Citation

Shultz JM, Thoresen S, Galea S. J. Am. Med. Assoc. JAMA 2017; 318(18): 1753-1754.

Affiliation

School of Public Health, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, American Medical Association)

DOI

10.1001/jama.2017.16420

PMID

29052716

Abstract

n the evening of October 1, 2017, at the close of the 3-day Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, a shooter, who had transported an arsenal of 23 firearms to his 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel overlooking the venue, smashed out 2 windows and repeatedly raked the concertgoers below with indiscriminate bursts of semiautomatic weapons fire. The death toll from this rampage shooting climbed to 59 gunshot fatalities (58 gunshot victims and 1 shooter suicide), the highest single-shooter incident in US history and second only to the 2011 shooting massacre that resulted in 69 deaths in Utøya Island, Norway.

Mass shootings draw widespread media attention. The Las Vegas shooting has been followed, as are most such events, by survivor interviews and video clips, commentators discussing the political challenges of gun legislation in the country, and the range of potential actions that could be taken to mitigate the human cost of firearms in the United States.1 Yet beyond the focus on fatalities, the Las Vegas event also highlights several issues that mandate attention in public and academic conversations around this issue. We summarize them here...

Language: en