Cooper: What gun measures can, can't do

Las Vegas bookmakers, were they not likely shocked at the act themselves, wouldn't have given odds on how quickly Democrats attempted to politicize Sunday night's horrific mass shooting that killed 59 and wounded more than 525 in Las Vegas.

It was that quick. Former President Barack Obama used to do it himself, but in his stead it was left to former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and far-left senators Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., among others.

The politicization - before a motive for the largest mass shooting in United States history was established, before the news was corrected that the shooter killed himself rather than was killed by police, before the man's political history had been plumbed, before it was determined how he acquired his guns - was that Congress should immediately pass gun control legislation.

Which specific gun control bill would have stopped the Las Vegas shooter? No Democrat is saying, but that's irrelevant to gun control pushers. Something, they maintain, must be done.

We're no gun fans, but we don't see how the possibility of such a tragedy is eliminated - even with the passage of every gun control bill that ever was conceived in the mind of a liberal - until every U.S. home, car, person and hiding place is invaded, searched and every gun confiscated.

Can such bills stop the future sale of some guns? Yes, but no bill yet proposed has a way of removing guns from those who are determined to have them. A demented shooter who would break out a 32nd-story hotel window above the Las Vegas strip and fire into a crowd of 40,000 country music fans is not going stop because a hotel has a sign proclaiming it a no-gun zone, because he can't get his weapons through the mail or because he doesn't have an open-carry permit.

The Las Vegas shooting was carried out by a man who, as of midday Monday, was described as "just a guy," who had no history of mental illness, who only had a minor traffic violation on his record and who retired to Nevada because he like to gamble.

Before the fact, he would have been difficult to profile, to target as a potential mass shooter.

Gun measures are certainly worth having conversations about - in Congress and out - but it should be understood what they can and can't do.