By Vikram Bala ‘20, Staff Writer

You might have woken up on Monday, October 2nd, unprepared for the upcoming school week, and stumbled through your mundane morning routine unaware of the events that took place overnight not so far away. You may have arrived at school around 7:40, and opened up your laptop to find numerous notifications from various news sources about a massacre in Las Vegas.

Many people have become numb to what seems like an neverending report of mass shootings in America and did not realize the severity of the shooting at first, and it wasn’t until after repeatedly hearing about it in the news did these people fully realize the extent of the situation. The description of how Stephen Paddock shot at the crowd like fish in a barrel is truly horrifying. Imagine standing above a crowd of people with complete control over their lives, while they are oblivious to the situation unfolding. Comprehending why someone would inflict such harm on others is hard to understand, but even harder to understand is why this was not prevented. As expected, the first issue confronted by the media was gun control legislation. Whether or not you own one, it is our responsibility as a country to decide what to do with them. Is it possible that we still haven’t figured out how to stop mass shootings and protect innocent civilians? The NA community has a variety of responses to the events.

Understandably, many don’t have the time to sift through the “noise” in the news these days, so here are some important facts to know. The man who shot at the crowd and killed 58, Stephen Paddock, obtained his guns legally. Potential buyers of guns are run through background checks going through 3 FBI criminal databases. Paddock did not raise any “red flags” during his background check, meaning that he was allowed to purchase the guns he wanted. The only states that prohibit the sale of more than one gun in 30-90 days are New Jersey, New York, and California. Automatic weapons are outlawed in America, but there are ways to legally modify semi-automatic guns to shoot a higher rate of bullets per minute; even with the these modifications, they are not considered automatic guns. The first modification is known as a bump stock. It can be used to harness the recoil of the gun to repeatedly push the trigger against the finger of the bearer, allowing for a rate of fire close to 60 rounds per minute.  A trigger crank can be used to also increase a gun’s rate of fire. Every turn of the crank makes the gun fire multiple times. A report by CNN says there have been 273 mass shootings (defined as 4 or more people killed) since the beginning of 2017 (Article Published October 5th, 2017). From 1966 – 2012, the U.S had 31% of the world’s mass shootings. In about 40% of the shootings from  2000-2013, the shooter committed suicide, and in about 28.1%, the shooter and law enforcement exchanged gunfire. In 13.1%, unarmed citizens disabled the shooter, and in about 3.1%, armed citizens disabled the shooter. With some knowledge on hand, let’s see what some fellow members of the NA community think.

Rohan Kapur, Class of ‘20, comments, “There is no way this mass shooting could have been prevented even if there were stricter gun laws or lesser gun laws.” He claims that arming the citizens with guns in this situation would have proved useless, as they would have not been able to disarm the shooter. More gun laws, Kapur believes, would have still not prevented Stephen Paddock from obtaining the amount of weapons that he did. When asked how he thought the situation could have been prevented, Kapur explained that he didn’t think it could have been prevented. Another member of the N.A. community, who requested to remain anonymous, claimed that, “While no single action could have prevented this shooting, there are steps that could be taken to limit the chances of similar events happening in the future.” They went on to explain that better handling of mental illness would be beneficial, in the case that Stephen Paddock had some kind of mental illness. When asked what they thought should be done, if anything, about the bump stocks used to increase the rate of fire of semi automatic weapon (Stephen Paddock used bump stocks on 12 of his rifles), they explained that they believed bump stocks should be banned. A recent report by The Independent explains that sales of bump stocks were minimal before the events in Las Vegas, but due to fear or bump stocks getting banned by legislature, the number of buyers for bump stocks has rapidly increased.
After hearing two very different viewpoints, one must wonder: was this event inevitable, or was it tragedy that could have been prevented long in advance? When debating about implementing more gun laws, or fewer, some people may encourage calling local legislative representatives, in order to pass laws restricting guns, or unrestricting them. No matter what side of the political spectrum one is on, change and prevention of events like the one in Las Vegas will only happen through unified awareness.