Americans have been talking a lot in the past two days about the worst of humanity.

Las Vegas has now become identified with the worst mass murder in “modern U.S. history”; I’m not sure how the media are defining “modern,” but the city once known exclusively for its glitz and glamor is now known also for something quite different.

Let it also be known as a city full of heroes. It is full of residents who, when the shots rained down Sunday night on the crowd at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, responded with valor and heroism.

I posted an item on this blog that sought to pay tribute to the first responders who answered the call. They included scores of off-duty police officers and firefighters who reacted the way they were trained to do. I failed in that post to mention the heroism displayed by individuals who formerly were known as “just plain folks.” No longer.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2017/10/stories-of-heroism-emerging-from-las-vegas/

The stories keep coming out of Las Vegas about the acts of those who shielded strangers from automatic rifle fire. Some of those heroes paid with their own lives while protecting the lives of others, whether they were loved ones or those they knew only for a moment or two before all hell broke loose.

We tend to center on the worst of humankind when events like this explode onto our consciousness. The monstrous gunman is dead; he took his own life at the moment police were closing in on him in his hotel room.

His reign of terror, though, managed to produce hundreds of heroes at whom he aimed his weapon.

We should pray for them and thank them for exhibiting the best in humankind while they were responding to the worst.