Machine gun massacre kills 59 in Las Vegas

A country music festival on a warm night on the Las Vegas strip. The picture of all-American fun.

But the joyful crowd did not know the evil that lay looming above them on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. At 22:08, a 64-year-old man named Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd. One eyewitness said he fired “probably 100 shots at a time”. “It would sound like it was reloading and then it would go again.”

“People just kept dropping and dropping,” said another festival-goer.

As The Day goes to press, 59 people have been confirmed dead, with 527 injured, some in the stampede to flee the scene.

Police were able to pinpoint Paddock’s position relatively quickly since the gunfire triggered the smoke alarms in the hotel.

They used explosives to blow open the door to his room, but by then it was too late — Paddock had shot himself dead. Inside the room they found an “arsenal” of 20 rifles.

Attention is now turning to Stephen Paddock himself: his background, his motive and how he was able to acquire such weaponry.

Paddock kept his true nature well hidden. His brother said the family was “dumbfounded”. “He has no police record. He probably doesn’t even have parking tickets. He eats burritos and goes into Vegas to gamble. He was not an avid gun guy.”

NBC News reported that he had stayed in the hotel since September 28th and had gambled “tens of thousands of dollars” in recent weeks.

But still no ideological motive has been found. Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility, but similar claims have been bogus in the past, and investigators have found no link to international terrorism.

Whatever his twisted reasoning, Paddock was clearly, as President Trump said, “pure evil”.

So at a time when the USA is going through a psychodrama of its own, with its divisions deepening and its global influence on the wane, along comes the deadliest mass shooting in the country’s recent history. Could this bring the country together, or will it further shake American certainty and confidence?

Stripped down

After such a tragedy, let us hope that people will forget their disagreements for a while. Those killed were Democrat and Republican, black and white, tourist and American citizen. The motive does not seem to be political. This can be a chance for the nation to step back, look at itself honestly, and unify.

But others are more pessimistic. Already the great gun control debate is raging around America, dividing fierce partisans on both sides. The politicisation of such tragedies leads to even more irrational thinking: conspiracy theories quickly started spreading around the internet, fuelled by people with a point to prove. America is in crisis, and this cannot help.