Columns

On October 1, 2017, 64-year old Stephen Paddock checked into a 32nd-story suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas and opened fire on an outdoor music festival below, killing 59 people -- including two off-duty police officers -- and hurting 527. Later Paddock killed himself.  

While listening and reading about the post-Las Vegas shooting discussion, I had a sense of deja vu. Just substitute Sandy Hook, Orlando, Virginia Tech, Charleston, Aurora Theater in Colorado, Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., and the other mass shootings too numerous to mention, for Las Vegas, and you will see what I mean. Isn't it the same discussion -- sorrow, helplessness, outrage, a call for gun control?  

America is just too gun loving to have a serious, informed discussion about gun violence. Consider that this country already boasts approximately 300 million guns, or eighty-eight for every hundred people.  

The state of our gun laws is not the Supreme Court, the Second Amendment, or the gun industry, but the NRA. And so far the NRA is winning the political battle on gun laws in Congress. 

As a result, we will just have to grit our teeth and wait for the next mass killing that will come as surely as night follows day.