After Vegas shooting, calls for gun control

Celebs speak out, Hillary puts spotlight on gun Bill

Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande urged US leaders on Tuesday to act to tighten gun laws following the carnage in Las Vegas, as artists voiced shock at the deadliest shooting in modern US history.

While most artists left their comments to general messages of sympathy after the assault on a country music festival, Gaga used her social media power to press politicians. “This is terrorism plain and simple. Terror bares (sic) no race, gender or religion. Democrats & Republicans please unite now,” the pop star wrote to more than 71 million followers on Twitter, where her account is the seventh most popular.

Grande — whose own concert in Manchester was attacked in May by an ISIS supporter, killing 22 people — indicated that she saw little distinction with the assault in Las Vegas, where the gunman’s motivations were not immediately clear.

“My heart is breaking for Las Vegas. We need love, unity, peace, gun control & for people to look at this & call this what it is = terrorism,” Grande tweeted.

At least 59 people were killed and 500 injured when a heavily armed gunman opened fire from his hotel room onto an open-air country music festival in Las Vegas.

Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton turned the spotlight on a gun Bill that’s currently making its way through the House. “The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots. Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA (National Rifle Association) wants to make easier to get,” she tweeted.

The “Hearing Protection Act,” would make it easier to purchase silencers. At present, federal laws are more restrictive for silencers than firearms. Buyers must undergo a nine-month approval process that involves getting fingerprinted and submitting a photo, along with paying a $200 tax. The Bill calls to eliminate those steps and make purchasing a silencer easy, CNN reported.

A key supporter of silencers is Donald Trump, Jr. — Agencies Las Vegas, Oct. 3: Police recovered 23 weapons, including a handgun and multiple rifles, from Stephen Paddock’s 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel from where he opened fire at a crowd and killed 58 people on Monday.

Authorities also found several pounds of ammonium nitrate, used to make explosives, in his car, CNN reported. From Paddock’s home in Mesquite, Nevada, police recovered at least 19 firearms, explosives, several thousand rounds of ammunition and some electronic devices.

Investigators are trying to find out why Paddock, a retired accountant, went on a shooting spree.

Paddock also had two “bump-stocks” that could have converted semiautomatic firearms into fully automatic ones. A semi-automatic weapon requires one trigger pull for each round fired. With a fully automatic firearm, one trigger pull can unleash continuous rounds until the magazine is empty. — Agencies