This graph illustrates the terrible scope of the Las Vegas shooting


Sunday night's mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival was the deadliest in modern U.S. history, with at least 59 people dead and 527 wounded, and perhaps not coincidentally, it was possibly the first such mass murder carried out by a fully automatic weapon. On Tuesday, Mike Allen at Axios laid out three "hard truths" about the tragedy, perpetrated by a 64-year-old retired accountant and avid gambler with no known significant record of run-ins with the law, according to law enforcement officials.
Those truths included that American "gun manufacturers are heavily incentivized by market demand and lax laws in most states, and by the federal government, to allow mad men to accumulate all the firepower they crave for mass killings," and that won't change just as it "didn't change after Columbine or Sandy Hook," largely because "President Trump and congressional Republican have every incentive to protect the status quo." To illustrate how the Las Vegas shooting compares to other shooting incidents with at least four people shot going back to 2013, Axios created a graph. Highlighted rows are the major attacks, with the red figures representing the dead and the grey figures the wounded.
On Monday night, former Trump chief strategist Stephen Bannon told Jonathan Swan at Axios that Trump won't support gun control, as he did at an earlier time. "Impossible: will be the end of everything," Bannon texted. If Trump supported gun-safety measures, "as hard as it is to believe," it would be "actually worse" with his base than if he backed an amnesty immigration bill. "Amnesty," like many gun control measures, is actually pretty popular.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
-
Zohran Mamdani: the young progressive likely to be New York City's next mayor
In The Spotlight The policies and experience that led to his meteoric rise
-
The best film reboots of all time
The Week Recommends Creativity and imagination are often required to breathe fresh life into old material
-
'More must be done'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Sniper kills 2 Idaho firefighters in ambush
Speed Read A man started a wildfire, then fired a rifle at first responders when they arrived
-
Weinstein convicted of sex crime in retrial
Speed Read The New York jury delivered a mixed and partial verdict at the disgraced Hollywood producer's retrial
-
'King of the Hill' actor shot dead outside home
speed read Jonathan Joss was fatally shot by a neighbor who was 'yelling violent homophobic slurs,' says his husband
-
DOJ, Boulder police outline attacker's confession
speed read Mohamed Sabry Soliman planned the attack for a year and 'wanted them all to die'
-
Assailant burns Jewish pedestrians in Boulder
speed read Eight people from the Jewish group were hospitalized after a man threw Molotov cocktails in a 'targeted act of violence'
-
Driver rams van into crowd at Liverpool FC parade
speed read 27 people were hospitalized following the attack
-
2 Israel Embassy staff shot dead at DC Jewish museum
speed read The suspected gunman chanted 'free, free Palestine'
-
Bombing of fertility clinic blamed on 'antinatalist'
speed read A car bombing injured four people and damaged a fertility clinic and nearby buildings in Palm Springs, California