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Why so many mass killings? Families, experts seek answers

FILE - In this Sept. 25, 2018, photo, people look at a display of wooden crosses and a Star of David on display at the Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history on the Las Vegas Strip in 2017. More than 100 people have been killed in mass shootings thus far in 2023, an average of one mass killing a week. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)
FILE - In this Sept. 25, 2018, photo, people look at a display of wooden crosses and a Star of David on display at the Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history on the Las Vegas Strip in 2017. More than 100 people have been killed in mass shootings thus far in 2023, an average of one mass killing a week. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

By STEFANIE DAZIO and LARRY FENN / Associated Press 6 min read

More than five years after his son was gunned down in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, Richard Berger still asks why.

Why Stephen Berger was killed the day after celebrating his 44th birthday. Why the gunman rained bullets over the Las Vegas Strip in 2017, turning a country music festival into a bloodbath. Why the massacre’s death toll didn’t shock U.S. leaders into doing more to prevent that kind of violence from happening again and again.

Why?

“It’s just a hole in our hearts,” Berger said. “We just don’t know, and we just don’t know what to say.”

For the Bergers, the families of the other 59 victims in Vegas — and relatives and friends of countless others slain in mass killings across the country in the years since — the questions loom just as large now as when the crimes happened. Yet the carnage continues.