The ‘pure evil’ of the Las Vegas shooting | Letters

Similarities with a 1966 Texas campus massacre are pointed out by Chris Harris, while others consider the US gun lobby and the second amendment today

I assume your front-page headline quote of President Trump’s verdict on the Las Vegas shooting by Stephen Paddock was intended to be ironic (‘An act of pure evil’: 58 shot dead in Las Vegas massacre, 3 October).

In 1966 Charles Whitman lugged a trunkful of guns and ammunition to the top floor of the University of Texas Tower in Austin and, after killing a receptionist and tourists on the stairs, he began shooting people on the ground below (As campus carry becomes Texas law, memories of UT Tower massacre linger, theguardian.com, 31 July 2016). By the time officers had worked their way up the stairs and shot him dead, he had killed 16 people and wounded more than 30. He left a suicide note saying he had become the victim of irrational thoughts. A postmortem revealed a brain tumour.

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