Watching the news from Las Vegas this morning brings me back to Orlando in 2016. For some, it will bring them to Aurora. Or Newtown. Or Columbine. Sadly, there’s so many mass casualty events in recent American history that virtually anybody can think of a community near them that became a part of a headline. I remember gathering stories from survivors and family members, tales that will touch me the rest of my days from people who had their course of life changed for ever by the devious act of a single man.
But I also find myself pondering words said to me in a Port St. Lucie bar days after the Orlando attack. A year and half ago, I was in town asking about the Orlando shooter, a man named Omar Mateen, known for a moment for the deadliest shooting in US history. Those in his home town were not interested in marking Mateen’s name down in history. “Now he’s got the record, but someday someone else will have it,” said Daniel Mundis. “Nobody will remember this as his shooting. It will be the Pulse shooting.”
Now the mass shooting record belongs to Stephen Paddock, another otherwise insignificant man whose last act on earth would change a community forever. His action last night go into the books as the deadliest mass shooting ever, but sadly, it won’t remain that way forever. Whatever cold comfort this provides to Orlando, people will no longer reference Omar as the man behind the deadliest shooter ever. Someday Paddock will lose that title as well. Infamy is not everlasting.
All that said, there’s a reason we learn these names for a time, and why so much attention goes to understanding the motivations behind such a shooting. Why did this man apparently plot out this attack at a concert? How could he get this type of weaponry both into the city and inside of this hotel? Why did he elect to shoot at this group of people? And lest the question get brushed off too easily, how did he obtain a weapon capable of this sort of havoc in the first place?
That’s a lot of questions that won’t be answered as easy as they get asked. It will take a long time to unravel the events of the day with deserved thoroughness. And as Orlando can tell you, it will take an even longer time for the community of Las Vegas to heal.
We need to know what happened in the life of Stephen Paddock right now. And this tragedy will never be forgotten. But history will not elevate this madman’s reputation. It cannot.