Mass shooting in Las Vegas another senseless, inexplicable act of terror

There’s nothing that can make random mass murder more horrifying than it already is. As of Monday afternoon, at least 58 people were known to be dead and hundreds more injured, many of them critically, after a gunman opened fire at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas.

If anything could possibly add a layer of tragedy to the already unspeakable reality of what happened Sunday night, it’s that this was an attack on people gathered for an evening of shared pleasure — people who had come together to be together. This was a meaningless act of domestic terror, as if any act of terror could ever be rightfully described as “meaningful.”

Another bitter detail is the Islamic State’s claim that the shooter was one of its operatives, a claim for which the FBI found no evidence (ISIS has made bogus claims before), in which case murderous rogues were simply gloating over American bloodshed.

The attack came during a performance by country musician Jason Aldean, which was interrupted by gunfire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino across the street. The initial horror of panic, violence and death was made worse by how long it went on. Jake Owen, one of the musicians on stage at the time of the attack, told CNN it was like “shooting fish in a barrel from where [the shooter] was … This is not an exaggeration: This shooting was going on for at least 10 minutes. It was nonstop.”

One concertgoer told the New York Times she thought the sound was fireworks until a man nearby fell down bleeding from a neck wound.

“It’s either run and get shot and die or stay and get shot and die,” said another. “Those were the choices.”

The tragedy seems all the more senseless for the mystery of what motive the shooter — identified by Las Vegas police as Stephen Paddock, 64, who apparently killed himself in his hotel room before police broke in — could possibly have had.

He fit no obvious profile. A resident of Mesquite, Nev., he had no criminal history. His brother Eric, interviewed in Florida by CBS, said Paddock was “not an avid gun guy at all … if he had killed my kids, I couldn’t be more dumbfounded.” He had legally bought a handgun and two rifles in Mesquite over the last year, purchases that cleared federal criminal history screenings; but those buys did not account for the arsenal found in the hotel room. He was not known to be ideologically zealous, having “nothing to do with any political organization, religious organization, no white supremacist, nothing, as far as I know,” his brother said. “And I’ve only known him for 57 years.”

The survivors and the families and the friends of the dead are left with shock, and grief, and questions that might never be answered. The rest of us are left — again — to wonder, and mourn.

This story was originally published October 2, 2017 at 6:05 PM with the headline "Mass shooting in Las Vegas another senseless, inexplicable act of terror."