More than 50 Dead in Las Vegas Mass Shooting

America's utterly insane gun laws have claimed more than 50 more lives in yet another mass shooting, this time in Las Vegas.  Once again it also appears that automatic weapons were involved, thereby increasing the death toll, plus over 200 injured.  The rest of the world must thing Americans are insane (not that Trump's election hasn't already proved that in the minds of much of the world).  The simple truth is that NO ONE needs to have an automatic assault rifle.  NO ONE.  That the NRA and its political whores, particularly in the Republican Party allow their easy purchase belies the myth that guns are used by Second Amendment loving hunters and sportsman.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at this latest carnage that sadly will recur again unless and until sane gun laws are enacted and automatic weapons confiscated.  Here are excerpts:

More than 50 people have been killed and over 200 injured in America's deadliest mass shooting after a single gunman positioned on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel window opened fire on thousands of music fans attending a country-music festival shortly after 10pm on Sunday night local time.

The suspected shooter, a man who lived locally, is dead, according to Joseph Lombardo, the sheriff of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, who said the scene is now “static.”

It is now the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, surpassing the death toll of the Pulse nightclub massacre, which killed 49 people.

Police have identified the shooter as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, who lived in a retirement community. Lombardo said the shooter's companion, named as Marilou Danley, is being sought for questioning. She and Paddock have the same address. Country star Jason Aldean was performing one of the festival’s final sets when automatic gunfire broke out. “People went down on the Mandalay side of the stage,” one concertgoer, Joe Pitzel, told CNN. “I don’t know if people were ducking or if people were hit.”
Eyewitness Bryan Heifner spoke to CNN from a room in a hotel across from the Mandalay Bay, which he said he could see from his window.  “Mostly I heard the shots, just so many shots . . .

Concertgoers reported seeing muzzle flashes from the upper floors of the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino across Las Vegas Boulevard from the festival and the sound of what they described as automatic gunfire, according to the Associated Press.

It would be nice to think that perhaps the fact that it was country music fans who were murdered rather than gays that just maybe something will be done to bring sanity to America's gun laws, but that's likely a pipe dream.  The NRA and gun manufacturers for which it is a front organization have bought and paid for too many politicians.  Very, very sad.