Questions swirl in the Las Vegas mass shooting
By Jon Rappoport
Sunday night Las Vegas shooting at country music concert.
Shooter in a high room at the Mandalay Bay Resort Hotel, a long distance
away. Deadliest mass shooting in US history. 518 wounded, 58 dead.
With the body count and wounded numbers rising, and the concert shooter, Stephen Paddock, dead, here are a few questions:
What weapon was he using? That is important in deciding
whether Paddock could, from a significant distance, inflict the reported
destruction of life. Or whether, as earlier reports/rumors suggested,
there was more than one shooter.
At least ten weapons were found in the shooter's hotel room.
He had checked into the Mandalay Resort Hotel several days earlier. How
did he bring in all the weapons? Disassembled? Did he have prior
experience with weapons?
In an interview, Paddock's brother said he was absolutely
shocked, and his brother, Stephen, was "just a guy." No motive, no
reason to go on a rampage. True? False? What turned him into a killer?
Had he ever been under psychiatric care? Had he been prescribed, for
example, SSRI antidepressants, which are known to push people over the
edge, into homicidal violence? If he was "just a guy," did that include
significant experience handling weapons? Was he capable of bringing all
or some of the weapons into the hotel in pieces and then assembling
them?
The Guardian: Paddock's brother said, "He's not an avid gun
guy at all. The fact that he had those kind of weapons is just - where
the hell did he get automatic weapons? He has no military background or
anything like that. He's just a guy who lived in a house in Mesquite,
drove down and gambled in Las Vegas. He did stuff. Ate burritos."
Police reports seemed to indicate, at first, that police
broke into Paddock's hotel room and killed him. Then the press were told
that Paddock committed suicide as the police entered, or before they
entered.
For a time, police were searching for Paddock's friend,
companion, roommate (?), Marilou Danley. Reports then suggested they had
her in custody. But a later report indicated she was overseas, and the
police were satisfied she had nothing to do with the shooting. How were
the police able to determine that so quickly? Her absence from Las Vegas
would not rule out the possibility she was involved in the planning.
Then we have this: "CAIRO, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Islamic State
has claimed responsibility for a shooting that killed at least 50 people
and wounded over 400 in Las Vegas early on Monday, and said the
attacker had converted to Islam a few months ago."
"'The Las Vegas attack was carried out by a soldier of the
Islamic State and he carried it out in response to calls to target
states of the coalition'," the group's news agency Amaq said in
reference to the U.S.-led coalition fighting the group in the Middle
East."
"'The Las Vegas attacker converted to Islam a few months ago'," Amaq added.
True? Bogus? An ISIS attempt to take credit for an attack, with which they had no connection?
Earlier this morning, I came across a tweet which I can't
locate anymore. It named another Stephen C Paddock, who is 44, who has
been convicted of several crimes involving lewd acts on a child and
child molestation---11/28/01 (South Carolina), 4/06/94 (Indiana), and
11/09/89 (Indiana). The tweet included what appeared to be a screen shot
of an official law-enforcement document, also indicating that this
Stephen Paddock had been confined, at one point, in a South Carolina
mental institution.
Then there is the story of a concert goer who was warning
people before the shooting that they were all "going to die." Who is
she? Is she involved?
The Express (UK): "One woman, who was at the Route 91 music
event, claimed an unidentified woman had told other concert-goers they
were 'all going to die' after pushing her way to the front of the
venue...The witness, 21, told local news: 'She had been messing with a
lady in front of her and telling her she was going to die, that we were
all going to die. They escorted her out to make her stop messing around
with all the other people, but none of us knew it was going to be
serious'...She [the winess] described the lady as Hispanic. The lady was
escorted from the venue along with a man. The unnamed witness, who was
attending the event on her 21st birthday, described the pair as short,
both around 5 ft 5ins to 5ft 6ins tall, and looked like 'everyday
people'."
In every one of these mass attacks, average news consumers
assume the police and the media "have the story right," and all
remaining questions are "just details that will eventually be worked
out."
That's not a wise assumption. It's especially not wise when
connected major agendas are on the line: removing guns from all
citizens; accelerating militarized police presence in every aspect of
daily life; keeping citizens in a state of anxiety, inducing their
decision to stay at home behind locked doors and not venture out;
reduction of public events of all kinds; degradation of the economy.
Such agendas can result in violent events which are not what they seem to be.
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