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What Can We Do to Prevent Events Like the Las Vegas Mass Shooting?
There are things that we design to keep us safe from those who would do us harm: Pylons and cordons, bulletproof vests, security checkpoints, facial recognition software, personal firearms, criminal databases. But the tactics used by last night's mass killer in Las Vegas defied all of them.
At 10:08pm last night, well-armed 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on the attendees of the Route 91 Harvest country music festival. Here is the precise moment the shooting began, captured by a festivalgoer:
— Evan Schreiber (@SchreiberEvan) October 2, 2017 " contenteditable="false"> Enter a caption (optional)
It brought to mind last year's deadly Pulse nightclub shooting in Florida, where a 29-year-old slaughtered 49 people and wounded 58 others, barricading himself inside and taking hostages before being killed by police. Some survived that incident by hiding in locations that the gunman couldn't get to.
Paddock's attack was tactically very different. He was across the street from the open-air venue—and firing from the 32nd floor of a room at the Mandalay Bay hotel, hundreds of feet above street level, with a commanding view over a crowd of thousands. There was no place to hide and no way to tell where the gunfire was coming from. After the first round of gunfire, this is what the scene looked like on the ground:
After the second round of gunfire, panic reportedly broke out. People ran, and some were trampled in the ensuing stampede.
Consider the situation: Even if you yourself were armed to the teeth, there would be virtually no way to pinpoint where the fire was coming from and accurately return fire from that distance. There were off-duty police in attendance at the concert and they were unable to return fire. Even if the range of your weapon matched Paddock's, absent sniper training and a spotter you'd be peppering the side of a hotel filled with innocents above, below and to either side of the shooter. Paddock, with no such concerns, could simply continue to reload and spray.
This is approximately two-thirds of the distance that the gunman was firing from. The festival grounds are behind the camera.By all accounts local police arrived on the scene swiftly, armed with handguns, shotguns and even assault rifles, but there was no way to take Paddock out from the ground. It's also not clear if he was even still firing when police arrived. Paddock reportedly fired for several minutes on the crowd of 22,000, then took his own life. Police say they found some ten rifles in his hotel room.
The numbers may change, but at press time the casualties were estimated at 50 dead and over 400 wounded. As grim as this sounds, given the circumstances that seems miraculously low.
Perhaps what's most terrifying about this particular mass shooting is that none of the commonly-suggested solutions could have prevented this. For example:
Ban guns.
Number one that's simply never going to happen in this country, where the rhetoric around gun control has become too polarized for any kind of meaningful debate to take place. Number two, even if you somehow convinced all law-abiding citizens that all guns should be illegal, criminals will still find a way to get them. Guns are illegal in New York City, yet we had nearly a thousand shootings here last year.
Go the other way and arm all citizens.
As mentioned above, there's no way people on the ground would have been able to accurately return fire. And even if you were in a room on the same floor as the shooter, armed, and a crack shot at the gun range, are you trained to breach a room and take out a hostile?
Ban travel from foreign nations.
Paddock is apparently homegrown.
De-radicalize terrorists.
Paddock, 64, lived nearby in an upscale retirement community with its own golf course. At press time there was no indication that he had links to any terrorist groups.
Rely on data gathering/criminal databases for screening.
Paddock reportedly had previous run-ins with the police and was already "in the system," but there was no indication that an event like this was in the cards.
Design safer architecture.
This is, of course, impossible to do comprehensively. All cities offer large gatherings of people and a plethora of high vantage points.
So what's to be done?
The absolute root of the problem is that our society contains individuals who, out of ideology or mental illness, want to harm scores of others at once. In America it's with guns, in China it's with knives, in Europe it's with vehicles, in Israel it's with explosives. It seems to me impossible to design and build enough physical impediments to safeguard against those weapons.
These kinds of mass crimes against humanity originate within the minds of their perpetrators. And while we have thousands or millions of medical professionals worldwide dedicated to keeping the human body healthy, it seems to me that the brain—and what's going on inside of it—is perhaps the least-well-understood organ of all.
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Comments
Sound triangulating laser system which targets the source of the gunfire? It could serve to blind the assailant and also let the crowd know where the threat is.
another way the gun industry "stimulates the economy" I guess is with design/manufacture/selling/managing systems to prevent their use on innocent civilians...
The gun industry is there to arm military, law enforcement, and the responsible citizen. They aren't some pack of demons.
Actually, no lasers needed just spotlights that home in on the sound source.Software detects gunfire and blasts a million candles in the face of the assaulter. Of course, that does nothing to prevent bombings like we saw with Ariana Grande in London.
I want to address this:
I have always wondered about security issues in hi-rise buildings. Especially places like hotels, apartment buildings and offices. While the violent act MAY not have been preventable, what about rapid response? Why not have security stations dispersed throughout the building. At 32 stories up, why not an alarm system that alerts that a window has been shattered in a specific location. The system would automatically call the authorities with precise location information of where the incident is happening. That way, you could possibly cut down on response time... ?
To Austin's point: a weapon can do nothing without its wielder. This is less a gun control issue (don't get me wrong, that needs to be fixed, too) and more a mental health issue. These attacks happen because there is desire to hurt buried deep in the heart of the attacker. Extinguish that and you remove the danger.
It's absolutely a societal problem. In some cases like Sandy Hook, it's due to a failing of the mental health system (before the regional/county Psychiatric hospitals were disbanded, he would likely have been locked up). But the Las Vegas shooter likely would not have been locked up. However, people like him reflect the society where any number of deep-rooted issues can be at play, such as loneliness, rootlessness, lack of support/security/community, glorification of violence in entertainment, etc.
And yet again, The Onion serves up what sadly has to be the site's most reused headline ever: 'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.
Guns are useless without ammo. Controlling the ammo is the next best thing we can do.
"Number two, even if you somehow convinced all law-abiding citizens that all guns should be illegal, criminals will still find a way to get them. Guns are illegal in New York City, yet we had nearly a thousand shootings here last year. "
Canada has similar access to firearms and a much lower number of mass shootings, I believe. Maybe one approach is to recognise the damage which the american dream does in creating intense resentment when people fail to get what they believe they deserve (fair treatment, loyalty, justice, money, recognition...) My suggestion would be to de-emphasise the idea that good behaviour leads to fair treatment. I'd also offer people a way to publicly register their grievances. Perhaps there could be a giant monument in the desert fitted with a laser engraver so that people could express their feelings permanently without resorting to violence.
The problem here is beyond the scope of much of what designers can do, but here' my best attempt. I already anticipate the objections, but here it goes:
This will be how Tyranny comes to the USA. (We can't do nothin about no guns!)
And this is exactly the way of thinking that is totally incomprehensible to anyone outside of the U.S. Here in the U.S. so many people feel the need to have guns to "protect themselves from the government". And whenever the dubiousness of such claim is brought up, the response often includes the Jews' fate during Nazi Germany ("Had they had guns, Holocaust would not have happened.") Maybe so, but then the other alternative is what we have now: about 300 million guns that will *never leave their owners' hands without a civil war, and a society where every now and then someone who loses it takes out bunch of innocent civilians. You can't have it both ways.
Spain is certainly having a crisis of democracy right now. Catalonians were beaten and thrown into prison for trying to vote. Just a reminder that the government will always try to overstep their bounds. Live free or die.
It may be impossible to prevent this sort of attack. I'm afraid we may only be able to develop means of responding rather than prevention.
Snipers on rooftops for rock concerts sounds pretty rough, but that may be the direction we're going if this type of events become more commonplace. We need a "Pre-crime" unit, like in "Minority Report".. :-]
You didn't suggest the obvious: ban public gatherings of more than 4 people. (that's a joke).
Guns are legal but controlled in Canada. Many guns are simply illegal to own at all. Others are legal, but the owner needs a permit, the gun needs a permit, the owner needs another permit to transport the weapon and they need to contact law-enforcement when they are going to transport the weapon. As the bureaucracy increased, most people just gave up any weapon that they didn't really need.
I think that it could be done in the US, but it would require leadership that is clearly lacking on the issue. I'm not talking the leadership to pass a law, but the leadership to communicate the need and reasoning to the people.
These comments seem strange. As for me, I can relate to this article. Designers are naturally compassionate and want to find ways to solve human problems. Also, it's nice to see the news from a designer's perspective instead of the usual politically charged sources. We all have a responsibility to try to make the world a safer place when we sense danger. I pray those affected will find the comfort and healing required to restore their broken hearts, spirits, and bodies.
rain, always enjoy your level headed realistic view on things.
another thing to note, is the guns used were likely illegal as they sounded full auto.
i think design will eventually solve these problems.... i picture 20 years from now, at the sound of first shot, there would be police drones locating the source and taking care of the problem.
Why do we need to wait 20 years to use drones to take out domestic snipers? Creech AF Base is like 30 miles from Las Vegas, and the control center for many, many Predator and Reaper drones. They fly test and training missions in NV all the time. I would think one Reaper could have taken out the Las Vegas sniper/one man army.
Drones! good idea.
i've enjoyed almost everything i've read of yours. i've always thought you were fairly enlightened. but you write a piece that credulously asks: 'what can we do to prevent events like vegas ..... ? give me a break.
To be fair, I couldn't tell exactly what you were objecting to either. I'm glad you replied to Jake so we could all see what you were really trying to convey. I honestly agree with you: enough of the nonsense. Something has to change now before the next disaster distracts us.
Not sure I understand what part of the article is upsetting to you? BY nature designers seek out the answers and solutions to problems. Events like this are no different.
you have to be kidding me, right ? are you seriously thinking another round of fucking hand-wringing is going to make a difference ? let me see ... let me see ... what kind of creative, cutting edge design thinking can help prevent this ? ban guns, you morons. but you better do it by end of day tuesday, because the mass shooting news cycle is only good for 48 hours at best.
*Smith Mundt Modernization Act. Damn you autocorrect...
Stop believing manufactured media narratives. Investigated the Smith Mundy Modernization Act. You are witnessing political/terrorist theater, not “lone shooter” false narratives propagated by the propaganda machines (media corporations) who are furthering agendas they never speak about. Again research the Smith Mundy Modernization Act to understand the larger context.
What are you talking about? Just read your link an it seems to be just some broadcasting rules about domestic distribution of media, and regulation on foreign use. I didn't see any thing about propaganda or terrorist or false narratives.