While the national conversation returns to gun control once again after yet another mass shooting, Josh Abbott Band guitarist Caleb Keeter now approaches the debate with a fresh perspective, having witnessed the horrific event that took place in Las Vegas last night. Josh Abbott Band had performed Sunday afternoon at Vegas’s Route 91 Harvest Festival, prior to the Sunday-night shooting that left 59 people dead and 500 injured. Keeter took to Twitter on Monday to offer his reflections on the gun-control debate, having experienced the havoc firearms can wreak. “I’ve been a proponent of the 2nd amendment my entire life. Until the events of last night,” the musician wrote. “I cannot express how wrong I was.”
Keeter further explained, “We actually have members of our crew with CHL licenses, and legal firearms on the bus. They were useless. We couldn’t touch them for fear police might think that we were part of the massacre and shoot us. A small group (or one man) laid waste to a city with dedicated, fearless police officers desperately trying to help, because of access to an insane amount of fire power.” He described fearing for his life, an experience that, in his mind, brought home the reality of gun control in a way he had failed to grasp before. “These rounds were powerful enough that my crew guys just standing in a close proximity of a victim shot by this fucking coward received shrapnel wounds,” he said. “We need gun control RIGHT. NOW.” When a follower lamented that stopping gun violence only became a worthwhile goal after the violence has occurred, Keeter replied, “You are all absolutely correct. I saw this happening for years and did nothing. But I’d like to do what I can now.”
