATEDLY SHOWN THEY HAVE AND WILL REFUSE TO DO THEIR DAMN JOBS. ANY POLITICIAN WHO REFUSES TO TAKE AND ENFORCE THIS ACTION RIGHT HERE AND NOW MUST BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE FOR CAUSE, ASSET STRIPPED TO THEIR UNDERWEAR AND SEE ONLY MIDDLE FINGERS WHEREVER THEY OR THEIR FAMILY GO FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES.

You would think for the fastest SWAT response in the country besides airports would be Vegas.

to me it’s amazing you can open fire with a machine gun from Vegas casino perch on a concert and the SWAT team response time is ***1 hour***.

I’d find even 15 or 20 minutes unacceptable.

There is much factually wrong with this account.

Too much to go into.

Lots of information has been learned in the last few days.

The security guard did *not* approach the door when shooting was going on.

The shooting at people outside had stopped when SWAT got there.

Those two fact completely derail this rant.

Columbine: 3 hours

Mandalay Massacre: 1 hour

I guess being on a SWAT team is the male of a fashion show.

“Fash show”..?

But in fact that makes Vegas a lot like columbine:

at Columbine the police tactical response time was probably 15 minutes or less, probably reasonable.

however at the time they had weird protocols and the team remained outside for maybe 2.7 hours.

they had procedures that prevented them from entering, for example “shooting has to have stopped” or or something like that.

also they didn’t like that they were blinking lights and sirens and the sprinklers were on.

somehow, the Columbine cops claimed, that prevented them from entering.

Not that I’m an expert on Vegas, but you would think that they’d have a team of eight guys on duty...24-hours a day...for SWAT situations. And a regular crew that could be called to back them up in an hour. As much city tax revenue that is pouring into the city...they’ve got the money for it.

I don’t know enough to criticize, but I found the stories of the guy who stole a truck to take victims to the hospital, and the one man who was shot and said, “I’m not going to make it” and shielded two young women with his body to be incredible. They restore your faith in humanity.

Lot of crying re: ‘inaccuracies’ but no point-by-point as of yet. Article seems to have the URL references to back it up.

His point is spot on though: no cop\officer\etc. has the obligation to protect/defend the populace. NONE.

Yet, here we show, *again*, for all the $$$/time/gear/prep, GOVT is woefully lacking.

This guy claims in his rant that the SWAT guys sat in the stairway for an hour while Paddock shot at the crowd below, but all reports I’ve seen (for what they are worth) say that Paddock shot for ten minutes, not an hour.

and the SWAT team response time is ***1 hour***.

oh no, they were FAST, and there in time. apparently they just decided to wait in the stairwell until the shooter was finished.

Representative Dina Titus said housekeeping had been in the room and had seen nothing amiss and that he was winning at the tables. Hadn't heard from her since that statement. Down the rabbit hole.

Glad he didn't knock over the bipod.

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