the Vegas shooter was not laying down "suppressing fire" upon an opposing force.
he was pumping as many bullets as possible into a large crowd of people who did not know they would be attacked.
if he had only been able to shoot as fast as he could pull the trigger, less people would have died.
you said that holding down the trigger/machine gun fire is rarely used in military situations...and for good reason.
but when someone decides to go full auto on a group of civilians, there is no reason not to.
The bolded is just not true, friend. It's just not.
Ultimately we don't disagree and we're on the same team.
I don't think bump stocks should be legal. I think it's possible, but not likely, that the bump-fire stock allowed him to kill more people than if he used semi-auto.
I was not suggesting the Vegas shooter was using supressive fire. Clearly he was doing some evil shyt. I've spoken with people ranging from Army Infantry vets to a Delta Force Operator and the consensus among them is that the Vegas shooter would have killed more people had he shot one shot at a time. That may seem crazy. It took an average of 250,000 bullets to kill every insurgent in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the earl 00's (source:
US forced to import bullets from Israel as troops use 250,000 for every rebel killed)
In the early 90's the military REMOVED the full-auto option on their AR-15 platforms because it wasn't effective and was wasting ammo. Again to your point, this is not fish in a barrel like the Vegas situation, which you smartly pointed out.
A lot of the Vegas shooters bullets did hit bodies, sadly. But most of his bullets thankfully did not hit bodies. He fired about 1200 bullets. He shot for about 10 minutes. 58 people died. Tragedy. My point is that a lot of experts and myself think that more would have died if he had aimed from target to target for those 10 minutes. There's a reason that professional warriors don't use full auto on their AR-15s...it's not that effective. The Vegas shooter basically used a bootleg version of full-auto gunfire in virtually the only situation where it could be effective. And it sounds gross, cold, and clinical to talk about this in terms like
effective but it's the harsh reality of what we all need to talk about.
Now, if that doesn't convince you, then set aside the entire bump stock conversation. Semi-auto (one shot at a time guns) are responsible for almost all of the gun deaths in this country. Actual full-auto or bump fire guns have been involved in almost no mass shooting incidents. The VA Tech killer was able to kill 32 people with 2 handguns.
The most difficult part of the gun violence crisis is that semi-auto guns (mostly handguns) are the ones that are causing most of the deaths, and no one is really talking about banning those. Between 1982 and 2017 in mass shootings, over twice as many handguns have been used than rifles of any type. And I feel like we aren't even talking about this aspect of the problem.
EDIT: Also, for the last point, someone going full auto among a group of crowded people is going to have to reload every 2-3 seconds, and there is way more time to jump on that guy and end the madness than if he's elevated in a hotel room and can reload without any stress or pressure.
I feel like such an a$$hole arguing about this, because we both agree that bump fire stocks should be illegal.
