The responses range from the predictable - Nevada's gun laws are the weakest in the nation, and he was able to acquire 23 weapons legally for this purpose - to the empathetic - hashtag Pray for Las Vegas - to the political - one well-known attorney tweeted that because country music fans are likely to be pro-guns, he felt no sorrow for those cut down by a gunman - to those longing for a better day, the very sentiment that led a presidential candidate to win the most recent election - Make America Great Again.
But how exactly could you prevent something like what happened on Sunday night? I would argue that the cure would be worse than the disease.
The gunman had no criminal record, although now the authorities are looking into some large money transfers that the known gambler had recently received. From an article in the USA Today:
Investigators, however, confirmed they have begun probing the gunman's gambling habits. Authorities are reviewing the recent transfers of thousands of dollars involving the suspect and links to gambling activities that would have tripped mandatory government notification requirements, the federal law enforcement official said.
What didn't trip any alarms were the 23 weapons he had in the hotel room, nor the "undisclosed amount of ammonium nitrate, a type of fertilizer that has been used as a bomb component - most notably in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing - (that) was found in the suspect's vehicle parked at the hotel." All of that was acquired legally.
Here's the bigger problem: you can ban guns and fertilizer all you want. But if you want to commit mass murder, you don't need those.
Drive a car through a parade, as they did at Oklahoma State two years ago.
Get a toxic gas and release it in the subway, as they did in Japan in 1995.
Poison a city's supply of drinking water with chlorine, or arsenic, or any of a dozen other chemicals.
Make a homemade bomb.
Set fire to a tenement house while all the residents are asleep.
It doesn't take much imagination to kill.
What takes imagination is how to prevent killing. I'll ask again: how could you prevent something like what happened on Sunday night?
You could lock up every criminal and throw away the key. But this gunman had no criminal record.
You could track everyone whose choice of career or hobby made them suspicious. This guy was a retired accountant who lived in a retirement home. His family was utterly astonished by his actions.
You could do Secret Service - style inspections at every event where more than ten people gathered together. But this guy was in a hotel room, at least a block away. And since he didn't care about accuracy when firing into the crowd, he just kept firing. And firing. And firing...
Would you have closed down the entire hotel for this event, "in the interest of safety"? Look at the photo - somebody driving past could just as easily have been the gunman.
I don't know this fellow at all, the deranged man who decided to go out with a bang. But he had one thing in common with all the other mass murderers of this type: he not only didn't care if he got caught, he intended to get caught and get killed by the police. That removes a lot of our traditional protection in society - we presume self-preservation, self-interest in the people we deal with. But when they're suicidal, we lose much of that protection. Imagine how much more frightening driving down the road would be if you had to fear that any one of the drivers coming at you in the oncoming lane could be ready to kill himself by swerving over the line and crashing into some random car - like yours.
If you've ever seen the movie Minority Report, that's what it would take to prevent someone like this gunman - some kind of pre-cognition in governmental hands that would let authorities know when any of the 320 million people in this country suddenly snapped and decided they were going to commit mass murder. The movie uses three psychics; I'm of the belief that it would more likely be a computer reading of our brain activity, compared with a baseline reading required of all residents yearly. With the growth of that field now, I could see that being possible in as few as twenty years.
But is that the world you want to live in?
We can't put the genie back in the bottle. We aren't going to magically remove all forms of mass murder. We can't magically heal all the broken psyches ...
Or...can we?
This is where I tell you that Christ is the answer to fixing broken men (and women and children) like this gunman. And I firmly believe that.
But that's not going to happen. I firmly believe that as well.
We don't live in a Christian nation, no matter what we may wish. And as I've said here before, Christianity was really never intended to be the dominant belief, as much as God would Wish that all of His Creation might be saved.
"And someone said to Him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And He said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able." (Luke 13:23-24)
No, we can't save the world by converting it to Christianity. The best we can hope for is to share His Word with the world, and give them the chance for salvation in Christ. But that's not going to be the solution to preventing lonely accountants who snap and decide to go out in a blaze of glory.
Nothing in the devil's world will solve that. That's the price of sin.
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