Ross King: Another US shooting tragedy is inevitable and gun laws mean Las Vegas won’t be the last community to suffer

I’D barely arrived back in Los Angeles around 11pm on Sunday night after a great week back in the UK when my phone went with a news alert of a shooting in Las Vegas.

It was a message from the producers of Good Morning Britain and Lorraine telling me to head to the studio and then be on a flight to Vegas just a few hours later.

As I sat on the plane, all I could think of was how many times we’d been through this.

Every year or so it seems I have to cover “the worst shooting in America’s history”.

I stood outside the Pulse nightclub in Florida last year and said something had to be done after 49 people were killed by a gunman.

Just like the previous massacre, and the massacre before that.

And the sad thing is I’ll probably be saying the same thing again all too soon.

Vegas is called Sin City, famed for its garish casinos and neon buildings, but the atmosphere when I arrived in the hours after last week’s horrific mass shooting was grim, to say the least.

I spoke to several survivors who barely escaped the hail of bullets from Stephen Paddock’s room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

Thousands of people were at the music festival he fired on, and the number of people caught up in it was staggering.

At one stage I got a message from my wife, Brianna, who was still in London. Jenna Rushton, from Texas, a classmate at Pepperdine University, was at the concert.

Jenna had been shot in the back as she fled, the bullet exiting through the front of her body. A brave bystander shielded Jenna then carried her to an ambulance.

Thankfully, she’s now in a stable condition in hospital, and on Wednesday was well enough for a visitor – President Donald Trump.

I wish I’d been there with Brianna when she heard about her pal. For a moment I understood in the smallest possible way what it was to be stranded far away from your loved ones.

I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like for the families of the victims.

One of the first people I spoke to on the scene was Brian Hopkins, who was among those fired upon.

Brian told me a jaw-dropping story.

As he ran he saw two people crumple as they were struck by gunfire, right in front of him.

He grabbed the two girls and dragged them backstage, all the while the hundreds of rounds of ammunition were peppering the stage where the country music festival was taking place.

They took cover in a walk-in fridge.

Someone once said to me that when terrible things happen, you tell children to look for those who are helping.

And there were lots of people helping, from emergency services to ordinary people opening up their homes.

Vegas isn’t famed for its kindness but perhaps it should be now.

The community here really pulled together – airlines offered free flights for the victims’ families so they could get where they needed to be.

Hotels gave free rooms so they had a place to stay.

Taxi drivers switched off their meters. People queued for hours to donate blood.

Yet more ordinary folk went to the same lines to hand out food and water to those waiting.

Everyone I spoke to had a story.

Three off-duty British soldiers, from the 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guard The Welsh Cavalry were staying in Las Vegas after taking part in army exercises in Nevada.

They headed directly for the danger zone to perform triage on some of the injured.

More than 400,000 British people go to Vegas each year, and there’s been a bit of talk about whether this horrendous event somehow signals the beginning of the end of the city as a tourist destination.

I doubt it. Vegas is a very resilient place.

As is America itself.

My adopted home has plenty of experience with this sort of violence – and the chances are I’ll be covering another senseless episode like this.

Some people have said it’s too soon to talk of gun control, I said it’s too late for the victims.

If there is possibly any kind of good to take from this horrific event it’s that when things are at their worst, people are at their best.