The gun: an American icon

Fear of enemies, real or imagined, fills many in the US with a compulsive desire to arm themselves

All week every news bulletin featuring the Las Vegas mass murder has ended with the same question: why? Apparently, half the Nevada police force are still involved in a forensic and psychological analysis of killer Stephen Paddock’s motives.

I’m not sure quite what essential difference Paddock’s motives are supposed to make to what he did. Is it that different motives might somehow cast a different light on the slaughter of 59 people and ...