Big Shot

A “loner” totes an arsenal of 27 guns into a casino hotel and kills 59 people at a nearby outdoor concert, wounding hundreds. What kinds of forces might be moving such a man to spectacular murder?

Routine observations of Starbuck employees at the Virgin River Casino in Mesquite, Nevada provide some clues. They

winced whenever Stephen Paddock and his girlfriend, Marilou Danley, lined up for their usual beverages. That’s because Paddock had a nasty habit of berating Danley in public. “It happened a lot,” Esperanza Mendoza, supervisor of the Starbucks, said Tuesday.

Workers remembered Paddock as a tall man with a big beer belly and heavy bags under his eyes. “He looked like he never slept because of the large bags under his eyes,” Mendoza said. Danley stood only elbow high to Paddock.

The abuse would come when she asked to use his casino card to make the purchase, Mendoza said. The card enables gamblers to use credits earned on electronic gambling machines to pay for souvenirs or food in the casino.

“He would glare down at her and say—with a mean attitude—‘You don’t need my casino card for this. I’m paying for your drink, just like I’m paying for you.’ Then she would softly say, ‘OK’ and step back behind him. He was so rude to her in front of us.”

His money made him superior. At the Starbucks counter, he enforced deference with a touch of the executive cattle prod. But why would a rich man suffer such stress and need to dominate a meek girlfriend?

The “heavy bags under his eyes” and his “big beer belly” say that he was mentally absorbed and neglecting his body. His girlfriend felt "he seemed to be deteriorating in recent months both mentally and physically." He took Valium occasionally for anxiety.

From an early age, says his brother Eric, Stephen Paddock "focused on gaining complete control over his life and not having to rely on anyone." He was calculating as a core personality trait, with an unusual aptitude for risk-assessment. It enabled him to evaluate real estate deals, and certainly helped him sit for hours before high-stakes video poker machines making rapid winning calculations about his bets.

In an Oct. 29, 2013 deposition, he boasted that he was "the “biggest video poker player in the world”—claiming he bet as much as $1 million a night, according to a report. . . . .At the height of his wagering in 2006, Padock testified, “”I averaged 14 hours a day, 365 days a year. ‘I’ll gamble all night … I sleep during the day.’”

He was "the biggest" gambler in his specialty "in the world." But the wagering whiz had virtually no life with others. He owned planes, guns, and houses, but two brief, childless marriages failed. "Some who met him described him as arrogant, with a strong sense of superiority. People in his life bent to his will, even his mother and brother. He went out of his way for no one. 'He acted like everybody worked for him and that he was above others,' said John Weinreich, 48, a former executive casino host at the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa in Reno." This suggests the sort of alienated savant faculty associated in the domineering behavior of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook killer, with Asperger's syndrome.

The Australian partner of his girlfriend’s sister “recalls a man who was ‘extremely intelligent, methodical, conservative—guarded—and strategic’." Mr. Paddock treated them to a “palatial” stay at a resort (casinos paid part of his winnings in comps). At Paddock’s house, they had many ”robust” discussions of gun-rights, which Mr. Paddock had studied intensively. At one point he “gestured in passing to his ‘gun room’. Its presence in the two-bedroom home made an impression on the man—who opposes the US’s lax gun laws—but he ‘didn’t pursue it’ with Paddock."

So lifelong discipline created a person capable of winning bets from gambling machines, but at a cost of phenomenal, exhausting concentration and emptiness for which the false superiority of money and weapons couldn't compensate. At 64, the gambler's fierce alienation had amassed money and comps, but his life was otherwise dead. He must have known that the satisfaction of control would finally go flat. It makes sense that guns would represent a way out.

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Of the 33,626 gun deaths in 2013, 11,208 were homicides, while 21,386 were suicides. Rampage killing combines both. A spectacular killer commands the world’s attention and leaves in a glorious cloud of mystery.

Humans are uniquely haunted by awareness that we are doomed to die and vanish forever. Guns are tools for killing. They magnify your body’s power and allow you to feel in control of weakness and death. Religious symbols and flags can pump up the illusion of power too. But guns are solid in your hand. A gun can instantly demonstrate your power over life and death.

The truth is, that any human can fall under the spell of death and power. Culture usually regulates access to killing-power, and most Americans favor controls. But those who fall under the spell of guns protest vehemently against controls. Killing power is like a drug or religious ecstasy. It pumps up the brain and body. For a few humans, that thrill of potency is irresistible. They feel bigger, indomitable. Under the spell, they want more. In some cases, they can’t get enough.

The truth is, any human can come under the spell of death and killing power. Culture usually regulates access to killing-power, but those who fall under the spell of guns protest vehemently against all gun controls. Killing-power is like a drug or religious ecstasy. It excites the nervous system. Without it, you can feel empty and anxious: flight rather than fight. Most people are content to let police and soldiers exercise their killing-power. For a few people, especially under stress, the thrill of potency becomes irresistible. They feel bigger, indomitable.[1] To them, the potency feels like more life—more self—and who doesn't want more life?

As a gambler and speculator, Mr. Paddock was used to the intense excitement of risking all. His father had been a criminal, so there may have been genetic susceptibility to that heightened state. But gambling and gun culture in the US are also seductive. They advertise psychic rewards of glamor, power, righteousness, and superiority. Las Vegas flaunts treasure and dreams. Symbols such as the pyramid promise to overcome time and death.

Rampage killing has also become a subculture. Most rampage killers have military training or cheap access to military-style weapons. And there is an element of copycat behavior. Killers seek to break records and command the world’s attention—which in an age of electronic and social media they can do.

In copycat fashion, Mr. Paddock amassed a huge arsenal of weapons, including explosives (at home), making it clear that like other rampage killers, he wanted to gain maximum attention. Doctoring his weapons to give them military killing-power, he planned out a spectacular death for himself and others. He planned carefully, showing ordinary humans that he could fool them. In hunting and killing them, he showed the world that he was special. Superior. It’s likely that he chose to kill Las Vegas concert-goers because they were young, with lots of life ahead of them, and they were plainly enjoying it.

Part of the thrill of gambling is the way it intensifies your sense of self. As slang has it, your fate lies in the roll of dice. Intensely alone, the “high-flying” killer wanted to build himself up as his life waned. The dream is that a big shot can make a big shot. He wanted the world’s attention as he left life, taking some subjects with him as ancient kings went to the tomb with servants killed for company. In place of the Chinese emperor’s ceramic army, Mr. Paddock fortified himself with a military arsenal to magnify his impact. He fired down on his victims, killing them from a great height. At his distance they were "little people," machinelike specks. His plan was visionary, for an act of superior daring that would “live forever” in the world’s memory.

The gun is a tool for killing, and since everybody knows that, just carrying a gun commands attention. It intimidates. At bottom, this is what the Second Amendment hysteria is all about. The power to command others creates an aristocracy. In history, it was a warrior aristocracy. And you don’t need flaunt your weapon. Just knowing you can kill anybody on the street whenever you want can make you feel potent and dominant.

Gambling demands urgent concentration. It's stressful. Sooner or later gamblers are tempted by the prospect of a blowout. Think of the movies and books built around fantasies of double-or-nothing, do-or-die, betting the farm. A high-tech world dreams of control over life and death from a fabulous distance, as in "American Sniper" or Mr. Paddocks 32nd floor window. Like Nicholas Cage the romantically suicidal alcoholic in “Leaving Las Vegas,” Mr. Paddock could throw over the card table and wipe out the players. And by killing himself, he would get away with it.

A successful gambler may crave the thrill of risking life over and over, feeling pumped up larger than life. But alas, the game and personal life are destned to lose intensity. Like so many Americans, Mr. Paddock turned to war games, buying tools for killing, one after another, and bullets cheap as poker chips. It’s a big world. You can never have too much power.

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1. One of the Columbine killers, Eric Harris, showed vicious superiority. "The FBI’s psychological assessment found Harris a psychopath: grandiose, cold, and homicidal. His journal opened explosively: 'I hate the f—ing world.'" See The Psychology of Abandon, p. 65