Killing in Vegas, How Will Politicians/Media React?

Last night, a man shot up the Jason Aldean concert in Las Vegas Nevada. Follow the full coverage: http://www.foxnews.com/live-coverage/las-vegas-massacre

First, thoughts and prayers to all the families of the victims for their loss, the wounded for a speedy recovery and the survivors for help dealing with the aftermath.

Now, about this whole mess. Let me start by saying, every murder is tragic, despite where, when or how it occurred. That being said, it seems more and more that certain forces love to use these tragedies to further their own ends. So, to that, I will be digging in to the next steps on how they will react. That way, maybe we can break this cycle before it happens.

All of these tragedies start in media the same way. An event happened, talk to witnesses. Then we have to find out what every celebrity thinks of the event. This is followed shortly by social media posts from the pres/gov/local reps. Then they must analyze why the perpetrator did this.  What were the indicators that this person was going to do this? How could we stop it? And these things are where they will get it all wrong. Again.

They will look into the shooter’s history. Once again, I will not name him. Mass murderers should be forgotten in name. Likely, they will find he was a social outcast that once had some small instance of government dissatisfaction and had a few assault charges. Some history of mental illness, such as depression, will be possible.

The next logical step will be how to prevent it from happening again. Of course they will cite sources and push for legislation ranging from restricting firearms from people with any kind of criminal history or any history of mental problems.

Click on the picture to read the full BBC article.

Where we get into trouble is, as we are standing around the water cooler, getting attacked by liberal ideology, they are armed with media corrupted facts, and we are under-prepared. Well, let me fill you up with some facts and arguments. First, the argument that creating a restrictive state for access to firearms, ammo, or accessories will reduce mass murder crime is false. Anecdotally, lets look at some of the last tragic events world wide. Take for example the mass stabbing in China in 2014. 29 killed, over 100 wounded. With a knife. (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-26402367)  Or perhaps the violent assault with a truck in France in July of 2016. 86 killed, over 300 injured. (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36801671) Both of these events happened in countries that are highly restrictive of firearms, so criminals find another way.

The next argument: high capacity magazines are the culprit. If the criminal didn’t have a magazine with an arbitrary capacity limit set by some authority, then he wouldn’t have been as effective. In fact, when I researched the effectiveness of the 1994 capacity ban, I could find no data showing that high capacity magazines used in crimes changed the outcome. The proponents of these measures state that less high capacity magazines are being used , (https://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/magazine-capacity-limit-explainer/) but they don’t like to mention that since the sunset of the assault weapons ban in 2004, homicide rates have not changed in any significant way. (https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hus11.pdf) It seems clear to me that banning the type of weapon or the capacity of the magazine has no real effect on crime.

What do they go after next? More restrictive laws on people with records of mental illness or criminal background. However, there are already restrictions on these things, where they will be effective. Not every crime is a precursor to murder, and those that are, violent crimes, felonies, domestic assault, are already restricted from owning firearms. In the same right, not all mental illnesses are a precursor to violence, and if the person has indicators of violence, they are already restricted.

Now, a lot of opinions like this will say ‘stop all gun control’ measures and not provide any alternative. I think we should start coming back at them. Let us provide solutions that work. I suggest two things, education and proper enforcement. It has long been known that there is a link between education and crime. This article from the National Crime Prevention Council, from back in 2007, shows that education is effective in reducing crime as a whole. Here is a great article from all4ed.org that suggests increasing success rates in high school would reduce crime enforcement costs by a significant amount in a community. As to enforcement, we could do to reduce the emphasis on ‘easy money’ enforcement actions. Less police out running radar and writing up tickets for inspections means more officers protecting the population. Additionally, community involvement would go a long way to improving relationships with local law enforcement, bringing back a measure of public trust. This would lead to a situation where individuals would be much more likely to report suspicious activity, rather than fearing police too much to get involved.

In summary, guns are not the underlying cause of the violence, so trying to stop crime by getting rid of firearms is like taking asprin to get rid of pneumonia. It will reduce the fever but it will not solve the condition.

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