Althouse: At the Calm Café...

October 2, 2017

At the Calm Café...

... peace be with you.

37 comments:

Darrell said...: And with your spirit.; 10/2/17, 1:18 PM
Roughcoat said...: He said that still through chaos
Works on the ancient plan,
And two things have altered not
Since first the world began—
The beauty of the wild green earth
And the bravery of man.

- T.P. Cameron Wilson, "Magpies in Picardy"; 10/2/17, 1:26 PM
TerriW said...: As a cradle Catholic, I would say, "And also with you."

But Darrell is with the times.; 10/2/17, 1:33 PM
rehajm said...: As a cradle Catholic, I would say, "And also with you."

Triggered a St. Rose flashback for me there. I'll be allright...; 10/2/17, 1:35 PM
traditionalguy said...: Sarah Huckaby read a preparedvstatement at the press briefing, and she cried through her description of the Las Vegas slaughter. The lady is a sincere Christian. Her courage to stand up to the opposition accusers calling themselves journalists is well known. And where that courage comes from is clear.; 10/2/17, 1:35 PM
MaxedOutMama said...: and with thy spirit.; 10/2/17, 1:49 PM
Michael K said...: My kids go to concerts like that. I was happy to learn that everyone is home.

The lesson may be to avoid sites with high buildings nearby.

Stagecoach, and Coachella are held out in the open at a polo field in the desert.

They are huge and I'm sure security will be tighter next spring but there is no high site to watch.

The 2016 festival sold 198,000 tickets and grossed $94.2 million.

That's just Coachella. My kids go to those things.; 10/2/17, 1:50 PM
Jaq said...: Remember back when "settle science" said the "Great Permian Extinction" was due to climate change?

From NYU: New evidence that Siberian volcanic eruptions caused extinction 250 million yrs ago A team of scientists has found new evidence that the Great Permian Extinction, which occurred approximately 250 million years ago, was caused by massive volcanic eruptions that led to significant environmental changes. The study, which appears in the journal Scientific Reports...; 10/2/17, 1:58 PM
Big Mike said...: Madam Professor, as a Virginian I answer you with the words of Patrick Henry:

"Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. ... Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"; 10/2/17, 1:59 PM
Roughcoat said...: tim in vermont:

Yes, the Siberian Traps eruptions. Lasted for 1 million years. One million years. The "Great Dying": 90 percent of life on earth perished.

Why? Did God weep . . . as he is weeping today?; 10/2/17, 2:11 PM
Anonymous said...: Nice pic. I always enjoy studying the composition of your photos.; 10/2/17, 2:15 PM
traditionalguy said...: Now that that our media personalities have calmed down, the questions are being asked. How did one man, who was not a gun expert,arrange for 12 weapons and thousands of rounds of ammo stocking a shooters nest in a room rented three days earlier, and by then himself keep up that rate of fire for 20 minutes before dying on cue die as the patsy?; 10/2/17, 2:42 PM
Ann Althouse said...: @traditionalguy

Once you have a hotel room, you can keep the maid service out by just leaving the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door. If you've got stuff in your car/van/truck and it's parked in the underground garage, you can bring things up bit by bit in the elevator. If no one from the hotel comes in your room, they won't see it. It's a huge hotel. I don't think they'd notice if someone was keeping to himself in his room and excluding maid service. I'll bet there are lots of people who do that for 4 days or more just because they're reclusive for one reason or another or they don't want the maids touching their things.; 10/2/17, 3:21 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: @Ann Althouse said...
@traditionalguy

Weaksauce, Emerita.

Yes, you could keep the maid out of your room for three days. And bring up the gear trunk by trunk.

Do you know where to get weapons like a SAW or an M-16 with C-Mags or an RPK, and thousands of rounds of ammo, without getting caught? Do you have $25K cash in hand (or ten times that), or could you get it without flagging authorities??

Would you know which was the end you hold and which the end you point at the crowd? Could you clear a jam (not with a cloth)? Could you even imagine the recoil, let alone withstand it?

I won't ask whether you could fire the weapon, steadily and with effect, in a very unusual orientation (BTW a shooting range is one thing, where the hell did he learn to compensate for extreme angle firing as from a 32nd-story eyrie?), over 500 times in the space of 10 or 20 minutes, without breaking it, hurting yourself, or going insane. Because I don't have to.

Could you learn? Possibly, but not without practice and support.

Lawyers tend to deprecate the difficulty, and the value, of any activity not involving the practice of law.; 10/2/17, 3:39 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: BTW, you showing up to a midnight rendezvous in the TT with $250K in an ox box and having them strap the crates to your ski rack is such a precious image I hate to abandon it...but the fact is that you would probably be robbed for the cash, if not raped and murdered in the bargain. For sure, you would never manage it alone.

Who was this guy's Meade?; 10/2/17, 3:41 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Funny, how Mueller's shop leaks like a sieve but the lousy LVPD can keep shtum on what was the weapon and all other technical details.; 10/2/17, 3:51 PM
Roughcoat said...: Do you know where to get weapons like a SAW or an M-16 with C-Mags or an RPK, and thousands of rounds of ammo, without getting caught? Do you have $25K cash in hand (or ten times that), or could you get it without flagging authorities??

Kids on the South Side of Chicago can easily purchase automatic weapons and as much ammunition as it suits them to have. They don't have any formal firearms training but nevertheless learn to use the weapons and use them to kill and wound each other and innocent bystanders with alarming frequency. They don't have a lot practice but they watch a lot of television and movies and they have older gang members as mentors to show them the ropes. At night when I am driving home from my job on the South side through some of America's worst neighborhoods I have heard guns popping off in the dark streets south of 55th and I have heard automatic fire. It doesn't take any special skill or much practice to point your weapon from a high vantage point and spray a huge crowd in an open field. As for the problem of jamming: was there any indication in the vidoes that the shooter's gun(s) jammed? I heard long bursts. If the silence between burst was due to jamming -- well, evidently, he picked up another gun. Problem solved.; 10/2/17, 3:54 PM
Ann Althouse said...: I wasn’t addressing how to get the weapons, only the logistics of the hotel.; 10/2/17, 4:09 PM
Big Mike said...: Kids on the South Side of Chicago can easily purchase automatic weapons and as much ammunition as it suits them to have. They don't have any formal firearms training but nevertheless learn to use the weapons and use them to kill and wound each other and innocent bystanders with alarming frequency.

As Nicholas Cage put it ...

I'm pretty certain that the shooter used a magazine-fed automatic weapon. The spacing of the shots is too even to be the result of a person repeatedly squeezing the trigger, and there are gaps between sequences of shots that are probably caused by changing magazines (not jams). An AK is very likely, but it is not at particularly accurate. Still, as has been pointed out, with as many concert-goers as there were, close to where you're aiming is good enough. (I take issue with Cage: AK-47s can and do jam. Lack of knowledge of how to clear a simple stovepipe jam brought down one of the North Hollywood shooters.); 10/2/17, 4:20 PM
Michael K said...: My son, when he lived near USC which is close to downtown LA, said he heard automatic weapons fire every night.

The hotel may be evaluating security in a big hurry right now.; 10/2/17, 4:24 PM
Michael K said...: I would guess an AK 47 or maybe a SAW.

500 people hit is pretty good shooting even for a guy with little experience.

I don't know what to make of the ISIS claim.

He certainly seemed to be well organized.; 10/2/17, 4:27 PM
Roughcoat said...: 500 people hit is pretty good shooting even for a guy with little experience.

Spray a crowd from above with a fire hose, a lot of people gonna get wet.; 10/2/17, 4:33 PM
Michael K said...: "Spray a crowd from above with a fire hose, a lot of people gonna get wet."

I dunno. It still seems a lot to me.; 10/2/17, 4:43 PM
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: And also with you.

(Former Lutheran, now Episcopalian, reporting in.); 10/2/17, 5:16 PM
Etienne said...: I hear automatic weapons, explosions, and hovering helicopters a couple of times a week.

The city police firing range is about 1/2 mile away.; 10/2/17, 5:34 PM
Darrell said...: But Darrell is with the times.

And with the pre-1970 times. That's when it was changed to "And also with you." We went back circa 2011. Regardless, it is, and shall always be et cum spiritu tuo,; 10/2/17, 5:36 PM
Narayanan said...: Are we sure - no inside help? Who doesn't show up tomorrow? Maybe even off the books!; 10/2/17, 6:48 PM
Ken B said...: How many times when you have gone to a hotel have the staff searched your luggage? My answer is never. I bet that's your answer too. So getting guns into the room isn't hard.; 10/2/17, 7:46 PM
Big Mike said...: The Mandalay Bay often hosts conventions. Hotel staff wouldn't necessarily have thought anything about someone bringing large cases from the trunk of his car up to his room, as it could be someone planning to set up a booth at a convention. A bell hop might even have helped him.; 10/2/17, 7:57 PM
Roughcoat said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/2/17, 9:16 PM
William said...: It was well thought out, but to what end? Why would someone go to all that time and trouble to kill a group of random strangers?.....It's kind of scary that a person this evil is passably sane and civil. What was eating him?; 10/2/17, 10:01 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: A full sized military M16A1/A2 rifle, whose more long-range capable pattern with full 20" 1:12 barrel firing the FMJ in 55 or 62 grain, is usually forgone nowadays in favor of the carbine versions with 10-16 inch barrels and faster twists, but would have been more nearly ideal for the killer's uses.

Point being, even the full size M16 is 39.625 inches long. That fits in a footlocker, in a steamer trunk, in a golf bag. If he had a long stay and pretended at golf he could have smuggled in a dozen that way. A dealer at a SF&F convention; a salesman with samples; any number of rationales to move goods througb hotel corridors and ramps and service entrances.

Most hotels or my experience seem quite accustomed to guests doing their own schlepping. Granting my experience is of a certain sort, and may not apply at Mandalay Bay or LV.

Unloading an SUV full of cases of guns at a hotel, given resources and a certain amount of form, is easy peasy. In traveling Zero-Halliburton movie-style crates, no one would even question that they were speakers or mixers or lights or stands or some damned AV thing. He could have rolling luggage, carts to spec, and be quite efficient moving himself. Guns are meant to be moved.

It's coming out now that he was rich, he could have played or really been a whale of some level, certainly an old guy throwing around money can be up to no harm, eh? Whales don't shoot up the place.
All you old rich coots on this board are dangerous mofos.; 10/2/17, 10:34 PM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Is it too much, my marker to both left and right, to ask that this be investigated deeply and insightfully, like the good cops and not the bad cops? What's the catch phrase, follow the evidence wherever it leads?

Oh speaking of which any news on Seth Rich lately?; 10/2/17, 10:37 PM
Big Mike said...: All you old rich coots on this board are dangerous mofos.

@Bad LT, I am not rich, but otherwise damned right sonny. Damned right.; 10/2/17, 10:43 PM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/2/17, 11:11 PM
Jaq said...: It was well thought out, but to what end?

Yeah, it's kind of funny how the scope of what was "well thought out" was so tightly circumscribed.; 10/3/17, 5:11 AM
Bad Lieutenant said...: Yeah, it's kind of funny how the scope of what was "well thought out" was so tightly circumscribed.

You can't escape the question, what did he want, what was he trying to achieve, what was he after? Human tendency to seek meaning demands answers. Doesn't mean fellow should get what he wants, unless he already has. It seems really important to know who he's with. He suicided which I find extra concerning.; 10/3/17, 7:11 AM