And so here we are. Again.
The Las Vegas massacre is not, as the media habitually labels such incidents, a tragedy.
This is an atrocity.
Hurricane Irma was a tragedy. The fires in California are tragedies. Cancer is a tragedy.
We know very little about the man who just committed the greatest mass murder in American history. But we know enough to know that it is most unusual. Stephen Paddock was a 64 year-old (alleged) millionaire. He has, as far as we know, no history of mental illness, no known ties to terrorist organizations, no criminal record beyond a minor vehicle violation years ago. He was, according to his brother, “…just a guy who lived in Mesquite and ate burritos.”
But he was a guy firing what definitely sounds like a machine gun into thousands of Country Western music lovers.
ISIS immediately claimed that Paddock converted to Islam and took the name Abu Abd El Bar. He was, according to ISIS, a blessed Islamic warrior.
We have no idea if this is true.
If this claim is accurate, we know pretty much all we have to know. Paddock was an IslamoNazi. Case closed.
But this has not yet been confirmed. We have to wait for more information.
Of course, the usual liberal suspects immediately politicized this atrocity. They have no shame. They are as hard-hearted as Bolsheviks. They are also woefully ignorant about guns and the thousands of gun laws that are already on the books.
Lydia Polgreen, editor of the Huffington Post, immediately demanded to know why something has not been done about civilians owning automatic weapons.
In fact, since 1986, buying a machine gun is extremely difficult, extremely expensive and rare. Machine guns are not the weapon used by mass murderers in America.
And of course, even though the rivers of blood had not yet dried on the strip, Hillary Clinton hit the send button on her Twitter account with this gem: “Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get.”
Hillary has seen too many James Bond movies where silencers make a nifty, low decibel pffft.
In fact, silencers—they’re called suppressors—are designed to protect the eardrums of the shooter. A suppressed rifle sounds like a jack hammer.
Hillary should be silent already.
I know: she won’t.
Vox blamed Trump, claiming that, “Since Trump took office, more Americans have been killed by white American men with no connection to Islam than by Muslim terrorists or foreigners.”
President Trump has been in office since last January and we have had, at least in America, no major IslamoNazi attacks. This is good. Sort of: Yay for us, right?
Of course in Europe and the Middle East, IslamoNazis are having a field day, slaughtering dozens a day on multiple fronts.
So: according to liberal/progressive/leftist gospel IslamoNazis are not the problem, white men are. This is classic racism; blaming an entire group of people for the actions of an individual.
And of course guns are animate things; they are evil and their ownership must be confined to the government. Because as we all know governments are, um, benevolent and trustworthy, incapable of deceit, treachery, oppression, persecution and mass murder.
In his commentary on Genesis 4:23, Ramban, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, the towering medieval scholar, writes with refreshing clarity:
“The sword is not the cause of murder, and there is no sin upon him who made it.”
Interpolation:
My good friend Sol Teichman told me the story of his liberation from a Nazi concentration camp: “It was the first time I saw a black man. An American soldier. He was carrying a rifle.”
Men with guns destroyed the Nazi regime and liberated the Jews from the death camps.
Isn’t it odd, no one I know refers to Zyklon B. violence. Because Zyklon B. did not step up and drop themselves into the gas chambers. Evil men, agents of their government did that. And yet liberals endlessly, mindlessly, self-righteously lecture us about “gun violence.” Because as we all know: guns load themselves, take aim, and then spit death because they are nasty little critters with minds of their own. Evil men, according to the tediously rigid liberal mind, are absent from this equation.
End Interpolation:
I’m waiting of the inevitable dopey headline informing a gullible audience that the Vegas Massacre was cause by Global Freezing/Global Warming/Climate Change. In short: the weather.
The truth is the Las Vegas massacre is a problem of evil.
Study the Torah and you realize one simple truth: good exists, and so does evil. HaShem gave man free will so he would be something more than a robot or a vegetable.
Man makes choices. Man has responsibility for his actions.
When I am writing a screenplay I am writing—beyond story, beyond plot—about one subject: human nature.
And human nature never changes.
May HaShem console the thousands of mourners in our midst, and heal the hundreds so cruelly wounded and maimed.
You might be interested in my post Jews and Guns in which I present a traditional Jewish view of the issue.
And here’s my three part series about being caught in the LA Riots of ’92, Jew Without a Gun.
Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
14 Comments
Well there is new info on the security guard that tells me my #6 above may be true after all. Also it came out about a week after events. Also I should correct #4 in that if it’s 30 round magazines it would then be 7 magazines used. That is a lot even at full auto.
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
“We know very little about the man who just committed the greatest mass murder in American history. ”
A quibble, but no. McVeigh killed 168 people.
Like or Dislike:
3 
0
… closely followed by the Federal agents who perpetrated the Waco massacre.
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
Thanks for the correction. I should have said: Mass shooting.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
I very much concur: good and evil, man has choices and is responsible for them, human nature doesn’t change, and man’s free will. No law of man can ever hope to contend with these. At best, ours, laws, is only an approximation of on the life intended for us, yet we insist on doing it “our way.”
Ou prayers are lifted up for the dead, for the injured, for those so terrorized by this atrocity, and for wise leaders, ones who realize that at the end of the day they really are not “in control.”
Like or Dislike:
2 
0
Robert,
Something is very very wrong with the coverage and the story we are getting. I may be way off on this (usually I wait a week on the reporting that’s when the truth seems to come out), but I don’t think so, so smells.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
5 
0
It seems that Paddock was at anti-Trump rallies, in full costume, pussy hat and all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=Pbsa1CiO5Ls
Answers some questions, doesn’t it?
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
4 
0
Has there been any confirmation or disproof of this video in the two weeks since it became available? I’m baffled as to how little we still know about this story, which seems so obviously bigger than any individual nutcase (who doesn’t seem to have even been a nutcase, as far as anyone knew.)
Like or Dislike:
0 
0
I have come to believe that there are people possessed by evil. Not evil in an abstract sense, but demons? Evil as its own entity. I was listening to the video – that was definitely an automatic weapon.
I was discussing this last night – if you were in that crowd what would you do? I would say that virtually all didn’t know where the shots were coming from. Run – to or from?
Then think of the possibility that these terrorists (and he was a terrorist) would have partners waiting at the likely exits.
One thing is for sure – one can’t go out in condition white any more.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
5 
0
All your thoughts are right on the money. They could be developed into a long, and probably pretentious essay, but that is not required. You have said all that is needed.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
5 
0
Paddock must have made numerous trips to his hotel room to haul up so much fire power, ammo, tripods, etc. I wonder, are we enroute toward the hotel industry adapting airport-like, enhanced security checkpoints/measures?
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
9 
1
All his movements are going to be on CCTV.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
7 
1
First, let me say that I believe he was not alone and there is much more to this than what has been released. That is a problem with me in that I’ll have a tendency to see what I want or think I should see. Keeping that in mind, I’ll say the following:
1) Photos given out show scenes that seemed staged to me
2) You don’t use bipods to shoot at a severe down angle (you have to be almost standing up)
3) How in the world would you use scopes on a automatic weapon or with a bump stock?
4) There are claims that 200 rounds were shot down the hallway, that’s more than 3
magazines.
5) You don’t see a lay out of the floor anymore like was shown on day one.
6) Last for now, the security guard who was shot in the leg (very brave fellow) is the key to
all of this. He was shot early, within 20 minutes of initial firing, but was told to go clear
other rooms while the police waited for over an hour to go in.
All of these things may quite well have very good explanations, but I would like to hear them.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0
Oh yeah, As far as I know very little CCTV footage has been released.
Like or Dislike:
1 
0