Why I Like Smart People -Updated

Because they raise smart questions.
In this case, SiGraybeard in earlier comments:

The only problem I have with thinking down this path is that it required the guy buy into dying for the mission. Either that or they assured him there was a way out and then killed him anyway - they lied.

A suicide mission? I'm really naive here and you know far more than me, but I'm under the impression we don't order people to off themselves. We will put them in very dangerous situations, but we do everything we can to ensure that those people have a good chance of getting out. Do they really say, "you do x, y and z and then we kill you?" Or do they say, "this is a really dangerous mission and there's a chance you might get killed?" And then renege on the deal?

It appears to be in the profile of the mass shooter that they generally kill themselves as soon as they're cornered. It often looks as though they plan on killing themselves as soon as they're cornered. I can't say I've met many people from "Christians in Action", or those other TLAs, but I can say none of the ones I've met have been suicidal.

My reply:

 You're assuming he thought he wasn't walking out.

If he knew he was going to die, (which has to be true if he's the ad hoc shooter), why not take on the cops??
If he thought he was going to live, why hang out for an hour-plus after capping the first 600 rounds off?

He could have dumped the mags (5 minutes), walked across the hallway to the fire stairs, and loooooong before anyone showed up, been in the wind (5 more minutes, all downhill). (With a plane, literally. Remember he was an instrument-rated pilot who owned two planes, sitting across the frickin' street from the airport, FFS.) An hour before the cops came knocking, he could have been in Timbuktu. By the time they knew who they were looking for, he's in Mexico, and after that anywhere he wants. He'd be a hero in Cuba, Venezuela, or anywhere from Tunisia to Indonesia, etc. and he's got money to burn.

Self-headslap!
Of course, if he's planning to die, why not take on the cops too?

If he's not planning to die, why hang around for an hour after the deed?

Once again, the signs point both ways simultaneously.
And yeah, Duh! He's an instrument-rated pilot, with two airplanes, sitting in a hotel across the frickin' street from McCarran International Airport.
Mr. Mass Shooter could have dumped 6 100-rd mags, walked down the stairs, across the street, and been on the way to Mexico before they even knew who, where, or anything else.
And he would have made it, easily.

Or driven uptown to a smaller private airport, same same. Ten/fifteen-minute exfil, get in the plane, off to Mexico, or wherever. An hour before SWAT even comes knocking.

If he wanted to die, why not take the SWAT cops with him? They never laid a glove on him because he was dead when they made entry.

I have to suspect, at this point, that he may have been COLD and dead when they made entry, and possibly long before they nailed down the perimeter.

A guy who'd cap 600 people isn't going to crap his pants about shooting it out with the po-po, even SWAT, and his room gave him all the advantages for everything short of explosive dynamic entry, an SAS-style rappel from the roof firing machineguns into his face through the windows, or lobbing 40mm HEDP grenades at him from the elevator corridor.

And a guy who's thinking he could do it just to do it could have done the whole deal in the opening five minutes, then split, and been the most famous fugitive since D.B. Cooper, putting his old man to shame, and shoving it into the FBI's face for what they did to his dear old daddy.

Whoever checked into the room used girlfriend's plastic.
So where's the video of that guy?
Where's the video of Paddock making trip after trip hauling his arsenal to the 32d floor?
And who else was coming and going?
When did LVMPD establish a perimeter around the Vista Suite in 32-135?
How long was that after the initial shooting?
Who, and how many, left the floor, and hotel, before that time?

It. Simply. Doesn't. Add. Up.
Everything at every turn goes in too many squirrelly directions.
And they're not telling us anything that makes the pieces we have line up in any coherent manner.

ADDENDUM:
And more from Cavalryman40, who's turning into a rock star in comments:

I still have to believe that as a pilot, if he really wanted to kill people, he would have just went over to Henderson Airport, rented a plane, and simply flown it right into the crowd. Easier, less planning, and no way to get caught and be stopped beforehand. And he would have killed 10 times more people. But he didn't do that did he? It wouldn't send the proper message. Had to be a mass shooting. We wonder why he would bring 23 guns with him, when he only needed a couple to do the job? The message, "LOOK AT THIS GUY, HE HAD 23 GUNS!" Like it matters. Well it does matter to the hysterical public, and it matters to the people behind this. 21 of the guns were props. And yes, I believe he thought he was going to get away. If he was simply going to die, we are back to the airplane again. He was dead, before metro got there, and that begs the question. Who did get away?

As the Brits would say. "F**king Brilliant!"
The guy could have taken one of his planes and plowed into that crowd like ninepins, and he would've killed hundreds, outright.
But he didn't do that, did he?
WHY NOT?!?
If he's just looking for a big splash, that's it. he could even eat a pistol just at impact, and eliminate the worry of accidentally surviving and going to prison forever, assuming the crash didn't kill him.

So the whole "looking to make a mark" argument for motive goes right into the shitter, right there.
QED

This guy was far more likely a planted corpse than a mass murderer, and there's gotta be a metric f**kton of things TPTB know that they aren't passing along.

This story isn't being reported, it's being managed, massaged, and woven, mainly out of whole cloth.