The first lawsuit has been filed against them for the Vegas shooting. There will be more, and they’ll have to settle. Three days of “Do Not Disturb” and no attention paid to all that luggage going in and none coming out does appear to me to be negligent. Particularly since it seems to have been a comped room. I think the real lesson here isn’t about gun control, but better security in high locations near entertainment and event venues.
[Friday-afternoon update]
Karl Denninger is unhappy and unimpressed with the Vegas authorities. To put it mildly.
“Three days of “Do Not Disturb” and no attention paid to all that luggage going in and none coming out does appear to me to be negligent. ”
Maybe you stay in hotels more often than I do, but I don’t follow your thinking here.
If I put the “Do Not Disturb” sign on my hotel room door, and I’m not bothering anyone else and I’ve demonstrated an ability to pay, I would be a pretty unhappy customer and would never patronize that hotel again if anyone from the hotel disturbed me (or asks me questions about my luggage).
Steve Wynn said on Sunday that the policy at his resorts is no more than twelve hours, for guest safety. They don’t want to have the liability of someone sick or dead in the hotel room because they put up a DND sign. And if a lot of luggage is going into a room and none is coming out, it’s a legitimate question. You are a guest renting the room, not purchasing it. Ultimately, the hotel is responsible.
If I did what he did with the luggage and DND sign I’d be surprised if the Hotel took an interest, mind you, the places I stay at wouldn’t have too many concerns about terrorism and such.
Regards Wynn’s policy, if the staff knock on the door, ask if all is well and are assured that all is well, what’s their next step, barge into the room because there’s a 0.0000001% chance the visitor is up to no good?
the places I stay at wouldn’t have too many concerns about terrorism and such.
There can’t be very many that do but in a free society it is impossible to remove all the risks from a person determined to do something. Any place can become a target for terrorists, which makes us all first responders. It is impossible for the government to be omnipresent or impose enough regulations to prevent all incidents from happening.
How much luggage did he have? A person would have to have a lot of luggage to appear suspicious. I doubt it would have even taken that many bags to smuggle in the guns and ammo. Even if there was an hour limit on DND, its not like housekeeping searches people’s luggage.
Lots of people use DND for the duration of their stays, so this doesn’t look all that suspicious.
I’ve used DND signs for a week or more. When housekeeping taps on the door anyway I open politely and say thank you I’m fine. Door is fully open so there’s no ‘hiding stuff’ vibe. I’ll wash the linen and such with my laundry in these cases.
That’s a nonsense point of view. Hotels should conduct intrusive visits and inspections on the off chance that one of their guests is a mass murderer? And when those checks don’t stop the next such event based in a hotel, then what, strip searching as your leave and enter? This is a situation that is so out of the ordinary that we can comfortably take no action and make no changes.
I agree with Bob-1 here, probably the 2nd time I’ve done so.
Mrs. McG and I have developed a habit of going DND during entire stays — because we don’t need fresh linens every freakin’ day. It must mean something different in a Vegas resort, because being bothered every twelve hours because of a sign on the door would be profoundly disturbing.
“Produce your papers!” Isn’t the America I want to live in and would not do a thing to have prevented this.
What we need to focus on is what works. Not what makes people feel better. A society where the St. Valentine’s day massacre is shocking would be a good place to be and attainable if enough people cared. It just requires a different/forgotten attitude about crime.
I once locked myself in a hotel room and hung out the Do Not Disturb sign for several days, and I didn’t shoot even one person.
When stated by a lefty only means two or more… well, unless lying? Pinning the left down is like arguing with a woman. Bill Whittle has a great video on Hillary’s lie ratchet.
How many guns did you smuggle into the room in several suitcases?
I’ve been staying in hotels for decades and not once has any one of them examined my luggage. That may change. Should someone want to smuggle weapons into a hotel room, it wouldn’t be hard. Who would look twice at someone carrying a golf bag to and from a car in the parking lot? Rifles can be broken down into smaller pieces and reassembled in the room.
The point is that so many pieces of luggage went into the room.
We’re never quite ready for each new wrinkle. Next up… large entourages instead of lone wolves. Lots of baggage, but not per person.
Actually, this guy could have done that with in-the-dark stooges getting a free vacation.
A resort that size has hundreds, if not thousands, of people staying there at any given time. It’s unlikely that the people watching the collection of monitors would notice a single individual carrying multiple pieces of luggage, even on multiple trips. Some AI or automation could help in that task, but unless someone is clearly acting strangely, he’s unlikely to attract attention.
Yes, this would be a good application for AI with security cameras, now that they’re getting good at facial recognition.
I agree with Rand’s point, but that’s because I know casinos are not regular hotels. They usually have a higher level of security, because they have a lot of money in them.
I’ll also give Andrew his due credit, because if they knock, get an “a-ok”, then yes, the staff could barge in (they do own the place), but why would they? Does hotel policy specifically state enter the room and verify all is ok?
Alas, what Andrew misses is that the US is a very litigious society. The guy used their property as a hunter’s blind. Moreover, one of their staff says he saw something, said something, and was ignored. That’s a great argument for negligence. Add the confusing story that perhaps is true about a security guard being shot 6 minutes prior to the shooting into the crowd. How did that go unnoticed for 6 minutes?
But the reason #1 MGM resort is getting sued is that they are a casino with lots of money. They’ll pay out at least $100,000 per victim just to make the lawsuits go away. Then again, $50mil would be fairly cheap. Perhaps $1mil per victim and safe some by limiting that amount to victim families. Keep it under $.5 billion. They can afford it. The lawyers filing the suits know it.
Following all of the news updates on this, it is becoming more and more muddled. The security guard who was originally credited with stopping the shooting was apparently shot, through the guy’s door, 6 minutes prior to the start of fire on the crowd. A maintenance man who was checking on a blocked fire door heard the shots, and saw the guard, who waved him off. The maintenance man (Stephen Schuck) says that he immediately told hotel dispatchers to call the police because of the gunfire, which by then he was ducking. The security guard, Jesus Campos, also radioed dispatchers to have them call police.
To make matters more cloudy, Jesus Campos does not show up on the Nevada registry of security guards, where they must register to work in the state.
I suspect that MGM will be settling out of court, big time.
Oh, BTW, the shooters room was comped.
The ‘report’ that troubles me is the one that said over 200 rounds were fired through the door and said ‘guard’ was hit once. That’s once, as in one time, only, in a non-fatal location. This is my Church Lady voice: “How conveeeeeenient.”
I’m not seeing anything so out of the ordinary, in terms of baggage or DND, that it would arouse suspicions or that if there were rules in place couldn’t be easily circumvented.
What did arouse suspicion, was a propped open door that was supposed to be closed. Was the door propped open by the shooter as an escape route? Did he fail to plan that they would know the door was open? Was it just a coincidence?
Even after the security guard was shot no one had a reason to do anything spectacular like immediately storm the room or firing an RPG back through the door (not that one would have been at hand even in Nevada), the shooter was contained in the room, unless he was about to detonate a large bomb – which would have called for the evacuation of the hotel (just providing more people for him to shoot from his window) there was no basis for reasoning that such urgent action, the sort of action that could be carried through in 6 minutes, was required or sensible.
The problem would have come with the ten minutes of shooting that followed. Once he starts shooting, then you’re no longer in that situation.
True, but whose responsibility is it to breach a room used by a gunman in that situation? I’d say police rather than Hotel security, and the police didn’t breach the room until 11:20 (I assume with a SWAT team, an hour and a quarter after the shooting began.
whose responsibility is it to breach a room used by a gunman in that situation?
Whose responsible?
Now tell us again how Americans should give up firearms for protection, while you have committee stand and discuss responsibility outside the door of an active shooter.
I don’t see how lots of people with firearms for protection was going to reduce the scale of this tragedy or prevent it.
So, given the existing parameters, how many counter-sniper teams stationed here and there? How much would they cost for a couple of hours? And how would they figure out there was an immediate target to take out? I get that we hire mercenaries overseas in various places. Call them ‘contractors’ all you want. Are we ready for this, here?