The Las Vegas Massacre and Occam’s Razor

With 59 people dead and over 500 injured, last Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas was the ‘worst-ever’ for the US, beating the previous record death toll set at an Orlando gay nightclub all the way back in June 2016. Just as folks had been remarking how long it had been since a (major) mass shooting in the US of A…

The official story is that this brazen massacre on October 1st was solely the work of a wealthy 64-year-old white American retiree, Stephen C. Paddock, resident of Mesquite, Nevada, with numerous other properties around the country, and frequent-visitor to ‘Sin City’. With no apparent motive, Paddock single-handedly acquired an arsenal of heavy guns and thousands of rounds of ammo and shot up a country music festival at The Village open-air concert venue on the southern end of the Las Vegas ‘strip’, all from two broken windows in suite 135 of the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel and Casino.

Despite an early claim by ‘ISIS’, courtesy of Rita Katz’s dodgy SITE Intelligence outfit, that Paddock ‘saw the light’ a few weeks back, turned his back on the finer delights Vegas has to offer, and became “a soldier of the Caliphate“, investigators have since reported that there are no credible links between him and international terrorism. Sadly, no one will never get the chance to ask Paddock about his motives or if he had any accomplices because by the time Las Vegas PD broke down the doorway to suite 135 at 11:20pm, Paddock had already eaten a bullet. Why he would kill himself after setting up an elaborate camera system to warn him of security personnel approaching his suite is left unexplained. Why would he kill himself after wiring $100,000 to the Philippines, where his girlfriend was waiting for him? Today, Las Vegas Sheriff Lombardo gave another press conference where he stated that there was evidence that Paddock planned to escape, but could not publicly provide the evidence.

Paddock had no criminal record, no history of violence, no military experience, was “not an avid gun nut”, had no particular religious or political views, and was not previously known to law enforcement. Nevertheless, authorities say, this is the man responsible for planning and conducting – at great personal expense, and requiring significant technical training and expertise – an operation in which he could fire off 1,000s of rounds from 23 “modified semi-automatic weapons“, spraying the crowd below and, over the course of some 11-12 minutes, becoming America’s Most Insane (Yet Disciplined) Mass Shooter. Ever.

Case closed? It is for the authorities, but many in the general public are not buying it, and for good reason.

To start with, it’s clear that the long bursts of gunfire (10-12 seconds at times) we hear on all the video footage is fully-automatic firing from a submachine gun. Even CNN talking heads speculated on the day that a belt-fed military gun like an M240 or an M60 was being used. Contrary to popular belief about gun-lovin’ USA, such weapons are not widely and easily available on the market for private citizens. Even if the average Joe could get their hands on one after passing extensive background checks and registering it with local law enforcement, accurately using this 23lb (11kg) weapon takes expert proficiency and a lot of strength and stamina. All of which makes our 64-year-old gambler, who was not in the best of health according to his brother, and would have had to pay a bellboy to take his large stash of weapons up to his room, a highly unlikely suspect.

But there are even bigger problems with the official story.

The list of weapons that authorities have stated were in the room with the dead Paddock do not include anything that is capable of holding enough ammunition to fire the 10-12 seconds continuous bursts that can be clearly heard in videos of the shooting from the ground at the concert. Several of the weapons found in the room (an AR-15, for example) can use magazines with a maximum capacity of 100 rounds. There are Youtube videos that show similar guns unloading 100-round magazines in a continuous burst. The maximum time it takes to do so is 6-7 seconds. In addition, AR-15 type weapons have a higher fire rate of around 800rpm, while the M240 belt-fed gun has a lower rate of fire of around 600rpm. The rate of fire and pitch from an M240 closely matches the long bursts of gunfire heard at the concert. See this analysis, for example:

That is not to say, however, that some of the guns found in the room (again, like the AR-15) were not used, because several videos taken by concert attendees as the shooting was going on record more than one gun firing at the same time. The other gun, which can be heard while the M240 (or similar) belt-fed gun is discharging, match the sound of an AR-15 (or similar) with a suppressor attached to the muzzle. A suppressor raises the pitch of the gunfire, making it sound more like a sharp ‘crack’ and is primarily designed to baffle the sound and make it difficult to identify the location of the shooter.

Several other videos on Youtube present similar analyses with similar results: there were at least two shooters with different guns, and likely fired from different locations that night. Here’s another slightly longer video analysis:

For those who might be wondering why no muzzle flash was seen from the Mandalay as the M240 (or similar) was being fired, here’s a video showing a nighttime comparison between an M240 without and with a flash suppressor (the gun is mounted on a military helicopter).

As noted, we have also been told that Paddock had set up cameras, one on the peephole on the inside of the main door to the room and another outside the room on a room service cart. Authorities initially said that Paddock must have been watching the live feed of the hallway from these cameras, presumably while shooting long bursts of gunfire from both windows in the room. Today at a press conference, Las Vegas Sheriff Lombardo stated that there were “cameras” outside of the room on the service cart but that “none of them were recording”. The Sheriff did not state how they determined this. He also stated that a security guard was shot by Paddock through the door of Paddock’s room. This security guard had notified police that the shooting was coming from the 32nd floor. Police arrived on that floor at 10:17pm according to the Sheriff’s timeline and were told at 10:18pm by the security guard that he had been shot. The security guard was, therefore, shot at some point before 10:18pm. The shooting from Paddock’s room had stopped at 10:15pm. There is no mention of the events that transpired that led to the shooting of the security guard. Did he attempt to gain access to the room? Or did he merely approach the door before he was shot? If he did not attempt to gain access to the room but was instead shot as he stood outside, then it seems reasonable to suggest that the cameras were working.

If you think a more plausible explanation is that at least one other person was watching the hallway while the shooter (or shooters) were at the windows, then you are mistaken; the authorities and the mainstream media insist that the 64-year-old gambler was alone in the room.

Given the logistics involved in organizing this, we should take into account that it took place in Las Vegas, which, being the casino town that it is, is saturated in hi-tech surveillance. In fact, it is arguably the global standard-bearer for surveillance technology. Everything in Vegas – every casino slot machine, every table, every room, every corridor, every underground car park, every street corner – is seen by ‘big brother’. Heck, even the public buses in Vegas are in the process of being equipped with cameras that will pipe 24/7 live feeds to the Las Vegas PD. Could an amateur pull off Monday’s massacre, without detection, all by himself? And if so, where’s all the footage of him doing so? Will we never see it because it shows persons other than Paddock blowing people’s heads off Monday night? Or will we soon hear that security cameras on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay were mysteriously switched off that night?

Just today, Las Vegas Sheriff Lombardo seemed to depart from the script when he suggested that Paddock must have had help from someone.

Further evidence that Paddock was not a ‘lone wolf’ is found in the multiple calls that were made to police reporting incidents at other casinos in the area shortly after the shooting from the Mandalay Bay. Police can be heard on the scanner audio reporting multiple shooters and an active shooter at the Tropicana resort; a car-bomb was reported – and subsequently confirmed found – at the Luxor resort; concert-goers returning to the Excalibur hotel shortly after the bloodbath at the festival reported a “loud noise” there which caused people to flee as far as the roof; shots were reported at the main entrance to the Bellagio resort; a “suspect in black fatigues” was reported at Motel 6… In fact, almost every casino and hotel from the Mandalay north to Caesar’s Palace – over 1.5 miles away – went into lockdown because of ‘active situations’ at each location.

Mainstream media have since blithely reported that these were all false reports, leaving us to assume that they were either made by Paddock to confuse the police (although he would have been dead at the time of some of the reports), or made by panicked and traumatized people in and around the resorts. Confusing the police and sending them off on wild goose chases was certainly someone‘s intention – in addition, we suspect, to getting most everyone on The Strip on ‘lockdown’ for hours and hours. Yet it is not at all clear that panic caused reports of other shooters, rather than the other way around. In addition to the tens of thousands of festival attendees, there were thousands of hotel guests at these venues, and they’ve been reporting what they saw that night.

Below is a selection of such reports from social media on the night of the shootings

One guest at the Bellagio hotel live-streamed a video on the night of the shooting at the concert at approximately 11.20pm, at the same time that police were breaking into Paddock’s room in the Mandalay. The guest, Rene Downs, was sitting with her husband near the front doors of the hotel when shots were heard and chaos ensued.

This testimony appears to be corroborated by another guest at the same hotel. Andy Williamson was interviewed live on British chat show ‘Good Morning Britain’ from the Bellagio hotel when he was forced to cut off the interview amid screaming and sobs.

Another guest at the Aria Resort captured this footage of panicked guests fleeing after hearing gunshots.

The Aria resort is more than 1 mile from the Mandalay Bay, while the Bellagio is almost 1.5 miles away.

These reports of shootings at several other hotels appears to also be corroborated by the following screenshot of police scanner reports from the night of the attack: