Las Vegas shooting

On the night of October 1, a seemingly harmless 64 year old with no criminal history and no apparent affiliation with a terrorist organization opened fire on a crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas. In total he shot and killed 59 people and injured over 500 more, qualifying the massacre as the deadliest mass shooting in American history.

The shooter, Stephen Paddock, shot at his victims with a machine gun similar to an AK-47 from the balcony of his hotel room on the 32nd floor of Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino. Just over an hour after the last shot was fired, Paddock was found dead in his hotel room from a self-inflicted gunshot. With him in his hotel room was an assortment of firearms, including 19 rifles.

Athena Castilla, a concertgoer present during the shooting, explained how it felt to be in the concert venue during the gunfire.

“It just felt like a rain of bullets, the scariest thing you could ever imagine,” Castilla told CNN. ”Not having any cover or anything to protect you. You’re just praying you’re going to make it out, praying not to get shot.”

According to massshootingtracker.org, this mass shooting marks the 337th in the U.S. in 2017 alone. Since October 1, 33 more mass shootings have occurred. This totals at 370 mass shootings so far in 2017.