From a great height
A gunman on a high floor of a Las Vegas hotel rained a rapid-fire barrage on an outdoor concert festival on Sunday night, killing at least 58 people, injuring hundreds of others, and sending thousands of terrified survivors fleeing for cover, in one of the deadliest mass shootings in American history.
Online video of the attack near the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino showed the singer Jason Aldean’s performance at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a three-day country music event, being interrupted by the sound of gunfire. The music stopped, and as victims fell bleeding, concertgoers screamed, ducked for cover, or ran.
The video clips show what a massive advantage the shooter had given himself – a huge open area on the ground packed with people, overlooked by a tall hotel, with the shooter on the 32d floor. There was nowhere to run to, no cover to take.
I have nothing intelligent to say about this.
I’ll just note that I read somewhere that the four worst mass shootings in US history all happened in this past decade – this one, Orlando, Sandy Hook, and Virginia Tech.
Meanwhile Congress keeps doing more to make guns easily available.
Has Trump commented on this? And if the perpetrator had an Arabic name, what sort of tweetage would he have been giving it? He’d be yelling about his Muslim ban again, as he has with pretty much any attack involving Islamists taking place in Europe. But an American White guy with automatic weapons? Unremarkable.
I guess the Second Amendment People will get to work on this right away.
He has, of course, and I’ve seen it quoted, but I can’t yet bring myself to look directly.
Here we go again. The 2nd isn’t an amendment, it’s a fucking disease!
According to the BBC the shooter was a white, American male aged 64. He’s dead. His partner is possibly of South American heritage and she’s in custody.
I’ve been listening to the news on and off all afternoon and have yet to hear mention of terrorism. 58 dead, 100+ injured, one shooter (I’ve heard no mention of whether his partner is suspected of active involvement) but apparently not a terrorist. Of course not. He was white American.
Would Donald please note that no foreign leaders have jumped on twitter to criticise the LVPD or presuppose the motive of the shooter.
That’s just because they are weak, sad losers, ineffective leaders who don’t automatically know all that needs to be known.
(That is me channeling the Donald, not me stating my own opinion, which differs as much from this as a lemon differs from a lemur)
“four worst mass shootings in US history all happened in this past decade”
As running averages go, I doubt it’s going to remain at just four.
However, I’m optimistic. In my life, I’ve seen gay friends become happier. I’ve seen people not be afraid to say they are atheists. My father owned several dozen guns. I own zero. My children will own zero and all of their friends, whose dad’s have guns, appear less enthusiastic about what’s the purpose. Just like with religion: it’s unlikely that make guns will go away, but people can slowly but reasonably doubt the purpose of believing something without evidence and owning something that is more likely to cause harm than prevent it.
Kevin, I hope you’re right. I wish I could be so optimistic, but here in the “forgotten”, “underserved”, “ignored” “flyover country”, I don’t see that happening. My students brag about having guns in their pickups on campus, and crow that there is really nothing anyone can do to stop that, because the school can’t search every pick up on campus, and they believe (wrongly) that every vehicle on this campus has at least one gun in it. I can say wrongly with total confidence, because my vehicle does not have a gun in it. The most dangerous thing in my vehicle (other than the vehicle itself) is a nail clipper.
Trump’s already barfed out that we should “unite, not debate”, that real gun control laws are ineffective anyway, and apparently suggesting that maybe, just maybe, we should make it legally difficult to massacre people is some sort of dishonor to the memory of the massacre victims.