Stephen Paddock (right) in 2002. Social Media.
As you are surely aware, no motive has been released for the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed 60 people and wounded 500 more. The attacker, Stephen Paddock, is a mystery and very little seems to be known about his life. He didn't release a manifesto and had little to no social media presence. With no information available all we have is speculation. So that's what I am going to do.
Perhaps that is irresponsible but at this point what else can we do? The man is a ghost and we have no idea as of this hour why he did what he did. We do know a bit about his background, but even that doesn't tell us much. He was rich and retired and gambled, but we don't know much about his politics. So let us go through some possibilities, with the acknowledgement that I could be totally wrong. I don't really find any of these possibilities likely to be honest.
1. He just went nuts. I find this extremely unlikely given how premeditated this attack appears to be. Very few people just wake up one day, mentally ill, and decide to go out and kill people. None of them wake up one day and then plan for months spending thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours planning an attack. It's possible that he's mentally ill, but I doubt that this was any kind of mental break. The attack was way too organized to be the product of a sick mind. It was almost professional in its execution.
2. It's right wing terrorism. I also find this unlikely, based on the choice of target. If you were a neo-Nazi or KKK member, why would you target a country music festival? It's full of white people, the very people that you think are superior. Plus Stephen Paddock had some kind of relationship with a Filipino woman, which is frowned upon, to say the least, by white supremacists. I just can't picture this attack as one perpetrated by a white supremacist when he targeted an event populated by mostly white people.
3. It's left wing terrorism. This seems a little more likely even though there is zero proof of this as well. Again, just because of the choice of target. If a radical leftist wanted to kill a large number of right wing people, a country music festival is about as good of a target as you can get. That said, there hasn't been any evidence that Paddock was politically active in anyway. Indeed, he seems like of the last people in America who isn't political in anyway.
4. He was just a nihilist that wanted to kill a bunch of people. I mean I guess it's possible. Some people really do hate everyone and want to make the world burn. If that was the case you would have thought someone would have picked up on that and said something to the media by now.
5. He had some kind of grudge against Las Vegas in general. There are media reports saying that he was a heavy gambler and if he lost a ton of money to the casinos he might be pissed off at them. But if that was the case why did he attack the music festival instead of the casinos itself? If he was mad at MGM, why didn't he target them directly instead of attacking a bunch of random folks at a concert? It seemed he used Mandalay Bay as a tool for his attack and not as his target.
6. He converted to Islam and joined ISIS. This is the only one that has any kind of evidence for it, though that evidence is very weak. ISIS has claimed credit for the attack via their media network, Amaq. That doesn't mean much because ISIS has claimed things that they didn't have much to do with. On the other hand, those have been mostly smaller attacks and nothing this major.
There is also the fact that his wife/girlfriend/whatever she was is Filipino. She apparently traveled to Dubai and is from a country where ISIS is active. She might have been radicalized and may have radicalized Haddock.
Still the ISIS connection has some major holes in it. First of all, it's extremely unlikely that someone in his 60's would convert to Islam out of nowhere. Second, the FBI hasn't found any links to terrorist organizations. Finally, Paddock didn't leave a video or a message saying that he was joining ISIS, which is pretty standard for ISIS attacks.
Those are the most likely options and even they have a lot of holes in them. There are other possibilities as well, but we would be quickly veering into conspiracy theories. It could be anything from the North Koreans or Russians or whatever but that would make even less sense. Right now though there is so little evidence available to the general public, your guess is as good as mine.
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