Posted on 01/12/2018 10:40:55 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
Marilou Danley, the girlfriend of the Las Vegas shooter, informed authorities she occasionally helped Stephen Paddock load ammunition into magazines and, as a result, her fingerprints were probably on some bullets, according to unsealed court documents.
No evidence suggested “criminal involvement” by Danley at the time the Oct. 3 document was published, but investigators also did not rule out the possibility. Danley was out of the country in the Philippines to visit her family when the Oct. 1 attack occurred.
The documents appear to show Paddock exchanged emails about purchasing rifles and bump stocks several months before the attack. A bump stock device allows semi-automatic weapons to fire in a similar fashion to automatic ones and was used during Paddock's attack.
The documents said Paddock also received an email suggesting he try an AR-style rifle before purchasing one. Paddock responded with interest in trying several scopes and various types of ammunition.
Authorities have no update on Paddock’s motive.
Paddock opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel upon concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival.
He was found dead in his hotel room by law enforcement after the shooting.
When I first read the headline I assumed that Paddock was in to doing his own reloading and she used to help him, but all she did was help load magazines. This is what qualifies as news in biggest crime in Nevada history. When you think about how the media can come up with incredibly trivial bits of information about people from other countries that don't even have Halls of Records, seemingly within minutes of a crime, the lack of information about this incident screams of a coverup, probably intended to protect big Nevada businesses from legal liability.
After Cliven Bundy was released from jail in Las Vegas this week as the federal case against him fell apart over deliberate hiding of evidence pointing to his innocence, he paid a visit to Sheriff Joe Lombardo’s office to voice his grievances.
Lombardo refused to meet with an assistant telling Bundy the Sheriff was busy. Well...........
It’s truly amazing the news blackout on this one and the possible motives behind the blackout. Sorta reminds me of the Muslim that shot up the community center in San Bernadino and, after a few days, nada.
I want to see ALL the evidence, that connects weapons in the hotel room, with ballistic forensics from the victims in the kill zone. Is it a match? Are there any gaps?
Why did she say(admit) it? Sounds stupid.
Wow, a big fat nothing burger.
I have lived with a ‘gun expert’ for 36 years now.....and my fingerprints are on nothing but my gun and the bullets in it. He does all his own reloading, takes care of his guns, and mine. If we go shooting he cleans all the guns and loads and unloads them by hisself.
Not sure I believe this story.
Wonder where the person was located that took that picture.
Lombardo is a coward,
They found 100 round magazines, and not all were loaded.
The sheriff reported there were around 4000 rounds total with only about over 1000 rounds fired. Some have reported from the photos of the magazines that the remaining stacked mags were not loaded.
For hand held auto weapons fire, at night, with plunging fire, magazine fed, no tracers, no anchored T&E, one would be lucky to have a 5% hit ratio and of those hits, most would not have been the targets being aimed.
After the first several hundred magazines were fired, actual hits on particular targets would have been happenstance due to moving targets.
There were over 600 casualties, about 50% of the rounds shot, and the rounds shot tended to fragment upon impact with most kinetic energy absorbed when they impacted and fragmented.
Even if one allowed 200 casualties due to collateral secondary impacts, 400 of 1200 is still a 33% hit ratio, about 6x that expected of the most skilled shooters in this scenario.
A 1 to 10 fatality to casualty ratio is about right for this type of scenario, but total shots fired by audio estimates were less than 1400 rounds shot (and many of those shots recorded may have been double accounted as echos or ricochets vice reports per shot fired). For 600 casualties at that distance, I would expect the number of rounds fired to more closely approximate 12,000 rounds.
Another major point to consider. Firing more than 100 rounds continuously through any barrel on an automatic weapon, beings to overheat the barrel. Many auto weapons recommend changing barrels after 100-200 rounds of auto fire, even in 3 shot burst mode. after 300-500 shots fired without allowing the barrel to cool, and the barell tends to sag, leading to either inaccurate fire, cookoffs, and possible blockage.
Continuous firing up to 700 rounds on heavier weapons have been witnessed in the field, but the weapons generally are not designed for a 1000 rounds being fired. They’ll warp the barrel, cookoff the rounds in the breach, and likely jam the weapon melting the casings and chambers together with a sagged barrel.
If we take a look at the Texas church shooting about a month after the Mandalay Bay shooting, the 5% hit ratio to shots fired was reported, and is believable. Note ,this was grazing fire, at point blank range, in daylight, within 50ft of targets, as opposed to the Las Vegas shhoting of night fire, plunging fire, 300+m, not tracers, magazine fed, hand held or shoulder fired with perhaps an unanchored bipod, but requiring weapon shift to remove magazines and reload.
After writing through this, it now dawns on me waht actually occurred.
The number of weapons in the hotel room seem to be planned for the above metrics. Amount of ammo doesn’t match. The press immediately started reporting a single gunman, even when the Sheriff insisted they were still determining this and chewed out the press for jumping to conclusions.
The actual events and the planning wasn’t performed by the same person. Numbers don’t add up, BUT the immediate reporting is consistent with the initial planned appearance.
Conspiracy Theories are frequently incredibly logical, but rarely feasible, because their implementation is too complicated. This is why black ops tend to be very small unit tactics, to allow for complex planning, but limited well known operatives.
In the last 20 years, the less competent have been promoted while those professionally trained have been isolated from many of these institutions who perform special operations or clandestined black ops.
The Las Vegas shooting appears to have been planned by a covert group, compartmentalized, then operated by less capable individual operators who haven’t engaged in such high fire environments routinely.
It being supervised by those who didn’t intuitively grasp that the numbers of rounds fired and rates of fire didn’t match the observed action, nor the actual casualty rates.
The press and media reporting was part of the op plan. Prepared separately and controlled separately without feedback to the actual events by personnel intuitive with the operations being observed.
The missing part is the source of the other rounds to meet the casualty rates.
There are a number of other eyewitness indicators and some youtube video which might be indicative, but lacking full veracity. Reports of being followed and targeted from within about 50ft of the eyewitness traversing outside the concert grounds. Some videos of other armed personnel in tactical black clothing on rooftops and bldgs across the street, reports of drones and feeling the heat of things swooping overhead,....but these also lack public verification by more than several reports.
I have fired a lot of .223 ammo over the years. Most of it ball ammo.
I can not recall ever finding a fragmented bullet.
Unless this guy was firing hollow points, I don’t see your scenario being reality.
If the concert area was on a concrete surface and the shooter was using ball ammo I would think that ricochets would be the norm.
Same reason the shots fired in the Casino hotel room towards the hallway, through the door, didn’t penetrate several walls and or floors of the hotel. Upon impact the rounds tend to fragment and lose penetrating power.
Here is a 0.233 ball penetrating 8 walls and not fragmenting.
While I am sure that most would opt to select .223/5.56 NATO over .22LR for home defense, but I have heard the argument that .22 would be “better” for home defense since its reduced energy would mean that it would penetrate through fewer walls. On the flip side, others argue that the 5.56 would be better as the round would tumble dissipating its energy and thus penetrate less.
Fortunately, both have now been put to the test in relatively similar conditions. A few tests come to mind on 5.56 through drywall (my favorite being the slow-motion from RichardBeck). I like the slow motion as it shows that the round does indeed start to loose stability. Still, the round is able to penetrate through nearly 8 walls, coming to rest on the inside of the last piece of drywall. (Interestingly, the 9mm Critical Defense load actually penetrates one drywall section less).
Around here, on Friday night, if you plan on shooting at the range on Saturday you are stuffing mags. That is the rule and has been for two decades. The fastest mags filler every was one of my female offspring, when she was 12 she could stuff a 30 round mag faster than I could get ready to go.
I know several families that have the same rule.
Have you seen an actual official report of how many of the injured were gunshot victims? So far I have not found such a summary, only rough estimates. I have friends that work at the medical center(UMC) that received many of the serious trauma cases. They tell me that even there many were broken bones and crush injuries from the paniced crowd. Hundreds were taken to other facilities that were not level one trauma center as UMC is.
Your points about shooting into an open area are questions I have also. While true, if there were no people there to react to hits it would be nigh on impossible to determine your impact points without tracers. That said I have spoken at great length with three people that were there and they all independently say that the firing was random as hell and probably contributed to the low numbers of actual gunshot victims. Two of them are combat veterans so I take their accounts about the incident seriously.
When I looked into it originally, I was under the same impression. Googling multiple tests and sources, at that time, the evidence from testing indicated the round would not be able to make it through 3 sheets of gyp board and after one board it would become embedded in a foam to simulate the density of flesh.
If the round fractured, it generally wouldn’t make it past the 1st board.
This meant the shots in the hallway could have been consistent with the reports.
Obviously it depends on the type of ammo used. Some of the ammo had been discernibly specified. The rounds found used on the fuel tanks were somewhat unique incendiary armored projectile rounds and not found elsewhere.
IMHO, if they fractured, the numbers of round fired (2 clips of 100 ea) in the hallway is plausible. If ball and solid thrugh multiple walls, then the first concern would have been to round up all the bodies in adjacent rooms and floors, and the bullets could be more easily located.
On the other hand if a more solid round, then the ricochet angle of repose would have been much higher (fewer injuries from ricochets because as plunging fire they would tend to bounce too high, then tumbled till loss of velocity.
Just from experience, the numbers are off by an order of magnitude. His highest casualty ratio should have been within the first minute, before the crowds began to disperse in all directions. Due to the somewhat higher density of targets, he probably had over a 20%-50% hit ration with the first 100 rounds. After people began moving, the numbers would have dropped to 5% even if he had fairly good tracking of their impacts. After the first 3 clips, each successive clip loaded would require a new aiming routine, some clips may not have even hit the concert grounds due to lack of spotting or tracers.
After the first 5 clips, his barrel would have begun to sag for 300m accuracy.
So, if he fired 14 clips of 100 (some have been reported as 30 rd clips), I’d suspect he had 25 + 20 + 20+10 +5+5+0+5+5 +5+5+5+5+5 = about say 120 casualty hits. Allow another 30% ricochet, say total of 156 casualties. Considering the 200 rounds for the hallway, IMHO the evidence only supports up to about 150 casualties from the tower, if any.
BTW, too many eyewitness reports of feeling heat overhead and of rounds striking the victims as grazing fire vice plunging fire. IMHO, it will take a lot of proving to show only one shooter was responsible for the casualties.
There were also cases where victims running towards a fence, then climbing the fence felt they were being tracked and were shot. If shot from the Mandalay Bay, that would have been about a 400m shot, which at night, without tracer, would even have been a tough shot to target, in single fire mode at a moving target, and in auto mode would have likely eaten up a full 100 round mag to acquiesce.
Using full auto, the numbers decrease dramatically for actual casualty rates if aiming at the targets. The more rounds fired without allowing the barrel to cool, and the rates drop even further. 50-150 is a likely casualty rate from the hotel over a 10 min span and 14 clips fired in auto at nighttime, without tracers and plunging fire.
Perhaps you missed the fact that he used multiple rifles all equipped with bump stocks.
I suspect that he practiced with the bump stock and learned to control his fire as best he could and figured out how many magazines he could go through before he lost accuracy.
Reports are he only used 2 of 23 weapons on deck, plus the suicide revolver,....which he shot twice. That would be at least 700 shots per rifle, probably 900-1000 until it jammed, and then the second rifle until he had to reload and perhaps it jammed. Unless, of course somebody else was assisting him lock the interior doors and load up the magazines, and tape him to the chair.
Let me know your thoughts
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