The Las Vegas Sun, like any other publication in Sin City at the time, devoted a lot of man-hours toward covering the Route 91 shooting there. I remember how many hours I put into covering that awful atrocity. I was flying solo at the time here at Bearing Arms, and it was the only story out there.
Eight years later, it’s still there. It happened, and it was the most awful thing I’ve seen since 9/11.
The Sun decided to take a moment on the anniversary of the attack to look at gun control efforts following the attack and where they stand.
Editor’s note: “Behind the News” is the product of Sun staff assisted by the Sun’s AI lab, which includes a variety of tools such as Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity AI, Google Gemini and ChatGPT.
Eight years ago, a gunman opened fire from his 32nd-floor suite at Mandalay Bay into a crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival. The attack killed 58 people initially, with the official count eventually reaching 60, and wounded more than 850 others [1]. The shooter used 14 rifles equipped with bump stocks, devices that allowed his semiautomatic weapons to fire at rates approaching automatic weapons — up to 400 to 800 rounds per minute, enabling over 1,000 rounds to be discharged in about 10 minutes [2].
A mass shooting is typically defined in U.S. research as an event in which four or more people are shot or killed with firearms in close proximity, not counting the shooter [3]. Since the Oct. 1, 2017, attack in Las Vegas, the U.S. has experienced hundreds of mass shootings annually, often with varied definitions affecting the count [4].
Bump stocks: From ban to Supreme Court reversal
Trump administration action (2018-2019):
After the Oct. 1 attack, President Donald Trump directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to ban bump stocks by classifying them as “machine guns,” effective March 26, 2019 [5]. Owners had to surrender or destroy bump stocks, with violations punishable by up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 fines. This move did not require congressional action and was widely viewed as a regulatory workaround rather than new legislation [6].
Supreme Court strikes down ban (2024):
On June 14, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Garland v. Cargill that the ATF exceeded its authority in banning bump stocks [7]. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that semiautomatic rifles equipped with bump stocks do not meet the legal definition of “machine gun” because they cannot fire more than one shot “by a single function of the trigger” and do not do so “automatically.”
Bump stocks are now federally legal after the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling, though some states, including Nevada, maintain their own prohibitions [8]. Other rapid-fire accessories, like forced reset triggers and trigger cranks, remain generally unregulated at the federal level unless states pass specific laws [9].
I should note that all of those footnotes alluded to don’t show up at the end of the text, so I have no way to evaluate literally any of the claims being made. Of course, I also felt I needed to include that AI was used heavily for this piece, which should tell you a great deal about the state of journalism these days.
There’s obviously a lot more, including a bit that blames evil Republicans for not enacting gun control because that was the only possible way this attack could have been addressed.
Unsurprising, really, because that’s all the media seems to consider. There can be no other possible response to something awful beyond blaming the guns, which is funny considering how often they trip over themselves not to blame Muslims for terrorist attacks or not blame illegal immigrants as a whole for the criminal actions of those who murder our sons and daughters, despite the fact that they shouldn’t even be in the country.
Funny, that.
Not mentioned, though, is how little we know about the killer despite the fact that this was eight years ago. We should have seen a lot more of what was found, what the police have learned about this turdnugget, and why he may have done this. For journalists, they seem profoundly incurious about any of that, even all these years later.
Again, funny, that.
The truth is that gun control wasn’t the answer then, nor is it now. We saw plenty of awful things transpire in the wake of every gun control law passed, including many that were incredibly deadly without a bump stock or anything else of the type. Most mass killers have no use for such devices, after all.
What’s a problem is the diseased mind that leads to these things. Nothing else.
Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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