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By APD writer Lu Jiafei
Washington, Oct. 3 (APD) -- In the past 274 days of this year, a total of 273 mass shootings happened in the United States. I urge you to keep the data in mind when you join the mourning for those 59 innocent people killed and more than 500 others wounded in the worst mass shooting in the U.S. history.
The harrowing tragedy happened Sunday night local time when a lone shooter started a shooting spree at an outdoor country music festival in Las Vegas from his hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the famous Las Vegas Strip.
With at least 59 people killed, the ugly record of the deadliest mass shooting in the country was broken, and it only took about 15 months.
According to the authorities, as of late Monday, over 30 firearms were seized from either the shooter’s hotel room or his home in Mesquite, Nevada.
The fact that a single person could have possession of more than 30 firearms might sound scary. What’s even more frightening is the reality that overall, private American citizens own an estimated 265 million guns, thanks to the country’s lax gun laws.
While the Las Vegas massacre was unprecedented in the loss of human life, it was by no means an isolated attack.
According to Mass Shooting Tracker, an online mass shooting database that follows local news nationwide on shooting incidents, as of Sunday, 273 mass shootings occurred this year in the United States.
Unlike the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, which narrowly defines the “mass shooting” as an incident where four or more people are killed in one case, the Tracker broadens the definition of the “mass shooting” to include all incidents involving four or more people being shot but not necessarily killed.
In his national speech on Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump called for unity and uttered a sentence that sounded far too familiar to ears.
The answers,” said Trump, “do not come easy.”
During the first White House briefing after the Las Vegas massacre, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders also blatantly echoed an argument often used by pro-gun groups that it was too soon to discuss gun control laws.
“This is an unspeakable tragedy. Today is a day for consoling of survivors and mourning those we lost,” said Sanders. “There is a time and place for political debate but now is a time to unite as a country.”
While there is nothing wrong with calling for national unity amid a tragedy, the purpose for such unity matters.
Rather than rallying to mourn for the loss, the leaders of the country should rally support for actual actions to rein in the malaise of mass shooting. Unfortunately, if history teaches us anything, it is the bitter fact that nothing happened in the past and nothing will happen this time.
Shortly after the Orlando nightclub massacre in June 2016, where 49 people were killed in a shooting spree, the U.S. Senate rejected four bills which sought to restrict gun sales, dealing a bitter blow to advocates who have failed to get even modest gun curbs through Congress despite repeated mass shootings.
As the country is still reeling from the terror and the sadness of colossal loss, Congress is expected to observe a moment of silence. But do not expect anything beyond that to happen.
No other society allows the mass shooting of its citizens to keep happening, except for the United States.
Lu Jiafei, researcher of APD Institute. After spending one year in Palestine covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict between 2013 and 2014, Lu moved to Washignton, D.C. and covered the 2016 U.S. presidential election till the very end of Donald Trump’s upset victory. He is a political contributor to APD.
(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)
