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A country guitarist who played the Las Vegas music festival where a gunman opened fire and killed at least 59 people is rethinking his position on the right to bear arms.
Caleb Keeter, who plays with the Josh Abbott Band, tweeted a lengthy note saying that he had been a proponent of the 2nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution “until the events of last night.”
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“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 firepower,” Keeter wrote.
“Enough is enough.”
READ MORE: Las Vegas shooting: what we know about gunman Stephen Paddock
Keeter said that he wrote his parents and the love of his life a “goodbye last night and a living will” because he wasn’t certain that he would survive the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest festival, which took place near the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.
The festival also featured artists such as Jason Aldean, Sam Hunt and Eric Church.
Police responded to reports of an active shooter near the hotel just after 10 p.m. PT, as Aldean was performing.
Shots rang out while Aldean was in the middle of a song; video showed the artist stopping and the crowd going quiet before more bullets rained down, sending concertgoers running or dropping to the ground.
Stephen Paddock, a multimillionaire real estate investor, has been identified as the gunman.
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READ MORE: Las Vegas shooting: Canadians among 59 dead, over 500 injured after attack at music festival
Keeter’s band wasn’t performing when the shooting happened, but he said that the rounds from the shooting were “powerful enough that my crew guys just standing in close proximity of a victim shot by this ****** coward received shrapnel wounds.
“We need gun control RIGHT. NOW,” he said.
“My biggest regret is that I stubbornly didn’t realize it until my brothers on the road and myself were threatened by it.”
Keeter also responded to people who criticized him for coming to the realization when he was personally confronted with a shooter.
https://twitter.com/Calebkeeter/status/914941713180917765
Keeter wasn’t the only musician to push for gun control on social media in the wake of the shooting.
Ariana Grande, whose Manchester, U.K. concert earlier this year was the site of a bombing that killed 22 people, tweeted that “we need love, unity, peace, gun control and for people to look at this and call this what it is = terrorism.”
https://twitter.com/ArianaGrande/status/914886991459651589
Lady Gaga also pushed for gun control.
So did singer and actress Ashley Tisdale.
Singer-songwriter Michelle Branch also chimed in.
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