The massacre was horrifying. There isn’t any place you want to have a massacre, of course, but there is something especially heartbreaking about having this happen on the Strip — a place dedicated to nothing more or less than having fun. I am not so naïve as to think that every kind of indulgence on offer in Las Vegas is entirely harmless, but Las Vegas is in my experience one of our least offensive cities, full of decent and hardworking people, kind and indulgent, living and working in the shadow of the international circus in the middle of it all. They’re veterans and immigrants and business owners who listen to a lot of jokes about the lovely, sunny, very livable city they call home. They’re tolerant, and they have good reason to be. And if the folks from Muleshoe want to come and stay at Caesars Palace, play a little blackjack, drink some cocktails, see a show, and spend their money, there’s nothing terribly wrong with that.

And there’s a funny flip side to Las Vegas’s purported libertarianism, a kind of corporate nanny state. (You think gambling is legal in Nevada? Try organizing a church raffle.) Las Vegas really does not want to arrest you for drunk driving or to see you suffer anything other than the loss of a sum of money big enough to miss but not so large as to keep you from coming back next year. Poor Vince Neil, the singer from Mötley Crüe, came out of a casino having had one or two cocktails too many and went into a rage when the valet wouldn’t get him his Rolls-Royce. He pulled the old “Do you know who I am?” routine. Of course the valet knew. That’s why he wouldn’t get him his car. He’d had a DUI before in Vegas. Bartenders are well-practiced in dealing with toasted tourists inquiring about prostitution, which is legal in some rural areas not far from Las Vegas but strictly verboten in Sin City itself. “That isn’t a conversation we can have,” they’ll say. Steely eyes, slightly ironic smile. “Would you like another drink?”