I’ve been to Las Vegas a couple times in the past and, although it was otherwise a fun experience, saw some seediness there too. It definitely would not be my choice for any future vacation spot. Why? Because it represents money greed to the fullest and with that goes a lot of corruption and criminal activity. If you have money, there is no limit to all the adult entertainment it offers (living up to its sin city nickname). Sure it has changed over the years offering other attractions (besides gambling) to draw families to it, but it still is about money and self-indulgence. Maybe all the excessiveness makes some people warped and do or act in a way that is harmful to others, specifically in the extreme case of the mass shooting (where 58 people got killed and around 500 injured, before the shooter committed suicide) that occurred at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival (during Jason Aldean’s performance). The concert was held in an open area (on the Las Vegas Strip) across the street from the Mandalay Bay Hotel, where shots were fired from the shooter’s hotel room on the 32nd floor.
According to what has been known thus far about Stephen Paddock (the shooter), he doesn’t fit any real mold of a terrorist or mass shooter profile. Afterall he is a wealthy christian white man, a retired accountant who invested in real estate and is a high stakes gambler, that has done very well for himself. No one close to him can say anything bad about him, even his live-in girlfriend, Marilou Danley, has stated he is a “kind, caring and quiet man”. His brother said he didn’t even know he had so many guns and praised him that he has helped and taken care of his family, including their elderly mother, and made him wealthy too. Obviously they didn’t know the dark side of Stephen Paddock, that he kept hidden. What made him go over the edge to the point that he wanted to kill as many people as he possibly could, sure indicates a very disturbed mind at work. Because surely it couldn’t be a disgruntled gambler who lost all his money but someone who had very evil intentions.
Anyone who saw him at the video poker machines, in Las Vegas, are saying he was very calculated as he sat like a statue fully focused on the high-stakes games he was playing to win. Maybe that is the key, he was always planning his next move, using calculations to achieve the end results. Same as has been shown in how he was able to carry almost two dozen rifles, guns, ammunition to his hotel room (past security) over a few days and be able to calculate how to shoot as many people as possible, from that distance, without anyone having time to figure out from where the shots were exactly coming from because there were no sparks from the gunfire, before getting caught. And it also has been insinuated (by law enforcement) that he may have had an escape plan, was planning to survive it and maybe continue on elsewhere, as his car was filled with explosives.
My question would be how anyone could enter one of the opulent casino hotels in Las Vegas with one gun let alone a large number of them. I’m sure they protect the money they rake in, as you probably would be apprehended in a flash or shot if you tried a robbery, and everything must be so ironclad that you probably would need an army to get past even one point toward the money. But on the other hand, you could register at a hotel, bring guns in your suitcase and golf bag up to your room, stay holed up in the room for a number of days without even maid service knowing you had any guns, fire away before anyone would even be able to get there in time to stop you. Supposedly there was one hotel security guard who went to the floor when an alarm went off, who ended up getting shot in the leg. By the time law enforcement arrived to his hotel room to apprehend him, he already had shot many people and killed himself as well.
Who knows what goes on in a disturbed mind filled with pure evil. But I definitely think the US has serious gun control issues (in Nevada alone is the easiest access to guns) that the laws need to be changed because they’ve had a number of mass shootings that are from mentally demented people that don’t necessarily have a terrorist connection but just have easy access to guns to pull of their evil deeds. If there were no guns, there wouldn’t be any mass shootings.
As for Las Vega (as it recovers), it will go on but with heightened awareness and tighter security. This tragedy will magnify it even more as a sin city with its extreme greed of money and self-indulgences that can push the limits of depraved people to get their highs and what more they want to have at the price of innocent victims. They will have Stephen Paddock to remind of them of that, unfortunately.
36/365