VEGAS! (The Conspiracy!)

The imaginative Conspiracy Theory about the Vegas shootings.

This is the first theory I've found:

(Natural News) It’s all hogwash. The “official” narrative of how things went down in the Las Vegas massacre is so full of holes that it begs the question of just how deep the truth about this attack really goes.

Details and quotes:

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: Official story of Las Vegas shooting unravels; physical impossibility of lone gunman senior citizen makes narrative ludicrous – NaturalNews.com:

People who aren’t familiar with firearms have no idea how difficult it is to conduct sustained fire with an automatic weapon. It requires tremendous strength, endurance and training — something that Stephen Paddock had none of. Military special forces operatives train for years to be able to manage such weapons and handle all the problems they pose (barrel overheating, ammo jams, double feeds, recoil management, etc.). The idea that some senior citizen accountant can just pick up a machine gun and lay down thousands of rounds of effective fire in a sustained, 10-minute assault even though he had no experience with such weapons is completely ludicrous.

Apparently the author of this article takes exception to the reportage.  I have no reason to suspect that there was a conspiracy among two or more murderers.   Still, the article was written within hours (not days) after the shooting, and before more detailed reports were available.   I have no idea how the author knew whether the shooter had formal weapons training.

I have a few rejoinders to offer (you may have your own):

• It's not difficult to conduct sustained fire with a fully automatic weapon.  It's just difficult to HIT anything when you go "full-auto", except when your target is massed shoulder-to-shoulder, filling a city block.
• Barrel overheating: while it is/can be an issue, one way to avoid that is to have SEVERAL rifles (he had 23?) so one rifle can cool off while he used the next one.  (Note that news reports mention an AR15 with a reddish-tinged barrel, indicating that it had overheated; perhaps had even begun to cook off.)
• Ammo jams, double feeds: see above.   That is probably why he had so many rifles.
• "Effective fire": when you are shooting at thousands of people, packed into a city block, at distances of a few hundred yards, you're not aiming.  You're "Flock Shooting".
• "Special Training": the guy had ... what, 23 rifles with him?  Lived alone on a ranch?  He didn't need Special Training, just practice.  He had solitude to practice and time to plan; all news reports indicate that he had the opportunity to acquire "experience" with every weapon, in both calibers.
• "Recoil Management":  he was shooting at a compacted mass of people, and had the advantage of height.   He didn't even have to aim.  He could have shot from the hip (and probably did, toward the end).  Besides, the .223/5.56  cartridge is low recoil.   Physical endurance was probably not an issue.  No special expertise was required.
• "Senior Citizen Accountant":   What, do men automatically become physically infirm when they hit 65 years of age?   Senile, perhaps.   "Physical impossibility"? 
• Conspiracy Theory:  There's no reason to assume that there was more than one shooter; remember the JFK Assassination, and the Texas Tower Sniper.   Both men deliberately sought the high-ground, although those murders were shooting at individuals.   
• This one obviously planned his attack, deliberately chose a venue with many "targets" in a large area which could be engaged without a special set of skills by using fully automatic rifles to murder the most people in the shortest time.   He used the lessons provided by his hideous predecessors.

OTHER ERRORS IN REPORTING: The Author's Full Report

What kind of weapon is capable of inflicting so many casualties, from such a distance, in a matter of 10 to 15 minutes? While we don’t know where the gunman got his weapons and precise information on them has not been disclosed, based on reports of the rate of fire, they were likely either semiautomatic or fully automatic assault weapons. Semiautomatic assault weapons * (whose trigger must be pulled to fire each round) have a rate of fire of over 100 rounds a minute. These weapons were banned from 1994 to 2004 under what is commonly referred to as the “assault weapon ban,” and are now readily available for sale in all but six states. There are reports that the shooter might have fired an automatic weapon (one just presses the trigger and the weapon keeps firing until it is released), which can fire up to a thousand rounds a minute. These weapons are tightly regulated. Regardless of the rate of fire, many of these weapons can pierce a soldier’s helmet from a distance of 500 yards.

* I note in passing the reporter uses the term "semiautomatic assault weapons", which is considered a pejorative in the tiny community which includes people who know what they're talking about when discussing firearms (and which generally excludes journalists).   An "assault weapon" is defined as a rifle which is capable of "selective fire"; which is to say that the operator can elect to fire the weapon in either semi-automatic (pull the trigger; one round files .. pull it again, the next round fires) or full-automatic; (pull the trigger, the rifle continues to fire until the operator either releases the trigger or the ammunition supply is expended).

Congratulations to the author for describing the difference.

However, the precedent (What kind of weapon is capable of inflicting so many casualties, from such a distance, in a matter of 10 to 15 minutes? ) is intentionally misleading, probably from the professional urge to lend drama to what might otherwise be a mundane technical digression.

Almost any "major power" rifle can penetrate a soldier's helmet, but probably not at a distance of 500 yards.  

In the first place, it's almost impossible for most military rifles (which use imprecise iron sights) to hit a soldier's helmet at 500 yards; the soldier himself is a much larger target, and is usually safe from a killing wound at such a distance no matter where he is hit ... if he is hit.  Which is unlikely.

In the second place ... I've seen a soldier's helmet which was penetrated 3 times by a burst from an AK47 at a distance of 30 yards.   He was fortunate that he was not wearing the helmet at the time (long story, I've told it before here).

ALL military rifles, under the Hague Convention of 1899 (obsolete, and not the Geneva Convention) fire fully jacketed bullets.  These bullets provide great penetration, but are designed to wound rather than to kill.

"What kind of weapon"?  Almost any rifle with the magazine capacity (or the ability to reload magazines quickly) can engage a large number of targets in a very short period of time.  

It is disingenuous of the writer to use such a lead-in.

But he's a Reporter; he is expected to be ignorant of the technical crap.