Las Vegas: America's latest killing field

It seems almost a regular occurrence, one that it rears its ugly head at least once, even twice a year. Just less than a year ago we witnessed the horror of a massacre of revellers in an Orlando nightclub where partygoers at nightclub were gunned down by a homophobic gunman.

Now, it’s Las Vegas, where the sun seems to never set, and where country music fans were enjoying a fun evening, with friends, and family members, and then the ominous popping sound, and then the screams, the terrified concertgoers fleeing into the night that had earlier held so much promise, a delay until the next workday beckoned them back to their labors.

At first light, “59 people killed, police said, and 527 injured, either by gunfire or in the flight to safety,” as a “A lone gunman perched on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino had smashed the windows of his suite with a hammer, taken aim at a crowd of 22,000 people, and committed one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history. Late Monday, law enforcement officials said they still had no idea what the motive was,” reported the Boston Globe.

According to local police, they found 23 firearms in his suite, in 10 suitcases. Later a search of the shooter’s house, “they discovered an additional 19 firearms and, according to Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, “some explosives, and several thousand rounds of ammo.” He added that they also found ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer sometimes used in making bombs, in the gunman’s car.”

This veritable arsenal of guns, easy to obtain, by the shooter a 64-year-old retiree named Stephen Paddock, reveals both intent from a damaged mind, rent by mental illness, and perhaps anger? But, all is conjecture, at this point until more is discovered.

As I noted last July, “The Leviathan seems to be the National Rifle Association, and its powerful lobbyists are ruling the day, but are losing the care that we must embrace as a nation. Many wondered at the deaths of grammar school children at Sandy Hook Elementary, if there would be a change, yet their hearts remained hardened.

On Monday, the NRA website was dark, no comment, no news, an attack on former President Obama, par for the course, and no responses to calls or emails.

President Trump tells us that now is not the time to discuss gun laws, yet that is what me must do, for while the old defense, of “people kill people, not guns,” still holds for many, yet keeping guns out of the hands of those that might kill, and restricting those that don't, seems to be the least thought of, until the next killing.

One unfortunate note: mass murders, while less than general homicide, has increased from 1983 to 2011, from 200 days, to 64 days, now. Even now, as of this writing there is one that is probably being planned.

Acknowledging this American crisis of mass killings, and that gun control, tighter gun laws, and gun show limits are needed, House mInority Leader Nancy Pelosi has sent a letter to Majority Leader Paul Ryan asking him to create a dedicated committee on gun violence to “study and report back common sense legislation to help end this crisis.”

Trump has previously suggested that people have more access to guns to fight back against this type of mass killings, yet his press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had this to say: “there will be, certainly, time for that policy discussion to take place, but that’s not the place that we’re in at this moment.”

“I think one of the things that we don’t want to do is try to create laws that won’t stop these types of things from happening,” she later added.

Looking at the mental state of the shooter, for many people, it seems that mental health is the stuff of movies and late night television, and not the stuff that reality is made of. In other words, crazy people scripted for the camera, and not real life; as easy to dismiss as leaving a darkened movie theater. But, mental illness is as real, and as palpable, as the days are long, yet we fail to grasp the enormity of these unaddressed problems, and how they can be dealt with.

In a discussion with some of my cohorts, one ventured to say, “Oh, mental illness is too broad of a category to use here, he was just not raised right,” in one incredulous moment, as the TV screen blazed, and the banner crawl gave the latest tally of injuries, and death.

Of course, platitudes are easy to utter, and the earlier mantra, as hackneyed, and as cynical as it sounds, could also be extended to those who insist that any infringement on the right to own arsenal style weapons is also an infringement on the Second Amendment of our Constitution

Rand Richards Cooper, writing for Commonweal said, “And to those who insist that any attempt to limit the types of weapons Americans can carry is an infringement on their constitutional rights, I’d ask, well, then how about a shoulder-fired rocket launcher? How about a bazooka?”

After the memorials are gone, and the headlines changed, we move on as a society, yet the failure to address in a systemic manner that results in carnage, whether it is Omar Mateen, or Oklahoma bomber, Timothy McVeigh costs the nation, our moral courage.

The problem before us demands our immediate attention, and despite the NRA’s victories, and their support for the election of Trump, the task ahead to decrease mass killings, or even, on a distant horizon, none at all is imperative, especially in Nevada where no license, no registration and no limits on the purchase of guns, even assault weapons, is allowed.

America has lost a huge part of its moral responsivity on failing to gain an adequate response to address these mass killings, stretching all the way back to Charles Whitman, in 1966, shooting from the clock tower at the University of Texas, to Adam Lanza’s assault on the grammar school at Sandy Hook five years ago.

We need a full-throated approach, not thoughts and prayers, those almost meaningless words that come from public officials to solve this uniquely American dilemma - and one  that encompasses all citizens in a quest for that long sought ideal of the new Jerusalem, the city on the hill.

In the upcoming days we may learn more about  Paddock, we may even find that there was a sudden departure from his general temperament, and personality, that no one could determine, or even imagine.

As I noted last year, If the road ahead, is the one less travelled, then new ideas must be brought to stem the tide, to bear on the challenge that faces America.