You just shake your head. You look at the death toll in the massacre in Vegas last night and you shake your head and ask "Why?" Yeah, we have disasters in this world — lately, a lot of them. Fires and earthquakes and floods. But those are unavoidable. The one in Las Vegas…somebody made that happen. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to do that.
And it's chilling because any one of us could have been there. Any one of us could have been sitting there and suddenly, bullets are whizzing past us. We feel bad for the people who were killed and for their loved ones. We feel bad for the ones who were wounded or hurt and we feel for the folks who weren't injured but endured the panic and terror. How well are those people going to sleep in the weeks or months to come?
And then we have to deal with the secondary horror…of people trying to "spin" this for partisan advantage. Sometimes when these things happen, I feel I should go online and say that the only way to prevent this kind of thing is for everyone to buy more copies of Groo the Wanderer. That would make about as much sense as some of the things being posted this morning.
Donald Trump said it was "an act of pure evil." As I think I've said here before, I don't think the word "evil" is a very helpful word. It may be right in a dictionary sense but it doesn't advance the dialogue about what really happened or how we might prevent it in the future. It's like saying it was witchcraft and we can't possibly understand it. I should have known better than to expect a word of insight or depth from the guy in the Oval Office. I'm surprised he didn't congratulate himself on the fine job others did of getting people to hospitals.
As I wrote here after the last five or six of these, I don't expect anything to change. We'll hear the same old, same old and nothing will be done. Don't get your hopes up that this is the one that will do it. It won't. The next one won't and the one after that won't and the one after that won't. The next Stephen Paddock will be able to acquire all the same guns just as easily.