This is the first mass shooting where I’ve actually been to the place it happened. I’ve walked the strip often.
A society like the US will have these sorts of events (just as China has knife attacks), but they could be made a lot less deadly with a few simple steps.
- No automatic or semi-automatic long arms. Bolt, pump, or lever action.
- Small magazines.
- Handguns limited to revolvers, for everyone, including police.
This isn’t rocket surgery. Other countries have dealt with this problem. America is no longer a wild country, there are certainly rural types who need guns, but they don’t need automatic or semi-automatic weapons.
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I grew up among gun owners: foresters and farmers, people who lived rural or even howling wilderness. Canada has a LOT of howling wilderness left.
None of them, some of the hardest outdoorsmen you can imagine, felt the need for more than a couple bolt action rifles and a couple shotguns (20- and 12-gauge). That’s all you need for dealing with animals and hunting. There’s a place for high-caliber revolvers in certain types of very thick bush (for dealing with bears), and I’m given to understand snake pistols are useful in parts of the US, but you can get by without them, and most did.
Of course, a determined person will find a way to kill (I am surprised that it took so long before people started crashing motor vehicles into crowds), but there are ways to make it harder and reduce the likely deadliness.
Those ways, ironically, involve less loss of real freedom. Why not simply make the guns unavailable instead of having 24/7 surveillance.
America’s not quite ready for this yet, but I think within the next ten years or so the tide will change on this, along with a lot of other things.
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