Las Vegas

A “crazed lunatic” opened fire with an automatic rifle from his high-rise hotel room in Las Vegas, targeting attendees at a nearby country music festival. As of this writing, the tally is 58 dead and another 515 wounded. (Update: It’s now 59 dead and 527 wounded.) It’s the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history.

No worries, though: the shooter was a White dude with no known radical affiliations, so it’s not terrorism! We can all breathe easier.

Now, the thing to remember is that, as Right-wing outlets are quick to declare, this is not the time to talk about gun control.

Sure, this is just the latest in a long line of mass shootings, of which 273 have occurred in 2017 – literally almost one per day.

And sure, the idea that bad people with guns are stopped by good people with guns is facile bullshit on the surface and even more wrong when actually tested.

And sure, strong gun control laws are proven to work, as illustrated in how every other modern country with gun restrictions has only a fraction of the per-capita gun deaths the US has. Australia, in particular, banned most guns after the 1996 Port Arthur shooting (35 dead, 28 wounded); it hasn’t seen a single mass shooting since, and murders (and suicides) have plummeted.

But debating the merits of restricting how many high-power rifles someone can own (the shooter reportedly had ten in his room in addition to the full-auto rifle he used – surely they were all necessary for self-defense) and whether background checks should be required (government invasion of privacy!) would be really disrespectful to the hundreds of people he killed and injured with gun violence. I mean, really, have some tact. You might hurt the NRA’s feelings.

You may also want to send your thoughts to the other victims of this tragedy: the gun manufacturers, which are sure to see a lot of blowback over – oh, wait, their stocks are already soaring. As they do after literally every mass shooting.

That’s a clear sign the US is a culturally healthy place, isn’t it?

(via @BadAstronomer, @donttrythis, @lindy2350 (RT: @donttrythis) & @jackmjenkins (RT: @Popehat))