The awesome killing power possessed by one gunman, Stephen Paddock, testifies to the consequences created when politicians continually bow to political pressure from the National Rifle Association. Paddock had amassed an absurd arsenal of 23 weapons in his 32nd-floor room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas.

He was able to unleash enough bullets from high-powered rifles to kill at least 59 people and wound more than 520 others. Paddock appears to have legally modified his semiautomatic rifles to make them operate like fully automatic, military-style rifles. High-capacity magazines allowed a near-continuous stream of fire.

Expressions of shock and bewilderment poured forth from across the land, including from President Donald Trump and congressional leaders. From the NRA came this telling message: dead silence.

If gun owners went to the NRA website looking for answers, the closest they would get was a prominently displayed essay in favor of overturning a Maryland ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines. The essay, posted two days before Paddock's rampage, argued for guns to have more killing power, not less.

Two days after the worst mass shooting in modern American history, the NRA kept that essay as its most prominent homepage feature behind its "Freedom's safest place" motto. Somehow, freedom didn't seem so safe in Las Vegas.

NRA leaders are either tone-deaf to this tragedy or so arrogant about their political stranglehold on elected officials that not even the shootings of at least 586 people can make them rethink their twisted stand on gun rights.

How many more massacres will it take to rattle Americans to the point where they and their elected representatives stand up to the NRA? Was the massacre of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary not enough? Orlando? Dallas? Aurora, Colo.?

Caleb Keeter, a guitarist whose band had played before Paddock's rampage, says he used to be a stalwart Second Amendment supporter. Not anymore. "We need gun control RIGHT. NOW. My biggest regret is that I stubbornly didn't realize it until my brothers on the road and myself were threatened by it," Keeter tweeted Monday. Several band members actually had guns nearby, he added, but "they were useless."

In other words, the NRA's "good guy with a gun" was helpless against a bad guy with an overpowering arsenal. An arsenal amassed largely because of absurdly loose gun laws enacted under NRA pressure.

Interestingly, Las Vegas law enforcers also sounded off during the shooting about not adding good guys with guns into the fight. As they worked to locate Paddock and bring him down, a radio call went out for all officers to lock their cars to prevent civilians with good intentions from accessing any weapons inside. Friendly fire was the last thing they needed. Why doesn't the NRA get this message?

REPRINTED FROM THE ST LOUIS POST DISPATCH