On October 1st, 2017, a night where music lovers were enjoying their favorite country singers, at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, a gunman opened fire on the crowd of 22,000 people, only after shooting a security guard at the Mandalay Bay hotel. The shooting, done by 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, left 564 people injured and another 58 dead. While country singer Jason Aldean performed on stage, Paddock fired hundreds of rifle rounds from his hotel room on the 32nd floor in the Mandalay Bay hotel, nearby where the Route 91 Harvest music festival was taking place. After firing into the crowd for 10 minutes, Paddock turned the gun on himself and shot himself. To date, Paddock’s motive is still unclear and police are continuing to investigate to find the motive. The Las Vegas shooting is the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in all of the United States history. With gun control being a major focus in today’s world, Kairos plays a huge figure in the event because the shooting highlighted the urgency that the government needs to put into place regulations on gun control to protect innocent people, who are simply enjoying their day and going about life.
Just a minute after the shots stopped, social media, especially Twitter, began to flood with posts and tweets from concertgoers about the shooting. After Paddock stopped firing shots into the venue, police directed concertgoers into the Mandalay Bay Hotel to get out of sight from the shooter. The Las Vegas Boulevard closed as SWAT teams went through the concert venue and businesses in the area. Adjacent to the venue was the McCarran International Airport, where concertgoers fled to escape the firing of the guns. The airport shut down for multiple hours after the shooting. Police broke into Paddock’s room a little over an hour after shots had stopped with an explosive to breach the room, only to find him dead from a self-inflicted bullet shot. Upon entering the room, 10 rifles were found. In the early morning hours of October 2nd, Las Vegas blocks were flocked with lines of people waiting to donate blood to help victims, some lines having up to a six hour wait. Jason Aldean, who had been performing on stage when the shots were fired, posted a photo on Instagram expressing his condolences to the victims, as well as reassuring fans that both him and his crew were safe. Hundreds of innocent men and women were simply enjoying their night out in Las Vegas, listening to their favorite country singers and songs when their whole world was turned upside down by a man that was out to kill. As stated earlier, officials still have not determined a motive for the shooting and victims still question why Paddock decided to act out the biggest mass murder in our country’s history. With this being the deadliest mass shooting in history after only dozens of other shootings in the last decade, the shooting prompted support from the U.S Congress to ban bump fire stocks, even gaining favor with the National Rifle Association.
With the radio, internet, and social media being a few of the ways people get notified of catastrophic events, details can get lost in translation or simply not translated correctly at all. Different details can be presented by different sources, meaning listeners and viewers aren’t always fully aware of what the facts truly are. For this reason, it is important for viewers, like ourselves, to do our own homework and dig to the truth by listening and reading the story from different sources so we are able to get the full idea of what has happened.
The Washington Post posted a story of the shooting on October 2nd, explaining the horror that had unfolded the night before and who some of the victims were, mothers, fathers, friends, police. The story was heavily concentrated on Stephen Paddock, giving details of his life and questioning why a man with no previous run-ins with police planned such a deadly shooting. The audience of The Washington Post includes many civilians of the United States of all ages, which helps to spread the story around and make others aware of the event. This story was very much influenced on questioning why Paddock did what he did because there was no obvious motive, victims deserve an answer for why this happened. I was confused on why this story gave so much light to Paddock, writers almost made it seem like it was so far-fetched that this man could do such an awful act. With so many of Paddock’s friends and family claiming he’d never do this, they were very clearly in the dark about the evils that Paddock had within himself, making it easy for him to commit such a heinous act of violence.
A tweet appeared on social media from the user @GLOKMIN just a minute after the shooting stopped saying, “I’m pretty sure a terrorist attack just happened next to me I’m at Mandalay Bay.” This tweet was obviously intended for this users followers on the social media platform, but was meant to get the word out about the shooting. This tweet was heavily focused on assuming the shooting had been done by the work of a terrorist group, ISIS being the big one to think about. The user didn’t consider that this shooting was not an act of terror done by an overseas group, but someone that had no affiliation with the group. This user had no influence for their tweet, just tweeting that a shooting had taken place at Mandalay Bay. I find it heartbreaking that victims had no idea what was going on, where the shooter was shooting room and that it was a totally unexpected turn of events from a happy night full of music.
CBS Evening News posted a YouTube video explaining the timeline on the night of October 1st that the New York Times had pieced together based off of videos taken from the night. This video didn’t focus so much on Stephen Paddock but the events that had taken place, starting with 10:05- when the shooting began. Motive for the shooting had not been mentioned in the video, which I find interesting because almost every story covering the night had questioned why Paddock shot into the crowd. Most of the influence in this coverage was to answer the question of what had happened that night and when everything exactly took place.
As a month has almost passed since the shooting occurred, NBC San Diego posted a story on recent updates of the story. As details have emerged since the shooting, one detail in particular has caught the attention of thousands. The laptop Paddock had in his hotel room was missing the hard drive and still has not been located. This story focused on the missing hard drive and if that hard drive were to be found, how that could help in aiding in the discovery of the motive behind the shooting. The audience intended for this story is for those who are still interested in learning the “why” in this incident. I, myself am very frustrated as to why there has not been a motive found yet and can only imagine the frustration of those who were at the music festival.
To get a full understanding of events in today’s world where we have so many ways to access news stories, I feel like you must read or listen to the story being covered and then continue to look for the story through other sources to see if the story lines up, if one source is missing information, if one source doesn’t have the full story, it’s very important to do your homework when an event like the Las Vegas shooting occurs to make sure you have a good understanding on the story.