Details about the weapons that Stephen Paddock used to murder 59 people (so far) and injure hundreds is slowly being leaked out.
It looks like he bought the guns legally, but then modified them illegally so that they could be used as automatic weapons.
From Fox News:
Stephen Paddock’s ability to kill scores of concertgoers Sunday night may have come from using modified semi-automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines, something that enabled him to shoot hundreds of rounds in just a few minutes.
When the feds stormed the hotel room that the 64-year-old Nevada resident used to launch his massacre, they found more than a dozen weapons — along with two devices that are attached to the stocks of semi-automatic guns to allow fully automatic gunfire, two officials familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press.
They go on to describe pretty well the different options people have to do this:
…semi-automatic rifles can be modified to fire fully automatic. Sometimes, add-on devices are attached to the stock that allows a method called bump firing – in which the shooter uses the recoil of the gun to push the trigger against the stationary finger allowing for a rapid succession of shots, similar to a fully automatic firearm. Devices called bump stocks can be attached to the rear of a semi-automatic to help facilitate this method.
Other devices like a trigger crank can also modify these weapons so they fire in an automatic fashion at a low cost.
Weapons found in Paddock’s cache included an AR-15-style and AK-47-style rifles, according to The Wall Street Journal. The latter can switch between automatic and semi-automatic firing but most manufacturers sell a semi-automatic version only.
But this undoes the leftist narrative that all we need is more gun laws. I don’t know what could make a person believe that someone who is willing to murder 59 people in cold blood would also follow any new gun laws. If anything, we’re lucky this scumbag didn’t take the time to increase his lethality.
We earlier had a post about all the important details uncovered about Paddock so far – check that out here.