I have shied away from posting anything on what happened in Las Vegas, Nevada, because of several reasons. For one, as soon as it happened it turned into a political debate. Also, I have so many questions about what happened and how it happened. Lastly, I am shocked and heartbroken that someone decided to make a festival an unsafe place to be, and harming so many innocent participants.

What really hits home is that this horrific event happened at a country festival, which is something my mother and I attend frequently. The number of country concerts I have seen in my life and would like to continue to do is crazy. This person not only killed 59 people and injured over 500 but has made me fear going to a concert myself or with my mother and worrying this happen to me. I can’t even begin to comprehend how someone, no matter who they are in terms of race, religion, gender etc., could do this to other human beings.

Along with feeling heartbroken for those affected by this tragedy, I am angry. I am angry that the first response to this event is a political agenda, and debates on whether or not a white person can be a terrorist. Our first response should be to help those affected and to pray for those who were killed and the family and friends who will suffer the pain of grief. The people of Nevada need our help right now. It’s obvious that guns laws will be debated after this event, but we need to at least help those who were affected FIRST. It has only been a couple days (this being written three days after the event), and we are already focused on what to do politically, that we haven’t thought to help first. Everyone deals with tragedy differently, but there is a time and place start talking about what we can do in terms of laws, to make sure this doesn’t happen again. It happened, so we need to deal with the aftermath first, then talk about preventive measures.

There are several things we need to do to help.

The first thing you can do, if you can, is donate blood, especially if you have a rare blood type. One pint of blood donated can help three individuals.

The next thing we can do is to stop sharing this the person’s name and information. The shooter does not deserve to be famous. This person does not deserve to be in any spotlight under any circumstance, no one who does these sort of things deserves to.

This goes with, stop sharing pictures and videos of the event. I know if anyone I knew was there I wouldn’t want to see his or her dead body posted all over social media. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected. I hope yours do too.