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What’s so weird about it?
His wiki article makes him look about as unhinged as I’d expect for a mass murderer. Clearly capable of planning, but just an absolute train wreck of a lifestyle.
Mainly it's the apparent lack of any real grievance against 'society' that would inspire one to act violently and indiscriminately.
The extent of the planning almost seems like his main goal was literally just to set a record for deaths, which indeed he did. Like he wasn't trying to lash out at any particular target, he just one day had the thought "I bet I could kill a shit-ton of people if I shot at a crowd from this casino hotel window."
And the sheer number of people he managed to kill is also slightly suspicious for just one man to pull off.
And parts of the plan are a little absurd on their face, the number of guns the guy brought, for instance. Even if you wanted maximum carnage, you'd bring like 2-3 guns at most, and tons of magazines for reloading. You certainly wouldn't bring in cases and cases of guns, if you were trying to keep a low profile!
The bit that really tickles one's conspiracy sense is multiple guns having bump stocks, which were an item the ATF sought to ban, shortly after the event.
Most hobbyist shooters will tell you these things are novelties at best, not something you'd use if you WANTED to kill a bunch of people.
And then the shooter's brother gets arrested for CSAM shortly thereafter.
Then charges were dropped and the guy more-or-less disappeared.
None of this is to convince you that it was a vast conspiracy, just to explain why this one stands out as a "WTF was happening?" situation.
Edit: Oh yeah forgot the strange missing hard drive situation.
How does this suggest anything conspiratorial? High-profile mass shooting uses X implement, government responds with ban. Just seems like they were impelled to action by the shooting.
Do I actually need to point out that governments, including the U.S., have used false flag tactics to achieve or advance domestic policy goals?
That that's a thing that has 100% happened before?
The fact that the 'government responds with a ban' doesn't DISCOUNT the possibility that the government intentionally created it's own justification for the ban.
That evidence tends to explain both possibilities. We'd expect a conspiracy to create the pretext for a particular government action would result in... government taking the action. This is not a contradiction.
Do you know how many other shootings or violent crimes bump stocks were involved in prior to this? Approximately zero.
Again, not asking you to believe in the conspiracy just noting why it tickles that particular part of the brain.
When?
Depends on how recent and how reliable you want the examples to be.
The one that tends to stick in my mind is when they used a dubiously sourced Dossier to justify investigating a Presidential Candidate during his campaign and extensively during his term as President, even as it's veracity was genuinely questionable.
Even more recently, there's the speculation that the U.S. blew up that oil pipeline, despite ya know, not being in a declared war
Then there's the Gulf of Tonkin Incident going back further, which justified invasion of Vietnam.
I never realised that Vietnam and Ukraine were inside the United State, huh.
How does this count as a false flag, even if you think the dossier was rubbish?
The falsification of an incident or, more broadly, treating false information about an incident as true, for purposes of claiming a threat exists and thus a policy response is required?
Seems to fit the definition.
"We have proof that Trump is likely a Russian Asset trying to harm the U.S." is pretty isomorphic to "We have proof that North Vietnam torpedoed a U.S. Navy vessel."
When the 'proof' is in fact conjured up by the same people trying to justify the action they are attempting to take.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag
Unless you're arguing that a 'false flag' only entails literally engaging in an attack against your own country whilst flying a different country's flag.
Before I actually respond to this, are you agreeing that these are examples of 'false flag' tactics or no?
Instead of "false flag", I propose "fabricated or greatly exaggerated incidents or allegations". The US has used fabricated or greatly exaggerated incidents or allegations to justify not just the Vietnam War, but also the Iraq War and, perhaps more controversially, the Spanish–American War and US entry into World War I.
But these are all foreign policy matters. The objection, which I share, was to the claim that such tactics have been used "to achieve or advance domestic policy goals".
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Not quite, and this is why Gulf of Tonkin isn't really false flag in my view. A classic false flag incident would be something like the Mukden incident, where the Japanese blew up a railway themselves and then blamed it on the Chinese. Gulf of Tonkin is different because if it was anything it was the zhuzhing up/misunderstanding of a real incident, and citing it as cause for a war that they wanted anyway. They didn't actually do anything themselves with a view to blaming it on someone else, which is surely required to call something a false flag.
The Ukraine pipeline perhaps gets a bit closer if certain things which may not be the case are. If the Americans did do it, and hoped it would be blamed on Russia, then ok we are closer to false flag, but if they did it and it was because they thought there was a strategic advantage to be had in stopping the flow of gas then not really.
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Absolutely Comped
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A guy wins against the house for decades in Vegas, doesn't strike you as profoundly odd?
He's old, crime is a young man's game. The murder rate for the elderly makes everyone look violent.
His home was burgled after the crime.
Depends on how neurotic he was. Would it make any more sense for the feds to somehow bankroll him through Vegas?
And I thought he made most of his money in real estate, then blew it on video poker and high-end firearms.
They wouldn't bankroll him through Vegas they'd bank roll him through a black account or he was doing his own gun sales and claiming gamble as a cover for where the money comes from.
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-vegas-shooter-estate-20180301-story.html
That lists his estate as $800,000 far too little assets to fund the level of gambling he sustained. Other articles list sales here and there but very modest gains. The big transaction is a gain of less than $1,000,000 years before the shooting. Enough to fund a long modest retirement or a short burst of massive gambling but this guy was gambling for years with little other income to support it.
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