There is still “no motive” for the largest mass shooting in recent American history that took place in Las Vegas in October 2017 during an outdoor concert. White domestic terrorist Stephen Paddock, staying in a room overlooking the open-air festivities in a hotel suite stocked with legal weapons, opened fire killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more. Trump, the NRA, the Republican Party and local and federal law enforcement have been mum on what Paddock’s possible motivation could have been. People like Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan have given lip service to “mental health” issues—while doing what they can to make sure that Americans have less mental health options and support available to them. But other than that, who is to say? The AP reported late last week on 1,200 pages of law enforcement investigation documents.
These documents came to light after the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department lost a bid to keep the documents sealed. Here are some of the highlighted notes about “possible” motives:
A jailed man whose gave a statement in November to police and the FBI recalled a man he believed to be Paddock telling him that Federal Emergency Management Agency "camps" set up after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were "a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kickin' down doors and ... confiscating guns." [...]
"Somebody has to wake up the American public and get them to arm themselves," the man said Paddock told him less than a month before the Oct. 1 shooting that killed 58 people and injured hundreds. "Sometimes sacrifices have to be made."
In a handwritten account, a woman said she overheard a man she later said was Paddock talking with another man at a Las Vegas restaurant just three days before the massacre. She told police that Paddock seemed angry about the 1990s standoffs at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge in Idaho.
None of these accounts could be verified since the identities of the witnesses involved were redacted from the released documents. I wonder where I’ve heard that kind of wild conspiracy theory that’s backed up by fact-less YouTube videos, and then subsequently nobody losing their guns? Probably from the same “Second Amendment” organization that vigorously defends guns by blaming schools, communists and video games for mass shootings.
