Wrong to label Las Vegas shooting as terror, says White House

Press Secretary says investigations need to be completed; shooting triggers debate on gun control

A candlelight vigil is pictured on the Las Vegas strip following a mass shooing at the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 2, 2017.

As U.S. investigators struggled to figure out a motive behind Sunday’s mass shooting and debate raged over whether it met the definition of terrorism, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said it could not be characterised as an act of terrorism until investigations are complete. As candidate, Donald Trump had been quick to denounce “radical Islamic terrorism” after two incidents of mass shootings. When asked about this on Monday, Ms. Sanders said: “There’s a difference between being a candidate and being the President.”

Eric Paddock, the brother of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock, was distraught and expressed disbelief. “If you told me an asteroid fell into Earth, it would mean the same to me. There’s absolutely no sense, no reason he did this,” he said in an interview to

The Washington Post . “There’s no political affiliation that we know of. There’s no religious affiliation that we know of.”

Paddock had earlier worked for defence company Lockheed Martin. None of the details of his emerging portrait — that he owned two planes, gambled big, travelled around the country and lived a lavish life, staying frequently in luxury resorts — provide helpful clues about his motive.

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Background checks

The shooting has also triggered another round of predictable debate on gun control in the U.S., but there is no agreement in sight. Paddock bought all his guns, dozens of them, legally, passing all background checks and raising no alarm at any point, as American laws allow it. The laws are different in each State. It is legal in Nevada to buy semi-automatic guns and a person can even possess a fully automatic gun if it was one manufactured before 1986. Two gun shops that sold weapons to Paddock have said that they acted within the limits of the law. One of them, Guns & Guitars, in his home-town Mesquite, said: “All necessary background checks and procedures were followed, as required by local, State, and federal law. He never gave any indication or reason to believe he was unstable or unfit at any time.” Add-on accessories that could easily upgrade a semi-automatic weapon to function like a fully automatic weapon are also legally available.

Asked about a pending legislation on gun silencers, Mr.Trump said on Tuesday, “We’ll talk about that later.” The legislation proposes easier access to gun silencers, which its opponents say will make gun violence deadlier. “The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots,” Hillary Clinton wrote on Twitter. “Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA (National Rifle Association) wants to make easier to get.”

In the U.S., there are 88 guns for every 100 people and 30,000 people are killed in gun violence every year — i.e 82 death every day. Most of them are suicides, but mass shootings occur at regular intervals. Incidents of mass shootings are often used by the gun lobby to press more sales, advocating that to prevent violence by “bad guys”, “good guys” must possess weapons. This notion of “good guys with guns” propagated by the NRA was widely referred to by Mr. Trump during his election campaign last year.

Meanwhile, Indian-American lawmakers have called for stricter gun control in the wake of the tragedy.“That is not what our founders intended by the ‘right to bear arms’" Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal said. Raja Krishnamoorthi, from Illinois and Ro Khanna from California also condemned the incident. “We must end this senseless violence,” said Mr. Khanna.