Without objective principles, there is no answer to ‘What happened?’

With the whole country and indeed the whole world looking aghast at Las Vegas, where 58 people were killed and some 500 wounded, what do we want to know about these happenings?

The first question is this: Did anything exactly “happen” in the sense of an objective wrong? We might ask the same question of Puerto Rico: Did anything objectively wrong “happen” there? Obviously, people were killed in both places, some by a storm, some by bullets. The first distinction to be made is this: Who or what was responsible for the deaths in Puerto Rico? These deaths had no human cause; we cannot put a hurricane on trial for murder.

{mosads}We know the name of the man who shot up the crowd below the Mandalay Bay hotel. But was he what we conventionally think of as “responsible?” We know he was the effecting cause. He did the shooting. He planned it, carried it out, and seems to have wanted to escape after it was over. But was he “guilty” of anything? If he was a certified madman on the loose, he would not have been legally or morally responsible. We can only blame and punish someone who, with deliberate calculation, did the killings.

If the man was “guilty,” it means that he was sane, aware of the wrong he was about to commit, had a motive, planned it, and carried it out. In the end, when trapped, he shot himself. Did he do something “wrong” in shooting himself, under the circumstances? Did he do something he understood to be wrong in shooting the people below in the first place? We must be careful about how we answer these questions. Thus far, we do not know the man’s philosophy, which is the first thing one needs to know when appraising what happened.

Our Supreme Court has said that we have a right to our own concept of the universe. We should be free to carry out our freedom as we see fit. Often it is added that we are free to do whatever we want unless it harms others.

But what if a man’s philosophy sees no reason why he must follow that restriction? Who says he had to follow it? If his “philosophy” tells him that he can kill whomever he wants, why is he not free to do so? Still, something seems very wrong with a philosophy that finds no order in the world other than that of one’s own making.

Once it was said that God or reason affirmed that killing was wrong. Even so, some believers still killed. Such a thing as eternal punishment was said by Plato and most religions to be the fate of someone who deliberately executed such a deed.

The man in Las Vegas saw fit to sum up his life in this final blazing act. In doing so, he claimed the “right” to shoot innocent people whom he did not know. He will not, of course, be punished by the civil law of Nevada. He shot himself — end of the case. And if there is no God or final punishment, then he had no reason to worry about any further consequences to his act. It just happened. Nothing further is to be said except the wringing of hands at our civic failure to prevent such an atrocity.

Initially, ISIS claimed that the man converted to Islam a couple of months previously and thus took responsibility for something that was, in its view, a good thing.

But we have no signs of “Allah be praised!” in this shooting. If it was an ISIS inspired killing, the man would at least have had a theory that justified his act. To ISIS, all infidels are enemies; killing them is a virtue. Dying in the process makes us martyrs and takes us to Paradise.

About the same time, two women were stabbed to death in the Marseille train station by an ISIS killer shouting those words. French police shot him. We have no trouble in understanding what happened in the French case, even if we think the argument justifying the action to be incoherent, which it is.

But unless otherwise proved, the Las Vegas killings were of a different sort. Were guns responsible, as many are dying to believe? Guns do not cause killings. People with reasons and passions do. The man seems to also have contemplated using a homemade bomb of some sort.

Guns also prevent killings. We wonder why the cops were not around before this man did the damage. But, of course, who knew what he was up to? He managed to transport a considerable supply of arms up to the 32nd floor of the hotel. Does this mean that from now on we will have to have the same security at hotels, concerts, and ball games as we do when entering airports?

What is the lesson of Las Vegas? Probably the main lesson when these horrid events happen is that we should first check our philosophy to see if our view of the world might have had anything to do with it. Because if we cannot hold anyone responsible for anything, if nothing we do is really “wrong,” we best just relax and enjoy the other wonders of Las Vegas.

The Rev. James Schall, S.J., author of “A Line Through the Human Heart: On Sinning & Being Forgiven,” is professor emeritus at Georgetown University. His latest book is “The Satisfied Crocodile: Essays on G. K. Chesterton.”