Stephen Paddock, Las Vegas Sniper

Is it possible to rationalise a person's actions when he is one who kills fifty-nine people in cold blood? Who had met few, if any, of them and who apparently cannot call on any motivation behind his chilling actions? Surely, not. What we have is a psychopath, or worse, a sociopath. A man who cannot even hide behind the excuse of revenge, or poverty, or religion, or personal benefit or sexual desire to offer some minimal context for his crime. There can be no words, no explanation, that will offer any compensation for the families and friends of the fifty-nine who died. Husbands, wives, sons and daughters left distraught by the meaningless act. Or the victims who survived, wounded by Stephen Paddock's bullets, or the horror of the event, or both. This article is in no way any attempt to excuse Paddock's evil actions, or even, really, to explain them. That is something probably impossible. Instead it aims to consider the factors leading up to that night in the fall of 2017 when Stephen Paddock secured the corridor of the hotel in which his twin suites were situated, set up his weapons and for ten chaotic, horror filled minutes, opened fire on the innocent people below.