MGM Resorts International just agreed to a $800 million settlement with victims of the October 2017 mass shooting at its Mandalay Bay resort in Las Vegas. Stephen Paddock killed an unimaginable 58 people one block away at street level in a crowd of 22,000 enjoying an evening of country music.
Lawyers claimed the hotel was negligent in permitting the shooter to bring in twenty bags of luggage containing weapons and ammunition to a pair of rooms on the 32nd floor.
The hotel may very well have been negligent to a degree — though it could be argued that high rollers, entertainers and their retinue often roll into town with plenty of luggage.
But — in choosing a casino with deep pockets to pay off the victims — those who might have prevented the carnage (besides the shooter) once again eluded responsibility:
- the National Rifle Association, which fights gun control tooth and nail;
- Nevada Attorney General Adam Paul Laxalt, a friend of the NRA, who nixed state gun control legislation
- the Nevada legislature, which has created the most lax gun registration laws in the nation
- and, finally, the people of the benighted state of Nevada:
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