After a good number of questions coming in following my thoughts on the attack in Las Vegas with an up-front lean toward accepting one or another of the many conspiracy “theories”, I have opted to put some thoughts together on this, and hopefully in some small way get people focused back on the truth instead of the fantasy.

In our culture of instant gratification, it is expected, I suppose, that people might want answers to certain questions sooner than such answers can be had. Idle minds are apt to create a story where no such story exists.

Adding to the problem is the social media fame-seeking issue. People who want desperately to be seen as relevant take any path they see as controversial in order to increase likes and follows.

Lives were lost. That is a reality that we must not forget. Using tragedies for increasing your own fame is sub-human behavior.

By far, the most frequently repeated conspiracy theory involves the idea that there was more than one shooter. They are basing this on the known fact of more than twenty guns in the hotel room, and adjustments to the timeline of the event as reported by Law Enforcement.

All conspiracy theories have to use facts which will then be interpreted in favor of the theory. They ignore that they are looking to support a foregone conclusion. The problem is that this is no way to find the truth.

So, let’s begin with the multiple gun issue.

Why would one man have so many guns in the room? There had to have been more than one shooter with that many weapons there? Right?!?!?!

Wrong.

Any semi-automatic weapon is engineered from the start to be a semi-automatic weapon. Ask anyone who knows anything at all about bump-fire stocks and they will tell you that it absolutely causes a drastic increase in the number of malfunctions you will have. Some of these malfunctions can be cleared easily, some leave the weapon inoperable. The killer obviously knew this, hence the many weapons. He intended to kill a lot of people, and knew he would not have a lot of time to clear a jammed rifle or fix a malfunction, so he opted for swapping out a jammed rifle for a different one.

See! There is a perfectly logical explanation available that does not resort to the conspiracy justifications.

But, but, but…why does the official timeline of the event keep changing?

There are two factors at play here, and in all honesty, I do not know which one is having the bigger influence on the slow information and the changing timeline. So, I will just give you these two things to think about: lawsuits and pressure.

It should not need to be pointed out, but everyone is going to get sued. The hotel, the city, the concert promoter – anyone with any connection to the area on the night of October 1st is going to be sued. This fact will slow the information coming from the hotel and any other potentially sued party to Law Enforcement.

Law Enforcement is under pressure from the media and the public to start giving answers. They are still going through the investigation process, but people feel they have a right to know now. Even before Law Enforcement has the answers.

I would advise anyone who will listen, please calm down. It is better for the investigation to end up with the right answer than it is for them to give you what you want to hear. I have watched every video I can find that was taken while the shooting was happening and I can find nothing to make me think that more than one gun was being fired at the same time. I have even watched the video and listened to the audio from people who think there was audio proof. It simply isn’t there. My number of subscribers and the number of shares would increase incredibly if I were willing to promote some of the conspiracy theories floating around, especially if I were to make one of my own so I could be the “journalist” who “breaks the story”, but I am not like that. Calm down, drink a chamomile tea, and wait while the professionals do their job.

Be nice to each other, things are rough out there right now.