We know more about the Las Vegas killer. We know more about the guns he used. We know more about the elaborate setup in his 32nd-story suite, including the cameras. We know more about the strange life he seemed to have led and the father who was a 10-most-wanted bank robber. We know much more about Stephen Paddock, the man who killed 58 people at a country-music concert. But we still don’t seem to have any idea why he did it. Via The New York Times.
The Las Vegas killer brought 23 guns with him to his 32nd-story hotel room. And 12 of those guns were set up with “bump stocks,” which allow a semi-automatic rifle to fire at the rate of a machine gun. Ross Douthat wonders if a minor provision banning bump stocks would finally be a starting place for the conversation on how to reduce gun violence. Via The New York Times.
The stories of the Las Vegas victims are heartbreakingly sad. But this beautifully told story by Wesley Lowery, about two strangers who bonded over country music before the gunfire began, will not only break your heart. It will haunt you. Via The Washington Post.
Richard Wolffe: We don’t stop talking about terrorism when ISIS strikes. We don’t stop talking about air safety after a plane goes down. Why is it wrong to talk about gun violence even as we mourn after Las Vegas? Via The Guardian.
Leah Libresco writes in The Washington Post that she used to think gun control was the answer to gun violence. Then she did the research. Turns out, it’s more complicated than that.
If you need any more evidence of how difficult it is to pass sensible gun legislation in Congress, try this Vox interview with Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who says guns aren’t the problem. The real blame for mass murders, he says, should go to the culture produced by, yes, sanctuary cities.
From The National Review, Katherine Timpf writes that she’s not arguing in favor of the Second Amendment, but that the Second Amendment is the argument.
It was yet another strange day from Trumpworld, in which the president goes to Puerto Rico to tell those on the devastated island what a great job he is doing and that they should be “very proud” to have kept the death count much lower than the count in a “real catastrophe” like Katrina. Then he went out to meet the people and threw paper towels into the crowd. Via The Atlantic.
During oral arguments on the Wisconsin gerrymandering case, Ruth Bader Ginsburg slaps down Neil Gorsuch with one withering comment. It seems that Gorsuch is not the most popular justice on the Supreme Court. Via The New Yorker.
This is probably just a coincidence, but Russia-linked Facebook ads targeted Michigan and Wisconsin, two states critical to Trump’s Electoral College victory. Via CNN.
From The Weekly Standard, Donald Trump has not only disrupted American politics. He has also disrupted American journalism.
Why losing Tom Petty feels like losing a piece of ourselves. Via The Los Angeles Times.
Photo by big-ashb, via Flickr: Creative Commons
