THIS is pure evil and the prayers of politicians who allow this kind gun violence to happen are repulsive and hypocritical. Hey America, keep electing politicians who feel it is more important to represent the interest of the nra than protect the people and it will not be long before someone seeks to murder more than will die from this attack. From PCCC, NPR and the Washington Post.....
Prayers are not enough. We need ACTION
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Today, the NRA wants us to be silent. The Las Vegas shooter used weapons of war to fire high-capacity round after round into the crowd.
But the NRA wants to shame anyone who calls for new gun laws -- calling that "politicizing a tragedy." They want to scare you and political leaders whose inclination is to do the right thing.
It's easy to feel powerless during this horrifying moment. But one thing we can do to have impact right now is reward those brave political leaders who go beyond kind thoughts and prayers -- and who demand action on guns.
Please forward this email to others, and post the linked page to social media.
Some early brave souls today include Senator Elizabeth Warren, Paul Ryan's opponent Randy Bryce, Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chair Mark Pocan, Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, and New Jersey legislative candidate Lacey Rzeszowski. A bunch more are here, and we'll be adding to this page all day.
(If you see bold leaders calling for action on Twitter, please let us know! Tweet it to us: @BoldProgressive.)
You have power today. You can do fight the NRA's scare tactics by incentivizing political leaders to do the right thing in tragic moments like this. Thank you.
-- Adam Green, PCCC co-founder
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Las Vegas Shooting Update: At Least 58 People Are Dead After Gunman Attacks Concert
Updated at 12:25 p.m. ET
A gunman holed up in a hotel room high above the Las Vegas Strip fired down upon thousands of people attending a music festival Sunday night, in a brutal attack blamed for at least 58 deaths, police say. In the mass shooting and panic that ensued, some 515 people were injured.
At least one of the dead is an off-duty police officer who was attending the concert. The suspect is also dead. Police say they're still trying to learn what could have motivated such an attack.
The sound of gunfire at the Route 91 Harvest festival concert was reported around 10:08 p.m. local time Sunday, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said at a news briefing. He identified the shooter as Stephen Paddock — a 64-year-old white male who is a resident of Nevada — and said the suspect was acting as a "lone wolf."
Responding to reports by the ISIS-associated news agency Amaq that the terrorist group had claimed responsibility for the attack — and that Paddock had converted to Islam — FBI Las Vegas Special Agent in Charge Aaron Rouse said on Monday that the agency has "determined, to this point, no connection with an international terrorist group."
Paddock fired down at the crowd of more than 22,000 people from his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, according to the Las Vegas police department. A SWAT team used an explosive to breach the room, Lombardo said, and when police entered, they "found the suspect dead." Police say they believe Paddock killed himself.
Lombardo said "in excess of 10 rifles" were found in the room; he did not identify the guns other than to call them rifles. He later added that information suggests the suspect had been in the hotel room since Thursday.
The violence is now being called the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, and the tragic death toll seems likely to rise. Forty-nine victims were killed in the June 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.
In an update delivered just before 9 a.m. local time, Lombardo said police at the Las Vegas Village concert venue across the street from the Mandalay Bay hotel face a "long process of body recovery out there, and evidence recovery and evidence documentation."
Sheriff Lombardo shared the number of a missing persons hotline that people can call to check on their loved ones: 1-866-535-5654.
Local officials also asked people to donate blood through United Blood Services — and a massive response followed, with long lines prompting the service to deploy mobile donation vehicles and open more facilities to the public. Others showed up to offer water and snacks to people waiting in line, local Fox 5 News reports.
"What we ask for is blood," Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman said, recalling the offers of help that have followed the assault on residents and visitors to the tourist hub. "Please donate blood."
Goodman called the gunman "a crazed lunatic" who carried out an "outrageous" attack that runs counter to her city's values.
Images and video from the Las Vegas Strip are harrowing. They show masses of people screaming and trying to seek safety as torrents of gunshots echo through the concert area. Witnesses said that at first they thought the gunshots were fireworks. After the danger became clear, several said, they were still unsure where to run — because they couldn't see where the bullets were coming from.
Two on-duty police officers were injured during the shooting, the department says, adding, "One is in stable condition after surgery and the other sustained minor injuries."
"Obviously this is a tragic incident, and one that we've never experienced in this valley," Lombardo said. The goal now, he said, was to "get our first responders back on their feet" and conduct a full investigation.
President Trump said via a tweet, "My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you!"
LAS VEGAS — A gunman in a high-rise hotel overlooking the Las Vegas Strip opened fire on a country music festival late Sunday, killing at least 58 people and injuring hundreds of others in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
The gunman, identified by police as Stephen Paddock, was later found dead by officers on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said during a news briefing Monday.
The massacre marked the nation’s latest outbreak of gunfire and bloodshed to erupt in a public place, again spreading terror in an American city transformed into a war zone. The carnage in Las Vegas surpassed the 49 people slain in June 2016 when a gunman in Orlando, who later said he was inspired by the Islamic State, opened fire inside a crowded nightclub.
Lombardo said investigators could not immediately identify a motive, leaving no clear answer as to why a gunman killed at least 58 people and possibly more. He also said an additional 515 people were injured, though he did not specify how many were wounded by gunfire or injured in the chaos that followed.
Paddock, 64, was found dead in his hotel room by Las Vegas SWAT officers, police said. They believe Paddock, who had checked in on Thursday and brought a cache of guns into the room, took his own life.
Under the neon glow and glitz of the Vegas Strip, thousands of concertgoers who had gathered for a three-day music festival dove for cover or raced toward shelter when the gunfire began at about 10 p.m. Sunday. Police said more than 22,000 people were at the concert when Paddock began firing round after round, shooting from an elevated position that left those on the ground effectively helpless. The typical advice for reacting to an active shooter — “run, hide or fight” — was rendered moot, as many in the packed crowd could not easily run or hide, nor were they able to fight back at someone firing from so far away.
Police described Paddock as a “lone wolf” attacker. Lombardo did not give further details on Paddock’s background and possible motivation, saying that police “have no idea what his belief system was.”
“I can’t get into the mind of a psychopath,” Lombardo said during a later briefing Monday. He also said that given the belief that Paddock was a lone attacker, “I don’t know how this could have been prevented.”
[Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock enjoyed gambling, country music, lived quiet life before massacre]
Police said Paddock smashed his room’s window — which would appear to those below to be gold — with something similar to a hammer before he began to fire, pumping off rounds that were audible in rooms floors away. Paddock was found with more than 10 rifles, Lombardo said, and he brought them all inside himself.
One official familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be identified discussing it, said the scene inside the hotel room suggested Paddock had spent a lot of time meticulously planning the attack – particularly for someone with no known background in weaponry.
The official pointed to a number of factors suggesting the foresight and deliberation that went into the attack – bringing a large quantity of weapons and ammunition, a tool to knock out the hotel room window before firing and keeping all of that equipment out of sight of hotel staff until he was ready to carry out the attack.
Relatives of Paddock’s said they were stunned by what happened. Paddock had retired and lived in Mesquite, Tex., for several years before moving to the Nevada town with the same name. Relatives described him as a quiet man, a licensed pilot who liked to gamble. His brother, Eric, said their mother spoke to the FBI.
“She said, ‘I don’t understand why my son did this,'” Eric Paddock said Monday morning outside his home in Orlando. While his brother had some handguns, Eric Paddock but was shocked by the weaponry police described in Las Vegas.
Eric Paddock said he did not know of his brother having any mental illness, alcohol or drug problems. When he spoke to the FBI, Eric Paddock said he showed FBI agents three years of text messages from his brother, including one that mentioning winning $250,000 at a casino. Stephen Paddock played “high stakes video poker,” Eric said, adding that he did not have any information suggesting the 64-year-old gunman had gambling debts or financial issues.
Their father, Benjamin, was one of the FBI’s most-wanted fugitives decades ago, a convicted bank robber described in one wanted poster as “psychopathic” with suicidal tendencies. Eric Paddock told reporters that Benjamin, their father, was not around much during their childhood.
A former neighbor of Stephen Paddock’s recalled that his home in a 55-and-over community in Florida looked like it was home to college freshman, with nothing on the walls and only a few pieces of furniture.
“One of the first times we met him, he told me he lived there, in Vegas,” Don Judy, his next-door neighbor in the community until two years ago, recalled. “He explained that he was a gambler, and a prospector. He said he was buying this house to check it out for his mother … and that if she liked it, he planned to buy another next door with a floor-plan like ours.”
Just as quickly as he appeared, Judy said, Paddock put up a for-sale sign and was gone, saying that he was moving back to Las Vegas.
As Las Vegas police investigated the horror that had unfolded on the Strip, they also faced a tragedy within their own ranks. The dead included an off-duty city police officer, the department said Monday morning. Two other officers who were on duty were injured, police said; one was in stable condition after surgery, and the other sustained minor injuries.
“It’s a devastating time,” Lombardo said at one of the news briefings he held.
In the initial chaotic aftermath of the shooting, authorities sought a woman named Marilou Danley, described only as Paddock’s “traveling companion.” Lombardo said during a briefing that investigators spoke with Danley, who was found outside the country, and do not believe she was involved in the shooting, though she remained a person of interest.
Her relationship with Stephen Paddock was not immediately known, but they lived at the same address in Mesquite, Nev., according to public records. Lombardo said police in Mesquite searched Paddock’s home on Monday.
Police in Las Vegas had only minimal interactions with Paddock before the shooting, Lombardo said.
“We have no investigative information or background associated with this individual that is derogatory,” the sheriff said. “The only thing we can tell is he received a citation several years ago; that citation was handled as a matter of normal practice in the court system.”
A spokesman for defense giant Lockheed Martin said in a statement that Paddock worked for the company for three years in the 1980s.
“Stephen Paddock worked for a predecessor company of Lockheed Martin from 1985 until 1988,” the statement said. “We’re cooperating with authorities to answer questions they may have about Mr. Paddock and his time with the company.”
On Monday President Trump praised the “miraculous” speed with which local law enforcement responded to the shooting, which he decried as an unfathomable attack on innocents gathered for a concert.
“It was an act of pure evil,” Trump said during remarks from the White House. “We cannot fathom their pain, we cannot imagine their loss.”
Trump ordered flags flown at half-staff and said he would visit Las Vegas on Wednesday.
Federal homeland security officials said there were no specific, credible threats to other public venues around the country, while federal agents headed to Las Vegas to support the local police leading the investigation.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it dispatched agents and began “conducting urgent traces on firearms” recovered after the shooting. FBI criminal investigators — rather than those in the bureau’s National Security Branch — are also helping local police in the case, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack on Monday in multiple messages through its Amaq News Agency. In the messages, the group said the shooter was one of its “soldiers” and had recently converted to Islam, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist groups.
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, often claims responsibility after such attacks, even in cases where it is unclear whether the group motivated them or was involved. Law enforcement officials on Monday disputed the claims from ISIS.
“We have determined, to this point, no connection with an international terrorist group,” Aaron Rouse, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Las Vegas, said at a news briefing.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he met with FBI Director Christopher A. Wray on Monday morning and spoke with Lombardo, expressing him gratitude and offering federal support.
“The investigation into the horrific shooting last night in Las Vegas is ongoing,” Sessions said. “To the many families whose lives have been changed forever by this heinous act, we offer you our prayers and our promise that we will do everything in our power to get justice for your loved ones.”
After the shooting, scores of people gathered to donate blood to those in need in Las Vegas:
The line kept getting longer, and people continued to wait to donate at united blood services. #RJnow #vegasshooting
The shooting occurred at the end of the Route 91 Harvest festival, a three-day country music concert held over the weekend. The concert grounds are adjacent to the Mandalay Bay, a sprawling casino on the southern end of the Strip.
The shots began as Jason Aldean, one of the final performers, was playing. Aldean posted an Instagram message that he and his crew were safe. The scene, he wrote, was “beyond horrific.”
Videos posted from people who said they were at the scene showed people screaming and running for cover amid the sound of gunshots that seemed unending. “We thought it was fireworks at first or trouble with the speakers,” said Kayla Ritchie, 21, of Simi Valley, Calif. “They had been having technical difficulty all weekend. Then everything went dark.”
Ritchie traveled with Megan Greene, 19, for the concert, and the two were separated when people began fleeing. They found each other hours later. “Everyone started running for the exit,” said Greene, who hid behind a truck before running into the MGM Grand. “We were in the street, and they told us to get down, get down.”
Taylor Benge, 21, was at the concert Sunday night and said he heard a round of pops that lasted for 10 seconds, as if someone was holding down the trigger. When a performer ran off the stage and the lights came on, Benge said, he realized that “about five feet to the left of me there was a man with a bullet wound to his chin.”
“He was just lifeless on the ground,” Benge said.
At least some people were injured in the frenzied effort to flee the gunfire. Tracy, 55, a California woman who declined to give her last name, said she was “trampled” trying to flee.
“We thought it was fireworks,” she said, a dazed look on her face and a bandage on her injured knee and shin. “We ran for our lives. We went into Hooters and hid in the bathroom. We felt like sitting ducks there. We went to the second-floor conference room and stayed there.”
A friend came with a mini bus, so Tracy and another friend ran out to the vehicle, terrified to go out on the street again. “Who thinks people would do something like this in America?” Tracy said.
Corianne Langdon, 58, a cabdriver in Las Vegas for the last 6 ½ years, said she was about seven cars back in the taxi line at Mandalay Bay when the gunfire began and began to drive away, seeing police crouching in the street and hundreds of people running away from the concert — some jumping the fence on the side of the venue.
“I had people hanging out of my windows,” Langdon said. “They were screaming, they were so upset, and it just wasn’t getting to me yet the severity of what was going on.”
Those injured in the shooting also included an off-duty officer with the Bakersfield Police Department in Southern California, who was taken to a hospital for nonlife-threatening injuries, according to a news statement. Several of the department’s officers were off duty and attending the concert when the gunfire erupted.
The shooting came as security measures at many music venues have been boosted in recent years after concerts were targeted in terrorist attacks. In May in northern England, a bomb exploded at a concert by American singer Ariana Grande in Manchester, killing 22 people; in November 2015, Islamist attackers opened fire at a rock concert in Paris as part of coordinated attacks that left 130 dead. In both of those cases, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks.
In Manila in June, a 42-year-old Filipino gunman armed with a rifle and a bottle of gasoline burst into a casino and set a fire, killing 37 people. Police said the attack was motivated by gambling debts and other personal problems facing the gunman, who fatally shot himself. The Islamic State also claimed responsibility for that attack, but officials repeatedly denied it was terrorism-related.
Berman reported from Washington. Travis M. Andrews, Brian Murphy, Wesley Lowery, Devlin Barrett, Matt Zapotosky, Julie Tate and Aaron C. Davis in Washington; Barbara Liston in Orlando; and Dan Michalski in Las Vegas contributed to this report, which will be updated throughout the day.
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