In Las Vegas, We Take Care of People

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/opinion/in-las-vegas-we-take-care-of-people.html

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LAS VEGAS — Las Vegas is the entertainment capital of the world for many reasons. Those of us who work on the Strip have perfected the art of hospitality. We strive to make all of our guests feel like family.

We welcome everyone, and we are not easily shocked.

But Monday morning, residents, tourists, emergency medical workers, politicians and local reporters were in collective disbelief that our city had become the location of the most recent mass shooting in America.

Hours before the shots rang out, I’d finished a long day of work at my casino job, exhausted and eager to get to my home, which is just two miles from where the shooting took place. Throughout the day on Sunday, I’d served guests poolside. Many of them were looking forward to the country music concert being held near the Mandalay Bay Resort hotel. All of them were happy and carefree.

The feeling didn’t last. A gunman perched on the 32nd floor of the hotel fired into a crowd of 22,000 people gathered at the concert, the Route 91 Harvest Festival, killing more 50 and wounding hundreds. The venue was wedged between the Strip traffic clotting Las Vegas Boulevard and McCarran International Airport. It is an area of already limited access, in the heart of the city.

This could have happened from the window of any of the properties on the Strip. I’ve worked at many of them, and I know this: All of us who keep the casinos, bars, pools and hotels running deeply care about our visitors. We call them by name. We ask where they’re from, about their families, about their jobs. In our own small way, we take care of them. We sincerely want them to enjoy their time here and to feel joy, and we want them to be safe.

We have an excellent history of keeping our visitors secure. But there is only so much that care and hospitality can do. In the coming days, the city and the casino industry are likely to have many conversations about how this shooting could have been prevented.

At a briefing on Monday, Gov. Brian Sandoval offered his condolences to the victims and their families. He expressed his pride in Las Vegas law enforcement and emergency medical workers. “There is a lot to learn from all of this,” he said. “It was a cowardly, despicable act that I’m very angry about. There’s not much we can do, but we can learn.”

Whether there is much that can be done, policy-wise, is a conversation some will vehemently resist having and others will aggressively push for in the following days. The fact that the gunman has been identified as a Nevada resident is likely to make state gun regulations, or lack thereof, a topic of conversation. Despite the inevitable disagreements, I hope my city chooses to have this debate.

Those of us who live here know Nevada is an open-carry state with a Wild West past of loose gun laws and regulations. It’s where a Las Vegas city councilwoman’s Christmas card featured a picture of her family members, including a child, fully armed, and where a tourist can visit one of many machine-gun ranges and try out a semiautomatic weapon of the kind the killer may have used.

As per usual, state and federal politicians are sending their thoughts and prayers. Although heartfelt, they provide very little comfort or practical use if they aren’t followed by action.

Ordinary people have acted in heroic ways, like loading the wounded onto truck beds and trying to get friends and strangers to hospitals. Las Vegas’s two major trauma centers were at full capacity Monday treating the wounded. Workers at hotels that were under lockdown tried to calm startled guests and employees. In the hours after the shooting, people desperate to offer help lined up to donate blood.

As I write this, my co-workers and others are returning to work. The Strip is filling back up with tourists seeking a sense of safety along with the escape they came here in search of. In the ways we do every day, and in the heroic ways this terrible occasion calls for, I see those who live and work in Las Vegas taking care of people. It’s what we do best.