To Live and Die in Las Vegas

The crowd flees in terror as a sniper mows them down at a Las Vegas concert.

When I heard early this morning that some sniper named Stephen Paddock had shot 50 people to death at an open-air concert in Vegas and wounded another 200, I was sure of only one thing: that Fox News would already be huddled somewhere with the NRA, carefully crafting lies to broadcast about the gun massacre.

I turned to CBS News, and watched the talking heads discussing regulations to prevent such American mass shootings.

HOTEL regulations, of course.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

A child shoots up a local high school. A gun-worshipping politician returns to Congress after being gunned down while playing baseball. Some sniper gets himself all cozy on the 32^nd floor, killing 50 people and wounds another 200 at a country music concert.

Why, there’s nothing to see here, folks! Just another typical week in America. None of this has anything to do with GUNS, certainly!

The NRA will assure us, as it always does, that more guns will solve the problem. But gee, it’s kind of hard to shoot back at a sniper on the 32nd floor, isn’t it? Maybe the NRA will suggest all Americans need concealed carry shoulder-fired rocket launchers now.

The timid, sold-out corporate media reporters can actually look at the hundreds of people screaming and running and pissing their pants in Vegas, and then dare tell us this isn't “terrorism.”  Of course it’s terrorism. It’s NRA terrorism.

The NRA wants us to get accustomed to American mass shootings with unlimited numbers of victims. Forget about it, treat it as routine, file it on the back page with boil orders and bake sales. No amount of slaughter, even if it’s dozens of children having their brains blown out, will ever be enough to justify the least interference with their gun rites. 

Not rights. 

“Rites.”

But never fear, Congress is sure to address the Las Vegas sniper massacre soon — by legalizing silencers.

And by next week, some Republican will gunsplain to me, with great confidence, how the Las Vegas sniper massacre was nothing but a hoax.