As a lawful gun owner, how do I respond to this horror?

What do we say now?

What do we do now?

What do I, a longtime gun owner, say now, after the deadly barrage unleashed Sunday from above at one of America's favorite playgrounds?

From what we know, the shooter was a 64-year-old white man firing from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, using rifles, which are effective at a distance, to turn the country music Route 91 Harvest Festival into a killing zone.

I am a lawful gun owner and I am as sickened as you, maybe more, because this slaughter — modern history's deadliest mass killing by gun by an American on American soil — will be used to recharge the batteries on calls for gun control.

I support some measures — such as universal background checks and closing all gun-sale loopholes. But some anti-gun forces will try to use the Las Vegas massacre as a battering ram to drive legislation to punch holes in the Second Amendment. And that will create a backlash, because about one-third of Americans own guns.

In Las Vegas, police responded quickly and effectively. When they burst into the hotel room, they reportedly found the gunman had killed himself. Early reports indicate he was not known to police in Mesquite, Nev., where he lived.

This shooting replaced the June 12, 2016, mass murder inside Orlando's Pulse nightclub as the nation's deadliest in modern times.

Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo described the attack as the work of a "lone wolf."

A rabid wolf. A homicidal, suicidal wolf.

We don't know how the killer acquired his arsenal, the means of murder, nor do we know the motive for his crime. In the end, the motive doesn't matter because he had the means.

So what do we do about that?

But it gets harder for me to say that, to believe that, each time something like this happens. It gets harder to justify those deaths as the cost of living free.

I do believe that my guns protect me and endanger no one else.

But I can't deny the brutal evidence that guns in the wrong hands kill innocent people. There is no magic wand that I or society can wave to guarantee that guns wind up only in the right hands.