WHAT HAPPENED IN LAS VEGAS WILL HAPPEN AGAIN…COUNT ON IT!

…This “Bump Stock” converts a semi-automatic gun to acting like a fully-automatic gun

 

The GOP is saying about the Las Vegas killings: “Nothing needed here regarding guns or laws!”

 

Well, we all now know that a gunman in a high-rise hotel overlooking the Las Vegas Strip opened fire on a country music festival that resulted in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. 

 

Unfortunately, even though most of America is in favor of reasonable gun laws like background checks, waiting periods, out-lawing assault weapons, silencers, large ammo clips, large ammo barrels, and fully automatic rifle conversion kits.  In addition, not allowing those with mental health issue to be able to purchase a gun.  This is for about 70% to 90% of those Americans polled.

 

We now know how this evil individual was able to fire so many shots in such a short amount of time which caused 59 deaths (so far) and well over 500 wounded, some that are still in life-threatening situations, but we may never know why he did it.  The real issue is that just like Sandy Hook, just like the gay nightclub in Florida, just like San Bernardino,  there isn’t the slightest doubt, that the killings will happen again.

The man, 64 year old Stephen Paddock, was twice the age of former terrorists attackers and he was not known for being particularly religious or political.  He had two years ago purchased a new, two story home in a retirement community in a town about 80 miles from Las Vegas.  He moved there because he was known for enjoying high-roller gambling.

 

He was a well know high-roller at the Las Vegas Hotels and he was probably compt for his two-room corner suite in the Mandalay Bay Hotel.  That is because he would spent over $10,000 in a single weekend of gambling.  But after the massacre and his taking his own life, the authorities removed 23 guns from the hotel suite and 19 additional guns from his home.  There were also multiple, legal, “bump-stock” devices found that would have allowed the guns to fire almost like a fully automatic rifle.  There were also explosives and thousands of rounds of ammo found at his home.

 

There can be no rational motive for mass murder.  But why Stephen Paddock had nominal or imagined reasons for his homicidal anger, nothing can really explain his decision to spray thousands of country western concert-goers with automatic weapons fire.

 

The authorities quickly said the attack wasn’t terrorism, as if this somehow lessened the horror. Would someone please explain to me how that works? Are friends and family members of the dead supposed to feel different if the murderer yells “God is Great” in Arabic, but then to feel another way if he doesn’t?

 

Investigators will sift through Paddock’s life for signs of some kind of chronic mental illness. But what will that search tell us? Of course Stephen Paddock was disturbed. No one in their right mind would consciously mow down innocent strangers at a country music festival?  But of the many people in the world who are not in their right minds, which ones are violent enough to commit such a heinous act?

 

There is no reliable way to announce: “I’m about to explode”.

 

What do we know about Stephen Paddock?  We know he was 64, and he often came to the Strip to gamble.  He came to also attend the country music festival.  But we also know, according to Clark County Sheriff, Joseph Lombardo, that Paddock brought more than 20 firearms to his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.  We also know that his father Benjamin Patrick Paddock was a bank robber that escaped from prison and was for 10 years on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list.  He was eventually re-captured and after being in prison until 1987, his father lived with a woman in Texas until he died in 1997.

 

So the “how” of this tragedy is unfortunately very simple: Our nation is flooded with guns, more than one gun for every voting citizen and with the constitutionally protected right to “keep and bear arms”.  The 2^nd amendment, established in the age of single-shot long-rifles and muskets, has been deemed today to include military-style semi-automatic assault rifles and other high-powered weapons.  Also high-capacity magazines, legal conversion kits to make semi-automatic rifles, fully automatic.  (The stupidity of this is that the conversion kits for going to fully automatic are legal and available for around $50.00.  But to actually install the kit is against the law….DUH?)

 

Sounds from cellphone videos taken during the Las Vegas massacre clearly indicates that Paddock was using the legal “Bump-Stock” devices that made the semi-automatics act like fully automatic rifles. He was therefore able to unleash long, continuous bursts of gunfire.  After Sandy Hook, Senator Diane Feinstein had introduced a gun control bill that would have made "Bump-Stocks" illegal.  The Republicans receiving money from the NRA lobby voted the bill down, 40-18.

 

But no deer hunter or target-shooting enthusiast needs a weapon that was intended for war zones.  That being a weapon designed and optimized for use by soldiers against their enemy soldiers.

 

However, if the Sandy Hook massacre of 6 and 7 year-olds didn’t lead to universal background checks for gun purchasers, let alone a ban on assault weapons, why would anyone believe things will be different this time around.

The Supreme Court has more than once stated explicitly that "reasonable gun-control measures are permissible under the US Constitution". But can you imagine this Republican Congress and this president doing the right thing?

 

Neither can I. It is appearing that we will need both a different Congress and a different president to make that progress.

 

The problem is that even if the laws changed today, there would still be an estimated 300 million guns in the United States. Which means that the possibility of more carnage would still continue.

 

Today, this country has become a “Killing Field”.  If the Las Vegas killings had not happened on Sunday, nearly 100 other people around the country would still have been killed by a firearm. About two-thirds of those 100 deaths would have been suicides; nearly all the rest, about 12,000 a year would be homicides .  Our nation has become emotionally and intellectually numbed to this appalling and disgusting toll.

 

A mass shooting or a terrorist rampage, on the other hand, that always rivets the nation.

 

As this time, the television networks immediately shift into continuous “breaking news” coverage. Newspapers rush to profile the shooter, then the victims. The president always makes a statement expressing the nation’s grief and the lowering of American flags.

 

 

But the Republicans and gun-rights advocates immediately declare with their talking points that this is not the time to talk about gun control, accusing anyone who does of politicizing tragedy.

And gun-control proponents ask: “If not now, then when? Everyone agrees we need to do something about those with mental health issues, but we end up doing nothing. A long series of funerals then ends the ritual.”

 

We proceed back to our old routines, as if there won’t be a next time.

 

But there will be anther massacre……..and we all know it, but we don't know where or when.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017