ABC NewsAfter being in the crowd Sunday night as bullets rained down at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, one country musician is changing his mind about gun control.
“I’ve been a proponent of the 2nd amendment my entire life,” Caleb Keeter, guitarist for the Texas-based Josh Abbott Band posted on social media. “Until the events of last night, I cannot express how wrong I was. We actually have members of our crew with [Concealed Handgun] Licenses, and legal firearms on the bus. They were useless.”
Josh Abbott Band played their 4:05 p.m. set on Sunday afternoon, but were still at the festival as Jason Aldean took the stage at 9:40. Josh himself happened to be on the 20th floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino with his fiancée, while the alleged gunman, Stephen Paddock, opened fire from the hotel’s 32nd floor.
Keeter and his co-workers remained on the ground as the gunfire started. He says he soon realized the band’s own firearms would do them no good.
“We couldn’t touch them for fear police might think we were part of the massacre and shoot us,” he explains. “… One man laid waste to a city with dedicated, fearless police officers desperately trying to help, because of access to an insane amount of fire power. Enough is enough…”
He continues: “These rounds were powerful enough that my crew guys just standing in a close proximity of a victim shot by this f****** coward received shrapnel wounds.”
Keeter concludes his passionate argument by saying, “We need gun control RIGHT. NOW. My biggest regret is that I stubbornly didn’t realize it until my brothers on the road and myself were threatened by it. We are unbelievably fortunate to not be among the number of victims killed or seriously wounded by this maniac.”
At least 58 have died as a result of the violence, and 500 more have been injured, making this the deadliest shooting in modern American history.
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