I'm Still Not Done...

I had a lot of free time, a big yard, and several housecats around growing up. When there's a gopher in the yard, a cat will sit outside the hole for hours, even days, without eating or moving, just waiting for the gopher to pop up and WHAP, no more gopher.

Dad wasn't a dog guy, and the GI Bill post-WWII house he bought in the San Fernando Valley was riddled with gophers originally. And you can learn a lot about hunting from housecats, I promise you.

So, in pondering things pretty much non-stop at the moment, it's come out that Mr. Mass Shooter had rigged cameras to his peepholes, and in the corridor, including one concealed on a food service tray in the hallway.

And in looking at the emergency diagram I showed you earlier, this hit me:

 

The door to the emergency stairwell in his wing is right across the hallway from the door of the adjoining room he rented.

In short, any approach to his room other than rappelling from above he could see coming.
He could put effective fire on both approaches. From behind cover. Until he ran out of ammunition.

Short of rappelling down, or explosive breaching through room walls, he was untouchable.

And despite shooting up 600 people outside, and being able to view the corridor and stairwell approaches, he made no attempt to repel the approach of SWAT officers, despite ample time, resources, and demonstrated ability to plan for the obvious and inevitable.

FFS, SWAT's been around since the 1970s, and Paddock probably watched the frickin' TV show in college; the SLA shootout in LA happened while he was a student in Los Angeles at Cal State Northridge. So it's not like this was news to him, or his plans.

So the only reason not to offer resistance to the police who eventually found him, was that killing another 5-20 heavily armed police SWAT members simply wasn't part of the plans for the operation.

And make no mistake, this was an operation, not a lone wolf blaze of glory.

So, who would shoot up 600 civilians (including a couple of police, off-duty or inadvertently) but not make any effort to shoot the police who inevitably came knocking, 72 minutes after the rampage kicked off?

And why wouldn't someone allegedly just trying to notch up a score (because no reasons) do that...??

I am the absolute last guy on the planet to buy into barking nutjob conspiracy theories.
(BTW, the easiest way to undo them, in 99% of cases, is grant the central premises, and then watch them fall apart logically. Or they fall back on the Lack Of Proof = Proof fallacy)
But every new revelation, like who he worked for, which the FBI "forgot to mention", and working through the timelines and physical layouts of the details of this shooting, his sketchy background, quiet rich guy no one thinks about personality, disappearing for months at a time, piles of money, overseas transfers of large sums of cash, multiple houses but all sparsely furnished, and on and on and on, keep pointing to a planned complex operation by operatives, not a random act by a lone individual with a screw loose. Certainly not a lackluster retired 64-y.o accountant.

There's a metric fuckton of secret squirrel agency-type tradecraft going on in this, from the minute it happened to now.

So, when was that suite reserved?
When did he begin purchasing the guns, etc. used in the attack?

This thing was put together over months, maybe a year or more.

Pick it apart, and show me I'm wrong, using facts in evidence.

When it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...

And following up on an earlier comment added to my last post, one of Paddock's airplanes, or former airplanes, tail number N5343M, was an SR-20, in production since 1999, and retails for $390K. Everybody's got a spare $390K, right? No word on what Paddock's other plane is. 

It's now registered to Volant Associates, LLC (you should check out their website, and read the "Careers" page, to see if you get a whiff of Christians In Action as strongly as I did). The tail number is active, yet apparently, the plane has recorded not a single registered flight in the last three years. Pssst! Say, just wondering, who can double-register tail numbers, and make flight records go away? Asking for a friend.

But the killer "Hmmmmm" part, repeated for emphasis:

Now the interesting part, if you go to faa.gov and put the same tail number into their search engine N5343M, you will find that the FAA says the n-number is inactive, and the last registration was a C152 (different aircraft) to some guy in San Diego CA. And no mention of the current registration by Volant LLC, or Mr Paddock. The FAA database is updated every business day at midnight. So, it looks like someone ether scrubbed the FAA database and forgot or didn't know that flightaware posted the same info

Dear guys in the black van: check your seals. The chair is against the wall.



(And for the record, I'm happy, well-adjusted, physically healthy and mentally sound, enjoy my job, and have many fulfilling and enjoyable hobbies, pasttimes, and projects, which I look forward to continuing for some number of years, as time and circumstance give me the opportunity, and I drive safely in a well-maintained and sturdy vehicle, and always unload my weapons before I clean them. Just in case the topic should ever come up...)