Active shooter at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas...

[Sylvain]

He apparently was also targeting those fuel tanks at the airport. Not sure how much further those were than the crowd was.

I saw that.
But with huge targets like that I'm not sure you need any calculation or even optics.
Not that I know anything about long range shooting.

The press reported 2000 feet.

 

[jamil]

This is a writer for Jimmy Kimmel.

Why? Why does it seem worth clarifying? So if that's worth clarifying is the 1st amendment worth clarifying? Ooh. I know. Is it worth clarifying then, that the 19th amendment isn't "in the Constitution?"

 

[jedi]

This is a writer for Jimmy Kimmel.

After this tweet, she pulled the "sexism" card at a man for responding to her inane bull****.

???? Meaning what???
Ammendement to the constituion are part of the document.

 

[jamil]

???? Meaning what???
Ammendement to the constituion are part of the document.

Well. Hold on. Just for the sake of argument, let's assume for argument's sake that she's right, that it makes a difference that none of the amendments are "in" it.

 

[HoughMade]

Why? Why does it seem worth clarifying? So if that's worth clarifying is the 1st amendment worth clarifying? Ooh. I know. Is it worth clarifying then, that the 19th amendment isn't "in the Constitution?"

I think we have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be "in the Constitution".

For the sake of avoiding divisive rabbit trails, I will refrain from making a list of claimed Constitutional rights that are actually not in the Constitution.

 

[Sylvain]

This is a writer for Jimmy Kimmel.

After this tweet, she pulled the "sexism" card at a man for responding to her inane bull****.

So the First Amendemnt and the entire Bill of Rights are also not part of the constitution?

I like how people use their constitutionally protected First Amendment right, and freedom of speech, to tell you that the Second Amendment is not really a constitutionally protected right since they think it's not part of the constitution.

 

[T.Lex]

Wait.

She might be on to something.

Direct election of senators might not be a real thing?

This may be worth exploring....

ETA:
Dangit.

I wonder what that means for slavery....

 

[Alpo]

I saw that.
But with huge targets like that I'm not sure you need any calculation or even optics.
Not that I know anything about long range shooting.

The press reported 2000 feet.

You really don't need ballistic charts for targets of that size and those distances. Especially with rapid fire. This wasn't a sniper problem requiring a solution. Wind effect? LOL. Just sayin'

 

[HoughMade]

I don't buy the "trying to get the tanks to blow up" thing.

Having some DOPE info doesn't change that.

 

[KLB]

Wait.

She might be on to something.

Direct election of senators might not be a real thing?

This may be worth exploring....

ETA:
Dangit.

I wonder what that means for slavery....

Women voting?

 

[Sylvain]

You really don't need ballistic charts for targets of that size and those distances. Especially with rapid fire. This wasn't a sniper problem requiring a solution. Wind effect? LOL. Just sayin'

It's what I was saying.
It's like 600 yards away.
I bet I could hit that with iron sights and "no sniper training".
At least hit one of the two tanks even if I was aiming for the other one.

The guy might still have overthinked it and worry about windage even though it was not needed.
At least the time he took making calculation he didn't use it to shoot his fellow citizens.

 

[eldirector]

Women voting?

Getting drunk?
Not getting drunk?
Getting drunk again?

WHICH ONE IS IT, MAN!

 

[T.Lex]

Women voting?

I'm open to that, but what will we get in return?

Oh wait.

Never mind.

 

[chipbennett]

This is a writer for Jimmy Kimmel.

After this tweet, she pulled the "sexism" card at a man for responding to her inane bull****.

The real question here is: did the Constitution get amended, or did the Constitution acquire an amendment?

 

[Sylvain]

I don't buy the "trying to get the tanks to blow up" thing.

Having some DOPE info doesn't change that.

Why not? Lots of people think a bullet will make a gas tank explode like you see in movies.
Maybe he wasn't a Mythbusters fan.

Also he might have had additional plans to ignite the fuel once he pierced the tanks with bullets.

 

[HoughMade]

Why not? Lots of people think a bullet will make a gas tank explode like you see in movies.
Maybe he wasn't a Mythbusters fan.

Also he might have had additional plans to ignite the fuel once he pierced the tanks with bullets.

If I see additional information that supports it, maybe, but I haven't see it.

 

[ArcadiaGP]

And the idiotic responses to this event continue.

Rick Santorum on Gun Control Debate: Why Aren’t We Going After Violent Video Games and Films?

And Wayne LaPierre points at video games again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pk2LqqqtDs&feature=youtu.be&t=52s

Go **** yourself, NRA. The 2nd Amendment deserves better protectors.

 

[JAL]

I don't know an engineer who carries all the formulas for their particular discipline in their head any more. But there isn't all that much you need for ballistics cosigns. The bullet drop from horizontal is often on cartridge boxes.

SOHCAHTOA is first semester trig in high school. Nothing mysterious about it.

My iphone has a built-in compass app. Included therein is a level. I can get a very good read on angle with it.

Could be my age . . . SOHCAHTOA took me a couple minutes to decipher . . . yup, it's HS Trig early in 1st semester. We weren't taught this mnemonic. Not difficult to get a horizontal angle or a vertical angle using a cell phone using the edge for sighting using the level or compass apps. Ancient astronomers used the same sighting principles in their methods millennia before the invention of the telescope. Also easy to estimate distances. Building height for that class of structure is easily estimated as about 10 feet per floor. The shooting position on the 32nd floor is about 315 feet above the bottom of the ground floor ((31*10) + 5). Add however elevated that is above ground level, if it is elevated. For a non-isosceles right triangle, any one side length plus one angle other than the right angle solves the entire triangle. I daresay the answer will be within 5 feet of a more precisely measured height with 1 inch precision. How much precision is needed? For a large area target, not much. Two significant digits is more than sufficient. 315 feet with 2.5 significant digits is close enough unless the venue is significantly different in elevation than the base of the hotel (add or subtract an estimate of that).

It's clear from his choice of elevation for the horizontal distance to the concert venue and the direction in which people would attempt to flee that he understood "field of fire" concepts, particularly regarding "beaten zone" and perhaps "enfilade fire", if not from formal study, then by logical deduction in basic ballistic analysis.

Beaten Zone:
Although Beaten Zone usually refers to indirect fire, especially with artillery, it also applies to longer distance areal machine gun fire in which a non-trivial projectile drop must be considered. Its use for MG fire arose to prominence during WWI. It defines the zone which will be covered by traverse limits at a specific elevation setting (or range of settings) in which a standing soldier will be hit somewhere from the head to the foot (first catch to last graze). Too much or too little elevation above the Beaten Zone reduces the hit probability within the desired Beaten Zone. "Kill Box" is newer jargon often used to characterize a Beaten Zone.

Enfilade Fire:
This is also known as flanking fire firing down ranks of soldiers. Navies call it raking fire, and from aircraft it's the preferred direction for strafing fire. Traverse becomes much more important than elevation as you're guaranteed to hit soldiers somewhere within the ranks with proper traverse. Artillery in particular was mostly direct fire, albeit longer range, up through the 19th Century. Traverse was much easier to aim than determining elevation for range with variation in powder charge and projectile mass. Properly used enfilade fire was deadly, but on a modern conventional battlefield is highly unlikely to present an opportunity.

John

 

[Sylvain]

If I see additional information that supports it, maybe, but I haven't see it.

Maybe he had tracer/incendiary rounds in the room.

But I'm not sure what was the plan if he managed to ignite the fuel anyway.
The tanks seems too far away from the crowd to hurt anybody.
There's a large open space all around.

Maybe the smoke would stop air traffic, keep news and police helicopters away from the scene ...
Possibly allowing him to escape with one of the planes he allegedly owned?

 

[T.Lex]

And the idiotic responses to this event continue.

Rick Santorum on Gun Control Debate: Why Aren’t We Going After Violent Video Games and Films?

Tipper? Tipper Gore, is that you? Let's not leave out gangsta rap.

Santorum deserves every bit of the ridicule associated with the (re-)definition of his name.

(BTW, that whole "define santorum" thing could be a very early example of proto-SJW efforts.)