Last night in Las Vegas, Nevada, a gunman opened fire on a music festival from his window across the road. The attacker killed 59 people and injured another 527 in the shooting, which has been labelled the worst Mass Shooting in American History. A local Vegas newspaper has described the horrors of the attack as "unimaginable." Perhaps the most unsettling thing is that the police's rigorous searches through the gunman's home and his hotel room, in which a grand total of 23 guns were found, still have yet to determine what the shooter's motivations were behind the attack.
His motive remains unknown. Maybe he just did it for fun. That's the most harrowing and horrific part. It was a murder spree completely in cold blood, and US gun laws allowed him to do it.
The shooter opened fire from the window of his hotel room, situated above the Mandalay Bay casino on the Las Vegas Strip, which was overlooking the Route 91 Harvest country music festival. He kept firing and reloading and firing and reloading and firing until finally he was stopped by local law enforcement once they had determined where he was firing from and hauled ass up there. 23 guns and accompanying ammunition were found in his hotel room, and if the police hadn't turned up to stop him, he would've kept going until he'd used every last bullet.
Police have named the suspect as Stephen Paddock
Las Vegas police have named the suspected assailant as Stephen Paddock, a local man aged 64. They believe that he committed suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound, so he can't get what's coming to him as he rots in a prison cell and gets a nice welcome gift from the other inmates.
He took the easy way out. And still, in a creepy turn of events, his motives remain unknown. It's really quite terrifying.
When police searched the Las Vegas hotel room from which the gunman was shooting the crowd, they found no less than 23 guns. If the cops hadn't showed up to stop him, and then he killed himself, he would've continued firing at people until he had emptied them all.
Well, maybe suicide was always the plan, so the psychopath might have left one bullet behind for himself.
The FBI have said that Paddock had no known affiliations with international terrorist groups and that he is believed to have acted alone. When the feds searched his house in Mesquite, Nevada, just outside Las Vegas, they found a further 18 firearms as well as explosives and thousands of ammo rounds. The police are planning a search of one of Paddock's other properties in Reno, Nevada, to see if they can find any hint there as to this strangely unknown motive of his.
Republicans are, as usual, ignoring the wider issue
Republicans are, of course, dodging the gun control debate, simply saying that this isn't the time to talk about gun control.
Yes, it is. That's what they said after Sandy Hook, when children were shot dead at their school by a psycho with a gun who just wandered into the school and started firing. It's what they're doing now with this Las Vegas shooting. They always want to turn a blind eye to how these things happen. It's only in America.
According to "Daily Show" host Trevor Noah, in the two years that he's been doing the show, there have been 20 mass shootings in America, and every single time, the Republicans have said that it's not the time to talk about gun control. It's exactly the time to talk about gun control! It's a time when uncontrolled guns caused many deaths! Without gun control laws in place, these kinds of crimes will keep happening.
59 people are dead in Las Vegas. And 527 are injured. These are ludicrous numbers that the Republicans want you to ignore, because of their precious Second Amendment rights. It's ridiculous. This is the worst mass shooting in American history, and in America, mass shootings are as common as a cold, so that's really saying something.
