We are in to the sixth day since Sunday’s shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas, and still at a loss to know why Paddock took to massacre of people who had come to celebrate the harvest festival and life’s goodness. Whatever, the motive of the shooter, one cannot escape the stark reality that it was a horrific human tragedy and, probably the worst shooting in the history of modern America which snuffed out 59 lives, injured more than 520, some quite seriously and shattered a whole lot of people. The Las Vegas shooting has shattered the nerves of Americans everywhere, not just who were present on the fateful day at the scene; not only the people in Las Vegas but the entire populace of America. The gory incident surpasses all dozens of the worst shootings and killings in the last few decades.

The question is how recurrence of such shootings can be stopped. Mass deaths caused by guns have long been a part of American history. But describing those events and recent ones accurately is more complicated than simply drawing a chronological line between them. There have been times when the shootings and killings were related to the economic status -the haves and the have nots. Racially motivated shootings also have been a part of history of violence in America.

But the present shooting does not qualify for either description. It is a mass shooting of mostly whites by a white. Indubitably, there are no racial overtones to this shooting. And, it will not be proper to dismiss the incident as the vile, vicious, heinous act of “pure evil” and forget about it, as we have forgotten dozens of such tragedies in yesteryears.

A little soul searching is necessary. Americans have a love of guns, in particular, a particular class. As long as these are used for hunting and as status symbols, there is hardly anything wrong. But when these guns fall in to hands of hot headed and wicked people we can expect gory shootings like the one we witnessed last Sunday in Las Vegas.

It is time the administration seriously revised gun policy and prevented deadly weapons from being acquired by anybody. Some kind of a check will surely help in preventing the recurrence of loss of life at the hands of people in possession of deadly guns. Let lawmakers value human lives more than their brand of politics.

God Bless America!