After taking the lives of at least 58 concertgoers and injuring 489, Stephen Paddock still remains a mystery to the authorities. His thundering interruption to Jason Aldean’s set at Route 91 Harvest Music Festival, which initially sounded like fireworks to many, lasted for over 10 minutes. Hundreds to thousands of rounds were fired at the venue from his 32nd floor suite of Mandalay Bay, about 400 yards away.
Paddock managed to commit suicide just before a SWAT team entered his hotel room, where he was found with a surplus of unused ammunition along with 23 weapons (12 of which were manipulated to operate automatically). These findings insinuate that if it weren’t for the authorities’ rapid success in locating him, he would have continued to fire for much longer. Still, the massacre he carried out is officially the most deadly mass shooting in United States history.
Among the victims of the shooting are a single mother of three, a recent college graduate, a registered nurse, a kindergarten teacher, a wrestling coach, and a city of Las Vegas employee who died in his boyfriend’s arms. The 58 victims each leave behind a distinct story along with a multitude of devastated family members and friends.
While we’ve yet to see enough mass shootings in the news to desensitize ourselves to the topic, the country has gradually adopted a sense of numbness to the issue. The White House is quick to address attacks committed by foreigners, and yet an American will seldomly be called a terrorist, even when their actions are only accurately described as acts of terrorism.
We hear media sources call events such as this unpreventable or incomprehensible, but statistics say otherwise. Mass shootings must be preventable, because nearly every other first world country prevents 100% of them from happening. While dying by way of a gun in America is about as common as dying in a car accident, in Poland it’s only as common as dying in a bicycle accident and in Japan it’s as rare as dying due to a lightning strike. And mass shootings also must be comprehensible, seeing as they have become a frequent, routine occurrence in our country. In the past 51 years, we have experienced 131 mass shootings, each of which killed an average of 8 people.
Mass shootings are no longer anomalies. They are happening with increasing incidence, and with increasing deadliness. Before the Las Vegas shooting, last summer’s massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, with its victim count of 49, held the title for the most deadly shooting in United States history. The third and fourth most deadly mass shootings in history (Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook) both have taken place in the last decade.
The evidence is clear; this issue is worsening rapidly. While a handful of politicians have argued that this period just after the attack is a time of mourning and not a time for discussing gun control policy, many others are insisting that we must take action now, before more trauma is ensued by another harrowing attack. Indeed, if we respond now, we can take control over a seemingly uncontrollable matter. Maybe we can prevent the next mass shooting from breaking the record this one has set. Maybe we can prevent the deaths of another single mother of three, another recent college graduate, another registered nurse, another kindergarten teacher, another wrestling coach, and another city of Las Vegas employee.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/2/16399418/us-gun-violence-statistics-maps-charts
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/mass-shootings-in-america/