Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are shifting
gears today. Usually we're here to unpack these
big complex systems, you know, economics, obscure
history, the weird corners of the tech world.
But today we are heading to a specific coordinate
on the map that I think everyone recognizes,
even if they wish they didn't. We're going to
the neon -soaked intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard
and Mandalay Bay Road. It's a location that really
represents a terrifying... pivot point in recent
American history. We're talking about the night
the social contract of public safety was because
it was just shattered in a way we hadn't really
seen before. Exactly. We're talking about October
1st, 2017, a Sunday night, the Route 91 Harvest
Festival. Right. You've got the closing act,
Jason Aldean on stage. You have the lights of
the strip in the background. It is high energy.
It's vibrant. And then in the span of just 10
minutes, it becomes the site of the deadliest
mass shooting by a lone gunman in U .S. history.
And I think we should be clear about our mission
statement for this deep dive, because this is
a heavy topic and we aren't here to just, you
know, recite the tragic headline. Not at all.
We aren't here for the sensationalism. We're
here to do what we do best, which is analyze
the mechanics. We want to move beyond the breaking
news banners and look at the. The forensic details
of the preparation, the physics of the attack,
the chaos of the response, and ultimately the
baffling void at the center of it all. That is
the hook, isn't it? That's the thing that still
haunts investigators. Because usually when we
do a deep dive, we end with a why. Right. There's
a conclusion. We wrap it up with a clear conclusion.
But here. Despite 10 months of the most exhaustive
investigation in the history of the LVMPD and
the FBI, the why remains a completely blank page.
It's the motiveless crime on an industrial scale.
And that is what is so unsettling. We know the
who, the what, the where, the when, and the how
in excruciating minute -by -minute detail. We
have the receipts, quite literally, but the why,
it simply isn't there. And that forces us to
ask some very uncomfortable questions about,
you know, the nature of evil and violence itself.
So let's unpack this. Let's start with the anomaly
that is the perpetrator. Because when you think
of a mass shooter, society... Let's be honest,
the data has kind of given us a stock profile.
We expect a disaffected youth, maybe someone
who's been radicalized online, someone with a
history of violent outbursts or, you know, a
manifesto. Right. You look for the Columbine
effect or some kind of political extremism. Stephen
Paddock broke every single one of those molds.
Completely. We're looking at a 64 -year -old
white male. He lived in a retirement community
in Mesquite, Nevada. A retirement community.
He wasn't a fringe dweller. He was a retired
auditor. and a real estate businessman. And a
wealthy one. Yeah. This wasn't someone acting
out of like economic desperation. He was a multimillionaire.
He was what they call a high roller. He was a
status player. And I think his professional background
is actually key to understanding the how, even
if we can't get to the why. Okay. He was an auditor.
Think about what an auditor does. They look for
patterns. They look for loopholes. They are meticulous,
detail -oriented, and they approach systems with
a critical, almost cold eye. He applied that
same auditor mindset to his gambling. Let's talk
about the gambling, because this wasn't just
a hobby for him. This was a lifestyle. But he
wasn't exactly the James Bond type at the backer
route table, was he? Oh, far from it. And this
is a really crucial psychological detail. He
didn't play social games like craps or blackjack
where you interact with a dealer and other players.
No. He played video poker. Exclusively. Which
is essentially man versus machine. It's man versus
algorithm. It's a solitary, repetitive, almost
trance -like state. You sit there for hours just
hitting buttons, watching the screen. It allows
you to be in the middle of the casino, surrounded
by the noise, the energy, the so -called action,
while remaining completely isolated in your own
little bubble. It's an antisocial activity, masquerading
as being out on the town. And despite being antisocial,
he was known. He was a whale. He got the comps,
the free penthouses, the gourmet meal. He absolutely
thrived on that status. He was the guy the casino
hosts fawned over. But, and here's where we start
to see the cracks forming. In the two years leading
up to 2017, that status was, well, it was eroding.
The sources mention he was on a massive losing
streak, a really bad one. He had lost a significant
amount of his wealth for a man whose entire identity
is built on being the big shot who beats the
house. That is a psychic injury. A huge one.
Some forensic psychologists point to this theory
of the eroding narcissist. He was an aging man.
He was losing his money. His girlfriend described
him as becoming distant and their intimacy had
ceased. He was watching his power just slip away.
So the theory is if I can't command respect with
my money anymore, I will command the world's
attention with my. violence. That's the speculation.
It's a way to reclaim control. You know, I will
decide when and how the story ends and everyone
is going to look at me. Right. But again, plenty
of narcissists go broke without firing into a
crowd. There's another layer here, a biological
one that is just, yeah, it's wild. You're talking
about his father. This is one of those details
that if you wrote it in a movie script, the producers
would say that's too unbelievable. Cut it. Benjamin
Bing Paddock. Steven's father wasn't just a bad
dad. He was on the FBI's most wanted list from
1969 to 1977. On the most wanted list for what?
He was a bank robber. A bank robber. Wow. Yes.
And the FBI poster for him described him as being
diagnosed as psychopathic and having suicidal
tendencies. So while Steven Paddock had no criminal
record himself, literally nothing more than traffic
citations, he is carrying this genetic legacy.
So he's the son of a diagnosed psychopath. Who
made a living. Living through high stakes crime.
Yeah. It brings up that age old nature versus
nurture debate, doesn't it? You have the potential
gene of the bank robber mixed with the discipline
of the auditor. A terrifying combination. The
impulse for destruction met with the capability
for meticulous cold planning. And that is what
we need to look at next. The planning. Because
this was not a snap decision. He didn't just
wake up on October 1st and decide to do this.
No, this was a project. This was months, if not
longer, in the making. The timeline of premeditation
goes back at least to May of 2017. He was scouting.
He researched large venues in Boston. He specifically
looked at Fenway Park. Fenway Park. Yes. Then
in August 2017, he actually booked a room at
the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. What's happening
in Chicago then? Lollapalooza, the massive music
festival in Grant Park. He booked a room overlooking
the crowd. Did he check in? He never checked
in, but the intent was there. He was shopping
for a venue. He was looking for a very specific
geometry, a high -rise vantage point overlooking
a dense, trapped crowd. He was sight -surveying
mass murder. That's exactly what he was doing.
And he even did a dry run right there in Las
Vegas. Just days before the Route 91 attack,
he rented a condo at the Ogden, which is a high
-rise in downtown Las Vegas. During the Life
is Beautiful Festival. Another open air music
festival. He was there. He was likely watching
the security rotations, watching how the crowd
moved, testing the wind angles. He was doing
his homework. He was. And his Internet search
history confirms this cold, calculated curiosity.
It wasn't political ranting or manifestos. It
was physics. He was searching for a ballistics
chart 308. He was searching for SWAT weapons.
He searched. Do police use explosives? He wanted
to know exactly what the opposition would bring
to the fight. He was calculating engagement distances.
It was a logistical problem he was trying to
solve. Oh, so let's move to the setup at Mandalay
Bay because this is where the auditor really
shines in the most horrifying way possible. He
checks in on September 25th. That is nearly a
week before the shooting. And notice how he gets
the room. He demands a specific suite, room 32135,
as a complimentary perk because of his gambling
status. Right, because he's a whale. It's a corner
suite with a panoramic view of the festival grounds.
But that wasn't enough for him. Four days later,
he books the connecting room, 32134. Why the
second room? What did they give him? It gave
him a second window, a second firing angle. It
allowed him to triangulate the festival grounds
and cover areas that might have been blind spots
from the first room. It was purely tactical.
And then begins to load in. This is the part
that just frustrates people so much when they
hear it. Yeah. How do you get an arsenal of weapons
into a high -end hotel room without raising a
single eyebrow? You use the front door. And you
use the staff. Over the course of his stay, he
brought in more than 20 suitcases. 20. Let's
break that down because the volume is just staggering.
Okay. So on September 25th, he brings in five
suitcases. Five. Okay. On the 26th, seven suitcases.
Seven more. On the 28th, another two. On the
30th, six more. And on October 1st, the day of
the shooting, two more. And he had the bellman
help him with these. He did, and this is social
engineering at its finest. To the bellman, he's
just a wealthy guy moving in for a long stay.
In Vegas, it is not unusual for a whale to have
20 bags. Right. You just assume it's cash or
something. Maybe it's cash. Maybe it's special
bedding. Maybe it's supplies for a month -long
party. You don't ask questions of the guy tipping
you big money. He hid in plain sight, protected
by his privilege as a high roller. He interacted
with the hotel staff more than 10 times. They
all described him as normal. He was pleasant.
He was tipping. He was gambling at night and
moving guns by day. And once everything was in
the room. He goes into lockdown mode. September
30th, the Do Not Disturb signs go up on both
doors, and he turns the room into a fortress.
He installed his own surveillance system. He
literally drilled a hole in the peephole of the
main door and installed a camera. Wow. But more
brazenly, he took a room service cart, you know,
a food trolley, and he put a camera on it. He
just left a room service cart in the middle of
the hallway. Yes. He positioned it specifically
to look down the hallway toward the elevators.
He created his own early warning system. He wanted
to see the police coming before they ever got
to his door. The sources say these cameras weren't
recording though, right? No, they were live feed
only. He wasn't interested in leaving a tape
for history. He was interested in tactical awareness
in the moment. He was watching the feed on a
tablet inside the room. It is so cold. So methodical.
Let's talk about what was inside those suitcases.
Because when the police finally breached that
room, the inventory list looked like something
out of a war movie. They found 24 firearms in
the suite. But it wasn't just a random collection
of guns. It was a specific tool set for a specific
task. What do you mean by that? How so? Well,
he had 14 AR -15 style rifles. These fire the
.223 caliber round. It's a lighter, faster bullet,
good for volume of fire. But he also had eight
AR -10 style rifles. Okay, for listeners who
aren't gun experts, what is the difference? Why
mix and match like that? The AR -10 fires a .38
caliber round. That is a significantly heavier,
more powerful bullet. It has much better range
and much better penetration power. He had these
AR -10s equipped with high -power scopes and
bipods. So those were his precision instruments.
Exactly. He intended to use those to reach out
and touch targets that were further away or perhaps
to punch through barriers like vehicles or stage
equipment. But the AR -15s? Yeah. Those were
for the volume, for the crowd. Those were for
the bump stocks. And this is the piece of technology
that really defined this tragedy. We heard so
much about bump stocks in the news after this,
but I want to make sure we really understand
the mechanics. How does it work? Okay, so a standard
semi -automatic rifle fires one round for every
single pull of the trigger. Bang, bang. Bang.
To fire fast, you have to have a very fast finger.
Right. A bump stock replaces the standard butt
stock of the rifle, the part that rests against
your shoulder. It's designed to be loose to allow
the rest of the gun to slide back and forth freely
on that stock. So it harnesses the recoil, the
kick from the gun. Exactly. When you fire, the
recoil pushes the gun back into the stock. The
bump stock then uses that energy to bounce the
gun forward again, slamming the trigger back
against your stationary finger. It creates a
mechanical loop. So instead of bang, it's a continuous
fire. It's bird. We are talking about a rate
of fire of roughly nine rounds per second. Nine
a second. which is, for all intents and purposes,
indistinguishable from a fully automatic machine
gun. And he had a 100 -round high -capacity magazine,
so he could maintain that volume of fire for
10, even 15 seconds at a time before having to
reload. It was a force multiplier. It allowed
one man to rain down the firepower of an entire
squad of soldiers. Absolutely. And the manufacturers
were all top -tier, Colt, Daniel Defense, FN
Herstal. He bought the best gear money could
buy. And it wasn't just guns, was it? He had
plans for explosives, too. In the valet garage
in his Hyundai Tucson, police found a terrifying
stash. He had ammonium nitrate. That's the fertilizer
used in bomb making. Like in Oklahoma City. It's
the primary component of heavy IEDs, yes. He
also had 50 pounds of Tannerite, which is a binary
explosive used for target practice, but in that
quantity. What was the plan there? To drop the
hotel? I mean, what do you do with that? It's
unlikely that amount would bring down a steel
frame building like Mandalay Bay, but a car bomb
in the parking structure. It would have caused
massive structural damage, fire, and absolute
panic. It would have drawn first responders away
from the shooting. It seems he wanted chaos on
every level. He also tried to get tracer rounds,
right? He did. He tried to buy them from a dealer
who was out of stock, so he bought them from
a private seller at a gun show. Tracer rounds
burn brightly when fired, so they let you see
the path of the bullet in the dark. So he could
walk his fire onto the target better at night.
Exactly. And then he left a note, a simple handwritten
note on the nightstand. A manifesto. A suicide
note. No. Math. It was a slip of paper with calculations
on it, calculations for the distance, the wind
drift, and the bullet drop from the 32nd floor
down to the concert grounds. He had worked out
the physics equation. To him, the people down
there weren't humans. There were variables in
a ballistics problem. That is absolutely chilling.
Just pure calculation. Okay, let's move to the
night of October 1st. The timeline. Because there
is a prelude to the mass shooting that is incredibly
important and often misunderstood. The security
guard incident. Jesus Campos. He is the unsung
hero and the first victim of that night. And
he wasn't even there for Paddock, right? This
is a coincidence. A complete coincidence. He
was responding to an open door alarm on the 32nd
floor. But when he tried to enter the hallway
from the stairwell. The door wouldn't open. Paddock
had barricaded it. He had screwed an L -shaped
metal bracket into the doorframe from the inside.
He had secured his flank. He didn't want anyone
sneaking up on him from the stairs. So Campos
had to go to another floor, take the elevator,
and come into the 32nd floor hallway from the
other side. And as he's walking down the hall.
He hears drilling. This is around 10 .00 p .m.
It was likely Paddock securing that bracket or
doing some kind of final prep. But as Campos
approaches room 32135, Paddock spots him. Remember
the cart camera? He sees him coming on his tablet.
And he fires. He doesn't open the door. He fires
35 rounds right through the wood of the hotel
room door into the hallway. And Campos gets hit.
He takes a round to the leg. This is at 10 .05
p .m. He retreats to an alcove and radios for
help. He actually runs into a maintenance worker,
Stephen Shuck, who had come up to fix the jammed
door. Campos saves Shuck's life, screaming at
him to take cover. Now, there was a lot of confusion
about the timeline here. For a while, the report
said there was a six -minute gap between Campos
getting shot and the attack on the crowd starting.
That was the timeline controversy, people asked.
If he shot a guard at 10 .05, why didn't police
stop him before he started shooting at the crowd
six minutes later? But the police eventually
clarified this with digital forensics. There
was no gap. So what happened? Paddock shot Campos,
realized his timeline was blown. He had been
discovered and he immediately turned his attention
to the windows. He uses a hammer. He smashes
two windows, one in the main suite, 32 -135,
and one in the connecting room, 32 -134. And
we have to appreciate the physics here. These
are heavy, hurricane -proof glass panes. Breaking
them requires violent force, and once they are
gone, the pressure differential sucks air out
of the room. It creates a wind tunnel. And then
he looks down, 10 .05 p .m. Jason Aldean is closing
the show. 22 ,000 people. The distance is 490
yards. That's about five football fields. That
sounds really far. For a pistol, it's an impossible
shot. For a rifle with a scope and a bipod firing
down into a crowd that dense, it is what marksmen
call a target -rich environment. He didn't have
to aim at specific people. He just had to point
at the mask. The shooting starts. Yeah. And the
crowd reaction. It breaks your heart to hear
the audio. They cheer. It's that normalcy bias
we talked about. We are wired to reject danger.
People thought it was fireworks. It was the finale
of the festival. They expected pyrotechnics.
Some thought it was a blown speaker. But then
the screaming starts. Paddock begins using the
bump stocks. Bursts of 80 to 100 rounds at a
time. Burt. A pause to change magazines? Burt.
It was just relentless. And the venue itself
turned into a trap. It became what tactical experts
call a kill box. The festival was surrounded
by high chain link fences. Right. These were
designed for revenue protection to keep people
without tickets out. But when the shooting started.
Those fences became walls. They kept the people
in. People were crushed against them, trying
to get out. It created a horrific bottleneck.
The exits were too few and too narrow for a stampede
of 22 ,000 terrified people. People were climbing
fences, tearing them down, getting trampled.
And all the while, bullets are just raining down
from a high angle. And he wasn't just shooting
at the people. He had another... Even more ambitious
target, the airport. This is a detail that really
shows the scale of his intent. He fired at the
jet fuel tanks at McCarran International Airport,
which is right next to the festival grounds,
about 2 ,000 feet away. Was he trying to blow
up the airport? He hit the tanks twice. One bullet
actually penetrated the steel shell of one of
the tanks. But it didn't explode. Why not? Chemistry.
Hollywood has taught us that if you shoot a gas
tank, it goes boom. But jet fuel is basically
kerosene. It's very stable. To ignite, it needs
to be vaporized and mixed with oxygen in a very
specific ratio. A bullet passing through liquid
fuel just causes a leak. It doesn't cause a detonation.
But the intent was clearly to create a massive
fireball to distract and destroy. Down on the
ground, the confusion must have been absolute.
It was the fog of war. The acoustics of the strip
are a nightmare. You have these tall glass canyons,
the Luxor, the Excalibur, Mandalay Bay. The sound
of the gunshots was bouncing off everything.
So they didn't know where it was coming from?
No. People thought shots were coming from the
Luxor. People thought there were shooters on
the ground. Reports came in of shots at Gate
4. The police were getting conflicting information
from all sides. So it took them a while to even
figure out where he was. Eventually, police and
security spotted the muzzle flashes from the
middle of the northern side of Mandalay Bay.
The strobe light of the muzzle flash in the dark
window finally gave him away. So the police mobilize.
10 .1 p .m. Officers are already in the hotel
on other floors. Officers on the 31st floor,
one floor below, could actually hear the shell
casings hitting the floor above them. They said
it sounded like rain. Wow. By 10 .17 p .m., officers
reach the 32nd floor. They find the wounded Jesus
Campos. But by 10 .17... The shooting has already
stopped. The gunfire ceased at 10 .15 p .m. The
entire attack lasted exactly 10 minutes. Over
1 ,000 rounds fired. But when the police arrive
at the door, it is silent. And this leads to
the breach delay. There was over an hour from
10 .17 to 11 .20 where officers were outside
the room but didn't go in. Why? Why the wait?
This is a matter of police doctrine, but it's
hard for the public to accept. When a suspect
is actively shooting, the protocol is active
shooter response. You breach immediately, you
engage, you stop the killing, even if it means
taking risks. Right. Go, go, go. But the moment
a shooting stops, the classification changes
to barricaded subject. So they slow everything
down. Exactly. If he's not killing anyone right
now, you don't rush in. You don't know if the
door is rigged with explosives, which was a valid
fear given the cameras and the drilling he was
doing. You don't know if he has hostages. So
they held the line. They evacuated the other
guests on the floor. They waited for the SWAT
team with the proper breach gear. And at 11 .20
p .m. SWAT places an explosive charge on the
door. They blow it. They enter room 32135. And
what did they find? Paddock was dead. He had
committed suicide with a revolver. Shot himself
in the mouth. There was an accidental discharge
during the breach, wasn't there? I read that.
Yes. In the extreme tension of the entry, an
officer's weapon fired a three -round burst.
It hit a cabinet. Nobody was hurt, but it just
shows how incredibly high the adrenaline was
in that moment. So the shooter is dead. The threat
is over. But the crisis has just migrated down
the street to the hospitals. The casualty count
is just overwhelming. The numbers are staggering.
58 people died that night. Two more died later
from complications of their wounds. One in 2019
and one in 2020, bringing the total death toll
to 60. 60 people. And they're injured. 413 people
suffered gunshot or shrapnel wounds. But the
total number of injured was 867. That includes
people who were trampled, people who broke ankles
jumping fences, people who cut themselves on
the barriers. The hospitals must have been a
complete war zone. They were pushed beyond the
breaking point. And there was a critical failure
in the system here. University Medical Center,
or UMC, is the level I trauma center in Vegas.
It is the place you want to be if you have a
gunshot wound. It's the best equipped. Right.
But about an hour into the crisis, emergency
services were told UMC was full. Was it actually
full? It wasn't. They still had capacity. But
in the chaos, erroneous information went out.
So ambulances started diverting patients to Sunrise
Hospital, which is a Level 2 center. And then
Sunrise just got crushed. They received 199 patients.
150 of them arrived within a 40 -minute window.
150 in 40 minutes. Imagine that. A patient every
15 seconds. Victims were being piled in the back
of pickup trucks, police cars, Ubers. The parking
lot became a triage center. Doctors were treating
people on the floor of the lobby. It was absolute
chaos. There was also the blood donation paradox.
I remember seeing the news the next day, these
images of lines for blocks of people wanting
to give blood. It is a beautiful human instinct,
isn't it? When we feel helpless, we want to give.
Blood donations in Vegas went up 53%. But, and
this is the paradox, 15 % of that blood went
unused and had to be thrown out. Why? Why would
that happen? Because blood has a shelf life.
And in a mass casualty event, you need the blood
now, which comes from the existing supply on
the shelves. By the time you bleed a new donor,
test the blood, process it, the immediate crisis
is over. So it creates this glut in the system.
A glut that the system can't use. It really raises
questions about how we manage that public desire
to help without clogging the system. Amidst all
this horror, though, we have to talk about the
heroism. Because in that kill box, people didn't
just run. They stayed. They helped. The impulse
to protect was just as strong as the impulse
to destroy. Take Matthew Kobos. He was a young
U .S. Army soldier. There's a famous photo of
him. You've probably seen it. Yes, I know the
one. He is lying on top of a young blonde woman,
shielding her entire body with his own, while
bullets are literally kicking up the dirt around
them. He didn't know her. He just covered her.
And then he ran back into the danger zone to
apply tourniquets to other people. And Jonathan
Smith. They call him the angel. He was there
for his brother's 43rd birthday. When the shooting
started, he grabbed his family, but then he just
kept grabbing strangers. He was screaming, active
shooter, get down. He formed a human chain, dragging
people toward a row of parked cars for cover.
He saved dozens of lives. Dozens. Before he took
a bullet in the neck himself, he survived, but
he saved so many. And Britney Spears. She was
a civilian. A civilian. An EMT from UCLA who
was there just to enjoy the music. She didn't
flee. She started setting up a triage station
inside the venue while the shooter was still
active. She was plugging bullet holes and directing
care. She was the only civilian medical professional
to receive a medal of courage from the police.
There is a really tragic connection that came
up in the research, though. A sort of coda to
the survivor stories that feels almost cruel.
The Thousand Oaks shooting. This is a gut punch.
A year later, in November 2018, a gunman walked
into the Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand
Oaks, California. It's a country western bar.
And who's there? A lot of the Vegas survivors,
right? A huge number of them. That bar was their
community hub, their safe space where they went
to heal together. Survivors of the Las Vegas
massacre found themselves in the middle of another
mass shooting just 12 months later. And one of
them didn't make it out. Telemachus Orfanos.
He survived the Vegas shooting. He came home
and he was killed in Thousand Oaks. His mother's
interview afterwards was, it was just searing.
She said, I don't want prayers. I want gun control.
It really highlighted that for these survivors,
nowhere felt safe anymore. You survive the anomaly,
only to be caught in the pattern. Let's zoom
out to the aftermath. Because as soon as the
shooting stopped, a different kind of chaos started.
The information war. This was really the first
major mass casualty event where we saw the total
failure of the modern algorithmic internet. Explain
that. What do you mean by failure? When a crisis
breaks, there is a data void. People are searching
for information, but verified news takes time.
Journalists have to check facts. But lies, lies
are fast and algorithms prioritize engagement,
not accuracy. So what happened? What was being
pushed out there? If you Googled Las Vegas shooter
on Monday morning, the top stories widget, the
part Google presents as authoritative news linked
directly to a 4chan thread. 4chan, the anonymous
message board. That was the Thou story. That
was the top story. And that thread completely
misidentified the shooter. It claimed he was
a registered Democrat, an anti -Trump activist,
and a member of an extremist group. It was total
fiction. But for a few crucial hours, Google
served it to millions of people as fact. And
Facebook wasn't much better, I'm guessing. No.
Sputnik, the Russian state -controlled news agency,
was trending on Facebook. They were pushing stories
linking the shooter to terrorists. ISIS actually
tried to claim him. Right. They gave him a name,
didn't they? Abu Abdulbar al -Amriqi. They claimed
he was their soldier. Was there any truth to
that at all? Zero. Absolutely none. The FBI tore
Paddock's life apart. They looked at every email,
every phone call, every travel record. There
was no connection to ISIS, no connection to international
terror. But ISIS knew that claiming him would
spread fear, so they did it. And this misinformation
had real, tangible consequences for the survivors.
The crisis actor conspiracy. This is the ugliest
part of the aftermath. Conspiracy theorists claim
the shooting was faked, that the victims were
actors hired by the government to push gun control.
Unbelievable. Survivors, people who had pulled
bullets out of their friends, started receiving
death threats. They were harassed online. It
added this layer of psychological trauma that
simply didn't exist 20 years ago. Let's talk
about the legal side, because the lawsuits here
were massive. MGM Resorts, the owner of Mandalay
Bay, faced a suit from 450 victims. And MGM's
response was legally fascinating and publicly
disastrous. They countersued the victims. They
sued the victims? How is that even possible?
They filed a suit against hundreds of victims,
but they weren't asking for money. They were
using a very specific piece of legislation called
the Safety Act of 2002. Okay, what is that? It
was passed after 9 -11. Basically, it says that
if a company uses anti -terrorism technology
or services that are certified by the Department
of Homeland Security, they cannot be held liable
for an act of mass violence. I see. MGM argued
that their security vendor was certified, so
they were immune. They sued the victims to force
a federal judge to rule on that immunity immediately.
So it was a legal maneuver to stop the bleeding
before it started. It was a hardball tactic.
It worked, in a sense. It forced a settlement.
In October 2019, MGM and the victims reached
a settlement of $800 million. It's a massive
sum, but it avoided a trial that could have set
a dangerous precedent on hotel liability. And
of course, the bunk stocks. Paddock put them
on the map. Before this, I mean, most people
had never even heard of them. Even the NRA initially
came out and said, OK, maybe these should be
regulated. In December 2018, the Trump administration
banned them. The Department of Justice reclassified
them as machine guns. But that didn't stick,
did it? No. It went all the way to the Supreme
Court. Just recently, in June of 2024, the Supreme
Court overturned the ban. On what grounds? A
technicality of language. The National Firearms
Act defines a machine gun as a weapon that fires
automatically with a single function of the trigger.
The court ruled that with a bump stock, the trigger
is still technically being bumped and pulled
for each shot. It's just happening really, really
fast. So by the strict letter of the law, it's
not a machine gun. According to the Supreme Court,
yes. So unless Congress passes a new law specifically
defining and banning them, they are legal again.
Back to square one. So we've covered the logistics,
the arsenal, the timeline, the heroism, the law.
But we have to end where we began. The conclusion
of the investigation itself. August 2018, Sheriff
Joe Lombardo and the FBI released the final report.
It is the definitive account. And the conclusion
is. Silence. No conspiracy. No second gunman.
No secret plot. And no motive. The FBI Behavioral
Analysis Unit, the best profilers in the world,
the people who inspired the show Mindhunter,
could not find a single or clear motivating factor.
No manifesto on a hard drive. No diary outlining
his grievances against the world. Nothing. No
political ideology. No religious extremism. No
specific grudge against the hotel or the concert
goers. Just a man who was, in their words, bored.
aging, losing his status, and who possessed a
high degree of intelligence and a nefarious intent.
That is infinitely more terrifying than a terrorist,
isn't it? It is. Because we can understand terrorism.
We can fight an ideology. If he was demonstrably
crazy, we could talk about mental health funding.
If he was a disgruntled employee, we could talk
about workplace violence. But Steven Paddock
was none of those. He was a cipher. It suggests
that our safety relies on something very, very
fragile. It relies on a social contract. We walk
through the world assuming that the person in
the hotel room next to us or the guy in the window
above us agrees the basic rule of don't kill
people. When someone like Paddock breaks that
contract without a reason we can comprehend,
it shatters our sense of order. It makes you
look at soft targets, festivals, concerts, open
public spaces completely differently. It changes
the paradigm. We can harden airports. We can
put metal detectors in schools. But how do you
secure an open -air festival from a window 500
yards away and 32 floors up? It forces us to
accept that there is a limit to how safe we can
truly make a free society. That is a heavy note
to end on, but a necessary one. We wanted to
move beyond the headlines, and I think looking
at the sheer mechanical preparation of this crime
does that. It strips away the myth and leaves
us with the cold, hard, and deeply unsettling
reality. And hopefully, by understanding the
mechanics, the luggage, the surveillance, the
purchasing patterns, we can better spot the anomalies
in the future. Maybe the next time someone connects
the dots before the window breaks. We can only
hope. Thank you for listening to this deep dive.
It wasn't an easy one, but we appreciate you
sticking with us to understand the details. Stay
curious, stay safe, and we'll see you on the
next deep dive.