Spare me your ‘thoughts.’
Spare me your ‘prayers.’
Spare me your ‘warmest condolences.’
Spare me your ‘deep concern’.
Spare me your ‘kudos to the emergency services.’
Spare me your ‘shock and horror.’
In fact, just spare me all the usual cliché-d, meaningless bulls**t that erupts across America whenever the country suffers yet another mass shooting.
This is on a different scale of horror to anything we’ve seen before, even by US gun violence standards.
I never thought I’d see a worse gun atrocity than the annihilation of 20 little children at Sandy Hook.
But I was wrong.
Last night’s massacre in Las Vegas was so diabolical in scale that it warrants a special hellish place in the pantheon of America’s most hideous gun-related outrages.
At least 59 dead, over 500 wounded.
It was also utterly, tragically predictable.
Mass shootings in the US have steadily increased in number and size in recent years.
Aurora, Newtown, Orlando… each new attack was bigger, more spectacular.
And each time absolutely nothing was done to stop them happening again.
When I say nothing, I mean NOTHING. There has not been a single change to federal gun laws in America as a result of any of this carnage.
Nor will there be now.
President Trump put on his most serious, somber voice today and talked repeatedly about God.
What he didn’t talk about was gun control.
How could he?
The NRA, a vile organisation with a sinister, deadly grip on America’s lawmakers, bought Trump’s silence when they backed him during the election campaign.
He used to be fairly reasonable about guns, opposing high-powered assault weapons and big magazine clips.
But once he realised the NRA could help him get elected, Trump – to his shame – hardened his stance and became Mr Gun Candidate.
‘You have a true friend and champion in the White House,’ he told the NRA at their conference after he won. ‘The eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end. No longer will federal agencies be coming after law abiding gun owners.’
But this Vegas shooter WAS a law-abiding citizen.
He had no criminal record.
He was just a normal, ageing dude who liked hunting and gambling.
Oh, and guns. He liked guns. Lots of guns.
But that’s OK in America. You can have as many guns as you like, few questions, if any, asked. It’s in the Constitution, you see. It was his RIGHT.
Then one day, nice, normal law-abiding gun owner Stephen Paddock went mad. You obviously don’t decide to fire an assault rifle at 22,000 people unless you’re completely insane.
So the ‘good guy with a gun’ suddenly became a ‘bad guy with a gun.’
Just like that.
Why? Forget the pathetic, desperate claims by ISIS that he was one of their ‘soldiers’. Of course he wasn’t, as the FBI quickly established.
He was just a crazy white American guy who woke up one day and fancied shooting everyone.
Even his own brother had no explanation for it.
‘I can’t even make something up, said Eric Paddock, shaking his head in incredulity.
END
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