Is The Mandalay Bay Shooter a Soldier of ISIS or This Generation's Charles Whitman?

When I retired early this morning I knew that the death toll in Las Vegas would exceed two people and so did the rest of the world. Indeed, when I awoke there were 58 dead and more than 500 people injured. It surpassed last year's Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre as the deadliest shooting in American history.

The shooter has been identified as Stephen Paddock. ISIS has claimed he was a recent convert to Islam and that they were responsible for the attack. If this is the case it would render President Trump's Muslim travel ban useless as Paddock is American born and raised. Of course, if this was an ISIS inspired attack it wouldn't stop The Left from demanding more gun control as was the case when CNN collaborated with President Obama on a January 2016 town hall meeting called "Guns in America" following the San Bernardino attacks (the same attacks which prompted Trump to call for his Muslim travel ban). However, at this point, the FBI disputes ISIS' claim.

When I learned about the attack, it reminded me of the November 2015 attack at The Bataclan in Paris and the May 2017 bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester this past May. But if the FBI is correct in its assessment that there is no connection to Islamic terrorism my attention turns to a mass shooting from more than half a century ago. Specifically, I am referring to the August 1966 massacre at the University of Texas in Austin where Charles Whitman shot and killed 16 people including an unborn child as well as injuring 31 other people from the 28th floor from the campus' tower. Paddock killed his victims from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. The similarities may or may not end there but Paddock was 64 and would have been in his early teens at the time of the University of Texas massacre. There's a chance he remembered the attack and might have been inspired by it in some way.

Whatever Paddock's motivations we are going to hear a lot more about gun control and background checks in the coming days. But chances are Paddock would have passed any background checks as it appears that he had no criminal record.

When something horrific and vile as this happens there is always a desire to want to either do something to prevent such an attack in the future or point the finger at others for failing to prevent the unforeseen. I am sure there will be plenty of both occurring. Unfortunately, nothing can undo what happened early this morning and there's probably not much more we can do to prevent things like this from happening beyond what we are already doing. That might seem inadequate to many people and it probably is. But we are often an inadequate species.