What Happened In Las Vegas

Mandalay Bay-Hotel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So it's happened again.  Another individual of questionable character and an agenda to tend to makes a name for himself by shooting up as many people as possible, sometimes before turning the gun on himself.  And a nation points fingers at who or what should take the blame for the carnage, while nothing gets done.

An outdoor country music concert Sunday night in Las Vegas that began with Jason Aldean performing ended abruptly half an hour later, when flying bullets from a nearby hotel that definitely weren't part of the entertainment left thousands to either scramble or take cover.  To date, 59 people are dead and hundreds wounded.

Jason Aldean, meet Ariana Grande.  Your lives and careers will never be the same after this.

The suspect, according to police, had a small arsenal of weapons in his hotel room overlooking the concert area.  We don't know why he did it, nor do we know what kind of connections he might have had with known terrorist groups.  We may never know the whole story because the suspect killed himself.

The news media has been careful to tell us that what happened in Las Vegas was the worst mass shooting in modern American history.  What do they mean by "modern"?  Is it post-World War II?  Dallas in 1963?  Columbine in 1997?  Because nothing that's occurred in the past 50 years or so, short of war and terrorism, begins to compare with the carnage racked up by events such as Wounded Knee and others where people of color suffered the consequences of running afoul of the white man.

To those hoping that what happened in Las Vegas will finally, finally result in a "national conversation" about guns and the misuse of them, they can forget it.  The debate was settled long ago, when Americans decided they'd rather have their weapons and Second Amendment rights pried from their cold, dead hands.

For President Donald Trump (who, by the way, is against any new gun law), this is one of the most unsavory parts of his job, which is having to be Consoler-In-Chief  to a grieving nation when things like this happen.  Barack Obama had to play that role so many times during his presidency.  Can Trump approach tragedy with the same dignity and class Obama displayed without calling attention to himself?  Or is that too much to ask?

Life goes on in Las Vegas.  Even though there's been a massacre, hotels, casinos and other attractions are all open for business.  The tourists and convention-goers will still come.  What happened here will stay here, at least until the next person tries to break the modern day record for a mass shooting.  And we get to do this all over again.