Come on, there is no need for private civilian to have that sort of device.
Firearms are damagingly loud and an an extra 20-30dB of suppression for a casual sports shooter or hunter can be the difference between being effectively deaf by 50 or keeping their hearing, or from one accident causing major hearing damage. In exchange for that hearing protection, which is rarely enough to conceal or significantly obfuscate an automatic rifle, you sacrifice some ballistic performance, which would have been more useful in a scenario like this.
Since this guy knew he wasn't leaving, and wasn't going to care about his ears, the idea that having access to a suppressor or not is absurd.
More absurd is the idea that you could keep what is essentially a can with some baffels/washers in it out of the hands of someone willing to die in an attack. If you can tie your shoes, you can build a fair suppressor.
Anyway, suppressors are very useful for legitimate civilian shooters and have been vilified based on asinine Hollywood inspired hysteria and misinformation.
Surely not fully automatic ones?
If you are wealthy and can afford a Class 3 weapon, you can legally own a fully automatic weapon. Of course, this is probably the most difficult way to go about getting one if you are intent to use it for a crime.
You see all those people putting analog sticks on the side of their Warthog HOTAS? That takes about an order of magnitude more time, money, and skill than converting many semi-auto weapons to full auto. Give me a metal file and I can turn a semi-auto open-bolt rifle into full auto. They aren't exactly complex machines.
Of course, it's often even easier to buy or steal a weapon. If the police or military have them, I can have them.
Looks like the shooter did. Full auto fire heard from the recordings on the news.
The shooter had way more than enough money to get whatever weapons he cared to.
There's always a chance it has nothing to do with gun control--He could have bought that fully-automated LMG off the Dark Web and had it shipped in a disguised container, that can happen regardless of how much gun control there is.
No doubt this will be used as an example to enact more restrictive firearm controls, which will do exactly nothing to prevent future attacks like this, but further disenfranchise certain groups, and punish law abiding citizens.
Let's not do the "white guy commits a massacre -> mental issues" thing. Regardless of the specific motivation, this is an act of terrorism.
US media says you need to be speaking Arabic or have brown skin to be a terrorist.
A lot of reports coming in that it was likely about his lifelong gambling hobby, it's possible he lost a few hundred grand from a casino and just went berserk.
Maybe he just didn't like the music.
Really, trying to speculate as to motivation is fairly pointless until a lot more is known.
What we've been witnessing over the past several decades (with the non-terrorism related mass shootings) is a symptom of the decline of western civilization.
I don't consider a couple of mass shooting a year significant enough to be significant enough of much of anything. As tragic as they are for those involved and those who know them, they are a tiny drop in a very large bucket of tragedy that is intrinsic to the human condition.
America is a beautiful country. I would love to visit one day.
But I won't seeing how easy it is to get shot there.
One glance at anything resembling an accurate statistic will reveal how irrational such a fear is.
No. You need a firearm to kill over 58 people and wound hundreds of others in a few minutes. You ain't doing that with a sharp object.
Fortunately, the shooter was also lacking in imagination and a sense of history or he would have realized he probably could have killed more people with a couple of bombs and a rental truck for a fraction of the cost.