"It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." Winston Churchill
OK, Winnie wasn't really writing about this subject, but the line fits. This one we may never figure out.
I have a great article, one I share with my psychology students, about the thread binding most terrorists and shooters. The author labels that thread "TNT."
Testosterone. Narrative. Theatre.
The narrative may not make sense to you and I, but almost always there is a statement, manefesto or video that explains the real or perceived insult that the perpetrator (or someone whom they stand proxy for) received. In this case there is almost a huge effort by Paddock to avoid just that.
So I think we're stuck with conjecture and assumption. I don't like that in this case. So I'm willing to say that we will likley never know what went haywire in his brain or life. Our natural tendency is to attempt to make sense of such events, or at least a sense that we can sort of grasp. Perhaps a story of mental illness or mistreatment. Maybe jihad, maybe jealousy. But in this case, I'm good with describing this as an unknowable evil act. Doc, I tend to think it was the "some guy who had a wire snap," deal, or a slow stretching to the snapping point.
Guns? I am sure I have friends with 20+ guns. I'm a deer and elk hunter with 4 rifles of my own. Three are of the high powered variety, one is a .22 (that has had less than 50 shells through it in 20 years. Hasn't been out of it's box in 10). I happen to have three other guns in the house right now, guns left to my nephew by his (maternal) grandfather. My brother won't have them in the house, so they reside with me until my nephew (now 20) finishes college. So that makes 7 guns in my house. And I'm not a gun nut by any means. I enjoy them, handload for my hunting rifles, belong to a gun range, shoot seasonally and well, and treat them with respect and care.
But I have friends who do that with 20 guns. BTW, I'm pretty sure that almost all of them do not own the AK variety of firearms. As it is, I am not alarmed by 10, 15 or 20 guns in a gun safe or closet.
But Paddock's guns were so chosen and adapted for such massive firepower that my friends and I offer nothing of real comparison. There was an intimacy to his planning this tradegy. It was almost delicately planned. In that, find the long slow stretch to the actual snapping act.
This is my 37th year in the classroom, 35 years with high school kids. I've always felt that a huge part of my job was to help events make some sense to kids. Planes flying into buildings, elections, tsunamies, planes disappearing into the Indian Ocean, shootings, you name it, I want kids to have a sense of the event and the reasons for it.
But I can find no reason to assign to this one that I can trust in. Occasionally that happens. The best I can do here, without a narrative that makes sense, is still fall back on testosterone and theater. Could any city more well fit those two variables than Las Vegas? Hadn't thought about that until right now. Hmmmmm?
Something "obviously" weird going on here, Doc? I don't know. I just see a terrible act, terrible and intimately planned. But I am not convinced that any "something" weird, a quirky ripple in the universe, could have been identified ahead of time. Well, minus his moving a tremendous amount of material through a motel and into a room. Prior to that, radar wasn't going to pick this guy up, unfortunately.
This mook can't explain it. I am not sure we ever really will.
My two cents. You guys probably deserve a refund.