The horrifying shooting at the Las Vegas country-and-western concert — from the Mandalay Bay hotel — is being widely reported as “the biggest mass shooting in modern American history.” The accuracy of this depends on that word modern,* and perhaps on narrowing down the definition of what a shooting is, too.
The death count, it may be worth remembering, has so far not reached Branch Davidian levels.
But, admittedly, the Waco event was perpetrated by the government against a besieged community, and mainly done by arson — though guns played an all-too-infamous role. The biggest “mass murder by arson” case that I am aware of is the Happy Land nightclub arson, committed by the late Julio González in 1990. His fire killed more people than has (by current count) the gunfire of Stephen Paddock.
A much larger peace-time atrocity took place at Wounded Knee in 1890. Hundreds dead. But that, it is worth remembering, was a shoot-out, not a shooting spree. There were deaths on both sides, though the Indians got it worse. Much worse.
The Wounded Knee massacre is relevant in the context of the predictable calls of my progressive friends (and leftists across the Internet, as well as the major media commentariat) for more gun regulation.
Why recall Wounded Knee?
Because it was, in essence, the result of gun control, a gun confiscation attempt by the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment.
If my progressive friends get their way, there will be many more massacres of the Wounded Knee variety.
Think it through. Would you be shocked to learn that most white Americans in the late 19th century thought the agenda of the 7th Cavalry was “reasonable gun control’?
So I guess what people mean when they call Paddock’s spree shooting the largest “mass shooting in American history,” is that Paddock’s was the largest non-government-initiated mass murder. With guns. Oh, and recent.
Meanwhile, ISIS has claimed “credit” for the shooting, referring “to Paddock by the nom de guerre Abu Abd al-Barr al-Amriki and said he answered a call to arms by its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” according to the previously linked article.
US officials have said they are examining the claim, but are yet to find any evidence linking the shooter to any organised terrorist group.
As if not to be upstaged, folks on the left can be caught everywhere insisting that the Las Vegas event be called “terrorism” . . . but perhaps only if we designate it non-Muslim terrorism — “terrorism by a privileged white guy,” perhaps.
Since we know, at present, of no political or socio-cultural point Paddock was trying to drive into our minds, it cannot be called terrorism in good conscience.
But it is odd to see the Left and Muslim terrorists once again siding up on one side of the line . . . of ideological fire.
twv
* On my Facebook feed, the necessary word “modern” seems most often elided. But most news outlets have been careful in their wording. The article I linked to was fairly precise, calling the event “the worst mass shooting in modern US history.” Note that modifier, “modern.”
N.B. Breaking stories about a large electronic funds transfer to the Philippines by Paddock, soon before the shooting, might possibly churn up an agenda so far not disclosed.
Wirkman Comment 