Policy wonk: Don’t Ignore Gunman’s Gambling Habit

The rush to find a possible “political or social motive” for the Las Vegas massacre, says Seth Barron at City Journal, “obscures what seems more likely to be the real reason” Stephen Paddock shot hundreds of people: He did it for fun. His life for the past decade seems “to have been based in and around casinos.” He was “a consistent gambler at high-stakes slot and video-poker machines, betting about $10,000 a day.” Casino gambling is addictive: It’s “designed to provide psychological rewards with each bet — even when you lose — and to prompt you to keep at it.” But “neurochemistry quickly develops tolerance to that initial dose, and the ‘hit’ becomes more and more elusive, until it finally evaporates.” So Paddock “very well may have contemplated mass murder as a sensualist exercise.”