Everyman

The remarkable thing about Stephen Paddock, that mass murderer at Las Vegas, was that he was so unremarkable.

Paddock had no police record, not even a traffic citation. As far as the authorities were concerned, he was an ordinary peaceful citizen who posed no threat to anyone. One officer described the man as having “no history of violence.” He held no known political or ideological opinion. He was just a brick in the wall. He was even more ordinary than that. Paddock, 64, lived his professional accountant who dabbled in real estate speculation. Who could be more uninteresting as a retired accountant?

There is no indication that Paddock loved to travel and meet new people. A few years ago, he bought a home in a retirement community. It was a quiet place populated by quiet people. Even there, he did not stand out.

But Paddock has a quiet passion as well. Over the past two decades, he accumulated about 47 firearms and thousands of rounds of ammunition. All of them were acquired legally. That is the crux of the matter.

There is one thing that has to be mentioned, however. One thing that is truly spectacular. Stephen Paddock’s father, half a century ago, was convicted for bank robbery. After he escaped prison, and listed high in the FBI’s most wanted list, the authorities described him a dangerous psychopath.

Ancestry, however, is not an item in the usual screening for people wanting to buy guns in the US. In fact, people could buy guns on line. Assault rifles are required to be semi-automatic. But there are accessories that may be bought legally that convert these rifles into fully automatic rifles capable of firing hundreds of rounds in a few seconds.

Some of the rifles found in Paddock’s hotel room, after he fired into the concert crowd below, were tweaked to be fully automatic. This is the reason why a lone gunman was able to take so many casualties.

A total of 18 firearms were found in Paddock’s suite at the Mandalay Bay. How he was able to smuggle these in, along with thousands of rounds of ammunition, is a matter still under investigation.

Also under investigation is the possible motive inspiring this gruesome massacre. Many days after the incident, investigators are still stumped.

What drove this most ordinary Everyman to do the horrible thing he did?

A man with no known opinion, who seems to have settled in to play poker for the rest of his years, single-handedly undertook the worst mass shooting in America history. That is quite a feat in a country where mass shootings happen with greater intermittence.

Under existing US laws, how could the authorities possibly screen out someone so ordinary as Stephen Paddock. He has no history of violence, no history of being psychologically unstable. The man was neither a zealot not one deemed mentally unstable.

The people who should know this man well – his family (or what little of it he has) – are shocked at what happened. They could not imagine why he would do such a dreadful thing.

The ISIS, of course, was quick to claim Paddock as one of their “soldiers.” But this terrorist group is quick to claim authorship over every man-made calamity, every failure in common decency. There is no other evidence linking this mass murderer to any group with any semblance of an opinion. He was just too colorless a man to be a crusader for anything.

Maybe, at some point in the comprehensive investigation on the incident, the motive might be found. Paddock may be deemed an emotionally volatile person or some such. But in the end, he could not have done what he did if the regulatory environment did not empower him to do so.

In New Zealand, there are less people than sheep. In the US, there are less people than guns. And while guns take the lives of people, to the tune of several hundred homicides each day, gun sales push up the supply of these instruments of death.

In the US, the Constitution protects the rights of citizens to bear arms. The lobby of gun manufacturers, including the National Rifle Association, has made interpretations of the constitutional provision permissive.

Over many years, as incidents of mass or random shooting proliferate, the gun lobby managed to resist all efforts to curtail gun ownership, invoking constitutional guarantees. In the wake of the unspeakable tragedy at Las Vegas, it seems the gun lobby will still hold sway.

The gun lobby is close to the Republican Party. This is the party that controls both houses of the US Congress along with the White House. It should not be surprising that in the wake of what happened in Las Vegas, there is silence about the permissive policy environment regarding gun possession.

This baffles the rest of the world. Why, for instance, should ordinary citizens be allowed to own assault rifles? And why should people like Stephen Paddock be allowed to own so many of them?

Many of us look to the US as the beacon of civility. But we have to reconcile America’s ideals with the violence that seems to lurk just beneath the surface of American life.

In many civilized societies, it is unthinkable to allow citizens possession of high-powered firearms, much less a virtual armory like Paddock does. In Japan, for instance, the police force is bored waiting for crimes to happen.

We cannot understand why Americans could not deal with gun proliferation.