“This will happen again,” were the four words that resounded throughout Waleed Aly’s response to the Las Vegas shooting on The Project on Tuesday night.
The shooting, which claimed the lives of 59 people and injured at least 527, was perpetrated by 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, a man who had legal access to multiple automatic and semi-automatic guns.
Paddock, who had no prior criminal record, shot at a crowd of 22,000 people at a country music festival from the Mandalay Bay hotel 400 metres away.
What occurred on Sunday night on the Las Vegas strip has now been declared the most deadly shooting in US modern history.
President Donald Trump said in response to the shooting, “Our unity cannot be shattered by evil, our bonds cannot be broken by violence… it is our love that defines us today.”
“We’re all still reeling right now,” Aly said during his commentary, co-written by managing editor Tom Whitty, “But I think what’s shocked me most is how familiar this all feels.”
“The truth about this act is not how evil it is, but how incredibly ordinary it has become.
“This will happen again.”
Listen: Journalist Amelia Lester and Mia Freedman deep dive on the largest shooting in US history and gun laws that desperately need to change. Post continues after audio.
To label the abhorrent act of violence as “evil”, Aly said, was “hiding something”.
“Over the last 50 years, per capita, the number of guns in America has doubled, from one for every two people, to one for every one person.
“You would think, after a mass shooting, especially the deadliest in modern US history, gun reform may actually happen,” he said.
But history tells us it won’t.
Following the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre, which claimed the lives of 26 civilians, the US saw an increase in the production of guns.
You can watch Waleed Aly’s full monologue, here.
Rather than identifying guns as the culprit, it would seem many Americans understand them to be the solution.
“And it’s too easy to mourn the victims, and choose to do nothing to protect them. More than 11,660 people have been killed by guns in the US this year,” Aly said.
Las Vegas was the 273rd shooting in the US in 2017- that’s more shootings than there have been days.
“It’s too easy to make this about one person; too easy to celebrate the brave community response, but not decry that there’s no brave political one.”
Aly ended his monologue with the four haunting words we all know to be true:
“This will happen again.”
Top Comments
Has anyone noticed that Susie, James B, Annette and The Wounded Bull always comment the same things on the same posts and never do you just see one of them comment. Do these right wingers follow each other around the same comment threads on this left wing site and just support each other? It’s starting to seem a bit fake.
Same could be said of all the left wingers.
Parroting the same message.
Well you're way off the mark there, but thanks anyway; I take it as a compliment to be mentioned in the same paragraph as The Wounded Bull and james b. 😉
It is probably a plot by a group of 'deplorables' to upset the sensitivites of the left wing, who according to recent studies, are far more intelligent that those pesky conservative aka right wingers.
It’s probably the Russians.
Waleed's grandstanding has more to do with him wanting to feel like some demigod rockstar to all of this gloating young lefty disciples than has to do with anything of substance.
Replace 'Waleed' with 'Trump' and 'lefty' with 'righty' and then I reckon we're on to something.