Supervillain In Sin City

In the wake of its deadliest mass shooting, America once again confronts its unending cycle of gun violence

- Saif Shahin

They came from near. And they came from afar—as far as Ala­ska. For thousands of country music fans at the Route 91 Harvest festival on the outskirts of Las Vegas, the three-day open-sky jamboree was coming to one glorious, rambunctious end, with meg­astar Jason Aldean’s eagerly awaited closing performance. But suddenly, and without warning, the groovy and warm Sunday evening turned into a night of unmitigated horror. The shooting started a few minutes after 10; it went on for at least 10 uni­nterrupted minutes. Bullets rained in bursts upon hundreds of people, spreading confusion, disbelief and panic.

The murderous hail left over 50 dead, more than 500 injured, and a nation’s heart shredded into pieces.

Sara Hass, a survivor, later relived the moment on NBC News. “Everybody starts running, everyone’s on the ground, everybody’s yelling, everyone’s confused,” she said. “No one knows what’s really going on. Everyone thought it might have been fireworks, but it was...you know....”

They know indeed. Although the deadliest mass shooting in recent US history, the tragedy in Las Vegas was hardly an aberration. In a country with half the world’s civilian-owned guns—over 300 million, by an estimate—mass shootings are routine. They make it to national news only when they are particularly poignant or the toll is unnervingly high. Five years ago, a gunman killed 20 children at an elementary school in Newport, Connecticut. It left then-president Barack Obama in tears and sparked nationwide calls for gun control. More than 1,500 mass shootings have taken place since then—one almost every day—according to the Gun Violence Archive. Gun control laws have remained stubbornly unchanged.