But why? Why is that important? Can't you just wear hearing protection?
No. Best hearing protection only reduces it by about 30db. This still leaves room for gradual hearing loss over time and some people are susceptible to tinnitus. To be totally safe requires both suppression and hearing protection. In europe it is also a matter of population density. Without suppression it is hard to maintain shooting ranges. This is becoming an issue in some parts of US now.
But let's be honest. There are plenty of times when easy access to a large number of firearms or firearms with a large capacity was the reason why more than just a few people died. They're NOT the same as a knife or a samurai sword or even a car bomb.
Even this shooting was no where near a car bomb. A car bomb is a completely different scale in terms of danger. In the oklahoma city bombing more than 150 people died. And that was a very crude, unrefined bomb which had to penetrate concrete walls. Even so, if you took the OCB and put it in the Vegas venue we would be looking at thousands dead. One suicide vest bomber in a crowd will kill hundreds. We are lucky this guy's pilot license wasnt up-to-date as he could have loaded up his plane with explosives and fly right into the venue probably killing most of the 22,000 person crowd.
Can we limit capacity? Is 100 round magazines on 40 semi-auto firearms okay for one person to have in a hotel room?
Here is the thing, the hotel had a strict no gun policy. So did the concert. These bans did zero, zilch, nada to prevent the incident. Nor do the total bans in Europe. France has a total ban on semi-autos. Yet 89 people were killed and 413 were injured at the concert attack in paris.
And regards bumpstocks, reports now are that most of the guns with bump stocks were found jammed. So casualties probably would have been worse without them. A decently trained marksman can fire an average of twelve aimed shots a minute (this includes
10 round magazine changes). Over ten minutes (time of actual shooting) that is 120 well placed shots. With a 50% mortality rate that is sixty people. A higher death toll than seen here (so far...lets hope it stays that way). And without the easy to spot rapid fire it possibly could have gone on a lot longer.
Which brings up another point, we dont know how many people were actually shot versus injured in other manners or even how many shots the shooter got off. The FBI and local law enforcement havent released that info. So there isnt even enough information to have an informed policy discussion.
In short, as security experts keep saying, but politicians continue to ignore, you cant stop these incidents by eliminating "means". They can only be prevented by disrupting "opportunity" and "motive". But even then some will make it through. So you have to work to minimize them when they do occur. And I have to say the Vegas police, private security, and civillians did that amazingly well given the circumstances. Heck, we saw people breaking into/stealing trucks to make make-shift ambulances to carry people to hospitals. We need to tell these types of stories more to get people mentally prepared on how to react - i.e. with courage and decisiveness.
It would be foolish to further erode rights (we have thousands of gun control laws already on the books) without definitve proof of any benefit. Especially when efforts to prepare the citizenry on how to respond have been totally innadequate. Politicians should address that first.
