Sixty-four-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on a country music festival in Las Vegas Sunday night, murdering at least 59 people and wounding over 527 others before reportedly killing himself.
Widely recognized as the worst mass shooting in United States history, the tragic events have elicited many reactions, some heartfelt and others inflammatory.
Here are five reactions to the mass shooting in Las Vegas. They include statements from leading politicians, a prominent social commentator, and a now-fired CBS executive.
(1) President Donald Trump released an official statement on Monday morning, calling the shooting “an act of pure evil” and saying that the country is “joined together today in sadness, shock, and grief.” “In moments of tragedy and horror, America comes together as one — and it always has. We call upon the bonds that unite us — our faith, our family, and our shared values,” Trump said. “Our unity cannot be shattered by evil. Our bonds cannot be broken by violence. And though we feel such great anger at the senseless murder of our fellow citizens, it is our love that defines us today — and always will, forever.”
(2) Hillary Clinton took to Twitter to denounce both the shooting and the National Rifle Association. “The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots. Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get,” the former first lady wrote in a tweet for which she has been roundly ciritcized for being misinformed about silencers, which don’t actually make weapons “silent” when fired. “Our grief isn’t enough. We can and must put politics aside, stand up to the NRA, and work together to try to stop this from happening again.”
(3)Hayley Geftman-Gold, a former CBS executive and lawyer garnered a firestorm of controversy when she said in a Facebook post that she could not feel sympathy for the victims. Geftman-Gold, who served as vice president and senior counsel of strategic transactions at CBS, said on Facebook: “I’m actually not even sympathetic [because] country music fans often are Republican gun toters. If they wouldn’t do anything when children were murdered I have no hope that Repugs will ever do the right thing,” she added. In response to the outrage, CBS announced that Geftman-Gold was fired, labeling her views “unacceptable to all of us at CBS.”
(4) Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, posted an entry on his website warning about calling the tragedy an act of divine justice. “After a natural disaster or an act of terror, one will always find someone, often claiming the mantle of Christianity, opining about how this moment was God’s judgment on an individual or a city or a nation for some specified sin. Jesus told us specifically not to do this, after his disciples asked whether a man’s blindness was the result of his or his parents’ sin. Jesus said no to both,” wrote Moore. “Those self-appointed prophets who would blame the victims for what befalls them are just that, self-appointed. We should listen to Jesus and to his Apostles, not to them. Those killed in a terror attack or in a tsunami or in an epidemic are not more sinful than all of the rest of us.”
(5) Televangelist Pat Robertson called the shooter’s actions “so horrible” and said that “I am trying to make sense of this” before later commenting that the “violence in the streets” was due to “disrespect for authority. There is profound disrespect of our president all across this nation … there’s disrespect now for our national anthem, disrespect for our veterans, disrespect for the institutions of our government, disrespect for the court system, all the way up and down the line.” Robertson added that “until there is biblical authority, there has to be some controlling authority in our society and there is none.”