Monday, October 16, 2017

The Las Vegas shootings: lots of smoke, but where's the real fire?


There are still many unanswered questions about the Las Vegas shootings a fortnight ago.  Law enforcement seems to be changing the timeline and other details to suit their own narrative, and they've done it so often as to call their professionalism and expertise into serious question.

Two articles summarize the current state of play:





Go read them for a very good summary of the issues that remain unsolved (at least, as far as the public is concerned).

I'm particularly concerned that little or no internal security footage from the hotel has been released.  I'm sure such video would be date- and/or time-stamped, and reveal the truth about who responded to the situation, at what time, where and how.  The fact that it has not been released speaks volumes about a potential police cover-up of a flawed, delayed response that may - I emphasize, may - have doomed dozens or scores of people to death or injury.  Unfortunately, in the absence of the release of this sort of information, we can only speculate;  and many are doing precisely that.  Law enforcement agencies are doing themselves no favors at all by their reluctance to provide details.

I'll let Karl Denninger sum it up.

As for the LVMPD quit covering **** up, especially whatever you know about that "guard's" legal status vis-a-vis being in the United States and why he doesn't show up on the Nevada License site as holding the license he would almost-certainly need to be a security guard.

Oh, and quit playing with the timeline too.

Finally, you and the Fibbies obviously can't find your ass with both hands.  How else does a (dead) suspect's house, which you breached violently and then searched, get broken into by burglars while you have it under surveillance?  Either cops broke into it (with your explicit permission so they could literally loot it) or you lack the basic ability to do your damn job and your entire department needs to be defunded since you are all a sufficiently-bad waste of oxygen that you deserve to get lost in the desert and expire. The rank incompetence during and immediately following the event is bad enough but this tops the list when it comes to getting paid to do literally nothing and nobody in your state should sit for one second more of that crap.

I'm not buying what you're selling -- I don't know why or what you're covering up but that you are is evident from the ever-changing timeline and your failure to address the inconsistencies, including said "Security Guard" who is a ghost according to the requirements of Nevada law to hold that position.  You knew damn well what was going on there within hours of the event and have intentionally blackballed all discussion of same.

There's more at the link.

Frankly, I think Mr. Denninger is right in almost every respect.  Why is the LVMPD still evading the issues in this case, two weeks after the fact?  This stinks of a cover-up at every level.

Peter

10 comments:

Aesop said...

Thanks for the link-love, Peter.

I agree with Deninger: the only reason for the FBI to continue to hog the footage that would forever nail down what really happened beyond dispute is either to service a cover-up, or arrange one once they have suitably altered the footage to suit a final version of events they still can't locate with both hands, a map, and a rear-view mirror.

Old NFO said...

Some folks are crawfishing so fast, they are leaving rooster tails! Sigh...

MrGarabaldi said...

Hey Peter;

All of mt early sources show the shooter to be an Anti-Trumper angry white dude. Then all of a sudden his image gets cleaned up and now you can't find anything on the guy and the lefties are pushing "gun Control". I keep wondering if this is some staged operation to support an agenda. I normally don't wear a tinfoil hat, but I am wondering.

Divemedic said...

the first link you posted is full of inaccuracies.

There are plenty of courts that issue sealed orders, beginning with the FISA court. Even regular courts routinely issue gag orders that are sealed. I myself have been involved with a court case that involves a gag order, and that order has been in effect and sealed for nearly five years.

Bump stocks affect accuracy because it is impossible to hold the weapon on target with high precision while the thing is bouncing back and forth in the stock. The distance isn't that great, according to Google maps, it is only 280 yards from the hotel to the stage. It is 400 yards to the center of the concert area. My ballistics table says that you only have about a 25 inch drop at that range, and a 55 grain bullet still has more than 300 foot pounds of energy at 400 yards.

The guy is full of crap when he talks about the shooting distance being the hypotenuse. The bullet only sees the horizontal component of the distance when computing drop, but sees the flight distance (hypotenuse) when computing energy. Even so, the hypotenuse of the triangle formed by a 32 story hotel and a 400 yard horizontal distance is only 414 yards. That really doesn't matter a whole lot to energy.

As to accuracy: At 400 yards, one minute of angle is equal to approximately 4.18 inches. This means that the concert venue at 500 feet wide, being 400 yards away, is more than 1400 minutes of angle wide. The shooter wasn't trying to hit individual people, which I admit would take quite a bit of skill. Instead, he was shooting into an area the size of two football fields, and hoping to hit any of the 22,000 people who were densely packed into that area. This would be the equivalent of shooting at a standard highway billboard (which is 48 feet wide) at a distance of about 100 yards. NOT a difficult shot. Stevie Wonder could make a shot like that.

Only about 200 of the injuries/deaths were due to GSW. The rest of the injuries were due to being trampled or otherwise injured while taking cover. There were 22,000 people in the venue, and he hit less than 1% of them- meaning he missed more than 99% of the time.

I don't know why I keep letting myself get sucked into these discussions.

Larry said...

A crack British trooper of 1914 could probably have been more deadly with a bolt-action Lee-Enfield and modern hunting ammunition. Given an L1A1 of 1950's vintage, I'd hate to think what a marksman could do.

I surely don't understand the police, LVMPD or FIB. It does look like they're staging a cover-up, though I'd suspect for different reasons. I wonder about mob ties motivating the local cover-up, based on how entrenched they are in Las Vegas and Reno.

Well Seasoned Fool said...

Don't see much input from recent combat vets on what they heard, the types of firearms, and types of ammunition.

Anonymous said...

This whole incident hasn't smelled right from day one and it hasn't got any better as time has dragged on. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. There are no aliens at Area 51 and Oswald did indeed shoot JFK all by his lonesome. But this shooting has my BS detector pegged. I'm just not buying what officialdom is selling and damn few people I know are either.

Nate Winchester said...

To: well seasoned Fool

Ask you shall receive
https://youtu.be/4uWBG-bbUZU

Anonymous said...

I was waiting for someone, somewhere, to bring up the SMLE and "mad minute;" Larry (above) has the honor.

For those who don't know, Way Back When the Brtish Army trained marksmanship: the "mad minute" was "as many aimed shots as a trained soldier can get off in 60 seconds," which usually was pretty close to 30, including reloading every 5 rounds with stripper clips. With a bolt action rifle. Using metallic open sights. While standing in cold mud. And scoring hits with the majority of shots on a man-sized target at 200-300 yards.

It was effective enough that employed in company-size units during WWI the Germans thought it was well aimed machine gun fire. (If it sounds far fetched, you've never handled a SMLE (Short Magazine Lee Enfield), especially the Mark III; the smoothness of the bolt operation is the world standard to which all other bolt rifles are compared. The .303 British round is no slouch, either: 7.92 mm bullet (same as the German 8MM Mauser), 174 grains, 2450 FPS).

As horrific as Las Vegas is, we should be thankful it was a shooter as incompetent as Paddock, or whomever it actually turns out to be, rather than a garden variety 1916 Tommy Atkins (or a Belleau Wood Devil Dog).

Speaking of Vegas, you should have added a CAT or SOFT-T, hemostatic gauze and a 4-inch Israeli to your EDC by now. Have you?


Alphonse

Tal Hartsfeld said...

The main thing I find intriguing is the idea of an obviously wealthy individual targeting a large group of financially well-off upper echelon civilians for the purpose of committing a sensationalistic mass-murder.

Just what was the reason behind all this?
What was he---or the organization(s) behind him---trying (or hoping) to accomplish?
Whatever was his (or their) "mission"?