How many people have to die before we open our eyes?

Stephen Paddock was a 64-year-old poker player who, while staying Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, fired a gun from his window upon people in attendance of the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas.

58 fatalities. Hundreds wounded.

Last night, America experienced their most fatal shooting for the second time in a year-long period. The Orlando Pulse shooting was deemed deadliest back in 2016, but we managed to outdo ourselves in the sickest way possible, acting like the number of deaths is a record to be broken rather than a toll of actual people who can no longer live their lives.

We lost 58 people to a man with no known motive. Police suspect there was an underlying cause to Paddock’s obscene terror, but he had no allegiance to a terror group or any significant past event that would have drawn him to that festival.

Stephen Paddock lived a life just like you and I. He worked, he had a girlfriend, he had to deal with life’s inconveniences. That’s what adds to the already unsettling nature of this devastation; he was a normal person.

58 fatalities. Hundreds wounded.

This could have been anybody. It just so happened to be Stephen Paddock, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been anyone else. There are people like Stephen out there, disguised as a run-of-the-mill person; capable of immense damage, yet familiar with the ups and downs life holds.

Anybody could have killed 58 innocent people; that’s what thought is constantly echoing in my mind, never ceasing to instill shock within me.

Next year we may receive word of yet another shooting, this one deadliest than the last. Perhaps it will be carried out by another every-day person, shocking us all for a few weeks until we forget what it feels like to be constantly fearful of being killed.

58 fatalities. Hundreds wounded. All by a man you could see in the grocery store next to you.