My facebook has become a swamp of conspiracy theories. From people who I'd otherwise consider normal, intelligent beings. The two common threads are "second shooter" and "killary's secret plan/fall guy/hired gun/final act to take down trump."
I'd like to see if there's a graph showing the increase in mass shootings along with the increased availability of the Internet in the U.S. I'll have to look for that sometime.
Here's the other thing because of the internet: I no long consider death threats serious, and wish the media would stop playing them up like they are. It's one thing to do it to somebody's face or on their home phone line but how often does that happen? Email? Social media? Pffft nothingburger. Nowadays it's too easy to both commit a death threat and hide while doing it.
Serious props to the LVPD Sheriff for how he holds his press conferences. Dude gives out a ton of information, answers questions respectfully, and in general just seems like a really composed dude as much as you can be in this type of situation. I hope other cities are taking note.
I'm somewhat disgusted by the Kickstarter campaigns for the medical expenses of the victims. Either this is a cash grab, so fuck them or the fact that this is necessary in our society is fucking disgusting (the tweet/meme that the shooter's right to own guns capable of murdering dozens of people is inalienable, but the healthcare to treat his victims is a privilege). Fuck this atrocity.
So, now we are in some really weird territory. They are saying they don't think he could have done this without help at some point. They are also seriously considering the thought that he was radicalized at some point. Business insider had an article that stated he tried to get a similar room two weeks prior for a hip hop show. So, what was his agenda? If it didn't mean anything to him whether the crowd were hip hop fans or country fans then doesn't that lead to a terror plot to kill any American, instead of Americans of a certain assumed political ideology?
He was also well off. The narrative was that he was some disgruntled, middle-class guy. He was a very high-stakes gambler that obviously played enough to get comped a suite at a major casino. Then again he could have been laundering the money from somewhere.
I think there's a lot of speculation on his motives, but not a lot of evidence. He tried to get a room in Vegas but couldn't. Does that mean he wanted to do this then, or was he casing the place or was just a consistent gambler? We won't know. God knows there's a vortex of shitty journalism circling this nightmare. I saw his girlfriend's sister being quoted like the fucking gospel saying something so obvious it was meaningless. "He sent her away." That explains why she and 100k were in the Philippines....idiot. "we were in love". Well yes that is special. Ffs. None of this indicates why he did this, what could have prevented it or really anything we didn't already know: Late middle aged, retired accountant, well-off, a bit gruff and valued his privacy. It's not like with the other, younger shooters who had a manifesto published in a half a dozen places online that got ignored. Even the "he bought 33 guns in a year" fact, while strange isn't THAT strange for folks into collecting/trading guns as a hobby, especially with the kind of money and spare time he had.
Once again, this is just speculation on my part, but I think we may well be disappointed when they do give us a motive. What I'm putting together from all the articles of interviews is he was just an unstable, hate filled, psychotic lunatic. Nothing more, nothing less. His brother keeps talking about how wealthy he was, he seemingly had no close friends, he was described as stand-offish by all his neighbors, and an encounter at Starbucks was described as his girlfriend asking for his casino card to pay for their drinks and he replied "I can pay for our drinks, just like I pay for you." That statement, to me, is very telling. He was controlling and used his money as a way to control others, which to me shows someone with incredibly low self esteem, who probably thought that the only reason people pretended to like him is his money. Contradicting all this, however, is I've heard law enforcement express they think he meant to get away, though how he planned on that is beyond me.
Not possible. You don't go to where people know you best and conduct an insurgent style ambush from your comped or rented hotel room rented in your name after walking past every security camera in the joint to put yourself at the location of the crime. You walk into this knowing you won't get away.
I am curious what they are basing the thought he was going to get away on. The ammonium nitrate in his car? I really have no idea, but then again I do know there is a great deal of information the public doesn't know. I'm also curious how they arrived at the idea he had a co-conspirator? It seems they're basing that on the idea that it would be impossible for one person to haul that many guns and ammo up to the room over 3 days time, which is ludicrous. I could do it in 3 hours, let alone in 3 days. But once again, they have more info to work with then we do.
I have seen discussion of a room service bill that appears to indicate that there was more than one person dining in the room days before. This is just another data point though, hopefully some clear narrative starts to form on this whole event.
There was also a girl interviewed just after the shooting who stated some woman was walking in the crowd before the shooting and said they will all die tonight. I wish they would hunt down that lead but it’s pribably a fart in the wind.
I guess it wasn't ammonium nitrate like first reported, it was Tannerite. "After investigating several cases found in Paddock’s car, police found 10 one-pound containers of Tannerite, two 20-pound containers of Tannerite, and approximately 1,600 rounds of ammunition." They're also talking about him "Stockpiling" weapons for decades, but that doesn't sound right if the original report that he bought 33 ( Of his 45 (?)) guns in the past year was correct. Acquiring 10-12 guns over 20-30 years is not stockpiling. Acquiring 33 in a year certainly is though.
Get away???? Vegas casinos have some of the most complex tech security in the world. He could have picked the lock of NORAD's door easier than he would of walked out of that hotel.
Eventually caught? Probably. Walked out? He could have. I may not be following all the timeline stuff exactly right, but the report was that he fired for a period of about 15 minutes, and it was 72 minutes after the first shots before the police breached the door. So, if the security guard that got shot hadn't been able to ID his location when he did - earlier than the 72 minute mark - then, he could have just walked out without anybody saying boo to him. Nobody knew who was shooting, and he was a high roller.
My understanding was that the entire hotel was under lockdown shortly after the shooting started. I read an interview with a guy who said that he was basically locked on his floor... elevators and even fire escape doors were locked. There was a phone conversation he heard between a maintenance guy and his boss going on in the hallway where he explaining how he was stuck on the floor and was asking what was going on. Shortly after that he had cops going door to door, banging, and then asking to verify who was inside the room. So yeah... I don't think he could have bailed if he wanted to, unless it was out the window.
Gotcha. There's so much about this that is unusual, I'm sure there will be more bizarre details to come.