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Too Soon to Play 20 Questions? [ Bumped ]

Cover? We don’t need no stinkin’ cover! We have phones!

I’m just spitballin’ here and it is, as all sane, balanced people know, FAR TOO SOON to know anything. But I am always ready to look at things like this Raconteur Reporton Who, How, Why, and WTF?, and ask, “If it is ‘too soon’ when will it be ‘too late’?” Among other items at the link, our Raconteur asks:

  1. What would make a 64 year-old single guy, well-off, no worries but how many years before he owes the actuarial tables his own death, fast forward the whole thing, spend thousands of dollars to meticulously craft the King of Spades mass murder of the century, just to go out in a blaze of glory and then cap himself when SWAT finally inevitably comes knocking?
  2. You have plenty of money even if you live to 99, a life of relative ease, no discernible problems of any kind, and you decide mass murder-suicide is the way to spend a weekend in Vegas at an age when most people aren’t even sure they can afford to retire yet.
  3. And then there are the questions. About a hundred or so, so far.
  4. How does an accountant get rich and retire early?
  5. Why gamble huge sums? Accountants, Steve Martin’s old schtick notwithstanding, are not known for being “wild and crazy guys”.
  6. Instrument-rated pilot? A detail-oriented guy, not somebody who’d take stupid chances.
  7. And why two planes? He can only fly one at a time.
  8. Why live in Mesquite, on the AZ/Utah border, 90 miles from Vegas?
  9. If you live in Mesquite, and Vegas is an hour and a half by car, or half that by plane, what are you doing in a strip club in Reno?
  10. And why is a retired multi-millionaire in the promised land of Sugar Daddies and hard-bodied young sugar babies hanging out with a shriveled old dealer who looks like she should be the maid on Golden Girls reruns?
  11. Why does “not a gun guy” suddenly have dozens of weapons?
  12. Why modify one or more to fire at near full-auto rates?
  13. Why get interested in explosives, and have ammonium nitrate in your car trunk?
  14. Who gets interested in sniping and mass murder after a career handling nothing more fearsome than a pencil (outside of a Dilbert cartoon)?
  15. What accountant vmoves 27 times?
  16. What’s the story on the roommate?
  17. Why’s she in Australia/the Phillipines/BFE at the moment in question?
  18. Room reservation, three day stay, constructing sniper platforms, acquiring weapons, ammo, modifications for weapons, bringing it all to the room, setting up his roost? That’s not an impulsive set of acts.
  19. Revenge? On 22,000 strangers? Country music fans from all over? WTF?

20. How many think we do not yet have all the answers and will never get all the answers, or even a little of them?

Then again all of this may indeed be far, far too soon and the “reason,” if reason can be said to hold sway in this, may be as mundane as a brain tumor as may have been the case with the first mass shooter, Texas tower killer Charles Whitman:

Although Whitman had been prescribed drugs, and was in possession of Dexedrine at the time of his death, no toxicology test was performed at first because Whitman had been embalmed on August 1, after the body was brought to the Cook Funeral Home in Austin. However, an autopsy had been requested in the suicide notes left by Whitman, and was then approved by his father.

On August 2, an autopsy was conducted by Dr. Chenar (a neuropathologist at Austin State Hospital) at the funeral home. Urine and blood were removed to test for traces of amphetamines or other substances.  During the autopsy, Chenar discovered a “pecan-sized” brain tumor, which he labeled an astrocytoma and which exhibited a small amount of necrosis. Chenar concluded that the tumor had no effect on Whitman’s actions, but this result was later revised by the Connally Commission ….

Following a three-hour hearing on August 5,  the Commission concluded that Chenar’s finding had been in error.  They found that the tumor had features of a glioblastoma multiforme, with widespread areas of necrosis, palisading[a] of cells.  and a “remarkable vascular component” described as having “the nature of a small congenital vascular malformation.” Psychiatric contributors to the report concluded that “the relationship between the brain tumor and […] Whitman’s actions […] cannot be established with clarity. However, the […] tumor conceivably could have contributed to his inability to control his emotions and actions”,  while the neurologists and neuropathologists concluded: “The application of existing knowledge of organic brain function does not enable us to explain the actions of Whitman on August first.”  Forensic investigators have theorized that the tumor may have been pressed against Whitman’s amygdala, a part of the brain related to anxiety and fight-or-flight responses.

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  • Kauf Buch October 3, 2017, 2:11 PM

    “12. Why modify one or more to fire at near full-auto rates?”

    Simple and innocent answer: the MSM Leftist Propaganda Machine, which knows less than squat about firearms, dramatizes and distorts this aspect to create hysteria.

    See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0f7OCnrrpk for a demonstration of the Slide Fire.
    It’s Just. Plain. Fun. to fire!

    BUT: while you can FIRE faster, your AIM goes into the veritable toilet. Unless you’re aiming at a barn door…from 25 yards.

    SO REMEMBER: don’t take the lying sack o’ sh!t media’s stories………

    p.s. I still don’t see how ONE GUY could possibly do all that (for starters, shooting out one hotel room window, then going – what 2 or 3 doors down? – and shooting out of another…it don’tmake no sense….).

  • Terry October 3, 2017, 2:14 PM

    Opinion only following.

    Try this out:

    Does MK ULTRA come to mind here- The deep state has fired the opening gun shots of the civil war.

  • ghostsniper October 3, 2017, 3:03 PM

    With a normal everyday off-the-shelf “assault rifle” even an inexperienced shooter can deliver 5 shots in 3 seconds, or 30 shots in 18 seconds, all day long as long as he has preloaded magazines. This requires almost no effort.

    Do you know what an aerial view of 22,000 people looks like from about 600 feet away?
    You don’t see the spaces between the people, you just see people, and the whole thing is pretty big.
    The shooter didn’t aim at anyone of the people in particular, he just shot into the big lump of people. This requires no effort.

    This could have easily been perpetrated by any low level gov’t employee during a FF procedure.
    Hotel management was in on the set up.

  • Anderson October 3, 2017, 4:15 PM

    For this to happen when the support for 2nd Amendment rights was strong and growing, with no sign of it abating and the Left on their heels over the topic, is unfortunate if not suspicious timing. It certainly instantly changes the dynamic.

  • Monty James October 3, 2017, 5:19 PM

    From an Australian paper, witness claims that there were multiple shooters, murdered security guard:

    Las Vegas shooting: Queensland eyewitness to Mandalay attack

    From a British paper, one image shows an AR with a SlideFire stock:

    Photos emerge of Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock’s body….and there is a NOTE

    I’ve had a problem with the number of weapons retrieved, (the claimed number is enough for two rifle squads at this point), and all the meticulous preparation like the camera system and platforms–it’s harder every day for me to buy that this was all by one mentally disturbed ex-postman.

  • Casey Klahn October 3, 2017, 6:15 PM

    The multiple shooter theory never seems to be the case. False flag? Show me ONE where it has been proven, and accepted by any police department anywhere. That is one big friggin corner room, with two knocked out windows – easy to see that.

    My estimate is 200-300 yards. Machine guns are area denial weapons. They say: “don’t be HERE!” OTOH, if the targets are massed in tight quarters, lots of mayhem will occur. He needed zero scopes, if indeed it was always automatic fire, which is all I hear on the videos. Granted, they are only a few seconds long each, but at any rate I never hear single rounds being fired, and so as I said, no scope works for that. For one very important thing, you cannot watch your splash through a scope on auto fire. The main reason, for those not familiar, is that you don’t aim BG fire that closely. In fact, without tracers, and at night, you simply point and shoot. At 200 plus yards, the .223 rounds would be stupid. The 7.76 rounds, and even on the Russian AK, would be the right ammo choice, but I think shooting an AK at that range is stupid. He did do a lot of stupid stuff, from a weapons use point of view. Lee Harvey Oswald he wasn’t. He got the main part right: he surprised everyone, and used a commanding height and a “willing” target zone.

    64 year old white guy: probably not ISIS, but his GF smells a bit rank and I’m very curious @ her. BTW, did he leave a note? Looks like it.

    If I am more than my usual skeptical about the news, I question every photo I see of the shooter’s room. Like I said, most of his weapons choices, and the sheer size of the arsenal, are non-sensical.

    Does anyone have a report by a news agency of the actual automatic weapons used? Someone said there were 3?

  • Casey Klahn October 3, 2017, 6:19 PM

    As far as gun control is concerned, I’d say he had unusually good gun control, considering his profile as a non-veteran, old fart with too many weapons poorly kitted out.

  • Casey Klahn October 3, 2017, 6:27 PM

    Sorry. Too much to say and think, without enough data. I said above that I don’t believe in false flag theories, but I will hasten to add that I trust zero of the photos of the shooter’s AO. I don’t even believe he used a bump stock, but do consider it possible. If his AR platform was chambered in the .308, it might be an okay weapon for his evil task. But, I’m more convinced that he probably had bona fide automatic actions, and I want to see the reports on that. 99% of the press have no idea what he used, even if they were standing right in front of the weapons themselves. They probably think he had silencers, because Hillary said something. I read a Brit paper story where they thought flash suppressors made the flashes harder to see. They are dipspits.

  • Rob De Witt October 3, 2017, 6:51 PM

    As I’ve noted in other threads, this is sounding way too much like November of ’63. Nobody has any proof that the shooter was who it’s claimed to be other than “the authorities.” There’s a published picture, which may in itself be fraudulent, of what could be anybody’s lower limbs. There are videos which claim to show the accused at an Angry Hillary rally in Reno this summer, not unlike the film of Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans distributing street pamphlets for a Communist front. Walter Cronkite changed the story from “Communist sympathizer who went to Russia” to “Obvious vast Right-wing conspiracy” literally overnight on November 23 and 24 of 1963.

    Like Oswald, who qualified as a Marine at the lowest possible proficiency on a semi-auto rifle and then made an almost-impossible shot using a cranky WWI-era Italian bolt gun with a loose telescope, this guy shows no history of having trained as an expert shooter. I don’t have the expertise, but I imagine somebody here does: the muzzle signature in those various videos sounds much too even for much too long to be a bump-fire semi, so I believe it to be full-auto. The distance is fairly settled at 500 yards. At night. Contrary to popular (liberal) belief, just because you’ve got an automatic weapon, “spray and pray” isn’t likely to be very effective at those distances, whatever the size of the target. As Casey pointed out, without tracers you have no idea of where your rounds are going, particularly at that distance.

    In 1963 I was an 18-year-old kid, and The Narrative stunk even to me. You younger folks will live with this mess your whole lives, I promise you. Nobody’s ever going to know who did it, or who was behind it; whether it was planned or only a random act of madness, you can bet the lefties will lie to your children about it.

  • John The River October 3, 2017, 7:03 PM

    I’m going fishing, the internet is broke.

  • Casey Klahn October 3, 2017, 7:50 PM

    If he had an M-10, chambered in 7.76mm, with a bump stock, maybe he could’ve used that, but…500 yards is like throwing the rounds by hand. You might hit something. I’ve never used a bump stock, but am well trained on the M-16A2 on full auto, as well as the M-60MG (7.62, which is basically a .30 caliber machine gun), and the M2 .50 cal. MG, which is a huge weapon. He did have an illuminated target zone, at night, and all-target, so it didn’t matter how well he aimed, but it did matter what weapons and their configuration. My uneducated guess on the bump stock is that it’d get fatiguing to use, even more than a full-fledged machine gun. I wouldn’t choose it for sustained fire situations, and I also wouldn’t use the standard .223 rounds that 90 plus percent of AR rifles chamber. If he did use .223, it was a mercy to the crowd and resulted in wounds that would’ve otherwise been fatal. I’d be interested in the ammo type, because civilian rounds will cause more damage than military, but OTOH the military type would pass through and hit more targets in this situation.

    Still not satisfied with the reporting. Some intrepid reporter could certainly make a name for himself/herself if they busted into that crime scene without portfolio.

  • Gordon October 3, 2017, 8:03 PM

    Uh, Rob, the Kennedy shot was absurdly easy. And so would the shots be from the hotel to the concert area. Think of a football field. Pack it with 20,000 people. The wonder is that he only killed 58. He didn’t need to aim, just point the muzzle at the big area full of people.

    People who worry about such things knew something like this would happen. It was just a matter of when, and where. You cannot get into a professional sporting event nowadays without going through a metal detector, and I set off the alarms at Target Field with my steel toed shoes.

    I don’t understand the “it’s a conspiracy, dammit” people. But there’s a lot of them, and they were spinning the tales before the bodies were cold.

  • Nori October 3, 2017, 8:25 PM

    The inconsistencies are piling up. Frothy muck on dirty shores.

  • bob sykes October 4, 2017, 4:20 AM

    Someone at another blog asked, Did he kill himself before or after the mass shooting?

  • Jaynie October 4, 2017, 4:45 AM

    Fascinating article, thought provoking list. And I hesitate to criticize, but I must take issue with this:

    “just to go out in a blaze of glory ”

    Definitely not glory.

    Glory: NOUN
    high renown or honor won by notable achievements:
    “to fight and die for the glory of one’s nation”
    synonyms: renown · fame · prestige · honor · distinction · kudos · [more]
    magnificence or great beauty:
    “the train has been restored to all its former glory”
    synonyms: magnificence · splendor · resplendence · grandeur · [more]
    praise, worship, and thanksgiving offered to a deity.
    synonyms: praise · worship · adoration · veneration · honor · [more]
    a luminous ring or halo, especially as depicted around the head of Jesus Christ or a saint.

    He went out in a blaze of hellish infamy.

  • Jaynie October 4, 2017, 4:48 AM

    To bob sykes, I wonder the same thing. Could this Paddock have been a front, a dupe in the event.

    Here’s hoping the SWAT team looked under the bed….

  • ghostsniper October 4, 2017, 4:50 AM

    The AR platform lacks the mass/weight necessary to control the power under full auto. The barrel heads northward instantly and by the time a 30 rd mag is emptied (less than 3 seconds) you are no where near the target. The M60 has the weight/mass is is very controlable, same with the 50 but better. There is very little truth in what has been put out there. Just about everything is fake, now.

  • Denny October 4, 2017, 7:47 AM

    Occam’s Razor,
    An eccentric and lonely old rich man, who believes in nothing, is trying to impress the only woman who would give him the time of day. Does anyone remember Anna Nicole Smith?

    The foreign woman is a feminist and a progressive with a powerful and intimate presentation to him of Hillary’s depraved wonders.

    Enter Antifa or Islam.

    She leaves him alone again with his nothing.

    The target becomes a huge crowd of 99% Trump supporters singing God Bless America.

  • Casey Klahn October 4, 2017, 8:06 AM

    I’m looking to see if he had an FN or a BAR. Or else he just kept switching out weapons. Daily Mail says he had a 330 yard range to the concert venue, but that makes the far edge probably in the 500 yard range. For those who don’t know, the bullseye that your weapon is capable of hitting is a yard in diameter and larger as you go farther out. As Ghostie said, the physics of these weapons weren’t optimal for this, so the take-away is he wasn’t tremendously well kitted-out, but it seems he made up for that by having more shitty guns in reserve. A gun enthusiast would conclude that there aren’t enough proper weapons easily available in America for the devilish carnage that Paddock brought. He had to have multiples of shitty weapons to conduct his assault on innocents.

    At least the Daily Mail quit saying the flash suppressor hides the flash. Its purpose is to increase accuracy, not to hide the flash. They watch way too many James Bond movies.

    In the cop video, I do hear single shots going out. 10:08 to 10:19, so eleven minutes of firing, if I got that right. That sounds short but when that’s going down, it’s a lifetime. 60 lifetimes, plus 500 upwards of hurt people. How many rounds?

    Next, we’ll hear he is ISIS, and the calls by the Left for a “terrorism” title will vanish into thin air. Or else, we’ll hear he had political leanings to the Left, and crickets will start chirping. I’m descending into conjecture, here. Where else does one go when there is no investigative reporting to read?

  • Jim October 4, 2017, 8:48 AM

    A qualifier. I may have a few more full-auto rounds in my downrange logbook*, than many civilian shooters have in lifetime rounds from weapons of all types.

    * thanks to Uncle Sam’s .mil “budget”.

    So, I know something of full-auto fire. And first, a myth to dispel:

    The AR is nearly uncontrollable in full auto fire. Yeah. No. This is simply reflecting the point of view of someone with limited exposure to the platform in full rattle. Yes, the barrel of damn near any platform, (with the rare exception of the unique KRISS VECTOR geometry,) in full auto wants to “point North”. So? One rolls one’s shoulder forward and down, bears down, leans forward a bit into the recoil, firms up the cheek weld and wields greater authority with the forward gripping hand.

    Done properly, a 30 rd mag dump at 25 yards can easily stay in the “7-ring” of a standard B-27 target. Yes, that’d be a “fail” with an accurate revolver, but it’s not “spray & pray” with the AR platform, either.

    Yes, the M-249 in 5.56 or the M-60 7.62 are both far, far superior to *any* shoulder fired AR platform in the full-auto mode. They’re SUPPOSED to be superior for that purpose, being designed thus, from the outset!

    That said, the most controllable (and fun) shoulder-fired, full auto, full-caliber weapon which was non bi-pod or otherwise “mounted” weapon I’ve experienced? H&K G-3, in full 7.63×51 (.308 Rem., civilian), with a 12″ bbl., at a “machine gun shoot” in Helotes, TX, back in the ’80s.

    20 round mag, old Chevy Vega for the target at 50 yards. Entire mag well placed in the central area of the car’s left door.

    The above “most controllable” statement of course, excludes machine pistols such as the UZI, Mac 10 and variants, etc. Most of those are far less challenging. But, ANY full auto platform requires specific training, coaching and practice.

    Know what platform really was damn near uncontrollable in full auto fire? The vaunted M-14, with standard issue stock & resultant geometry. Same round fired as with the aforementioned H&K G-3. Great geometry for accurate, aimed single and semi-auto fire. Not terrible with the butt-plate flipped up and a good bipod affixed thereto. But, from the offhand position? It was not a cooperative platform for that purpose, at all.

    Now, that said, the comment above that “full auto” is an Area Denial tactic, is entirely correct. It should be noted in addition, that “full auto” is also a fire-suppression matter, but that does not apply in this instance, as there was no return fire from the ground to be suppressed.

    As for accuracy, the literature for full auto fire, describes the target area as “the beaten zone”, and it is. That “7 ring” accuracy from the AR at 25 yards? The Cone of Fire (actually widens with distance, more like a trumpet’s horn-end”, at 400 yards, would likely be about two to three Deuce n’ a Half trucks wide, if the trucks were parked nose to tail. So, let’s call it a 100ft. wide, by ??? long (rounds were impacting at appx 22.5 degrees, assuming the height of the firing point was 1/2 the height of the lateral range to the beaten zone). I don’t care to do the math to the oblique angle, but let’s presume it’s a 300 ft. deep zone, front to back, if presuming a perfectly stationary weapon platform.

    Add to that the shooter’s obvious traverse and elevation changes, as well as shifting firing points from one window to another. Classic Area Denial.

    Bears mentioning also, the target zone was, by visual calculation, (as measured from the musician’s stage), easily at least 150 yards wide, by +/- 300 yards deep. I don’t know the relative angle from the shooter’s perch to the audience, but it does appear that parts of the field were blocked from direct fire by simple visual obstruction. Not “cover”, just concealment, but that likely did save more than a few blessed souls.

    Point is, it didn’t take Carlos Hathcock to put very nearly 100% of the rounds fired into the audience area, with just ridiculously high odds of scoring multiple hits per round, simply based on the “through and through” hits, striking multiple victims.

    That the body count was so high, was awful. That it was not far higher still, is nothing short of miraculous.

    One final thing. Might sound pedantic, but so be it.

    This was NOT a “tragedy”. What it was, was an ATROCITY.

    And I’d dearly love to beat the media about their collective skulls with the meaning of the difference.

    thatisall.

    Jim
    Sunk New Dawn
    Galveston, TX

  • Casey Klahn October 4, 2017, 9:07 AM

    So, Jim, you’d agree that all of his AR platforms were inadequate for the atrocious task. Even one chambered in 7.62, however I’ve never held one, but expect it to be too light. You didn’t like the M-14 but did you ever shoot a BAR?

    My sainted, late father had occasion to switch out his .50 cal barrel in combat in Italy. Think about that for a minute.

  • ghostsniper October 4, 2017, 9:21 AM

    “…switch out his .50 cal barrel…”
    =======================

    What’s that take, a thousand rounds? More?
    I should have clarified my position above in that persons of extreme bulk *may* be able to control an AR platform in full auto but mere mortals must succumb. But then, as someone that put a measely 100,000 rds through them over a period of 40 years, and built several, what do I know?

  • Jim October 4, 2017, 9:44 AM

    @ Casey… his AR platforms were indeed adequate to the task, as evidenced by the grisly results therefrom. What’s the hidden blessing, is that he didn’t use a markedly superior weapon, be it a SAW, M-60 Pig, BAR (which I love, but 20 rd. box mags are it’s primary limitation). Likewise, I’m glad he didn’t (apparently) use an AR-10. Even wider dispersion of hits, due to recoil. But egads, the difference in penetration, destruction and mayhem would’ve been horrible beyond words.

    Ghost, I think we’re of similar age, round count and scope of knowledge insofar as systems and the like. We simply differ in our experiences insofar as the AR platform and it’s relevant behaviors.

    My position is that it’s not the wild beast you make it out to be. In my prime, I was not some 300 lb. Hulk, either, and am not now. Back then, I was about a buck eighty, and now, would be delighted to lose 20~30 ish lbs. and get down to 190~200.

    Most of my full auto round count on the AR platform were with VietNam era M-16 A-1s, as issued by the USAF in the mid ’70s. Once the technique is mastered, it was not unusual to see wee USAF Security Police-ettes simply shredding targets in full auto with those well-worn (even then) relics.

    The straight-line recoil characteristic of the Stoner design lends itself to effective burst and full auto fire. Much more so in the 5.56 than the 7.62, I’ll freely admit.

    With modern muzzle brakes and the superior “fit” attainable by means of the nearly universal “adjustable stock”, selection of pistol grips, forward grips, angled fore-grips, etc… it’s easier now than ever before. It’s now possible for it to simply NOT be an issue, at all. Don’t believe me? Mount a J.P. Precision Brake (ugly, but effective) on your AR, and tell me if you notice *any* muzzle rise at all, other than a wee “twitch”. Or for that matter, any recoil greater than that of a .22 LR in the same platform.

    Frankly, I’m prepared to disbelieve any media report about the killer’s guns, until such time as I see high resolution images, of each and every arm found in that suite, or in his houses.

    Because the media still calls ’em AK-15s and AR-47s, and every revolver is a Glock.

    Jim
    Sunk New Dawn
    Galveston, TX

  • John October 4, 2017, 10:10 AM

    I’ve seen here in comments and in at least one news report “7.76 mm”. I don’t recognize that… 7.62 is usually used for the 30 caliber stuff, looks like actual dimensions for the .308 are 7.8, which is close… what does 7.76 refer to?

  • Gordon October 4, 2017, 10:24 AM

    Yes, it’s too soon, but that’s not going to stop anyone.

    So far the real gunman was A: in the crowd, B: up in the rafters above the stage, C: on the 4th floor of the hotel. Experts say so.

  • Bram October 4, 2017, 11:57 AM

    I believe #6 to be the answer to #4 and 5. He led a weird and shady lifestyle and was hooked up with the shady Filipino because he was in the drug smuggling business.

    Don’t know if he was sampling his cargo, snapped hard, or was radicalized somehow – but drugs probably explain his wealth and habits.

  • Casey Klahn October 4, 2017, 1:27 PM

    John, the 7.76 must be a misprint or typo. I may or may not know someone with a 7.65mm pistol (Hitler Killer), but that would be telling.
    One news report has an M10 in the room. Just a thimble of data.
    The cop vid released recently has them saying the shooter is in the hotel, which they name. Is that a fake, too? Please, please,please do not second shooter/Kennedy this, and when you are feeling the urge to, tell yourself to have 2 or 3 actual witnesses from some credible source for that.
    I just said: “credible resource.” Must be losing my mind over here. No such thing, anymore.
    Ghost, I think my dad related that to a story where they were overwatching by fire a village as the infantry were going in. I want to say it was a mad minute kind of thing, only WWII style, but at the same time I’d be surprised to hear of wasting a barrel for no reason. Perhaps there was a mix of both young-twenties virility and a sense of urgency. That was in the No. Apennines, in late Winter, ’45. I can picture seeing the Teds (Italian for Germans) counter-maneuvering in the town and wanting to protect the infantrymen. That was a theater and a war where the enemy wore uniforms, performed at a world class level, and did not yield for a song.
    It’ll take a hundred more hotel room pix for me to start getting a picture in my mind of what the creep did. Trying desperately to hold onto my senses, I’d say attacking a big, docile group of conservatives smells like some kind of anarchist move, with a heavy smell of ISIS. Hmmmm: nexus?
    Slaps self.

  • ghostsniper October 4, 2017, 2:31 PM

    My most current AR in 223 has an adjustable gas block, a precision weighted buffer paired with the proper spring. Recoil is almost zero, making successive shots instant and in the same hole, at 100yds, almost every time. If it was full auto I don’t believe it would be capable of doing that. There is SOME recoil and on full auto it would be impossible to react fast enough to get back on target, so there would be a steady drift upward. A 30rd mag will empty in about 3 seconds and that time frame goes by fast. With a 100rd drum this may not be the case for the time frame would be extended. My experience with individual firearms on full auto is exactly 4 times. 3 times with an M16 40 years ago and 2 years ago with a Thompson .45, and all instances resulted the same. Neither of those 2 guns had been modified and both of them immediately were uncontrolable upon pulling the trigger, with the barrel heading upward. These weren’t Hollywood guns.

    At about 30 cents per round firing on full auto might not be as fun as it was in years past.

  • ghostsniper October 4, 2017, 2:46 PM

    I’m not convinced this Paddock guy had anything to do with this other being converted into a patsy after he was killed. The environment now though is that we will most likely never know what the truth is.

    If you look at a 1000 pc puzzle where a bunch of pieces are missing can you see the picture?
    Rather than focusing on the picture you should be wondering why the pieces are missing.

  • Jim October 4, 2017, 3:09 PM

    Keep in mind also, that the Vegas maniac was likely shooting from a bipod, atop what the press has dubbed a “sniper’s platform”.

    Point is, you put even a pencil-barrel M16-A1 onto a G.I. cheap ass M-16 spring clamp bipod, assume the sitting or prone, and open up. That barrel isn’t coming up off of the ground into any vertical arc. Keeping it on target through the cyclic vibration can be accomplished with a firm grip of the off hand at the front of the magwell.

    You’ll still get a fairly wide cone of fire, but such is the nature of any full auto fire.

    Ghost, given the limited scope of experience you’ve described with full-auto firing, I can clearly see the training deficit. (that’s no slight, either…not to anyone who can hold minute-of-one-hole-group with the AR in semi mode!)

    Here’s the technique in a nutshell. The full auto carbine wants to push back against you. Then, concurrently, you’ve got to push back against it, in roughly equal measure, but exercising more muscle control to regulate the windage and elevation. (I’m skipping lots of important sub-points here, for brevity’s sake.)

    Look at how a firefighter controls the “recoil” of the 2 in. hose, and then leans in and works the stream. Valid analogy, this.

    With adequate practice, you’re into the lean and back on target within the first two or three rounds of the string. Yes, really. And yes, most all the training will be towards the classic 2~4 round burst, but the better one gets, the better one gets.

    Frankly, I do not WANT a giggle switch on anything I own. Too much cost in the acquisition, care, paperwork and feeding. Plus, like you, I’m into the precision of things. For a LOT of reasons.

    Concluding though. Don’t count out the trained and practiced full auto shooter, with anything from an UZI to an FN/FAL, H&K G-3 or the like.

    The Vegas maniac did not need a particularly deep set of skills, training or experience. His target area was damn near a full quadrant of the compass! He did adequate research into equipment, could afford it, and utilized it to the pursuit of evil intent.

    Didn’t take a lick of skill, except in the scheming and planning.

    Beyond that, I cannot even begin to contemplate the depths of darkness and evil that he had to possess, in order to do what he did. Either in thought or deed.

    The pity was, he didn’t start with suicide as his first option.

    Jim
    Sunk New Dawn
    Galveston, TX

  • Snakepit Kansas October 4, 2017, 4:33 PM

    I think the cops got the right guy. One shooter. I don’t think the gun was full auto, but maybe a bump stock or trigger. The cycle rate varies which either means not full auto or ammo with greatly different powder charges. .223 in FMJ at 300 yards will most likely still produce through-and-throughs on a human. If the .223 had a Nosler Ballistic Tip or Hornady VMAX type bullet, there would be some horrific wounds and many additionally wounded from fragmented bullets and bone. The guy was spraying and praying, just dumping rounds on a large mass of compacted people which does not take much talent. Once people started scattering, his hit rate would have gone down dramatically. Some people likely got stomped to death. If the guy had been shooting tracers it would have been a whole lot more scary looking. Many of those mass killers are just pussies and shoot themselves in the noodle once the cops show up. I will let God judge him, but if I was a gambling man I’d bet God hit the H button on this loser and sent his ass to swim in an eternal lake of fire.

  • Terry October 4, 2017, 4:45 PM

    Who owns a large share of the Mandalay casino? Is it not obozo and the Klinton’s friends in Dubai? Is it true that the guest records were disappeared (wiped clean) at the Mandalay? Was the “shooters” GF in attendance at a “meeting” in Dubai not long ago? All this weird stuff is sounding like the obozo/holder fast & furious fiasco on steroids to me.

  • Tom Hyland October 4, 2017, 5:57 PM

    Yeah… I’ve read what you’re thinking Casey… but I definitely believe in false flags and conspiracy. This thing in Vegas is SO flaky… as usual the gun grabbers can never pull together a clean and convincing crime. Just like Sandy Hook Elementary, I am convinced NOTHING happened in Vegas. Just a bunch of paid crisis actors getting back on the bus in time for their next scene. Did you see the carnage? Have you seen the bodies? Who is this guy they say “did it?” Keep watching the evening news if you dare. I stopped doing that over 20 years ago.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lztlqh0qahw

  • Casey Klahn October 4, 2017, 7:46 PM

    What did they pay Jason Aldean to run off that stage?
    Every hospital in Vegas was maxed out with wounded, but of course I’m only going on hearsay. I will say that I have seen the graves of the kids who died in the Columbine. I didn’t dig them up, Though, so gain, just hearsay.

    Pfffft!

    Good comment, SnakepitK. I use the ballistic tip Hornadys, but I hate to practice with them because of their cost. He was a rich dude, so maybe he did have an ammo can of those. Yes, that would be devastating. Varying cycle rate: are you watching/listening to a video of the event? Sounds like real auto fire to me, but video is a poor medium to judge by. I wish they’d publish a full list of the weapons. I’ve never fired an AK, but that would be a heavy duty sustained fire sound, and very deadly.

    Hadji was walking away from M4 hits, I am told. I wouldn’t enjoy being hit by a .22 at any range, but at that range the bullets are dropping from gravity because their ballistic energy has diminished. Yes, they would go through. No, their terminal energy wasn’t very good at that range. I once fired some .223 on a snowed-in field, I think it may or may not have been a varmint shoot, and I found one round on top of a footprint. Just laying on the snow.

    I’d say the larger calibers were the death dealers, and the smaller stuff was just pepper and caused wounds.

    Anyway, he was an enormous dickhead, and I’m still waiting for the word that he was politically motivated. I might go to Vegas and lay some money down on that prospect.

  • Casey Klahn October 4, 2017, 7:50 PM

    I may or may not have witnessed the sheriff’s deputy shoot an already wounded 350 lbs. buck through the neck repeatedly with .223 at point blank range, and the deer just shook it off like it was rain. Head shot ended the situation. I am typing this under that great neck. He’s a beauty.

  • ghostsniper October 5, 2017, 9:02 AM

    Somebody needs to ask the question.
    Do you really believe an obese elderly dood fired those 4000+ rounds?
    Really?

    You have a brain lesion if you do.

    The fact that all of this is even a story, is a story in and of itself.
    It’s a demonstration of millions of herd members being corraled as they’ve been trained.

  • Gordon October 5, 2017, 10:31 AM

    OMG how could old out of shape non-pro dude do that? It must be MOSSAD!

    Honestly, I am an old out of shape non-pro and I can figure out how to do everything he did, and without much thought. Get all the weapons to the room? He had a week to walk them in suitcases. Thousands of rounds? Somehow I suspect he didn’t have ammo cans stacked on the trolley. But I’ve hauled a ton of crap up to hotel suites and the staff doesn’t even glance at it.

    Fire that many rounds? Not at all hard, especially if you’ve practiced, and I’m sure he did. Even Oswald went to the range before he shot JFK. And the people wondering how he hit so many from so far–geez, it was a very large target area filled with people. How could he miss? He wasn’t doing aimed shots at discrete targets. He was hosing down the area.

  • Mark Pugner October 5, 2017, 11:56 AM

    Answer to number one question: he was an arms dealer. Had guns on display for buyer and didn’t care what they were going to be used for. Buyer(s) killed him, then shot up the concert crowd.

  • Punditarian October 5, 2017, 12:29 PM

    Interesting discussion.
    Have to agree with Gordon. When I finally got up to the 6th floor in the Texas Schoolbook Depository museum, I was surprised at what an easy shot it must have been. Right on top of the open car, up close, less than 100 yards away, closer to 50. The whole area was much smaller than I had imagined from the photos, movies, and news reports. People make it out to be some sort of world championship marksmanship. Nothing of the kind. I wondered why he didn’t open fire when the car was approaching his position, rather than leaving it, but the more I think about it, that makes sense too. When the car was approaching, his view was obscured by the windshield and the people in the front seat. Once it turned the corner, his shot was wide open. Anybody on this thread who has qualified on a rifle could have made it.

  • ghostsniper October 5, 2017, 12:54 PM

    Didn’t take long for the lesions to step right up with their Batman costumes on.
    I did this and I did that so anybody can do anything even if they can’t or didn’t.
    You can paint it right on top of their eyeballs with a big red paint brush but they’ll still see illusions.

    You really don’t have to delve into this thing very far to see what’s what but you do have to open your fukking eyes.

  • Gordon October 5, 2017, 1:39 PM

    Ghostsniper,

    You and I aren’t going to agree on this. I look at these lists of questions, and it is like the were written by the ignorant for the ignorant. How do you get all those guns and ammo in the room? I could do it in two hours. He had a week. And apparently he’s been planning this for quite some time.

    I’ve watched bump stock videos and AR automatic fire videos. The rate of fire you hear on the videos sounds a lot like the bump stock ones. Hitting that target from 400 yards? Not at all difficult. He wasn’t trying to shoot one person. He was trying to shoot many. Accuracy did not matter. He didn’t need the special JooSnipeSpec 7.89 with the tungsten jackets and molybdenum trigger guard. He just needed a couple of easily obtained, easily modified rifles.

    Try this, okay? Assume what he did was your goal. You have plenty of money, and time to plan, but you can’t bring anyone else into it, because every time another person knows, the odds of discovery go way higher. You can’t drop a dime to Vladimir for special ammo. So how would YOU do it?

  • pfsm October 5, 2017, 6:06 PM

    Something occurs to me. Paddock’s father was a Most Wanted bank robber, considered to be a psychopath. Was all the loot from his robberies recovered? That may explain the initial nut for the family real estate fortune.

  • ghostsniper October 5, 2017, 6:43 PM

    @Gordon, it can’t be done, by any one person.
    Do the math.
    I haven’t seen any videos nor have I read any of the *fake* news stuff.
    My only exposure to this event was to read a few blogs, most notably this one: https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/

    As an AutoCAD professional I imported a Google Earth Pro aerial view into my program, found the proper scale using known objects for reference (parking space width/length, etc.), then created a side view of the shooting angle, using the same scale, up to that 32nd floor. From there I rotated the shot to the shooters viewpoint and printed that view out full size. Do you know how wide the target was in inches? Less than 8. That means he could only pivot that gun about 4″ in either direction horizontally. Vertically he was even more cramped that is where the whole notion of trajectory comes into play. Not a whole lot of wiggle room there.

    Speaking of bullet drop. How far, do you think, a 55 grain .223 bullet will drop over a minimim 400 yard flight? When you get that figured out you can throw in the Twilight Zone mystery effect that happens to all bullets that are fired DOWNHILL.

    Now, consider this, a full fledged Army M16 will fire around 600 rounds per minute and that equates to (20) 30 round magazines. It has been accurately calculated that a minimum of 4,000 rounds were fired in about 11 minutes time frame. No matter how many guns he had on hand, unless he was firing 2 at the same time, it is physically impossible for him to have done what the media has claimed.

    All of the minute details have already been figured out by many people that are much more intelligent and experienced than I.

    Lastly, it is already a proven fact over a long period of time that the media lies it’s ass off almost constantly, so why are they suddenly telling the truth about this vegas shooting incident?

    Finally, comparing your experience carrying a few suitcases to some hotel rooms to what was done in the vegas shooting demonstrates your ignorance on the topic. Turn off the fucking TV.

  • Casey Klahn October 5, 2017, 8:25 PM

    Where did you guys read 4000 rounds were fired? Whose report is that? I would only trust the Clark County Sheriffs to have that data, but wonder who or why they’d give that info up. Not believing it at this point in time.
    The answer to the bullet drop, Ghostie, is almost 32 inches, depending on the weapon. Not sure what the angle of fire was, but it may not rise as much as, say, firing at the pool area from the 32nd floor. I know, with my recent experiences with archery, that unless your target is at a very acute angle from your stand, the gravitational pull is slight. I did fire my deer rifle on a 500 yard range atop a sheer cliff, and the beaten zone was below by about 120 feet, but out there at 200-500 yards. No effect.
    I’m still convinced that shooting .22 high velocity rounds out that far is a fool’s errand. Also, shooting huge fuel tanks at 660 yards, with the same rounds, is foolishness of the highest order.
    I also heard of gaping stomach wounds, so that would be a larger caliber.
    Still want the motive. Still not known.
    I’m not saying he didn’t have help. I’m saying the second shooter message is old and tired.
    If you want conspiracy to be mad about, recall the Quebec City Mosque shooting, where for over 2 days it was multiple Muslim perps, then suddenly, it was a sole white kid from down at the college. Sudden switches in narrative are pure BS. So far, I see nothing like that in this case.
    If he had an FN in the room, the target was toast and no problem. Bump stocks don’t come into it.

  • Gordon October 6, 2017, 3:41 AM

    Ghostsniper, I didn’t sit down and rotate and calculate using Google Earth. I just looked a a picture, taken from the room just above the shooter’s room. The concert area is quite large. I don’t have to hit one particular person. I just have to hit an area quite a bit larger than the side of a barn. The people can’t go anywhere quickly, because they’re hemmed in by the barricades. He planned this; I’m sure he practiced, too. There are lots of places in the desert where one could find a hill next to a flat area. Use a bit of spray paint to mark the boundaries. Go up on the hill and start whanging away until you can control the aim to a suitable degree. Repeat, as you can afford plenty of practice ammo.

    For years people claimed that the JFK shooting was an impossible shot for a guy who was an average marksman in the Marines. Those people were ignorant, or they were lying. The shot was very easy, as Casey said. The car was moving slowly and the angle was such that it wasn’t changing much. Now from the grassy knoll, that’s a tricky shot. The target is moving left to right, and changing elevation.

  • Gordon October 6, 2017, 3:54 AM

    Oh, and one of the key points of the WRSA article was that there wasn’t enough brass lying around in the pictures he saw. But, it has all the hallmarks of the False Flag op! (what are those hallmarks, exactly?) Except that all that professional False Flag work somehow failed to do something so obvious as to leave enough expended brass. Bad, bad false flagging. Someone is going to have to go back to False Flag training school and repeat the course on evidence falsification.

    Here’s question 21: They knew the shooter was in room 135 on floor 32 because his gunsmoke set off the smoke detector. How come the fourth floor shooter’s gun didn’t do that? How come no one in the hotel heard the fourth floor shooting? Smokeless powder? Silencers? Better scores on the False Flag exit exam?

  • Gordon October 6, 2017, 3:56 AM

    Sorry, I’m short on sleep and starting to get nasty. My apologies for the snark.

  • ghostsniper October 6, 2017, 4:16 AM

    jeezis Gordon, 3:56am? We almost ran into each other in the dark, I was on my way to the bathroom around then. Couldn’t go back to sleep so I got up for good at about 5. Now I’ll be tired all day…..

    For me it was the math that determined the number of rounds fired that pushed the whole thing over the edge. 4k rds in 10 mins or so is not possible by 1 person. Regardless, unless some major development in this thing occurs I won’t be commenting further, and I’m doubtful that will happen. Just more and more tidbits of disinformation from all the usual suspects…..

  • Snakepit Kansas October 6, 2017, 4:53 AM

    Ghost,
    One thing for certain is that the media outputs both biased opinion as well as ignorance. The best conman mixes in a bit of truth along with his charade. All the laughable comments from public officials to the media themselves about “ghost guns that shoot 30 bullets in a second” or the magic “bullet button that makes any AR15 full auto”, Hillary’s alarm about “silencers would have caused more deaths because people would not have heard the gun shots”, etc. etc. appear to me to be willful ignorance applied for sensationalism.

    I can only imagine how the media would portray me if I was falsely accused of something and I became the subject of their focus. How about most of us here that regularly trade thoughts at American Digest? Casey, Rob, Ghost, myself and others would be shredded.

  • Casey Klahn October 6, 2017, 8:08 AM

    Snakepit, you are completely right. The vagabond, but authoritative, media that drive by and shoot, will dox thelivingshit out of anyone they don’t agree with. The blessed virgin Mary herself would be skanky overnight if it matched the narrative of their story.
    Witness how they publish addresses of political enemies (conservatives) in hit pieces.
    Judge. Jury. Execute! Well, note that all NRA members, and white gun owners, are complicit in terrorism, and all Trump voters are rapists. When your guns are confiscated, only liberals will have guns, and not just the ones with badges. The ones on the inside politically will have whatever they want.

  • Bunny October 6, 2017, 9:16 AM
  • Pbird October 6, 2017, 9:23 AM

    I think Denny had a real good point.

  • Gordon October 6, 2017, 9:27 AM

    Wait a minute…thousands of dollars’ worth of sushi?

    Mercury poisoning!

    Radioactive poisoning from Fukishima!

  • John Venlet October 6, 2017, 9:56 AM

    …as all sane, balanced people know, FAR TOO SOON to know anything.

    Here we are, three days gone by since that post, and all we seem to know with any certainty is that 58 individuals are dead. Nothing I’ve read since Paddock’s atrocity seem nothing more than conjecture, words strung together and consumed like cotton candy and the only result of the sugar buzz of misinformation is a bunch of politicians, with the full support of the NRA, colluding to outlaw bump stocks.

  • Rob De Witt October 6, 2017, 2:15 PM

    …. all we seem to know with any certainty is that 58 individuals are dead.

    Really? How do you know that, exactly?

  • edaddy October 6, 2017, 8:28 PM

    What if Paddock was dead before the shooting ever started?

  • John Venlet October 7, 2017, 5:11 AM

    @Rob De Witt – Rob, you’re correct to point out that I may not “exactly” know that 58 individuals are dead as I’ve relied on numerous media sources’ lists of the Las Vegas dead as the basis for my statement, which may not be reliably accurate or factually true. With that said, I think the reporting of the number of dead is in all probability the one aspect of this atrocity we can consider factual because, as cynical as this may sound, the death count is the one aspect of this story which can be utilized by media mouthpieces and politicians of all political stripes to advance whatever agenda they are advancing as the flavor of the day.

  • Casey Klahn October 7, 2017, 5:31 PM

    Some cops let out, on a CBS interview, that the note in the sniper’s room was a ballistics chart. OK. I’ll buy that as a possibility.

    What really gets my goat is how they are, “oh, BTW, we’re going to tell you on-the-record, off-the-record, what the CRITICAL item of info in the room was.” That, from the dept. of “Fuck You, America, we don’t care that you’re begging for every scrap of info from this event, and while we piss around not telling you, you can stew in a morass of conspiracies Department.”

    There is no official in charge of the rumor mill, and that is nearly criminal negligence at the top. McCabe? You’re Fired!!

  • Gordon October 9, 2017, 12:56 AM

    Please note that I say this as a former reporter, and my family is still in the newspaper business.

    “journalists” is just a fancypants word for reporter. It used to be a job people fell into for one reason or another, which meant that most reporters had some real world experience. This is not true anymore. Pretty much everyone who writes or films or edits went to school to learn how to do it. They are taught by leftists. In Norway, every journalism instructor is a Marxist. It’s not quite that bad here, but you’re not going to see any professors of journalism wearing a MAGA hat.

    Inside newsrooms, these ignorants do not know what they do not know. They do know they get to go to important events, and talk to important people, and those important people speak to them respectfully. Thus they ARE somebody, and we must all look at them with awe. In fact, they are petty, spiteful, unethical, often vicious to those who they can bully, and they never, ever, get the story right. They are also pretty much unwilling to admit that they got it wrong.

    It doesn’t matter if it’s Fox, CNN, the NYT Carlos Slim blog, or the WP Jeff Bezos blog, or Gerard’s blog. If a reporter writes it or says it, there’s a good chance they are full of shit. Always remember that.