Sunday, October 8, 2017

Inconsistencies

There are a number of things that just don't make sense to me about the Las Vegas shooter. I'm not the only one. Now, I am not by any means saying that there was any sort of conspiracy, but there is a lot here that makes no sense to me.

First, there are the statistical anomalies: A 64 year old millionaire with a graduate level education, no political affiliations, no social media presence, and no history of mental illness just doesn't fit the profile. I read an article with quotes from a former FBI profiler who is just as stumped.

Then there are the other anomalies:

The note left behind turns out to have included hand-written calculations about where he needed to aim to maximize his accuracy and kill as many people as possible. To me, this seems to indicate one of two things: either a ballistics table, or a range card. Either of those would indicate a level of knowledge that is higher than the average shooter, not just the average American. A range card is used as a guide for soldiers, particularly ones who are going to be using a weapon to cover an area with fire, as opposed to using a weapon to engage point targets. Below is a range card, right out of the Army field training manual:



In other words, he was planning on using his automatic weapon to place fire into a "beaten zone" to fire into a crowd, where hits on specific people don't matter. All that mattered was putting fire into the zone, and count on the law of averages to get hits on individuals. Again, this would indicate a level of training and knowledge that is beyond what most people would know. Since this man is not alleged to have had any military training, where did he get the training?

Then there is the large amounts of cash he had. He paid cash for a house, gambled upwards of a million dollars a year, and there is a report that he won $5 million in 2015 by playing video poker in casinos. I am a bit of a gambler myself. I am not a high roller, but I do gamble enough to get limited comps, like the occasional hotel stay or cruise. Let me say this: The games are not predictable over the long term for people to pull those kinds of winnings out over the long term. Sure, there are people who hit the VERY rare large jackpot, but casinos use those large winnings as loss leaders to entice gamblers. People do not win over the long term, or everyone with some math skill would be in there making millions, and the casinos would go out of business. A more likely story is that he was using the casinos to launder money from some sort of illegal enterprise. Gambling is a great way to hide the source of illegal money.

Who pays cash for a house? Even millionaires don't travel around with a briefcase full of cash. They would pay with a cashier's check or bank transfer.

There are other anomalies pointed out here, and this is where things begin sounding like a badly written conspiracy theory novel:

He is a licensed pilot who let his medical certificates expire, but who still owned 2 aircraft. One of Paddock's airplanes, tail number N5343M, was an SR-20, in production since 1999, and retails for $390K.
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.

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.

(Pssst! Say, just wondering, who can double-register tail numbers, and make flight records go away? Asking for a friend.)

These anomalies beg for Internet detectives to spin yarns. What scares me is knowing that people are capable of doing stuff like this to advance an agenda- after all, the Obama administration came up with Fast and Furious. I'm not saying that there was a conspiracy here, all I am saying is that it isn't impossible.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Speech has a feedback mechanism to belief. That's why police when they question you attempt to distract you from saying "I'm innocent!". Merely saying it strengthens your belief in your innocence. If you force a person to say the chocolate ration went up when they know it went down, it damages their mental health. This is the true purpose of political correctness. Thus, the obvious fingerprints of government all over this is not sloppiness, it is deliberate brainwashing. Each time someone skeptical of events repeats the official story in his social circle in order to fit in, it weakens their will.

SiGraybeard said...

About the range card: he was an accountant, right?

Doesn't that imply someone who's comfortable with numbers? Not engineer-geek level, but more than happy to spend lots of hours plugging and chugging numbers in a spreadsheet, for example? If you take the view he was planning the attack, it would make perfect sense in my mind for him to say, "how can I make sure this works the way I want?" and spend time researching ballistics.

Just because someone hasn't been in the military doesn't mean they can't avail themselves of some of the open source manuals you can buy or simply download.