He had bump stocks, the official investigation never determined whether or not he used them or if any of the rifles were illegally modified to be actual machine guns.
The official investigation also never really turned up a motive, and if he was suicidal and wanted to take the maximum number of people with him, he had his own plane, so…
There's a lot of unanswered questions, even after the investigation was completed. A FOIA request showed that the ATF was prohibited from inspecting any of the guns to check for full auto modifications. It was a deliberate choice by investigators to not determine anything pertaining to the function of any given weapon.
Why would the ATF inspect the guns? That she FBI's job, isn't it?
The ATF handles the firearms portion of high visibility investigations. It was the ATF that investigated the firearms aspect of the massacre and were the source of that portion of the final report. No agency actually inspected the internal components of the guns at any point and the final report did not determine whether or not bump stocks were actually used, just that it was a possibility. This was revealed via a FOIA request after the investigation completed. The powers that be made the specific choice to not figure out if they were or were not machine guns or conduct any sort of testing on the weapons regarding their function or rate of fire and commented on this fact on internal documents during the investigation.
Interesting, I've never heard of this function of the ATF.
I guess it didn't matter since the suspect was dead and there wasn't going to be a prosecution for an unlawful possession of machine gun charge?
Maybe? They didn't give their justification but more likely than not it is because both the FBI and ATF considered their primary job not to be investigating and getting answers as much as creating justification for summarily ignoring laws by executive fiat.
That seems really insane, how did they not determine that? What the fuck did they even investigate then?
The simplest and most likely answer is that they didn't want to know. If they can say "he had bumpstocks" they had reason to ignore the fact that bumpstocks are 100% legal and ban them anyway without legislation. If they had found out that he genuinely modified them to be real machine guns, which are already banned by legislation, then they wouldn't have their justification for going outside the law. There might be another answer but this is the one that feels the least like a conspiracy theory. It took a FOIA request for them to even admit that they were prohibited from inspecting any of the weapons used.
It's pretty obvious he did but the extremely high rate of fire. You'd have to be nuts to think he brought them but decided his finger had had enough of a work out to be able to for rapidly for an extended period of time. It's not like he needed precision since he was firing into a giant crowd
Not necessarily. The rate of fire is far more consistent than you normally get with a bump stock. Converting any given gun to full auto illegally isn't that hard, it can even be done with a shoelace. During the course of the investigation the ATF was prohibited from testing or inspecting any of the weapons and they admitted that they do not know if they were illegal machine guns or not. All it would have taken is a pair of tin snips and a sheet of mild steel from home depot; the asshole more than proved that he had time and ability to do so.
He had bump stocks, the official investigation never determined whether or not he used them or if any of the rifles were illegally modified to be actual machine guns.
The official investigation also never really turned up a motive, and if he was suicidal and wanted to take the maximum number of people with him, he had his own plane, so…
There's a lot of unanswered questions, even after the investigation was completed. A FOIA request showed that the ATF was prohibited from inspecting any of the guns to check for full auto modifications. It was a deliberate choice by investigators to not determine anything pertaining to the function of any given weapon.
Why would the ATF inspect the guns? That she FBI's job, isn't it?
The ATF handles the firearms portion of high visibility investigations. It was the ATF that investigated the firearms aspect of the massacre and were the source of that portion of the final report. No agency actually inspected the internal components of the guns at any point and the final report did not determine whether or not bump stocks were actually used, just that it was a possibility. This was revealed via a FOIA request after the investigation completed. The powers that be made the specific choice to not figure out if they were or were not machine guns or conduct any sort of testing on the weapons regarding their function or rate of fire and commented on this fact on internal documents during the investigation.
Interesting, I've never heard of this function of the ATF.
I guess it didn't matter since the suspect was dead and there wasn't going to be a prosecution for an unlawful possession of machine gun charge?
Maybe? They didn't give their justification but more likely than not it is because both the FBI and ATF considered their primary job not to be investigating and getting answers as much as creating justification for summarily ignoring laws by executive fiat.
That seems really insane, how did they not determine that? What the fuck did they even investigate then?
The simplest and most likely answer is that they didn't want to know. If they can say "he had bumpstocks" they had reason to ignore the fact that bumpstocks are 100% legal and ban them anyway without legislation. If they had found out that he genuinely modified them to be real machine guns, which are already banned by legislation, then they wouldn't have their justification for going outside the law. There might be another answer but this is the one that feels the least like a conspiracy theory. It took a FOIA request for them to even admit that they were prohibited from inspecting any of the weapons used.
It's pretty obvious he did but the extremely high rate of fire. You'd have to be nuts to think he brought them but decided his finger had had enough of a work out to be able to for rapidly for an extended period of time. It's not like he needed precision since he was firing into a giant crowd
Not necessarily. The rate of fire is far more consistent than you normally get with a bump stock. Converting any given gun to full auto illegally isn't that hard, it can even be done with a shoelace. During the course of the investigation the ATF was prohibited from testing or inspecting any of the weapons and they admitted that they do not know if they were illegal machine guns or not. All it would have taken is a pair of tin snips and a sheet of mild steel from home depot; the asshole more than proved that he had time and ability to do so.