Devilish Behavior And The Las Vegas Shooting: A Hypothesis

Everyone keeps asking what drove the man behind the Las Vegas shooting. No accomplices have turned up. He was, by Vegas measures, a fairly accomplished gambler who lived that life out in the open long before the attack. In the span of a year he took something like twelve or thirteen cruises. He owned more than one home.

Pulling off what he did took real preparation. He gathered specialized knowledge, studied the ground, and apparently looked at other events and venues where he might have done the same thing. He knew how to fire semi-automatic weapons from the raised platforms he set up, and he had worked out the angles so his rifles would hit as many people as possible.

You may not accept the idea of the devil, or of demon possession the way the Bible describes it, yet it seems to account for what happened. Consider the possibility of a bargain: a deal with the devil that handed him the comfortable, winning life he enjoyed, even though he began with a very ordinary, low-level job. His girlfriend mentioned that he would thrash and struggle in his sleep. Was that a man wrestling with something that had taken hold of him? Such a pact would also explain the long stretch of planning, the specialized know-how he picked up, and perhaps even the choice of target. Country music draws crowds with many Christians in them, exactly the sort of gathering the devil might want attacked. And a man already bound by that kind of arrangement would not need a partner in the plot. As I set this idea down, I call on the name of Jesus to rebuke the devil and whatever served him, and to keep me safe.

People have floated mental illness as the explanation. The trouble is that someone genuinely ill rarely manages something this demanding, requiring this much acquired knowledge and careful setup. Was he a narcissistic sociopath? A paranoid schizophrenic? Illness of that kind usually breeds confusion, inflated beliefs about one's own powers, and warped, impractical schemes for acting on them. The desire to kill can certainly be part of it. Perhaps he held a grudge against Christians, but if so he never said a word about it to anyone. Nothing has surfaced pointing to delusions. He did not stand out in a room. He was known as a regular, successful gambler who caused no trouble, kept to himself, and spent his time with his girlfriend or, failing that, with prostitutes.

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