The Washington Post’s brilliant Eugene Robinson sums up what I’m feeling tonight better than anything else I’ve read in his latest column, entitled The Carnage Will Continue.
I’ve been struggling all day to come to terms with my thoughts and feelings about the mass shooting in Las Vegas, an incident so horrific that I’ve run out of adjectives to describe how horrific it was, and don't feel like trying anymore.
I refuse to watch the news, because I know what to expect. We’ve been here before. So many times.
I went to the gym to workout tonight and could not avoid glancing once in a while at the TVs running there, although thankfully with no sound. Flashes of photos of the shooter every few minutes; interspersed with running loops of video of people running for their lives, thinking they are going to die; cut to one talking head commentator, then another one, they seem to be disagreeing with each other. Got to show both sides, be civil, good people on both sides. Cut to a reporter I’ve never seen before, on the street interviewing survivors. How could this happen? Back to flashes of photos of some of the victims; cut to flowers and memorials set up on the streets of Las Vegas; more flashes of photos of the shooter; more video of people running for their lives. America’s mass shooting porn.
As Robinson starts his column:
We will never know why. We already know how, but we don’t care about that. And we know, beyond the slightest doubt, that it will happen again.
Yes, one thing we know for sure is that it will happen again.
He points to one obvious cause for the shooting, which nobody seems to want to talk about:
Investigators and reporters will now sift through Paddock’s life for signs of chronic mental illness or sudden psychological deterioration. But what will that search tell us except the obvious? Of course Paddock was disturbed. Who in his right mind mows down innocent strangers at a country music festival?
He also points to an obvious solution, so obvious that it’s almost tiresome to repeat it:
Sound from cellphone videos taken during the Las Vegas massacre clearly indicates that Paddock was using a fully automatic rifle — meaning that squeezing and holding the trigger unleashed a long, continuous burst of gunfire. Such machine guns were supposedly outlawed in 1986, but there are two huge loopholes: In some states, it is legal to buy and sell machine guns that were made before 1986; and Internet merchants sell kits that convert semiautomatic rifles into fully automatic killing machines.
No deer hunter or target-shooting enthusiast needs a weapon intended for war zones — a weapon designed and optimized for use by soldiers against enemy forces. But if the Newtown, Conn., massacre of 6-year-olds and 7-year-olds didn’t even lead to universal background checks for gun purchasers, let alone a ban on assault weapons, I don’t see why anyone should believe things will be different this time around.
I’ve been saying the ever since Newtown. I was convinced that things would DEFINITELY change after the mass murder of innocent children. Surely our country wouldn’t be that callous and cruel? Turns out we are. The Newtown massacre happened nearly five years ago, and Nothing. Has. Changed. So I’m convinced that nothing will change now.
Robinson is spot-on in describing what WILL happen:
A mass shooting or a terrorist rampage, on the other hand, rivets the nation. Television networks shift into continuous “breaking news” coverage. Newspapers rush to profile the shooter, then the victims. The president makes a statement expressing the nation’s grief. Gun-rights advocates pre-emptively declare that this is not the time to talk about gun control, accusing anyone who does of politicizing tragedy. Gun-control proponents ask: If not now, then when? Everyone agrees we should do something about mental health, but we end up doing nothing. A long series of funerals ends the ritual.
We go back to our routines as if there won’t be a next time. But there will. And we all know it.