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Here’s What Police Found in the Las Vegas Shooter’s Room and Car

October 03, 2017
Staff

WRITER

We still don’t know why Stephen Paddock decided to kill dozens of people by firing into a crowd at a Las Vegas music festival. Police haven’t yet pointed to a motive, and the horrifying event left his own family “dumbfounded.”

But we’re learning more about how terrifyingly overprepared the gunman was and how the situation could have been even worse. It’s possible he was trying to prepare a bomb based on what police discovered in his vehicle that was parked at the Mandalay Bay hotel.

Standing in for Glenn on today’s show, Doc and Kris talked about the list and covered what we know so far about the shooting.

  • 23 weapons were stashed in the gunman’s room.

  • Two tripods were positioned at the hotel windows and described as a “sniper’s nest.”

  • Hundreds of rounds of ammunition were also at the ready.

  • 10 suitcases were also in the room; police believe they were used to bring in the weapons.

  • Ammonium nitrate, which is used in bomb-making, was found in his car.

"We don’t know how far along he was in a bomb-making process," Doc said.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

DOC: First an update on what happened yesterday. Fifty-nine people now dead. The death toll at 59. The number injured 527. Five hundred twenty-seven people injured. Fifty-nine people dead at the hands of 64-year-old Stephen Paddock, who began shooting Sunday night from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel.

His brother said he was a millionaire and recently even won a $40,000 jackpot. The FBI said there's no apparent tie to international terrorism. Twenty-three guns were found inside the room, including at least one handgun. Some of the guns even had scopes. Thousands of rounds of ammunition still found there.

He had a camera mounted in the hotel room to record himself. Now, we've not heard reports if he actually recorded himself, if a video exists. Likely, we would never see if it is.

KRIS: I think that's a big fail. Not showing -- if there is a video out there, not showing that video is a big fail.

DOC: I think you're right.

KRIS: Just like they did not release the audio from the Pulse Nightclub, when he called. They show you just a little bit, but they don't actually show that he actually stayed on the line and you could hear back and forth.

DOC: Right. I think that actually helps make the case that this is a problem and we need to think this through and do some things.

KRIS: It does.

DOC: I don't think it's insensitive. But he did have a camera mounted in there.

Ammonium nitrate was found in his automobile. Ammonium nitrate is a component of some fertilizers. That's what this was, a fertilizer of ammonium nitrate. And that's also what was used partially to take down the federal building in Oklahoma City, at the hands of Tim McVeigh. It was ammonium nitrate fertilizer and also kerosene. We don't know how far along he was in a bomb-making process. I think it's fairly safe to say that if you shoot 600 people, that you probably -- if you had ammonium nitrate in your car, you probably were going to use it to create a bomb. It wasn't like, no, I just happened to have ammonium nitrate. It had nothing to do with that.

KRIS: I went to the store Lowe's.

DOC: On my way to kill people.

KRIS: I forgot to unload that up at the house.

DOC: The fertilizer, it should have been. I was going to garden tomorrow. I don't think that's what happened.

Inside his home in Mesquite, Nevada, about 80 miles from Las Vegas, they found another 18 firearms, several thousands rounds of ammunition, and more explosives.

His 62-year-old live-in girlfriend was in Asia at the time. Now, we had heard reports early on, Monday morning, that she was arrested, she was a person of interest, and that they had arrested her. That is not the case.

Law enforcement in Las Vegas says, if she returns to the United States, they, of course, will have some questions for her. But at this point, they say she was in Asia. We don't know if she had any knowledge of this. But she wasn't there when it happened. Officers, as they approached the hotel room to investigate what was going on, he opened fire on them. But these were Las Vegas police officers.

The officers that broke in and found him dead were S.W.A.T. officers. So it was a different team. So at first he did fire on them. He hit one officer in the leg. But then they backed off, waited for S.W.A.T. In the meantime, he killed himself. S.W.A.T. goes in and takes him down.

There was some confusion. And Kris and I all day yesterday afternoon could not understand why there were two windows out in the hotel.

Well, we know -- we knew that he was likely shooting out of them because it gave him an advantage. But was it two rooms? They were pretty far apart.

KRIS: Yeah, and one thing I told you, like, I don't want nobody from the FBI to search my computer, because it was three hours of searching floor plans. So I was -- Mandalay Bay floor plans. Thirty-second floor. Corner window.

DOC: Then followed up -- then different firearms and ammonium nitrate and Tim McVeigh. Yeah, we're on a bunch of radar screens today.

KRIS: Yeah, we triggered.

DOC: So we looked it up, and as it turns out, he had a suite that was at one end of the hotel, facing the north end of the strip. So if you were looking out his windows across diagonally at the venue that he fired upon, the window to the left -- again, looking out at the hotel looks north down the street. Then he had the window that was due east. The venue that he fired on would have been to the northeast of the building. The reason it was two buildings, it was either one giant suite with two bedrooms or a connecting room. Now, that's important because I had questions about, okay, if those are two separate rooms, which they even led with in some of the news, did he run down the hall? What was going on? How did --

KRIS: Yeah, then it goes back to, this is a 64-year-old man. Does he have the stamina to go back and forth?

DOC: To go back and forth. And what's going on? So they were at least connected. And he did set up -- they said he broke the glass of the windows, likely with a hammer-like device, which I don't know why he wouldn't just shoot through it, but okay. What is a hammer-like device, Kris?

KRIS: From what I'm thinking, you know those tactical hammers that police use when they're trying to break into a window? That's what I think.

But, you know, I want to give it to this guy. He was trying to be classy.

DOC: He didn't just through it. He wasn't a barbarian when he executed 59 people? Gotcha.

KRIS: No, no, no. He wanted to go out and do it the proper way.

DOC: Here's the bizarre and strange part of this: Still, we have no motive. What was his motive in this thing? It's really important. What was his motive?

While a lot of people are focusing on the method of murder, the guns. And melting down about the method. The how.

The why is much more important. The why is more important because that's how we stop future mass murderers like this. The how, you're never going to stop every way you can mass murder people. Take away all guns. What about the knives? Take away the knives. What about the golf clubs? Take away the golf clubs.

What about baseball bats? Take all of those away. What about heavy, blunt objects? What about -- what about rocks? What about your fists? You can pummel someone to death.

There are limitless ways you can murder, even on large scales. Remember, the most significant mass murders on American soil took place without guns.

9/11, it was box-cutters. Tim McVeigh, it was ammonium nitrate and kerosene. The attack on the school in Bathe, Michigan. The most deadly attack on a school in American history was a bomb. It was not guns. You can murder countless ways. So the how is not really as important as the why.

When you get the why, then you can start determining how we change it in the future. What makes somebody do something like this? Why do you do it?

This guy -- this dirtbag Stephen Paddock, does not fit any of the traditional profile. None of the obvious. What are the traditional profiles of a mass murderer like this?

KRIS: Loner.

DOC: Loner. Brooding Loner. Adam Lanza. Sandy Hook, right? The crazy, brooding loner. Everyone knew he had problems. Stole the gun from his mom.

KRIS: Crazy eyes.

DOC: Oh, crazy eyes. James Holmes in Aurora, right? He was a loner. And also had the crazy eyes. This guy is not a loner. He had a live-in girlfriend. He got along. He was social.

KRIS: He was a millionaire. You know, an alleged millionaire.

DOC: Okay. That brings up something else. A lot of these people, especially the ones that are radicalized, based on faith from the Middle East, the radical Muslims, are people that are radicalized partially because they are poor. They look at poverty and their own and they want to pretend -- why try to help everybody, it's not fair that some people -- what they really mean is, it's not fair that I don't have what other people have.

This guy may -- according to his brother -- was a millionaire. So he wasn't that. Young. That's another one. A lot of the Muslim terrorists, the extremist Muslims, they're young guys. Adam Lanza, James Holmes, young. This guy is 64.

KRIS: Yeah.

DOC: Sixty-four. That doesn't apply. Oh. Crazy. Certifiable -- no. Never been determined yet. A pilot's license. Which means he at least had a review of his mental state in order to get a pilot's license.

KRIS: Well, not just that, he was able to purchase guns from different salesmen. So how do you able -- if you're that crazy, how are you able to get different guns from different dealers?

DOC: The people who sold it to him, his family, his friends, anybody who knew him, nobody has come forth and said, "Oh, yeah. That guy was crazy."

KRIS: What about this one? Caring. He called his brother to check on his mom.

DOC: Check on his mom. How is mom doing? He doesn't fit any of the profiles. So what is going on? What happened?

I've come up with a couple of basic thoughts on this, as far as motive goes. That unless there's something we don't know -- remember the guy who shot up the tower in 1966 in Texas, in Austin. He had a tumor in his head, I think. Had been fairly normal. Wrote that even he didn't know why he was having these crazy thoughts --

KRIS: He started questioning himself.

DOC: Right. Outside of something like that or aliens or some grand conspiracy theory that he wasn't really responsible, the government did it, and just pinned it on him or something -- outside of that, likely the information we've gotten from his brother and everyone else is inaccurate. Maybe he had financial trouble. Oh, his brother said, no rabid political or religious viewpoint.

KRIS: Church.

DOC: Church, religion, none of those. Well, maybe his brother didn't know him as well. He was leading a double life or something. Maybe he had fallen on hard times financially.

Likely, some of the information we've gotten is not accurate.

I think he did it for political reasons. Purely, my speculation at this point. But we don't know why.

I want to get some of your calls on that. And tell me, what do you think it is? We'll speculate a little bit.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.