Items filtered by date: Monday, 02 October 2017

I had family in Las Vegas this week, so when I read that one man -- just one -- killed 58 people and injured another 515 at a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, I naturally called to make sure they were alright. They were, because they’re not into country music, which might have been why the concert was targeted.

My aunt said despite being just “next door” at the Luxor (half a mile away), they couldn’t hear gunfire coming from the 32nd-floor window at Mandalay Bay, where 64-year-old Stephen Paddock fired upon thousands of innocent concert-goers.

While ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack, of course they have. It’s the deadliest mass shooting in United States’ history, which is exactly the kind of press ISIS seeks. But despite FBI Las Vegas Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse saying they’ve found no connection between the shooting and an international terrorist organization, it would make more sense if they do find a connection with ISIS.

If Paddock was indeed acting as an agent of ISIS, an outdoor, country music concert in Las Vegas is a prime target for an ISIS attack. It certainly makes more sense than an Eagles of Death Metal concert in France. First, it’s Sin City, so regardless of who the terrorist shoots, in his mind, she’s a sinner -- guilty by association. Secondly, the country music fan is almost certainly an American infidel, which couldn’t be said about any other genre.

A thoughtful editorial by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria opines that radical Islam is the product of "broken politics and stagnant economics of Muslim countries," so while the Quran endorses violence, it specifies a very vague enemy. Even Muslims trying to make it in America are targets of terrorism because they’re accepting the vulgarities of the modern world that’s left the Muslim world behind.

Regardless of whom a follower of Allah determines to be an enemy of Islam, they should not be able to injure over 500 people and kill more than 50 in a matter of minutes without strapping a bomb to their chest. Had the gunman been forced to shoot people with a single shot rifle or pistol, he would have been killed by police before he could reload. Automatic weapons with detachable magazines serve no purpose but to wage war; recreational entertainment is not a purpose.

Our entertainment is not reason enough to continue to allow more people to die en masse from gun violence than any other country in the world. I like firing automatic weapons, but I don’t need to fire automatic weapons, and neither do you.

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