It is really sad that a single individual could go on for about 10 minutes shooting and killing innocent people. Right now, every major news agency on the planet has story after story about the Las Vegas shooting which - at this time, has claimed the lives of 59 people and injured 527 others at the Route 91 Harvest Festival. Unfortunately, the Harvest Festival will have this event etched into it's soul forever.
I've read a number of stories and of course comments from the public. ISIL has claimed that Stephen Paddock, the shooter, was a recent convert to Islam. As of my writing, no official statement from Las Vegas or federal authorities have confirmed this claim, at least I am not aware of such confirmation.
By now, we all know that Paddock was financially solid, even wealthy. In trying to answer the "why" people have speculated that he lost a great deal of money gambling. Yet, by all indicators, he seemed to be stable enough to handle the loss of large amounts of money. It is claimed that he became well off financially through real estate. If that is true, then Paddock knew how to deal with the ups and downs, and winning and losing that accompany such financial transactions.
Of course, many many people, both well known and private individuals, have spoke about the political and social challenges of gun control, violence in video games and on television, in the entertainment business, and the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution. The topic always comes up when this type of evil occurs. Pundits with many different opinions insensitively shout out their respective messages with the obvious yet irrelevant mantras that separate the weapons from the murderers or decry or laud the merits or demerits of the 2nd Amendment. Read through the comments of any article on the Las Vegas shooting and you will see such comments from people all over the map. Even the noted atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins mockingly, sarcastically, and with great insensitivity blames gun control and the US 2nd Amendment for this tragedy.
Aside from the condolences, the mourning, and tears, many are wondering WHY, desperately wanting to know the motives behind Stephen Paddock's rampage. This is the real question and the question I initially stated. We think that knowing the answer would help - and for some, it might aid in the grieving process. We may collectively think that if we know the answer, we can do more to prevent this from happening again. Sadly, history screams against such results. If knowing the right thing to do would prevent evil, terror, violence, abuse, greed, selfishness, war, human trafficking, child-abuse, domestic violence, and a thousand other social ills, mankind should have already conquered such problems. But we have not. Reality is painful and my prayer is that the people of God do not grow cold, bitter, cynical, and negative because of such reality.
I am convinced that we may never know WHY. In fact, even if we find out some of the reasons Paddock did what he did, it will still not really answer the question. Spiritually speaking, the values, beliefs, ideals, and guiding principles that direct a person's soul can only be understood by God. (Which is why God is the only one that can ultimately judge and condemn). Many times, we ourselves may not even fully understand why we do what we do! Most of what we do is inconsequential, but when our actions and behaviors begin to radically negatively impact the lives of other, those consequences can be terrible, as they were in the case of the Las Vegas shooting from this past Sunday, October 1, 2017.
I am also convinced that the real problems we have as individuals and collectively in our social, societal and national alignments - the real problems are spiritual in nature. It's interesting to me that an atheist like Dawkins would comment on indiscriminate death. From an atheist perspective, what gives mankind the right to survive over any other species? ...but I digress. When our values, beliefs and spiritual practices are based in TRUTH, dealing with such tragedy becomes bearable. Of course, the real question then is not WHY but what is the TRUTH?
The question of Why may not be answered but the heart and soul of real people can be comforted by the support and love of others. I hope and pray that each victim's family and close friends are surrounded by supportive, loving and caring people that can aid in the healing and moving-on in life from this terrible, terrible act.
