Some excerpts from the Washington Post's reporting on the Las Vegas shootings

Here are some excerpts from the Washington Post's reporting regarding the Las Vegas shootings.

...Paddock hid one camera in the peephole of his suite and two more in the hall, at least one of them disguised on a service cart, authorities said. At one point, he shot numerous rounds through the door, wounding a security guard. Paddock eventually put a gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger as SWAT officers closed in. They found him with blood pooling behind his head and around the empty shell casings that littered the carpet, a handgun near his body.

...Neighbors in several states where Paddock owned homes in retirement communities describe him as surly, unfriendly and standoffish. Paddock was the son of a bank robber who was once on the FBI’s most-wanted list and who authorities described at the time as a “psychopath,” but Paddock’s brother said their father was not involved in their lives when they were children.

...Relatives say the roots of Paddock’s loner lifestyle might have been planted on July 28, 1960. On that day, when Paddock was 7, a neighbor from across the street took him swimming. The neighbor told a local newspaper at the time that she knew authorities were coming for his father, and she wanted to spare the young boy from the trauma of seeing his father taken away. From that point on, Paddock’s family was never the same.

Until carrying out the massacre Sunday night, Paddock had no criminal history himself. Despite repeated claims by the Islamic State to the contrary, he also had no ties to international terror groups, authorities said. He had done some government work during his career, as a letter carrier for the Postal Service, an agent for the Internal Revenue Service and an auditor for the federal government’s Defense Contract Audit Agency in the late 1970s and 1980s. He was divorced twice and recently had been dating a woman from the Philippines who has Australian citizenship. He was known to gamble routinely and extensively.

...Several Democrats used the massacre to push for new restrictions, and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) asserted Tuesday that Republican leaders have no plans to advance a bill, which passed a House committee last month, that would make it easier to buy gun silencers.

Way to suck up to Hillary, Paul.

...At Paddock’s home in Mesquite, Nev., investigators recovered 19 more guns and an explosive, and in his car, they found ammonium nitrate, a chemical that can be used in bomb-making. At another property in Reno, Nev., investigators recovered five more handguns, two shotguns and a “plethora” of ammunition, Lombardo said Tuesday.


This video shot by a tourist in January 2016 apparently shows the inside of room 32-135 of the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas. On Oct. 1., Stephen Paddock used the room as a base to shoot and kill at least 58 people.
(Jeff Bridges/Facebook)