Something’s very wrong
That these mass shootings are so commonplace they no longer shock is the saddest reality of all.
Stephen Paddock, 64, of Mesquite, Nev., checked into a 32nd-floor hotel room at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. It overlooked the outdoor venue for the Route 91 Harvest Festival, a three-day country music event.
On Sunday, Paddock used the perch to spray a concert crowed of 22,000 with bullets from an automatic weapon or weapons, then killed himself. Throughout Monday the calculation of the carnage grew, by mid-afternoon 58 accounted as dead, more than 500 injured from gunfire or the panicked stampede it produced.
Authorities were in search of a motive. A retired accountant with no criminal history, Paddock reportedly liked to gamble on the Las Vegas Strip. Early indications showed Paddock had no religious or political motivations that might fuel his massacre.
This newspaper has long advocated for reasonable gun controls. Yet, maddenlingly, Congress, under the influence of the gun lobby, refuses to take even small steps such as universal background checks, banning possession of guns by people with domestic violence records, or allowing federal research into gun violence. While no set of reforms will stop all mass killings, that is no reason to refuse to adopt prudent gun controls. And so the list of modern mass shootings grows.
April 16, 2007: a 23-year-old senior kills 32 at Virginia Tech, then himself.
Dec. 5, 2007: a 19-year-old enters an Omaha, Neb., mall with a rifle, murders eight then kills himself.
April 3, 2009: 13 die when a 42-year-old gunman fires on a classroom at an immigration center in Binghamton, N.Y. They were attending citizenship classes.
Nov. 5, 2009: 13 die and 30 are injured when a fellow soldier, trained as a psychiatrist, opens fire at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas.
Dec. 14, 2012: a disturbed 20-year-old gunman enters Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., after earlier having killed his mother, murders 20 first-graders and six educators and then commits suicide.
Sept. 16, 2013: a 34-year-old former Navy reservist is killed after murdering 12 at the Washington Navy Yard.
June 17, 2015: nine adults are shot dead by a 21-year-old white supremacist as they attend Bible study in a black church in Charleston, S.C.
June 12, 2016: a lone-wolf Islamic terrorists’ sympathizer kills 50 and wounds 53 at an Orlando, Fla., nightclub. Just to list a few. Something is very wrong.