Massacre in Las Vegas

Quote: AZDuffman

Because they were used in an attack. EB forgot, a Ryder truck was used in the first WTC attack, need to ban those too, just in case.

EB, would you agree?

Rental cube van was used to mow down people in Edmonton, Canada a couple of days ago. Home grown terrorist with an ISIS flag.

Millionaire businessman, owns half a dozen
homes in the US, has a private plane, is
a big gambler. And he shoots up Vegas.
Those dots, they seem pretty easy to
connect here.

If I wanted to break the record I would drive a big rig down the strip on New Years Eve. Wall to wall people no place to get out of the way.

Quote: terapined

Nope
Just guns
We need to be more like Japan, UK and Australia

Well, as you have told me, "you should move there"

Quote:

This record aint gonna last long.
Last one just lasted 1 1/2 years, Pulse nightclub
Some nut out there is looking at the numbers, looking at what they can get their hands on, and thinking at least 75 for a new record :-(

McVeigh killed 168 and wounded 680, without a gun. Imagine if this Vegas guy had driven a van full of a similar device and added a thousand pounds of ball bearings? He could easily have torched it off with a cell phone and lived to do it again. Without owning a gun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh

The Vegas guy was already using illegal guns.

The feds and HS have been waiting for exactly this to happen and have spoken of it often. The US has shipped so many many tons of arms to hostile country's. How can some blowback not happen? I have expected RPG's to hit some airliner for quite a while. Easy to do. On the other hand, I'm becoming a much easier target for thugs, but with any luck, should a mugging happen [again], me and my little friend are going to come out on top.

Quote: FrGamble

I don't know what to say or write, I'm kind of numb to be honest. This doesn't seem like behavior someone would do if depressed or overwhelmed by life, it is so evil and senseless.

Gonna try something here. I know a few here are or have admitted to struggling, so maybe it'll help. You in particular might be able to "hear" this best, if you get what I mean, but I feel it bears saying even if I come out of this poorly...

Mental health, specifically the lack thereof, is senseless. I wouldn't go so far to say that it is evil; I rather think of it as "directionless", or "lacking in goal", but what it takes from a man allows for some pretty dark things. I've often talked about having struggled at times. I write semi frequently about my Really Dark Time, back around the end of college during "the drug years". And unfortunately, I'm in it again. Not just a funk, but to a critical level. I daresay worse than I've ever been, the only silver lining being my actions this time around haven't been near as destructive.

I'm not sure what others feel. I don't know what demon rides their back, be it depression, bipolar, schizo, whatever, and I don't know their hearts and minds to understand what their triggers are and how it makes them feel. But I can speak for myself, and I can tell you it's a very cold place. I'm in a position where my entire life is lived by memory. To try to explain, I have no emotion, or at least none other than anger. Perhaps it might make you feel happy to see an old friend, perhaps excited to learn of a new opportunity, saddened by a bit of news that inspires you to change... I have none of that. When seeing an old friend, I can't "catch up" and have a reaction, I have to hear what they're saying and then... best way I can explain it is try to remember how someone reacts when hearing a bit of news. If someone says they closed on a house, I can't / don't "get excited", I have to remember that excitement is the proper emotion I should be showing, and then feign it, all in an effort to try to conform, fit in, and "be a nice person". It's fucking exhausting, and I hate it. I hate that I have to make this effort for it, and I hate how it makes me look to the people I love. But... I can't "turn on" brain pumps. I can't "make" the feel-good flow. I can only hang on until it does, and hope that it will.

After long enough, you seek relief, oftentimes by any means necessary. First time around for me it was drugs. I'm sure there were other elements involved, perhaps self hatred, a desire to self destruct, but there definitely is a need for some sort of pleasure, some sort of relief, and when caught out as alone as this stuff makes one, there really is no price too high. Drugs, drink, whores, whatever will make you "feel", whatever brings a mere snippet of pleasure to break up the never ending pain, or, sometimes worse, the never ending nothing.

There's really only two things I have to keep me, that have kept me all these years from the opt-out clause - determination and hope. The idea that the clouds will lift, and the stiff neck to see that I make it there. But that is no life. That is no bump in the road. It's an every day, non stop fight that wears you from the soul outward, that dries you up, that burns out the brain. Something as simple as getting out of bed to face the day becomes a feat on par with rehabbing a serious injury; it takes close to your entire will to do. And that's just for getting up, forget about your responsibilities, your chores, your job, your family, your friends, the banks, the insurance, the HVAC man,... And if, IF, you can manage to get it all done for a whole week, and everything in life remains intact and forward moving, you are left with... nothing. No pride, no sense of accomplishment, no desire to do more. Only the knowledge that you have to do it again, to take yourself to the limit, only to survive with no further reward, and this life appears to be it. For the rest of ever. A difficult, grey slog through a cold mist until your pump coughs and moves no more.

When you feel what that is, when you are actually in it looking out, it's no longer a mystery of how this can happen. It really is surprising that it doesn't happen more often.

I don't know what the answer is because this stuff is incredibly personal. I don't mean it's private, but people's beliefs and values are as varied as their fingerprints. For me, I've for as long as I can remember having rational thought have been mystified and repulsed by our capitalistic society. I have never understood the idea that we spend our entire childhood learning so that we could spend our entire lives working only to retire to comfort well after our years when we could adventure, live, and grow. I've never understood being a "master". Sure, if you're one of those obsessive types, good for you. But I don't want to live with my life's goal being a fucking pension. I want to paint. I want to breed flowers. I want to raise fish and learn how to tune a 2barrel carb. I want to play the piano. I want to write a book. I want to f#$% off and spend 6 solid months under the tutelage of a expert blacksmith, and then I wanna f#$% off for 3 more and learn to fly, and then I want to spend an entire year in the woods with only a knife and a gun. I want to write poems no one will read, and build things no one will use, and experience the scant bit of time I've been granted in existence. Instead, I've got to be a f#$%ing monkey performing menial tasks for low pay while people around me skim all my value off the top, spend every day fighting for what's owed me, try to whisk it all away so I can spend a few pure hours with my boy, and then run and scramble to do it all over the f#$%ing 'gain, repeat until dead. To some, it's a game they can get ahead in. For others, the price of admission. For me, especially during these times, it's a death knell. It's not imprisonment, it's not slavery... but it's not out of that neighborhood.

Do you think terapined shares this exact philosophy/ideology? Do You? I'd bet no one does, and I bet several here have life expectations and ideas that are in exact conflict with mine. So how do you "fix" me without hurting them? Hell, even medically our ills could be completely different. Someone's dopamine out of whack from drugs, someone elses brain damaged from trauma, another a winner of the genetic lottery...

My own personal feeling are that humans have forgotten they are animals, and despite whatever culture we have or civilizations we create, we are denying and/or ignoring our basic life impulses. We are TOO connected. We have lost our sense of self, lost our sense of security. Vegas is 2,500mi from me, it was also right in my bed under the covers with me this morning. I don't know a single person who got shot, but they were all snuggled right up with me. WTF is Antifa, even? I dunno, I likely couldn't define "fascist" if put on the spot. Alex Jones, YouTube commenters, California Democrats, Neo-Nazis, judgemental Canadians ( ;) ), THEY'RE ALL IN MY F#$%ING LIVING ROOM EVERY DAY. I'm not a "modern man". I "enjoy" diversity, I do NOT want to be diverse. I'm a bit of a separatist, even, finding that I feel the best, most secure, and most free to be myself when I am surrounded by people of like mind. That, IMO, is animalistic, tribalistic, natural, but today we call it "bigoted", a "negative thing", a "failure of humanity".

/sigh. Sorry for the rant. Sorry further for providing no answers or insight. And sorry a third for having no clean closing statement for this car wreck of a post. I guess I said all that to say AZD's society collapse is one of the soul. We're increasingly putting a priority on making a living over making a life. Some of us... we don't take it as well as others.

Quote: Wizard

It would not surprise me if mental illness were the root cause, much like the similar shooting at the University of Texas.

His final shot may have ruined chances for an examination of his brain.

>>>>>May the odds be ever in your favor.
They never have been; they never will be.

Quote: Evenbob

Those dots, they seem pretty easy to connect here.

Not for me they don't and I don't think a machine classifier could do it either.

Quote: Face

I'm not sure what others feel. I don't know what demon rides their back,

Koyaanisqatsi.. Don't you have a Shaman?

Quote: Face

Do you think terapined shares this exact philosophy/ideology?.

Uggh, you had to mention me
My 1st reaction, TLDNR or Too Long, did not read
I then saw my name. So I read
wow, you need to talk to somebody
I suffer from depression.
Will talking to a friend solve depression, no.
But it helps and its the 1st step to get yourself out of depression.
I believe in talk therapy

Maybe you guys can tell me how many people die annually from rental truck related violence? Feel free to exclude suicides.