Eric Church blames NRA and gun lobbyists for Las Vegas mass shooting
Eric Church was one of the headliners at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas on the night of Sunday, October 1, 2017, the scene of the massacre known as the deadliest mass shooting by an individual in modern US history. After the incident, Church paid tribute to the 58 people who lost their lives on that fateful day with a heart-wrenching song called 'Why Not Me' and a heartfelt speech during a performance at the Grand Ole Opry. Fellow country singer Jason Aldean was performing when a gunman, Stephen Paddock, fired at concertgoers from the windows of his 32nd-floor room in Mandalay Bay resort.
Now, nine months after the shooting, in a recent in-depth interview with Rolling Stone, the country music star reflects on the tragedy, calling out the National Rifle Association (NRA) in particular for being a "roadblock" in gun control reform.
"There are some things we can’t stop,” Church says during the interview. “Like the disgruntled kid who takes his dad’s shotgun and walks into a high school. But we could have stopped the guy in Vegas.” He adds, “I blame the lobbyists. And the biggest in the gun world is the NRA.”
While he maintains that he still considers himself a “Second Amendment guy,” Church said that the Vegas shooting changed his feelings about guns "a little," expressing sheer disbelief at the amount of ammunition the shooter possessed at the time.
"As a gun guy, the number of rounds fired was un-f**king-believable to me. I saw a video on YouTube from the police officer’s vest cam, and it sounded like an army was up there. I don’t think our forefathers ever thought the right to bear arms was that."