Before Las Vegas shooting, gunman was settling into retirement
Jonathan Allen

(Reuters) - At first glance, it seemed Stephen Paddock, 64, was set for a quiet life in a desert retirement community where he bought a new home in 2015. From there it was only an hour’s drive to Las Vegas - where he would embark on the worst mass shooting in recent U.S. history.

Public records point to an itinerant existence across the American West: a few years in coastal California, a few years in other parts of Nevada. Paddock had a hunting license in Texas, where he lived for at least a few years. He got his pilot license, and had at least one single-engine aircraft registered in his name.

In early 2015, he bought a modest two-story home in a new housing development for retirees on the dusty edge of Mesquite, a small desert town popular with golfers and gamblers that straddles the Nevada border with Arizona.

“It’s a nice, clean home and nothing out of the ordinary,” Quinn Averett, a Mesquite police department spokesman, told reporters on Monday. Some guns and ammunition were found inside, though nothing remarkable in a region where gun ownership is high.

An hour’s drive southwest is Las Vegas, where Paddock would check into a 32nd-floor room last Thursday at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino with at least 10 rifles for a shooting spree that would kill least 50 people and hurt more than 400.

Eric Paddock, the shooter’s brother, said the family was “bewildered” as to what drove him to mass murder, saying the family would release a brief statement through the sheriff’s office in Orlando, Florida, where some of the shooter’s relatives live.

Stephen Paddock had no criminal record other than a traffic infraction, authorities said.

Before moving to Mesquite, Nevada, he lived in another town called Mesquite in Texas. He was listed as the manager of an apartment complex called Central Park. A woman who answered the telephone for the complex referred questions to another manager, who did not respond to messages.

Records as recently as 2015 list Paddock as single. Police and public records said he lived with Marilou Danley in the Nevada retirement community. Danley described herself as a “casinos professional,” as well as a mother and grandmother on social media websites.

She was traveling outside the country, and police say she had no connection with the attack, CNN reported.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-lasvegas-shooting-gunman/before-las-vegas-shooting-gunman-was-settling-into-retirement-idUSKCN1C721O

Jason Burke, the Guardian’s Africa correspondent and author of The New Threat, a work on the Islamic State and other terrorist groups, writes that the public and the press need to be skeptical of claims that the Las Vegas shooter converted to Islam or was somehow linked to an international group.

The Isis claim of responsibility for Las Vegas shooting appears to have been first published on Amaq news agency, an ISIS communication channel which has seen many previous such statements. We need to be very prudent assessing this one. The profile of the attacker alone urges extreme caution, and US officials have already said they have no evidence of any link to the group.

Until around a year ago, Isis claims tended to be reliable. The group used carefully calibrated wording to indicate its degree of involvement of the group, and, if there was some exaggeration, there was limited outright fabrication. The group often provided proof of its involvement through videos recorded by attackers before an incident.

Isis also started quoting “security sources”, which are thought by security officials to be close friends or relatives, contacted by the group, who confirmed an individual’s motivation and loyalties. Sometimes of these appear to have been “interviewed” by Isis after an attack to back up its claim.

But in recent months Isis, facing military defeat and the loss of territories, have repeatedly made claims which have been shown to utterly unjustified. Isis claimed a role in the Westminster attacks in March – and an exhaustive investigation found no link. The group claimed a shooting in a Philippines casino in June, where the attacker was an gambler with large debts and a drinking problem. There are many other examples.

This claim today describes the shooter in Las Vegas as a “soldier” of the Isis, who converted to Islam several months ago. This is theoretically possible of course but seems far fetched, not least because he committed suicide.

Islamic militant groups launch “fedayeen” actions in which death is a near certainty, thus becoming “martyrs”, but they do not ever take their own lives in this way, which is seen as a terrible sin.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2017/oct/02/las-vegas-two-dead-in-mandalay-bay-casino-shooting-latest-updates?CMP=share_btn_tw&page=with:block-59d259e0e4b00d657809cf6f#block-59d259e0e4b00d657809cf6f

It is awful what happened there. Also, I really doubt he was ISIS. I think they jumped at before they knew who he even was.

The shooter did have the gun illegally, so gun control laws would not have prevented this shooting.

Not that I'm opposed to a nice background check and mental health evaluation before people are sold guns.

The shooter did have the gun illegally

ISIS claims responsibility.

Aside from the gun control debate, this also brings up the question of terrorism. People are saying “call this domestic terrrorism”, but it’s fucking not, and it has nothing to do with him being white. This was not politically or religiously motivated as far as we know, which is what Terrorism is. People using this tragedy to express their hatred of white people and men is far worse than using it to trash the second amendment and nra.

Aside from the gun control debate, this also brings up the question of terrorism. People are saying “call this domestic terrrorism”, but it’s fucking not, and it has nothing to do with him being white. This was not politically or religiously motivated as far as we know, which is what Terrorism is. People using this tragedy to express their hatred of white people and men is far worse than using it to trash the second amendment and nra.

How do you know it was not domestic terrorism? We do not know the motive. But we know for now: the shooting was indiscriminate, its targets were civilians, it caused chaos and panic, and the alleged shooter was a local. So far it has fitted the often loose definition of "terrorism".

"Terrorism" is a term often abused by politicians. Politicians use it before the facts come out and the unquestioning media parrot it. A recent case in mind: Trump called London subway bomb attackers "loser terrorists" and advocated for Muslim ban, before a suspect was named.

Jesus, America. What an awful hateful country you have created. Such divide.

Listening to the talk show host's monologues about the shooting and gun violence and Trump and what-not is touching, but ultimately pointless. Nothing will change. This is just another reason for the whole world to laugh at the USA. Not laugh at the victims of a tragedy. But laugh at the idiocy regarding gun laws. There should be a special day every year for gun shootings. America seems to love them so much, why not celebrate it! Like Christmas and Halloween. I would suggest in June. There's not much happening in June. Why not have a federal holiday? ... Mass Shooting Day.

And don't say Americans don't like mass shootings. If Americans didn't like them, they'd do something to stop them. And so far they've done fuck all besides hope and pray. I wonder if that's helping.