The Las Vegas shooter

Whenever a mass shooting occurs, the early information -- anyone's own theorizing -- is inevitably misleading. The initial reports this morning said that two people were killed and 20 wounded in last night's deadly attack.

It's now reported to be the deadliest mass shooting in US history, and with 527 reported injured, the current number of dead, 58, is almost sure to rise.

My first thoughts, like a lot of peoples', turned to ISIS. But then it turned out that the shooter, 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock, was just a regular old American.

As the death toll mounted, ISIS claimed responsibility, but then the FBI said that the shooter had no  connection. (It does seem that ISIS would take credit for Hurricane Harvey if they could.)

I wondered if his girlfriend, Marilou Danley, who I heard was of Indonesian descent, might have had something to do with it. (Indonesia is a Muslim country.) She was initially reported to be in Las Vegas, then missing, then another report came out that she had been detained in a foreign country. Now, I'm hearing that she was visiting relatives in the Philippines when this happened, which would indicate that she is Filipino, and therefore less likely to be Muslim.

I also thought, aha, Paddock must be ex-military. He understood the tactical advantage of shooting from the higher elevation, he knew how to use a fully automatic rifle, he was old enough to have been drafted, and he was a deadly shooter. All of this pointed to a guy with training.

But, it turned out, he wasn't. He had been an accountant, and bookkeeper, and had most recently had described himself as a professional gambler.

The most interesting report was that Paddock's father had made the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list as a bank robber, then escaped prisoner, back in the 60's. At the time the father was reported to have been diagnosed "as psychopathic." And, as it turns out, his father was also an avid gambler.

(Family background almost always provides the why of a killer's personality.)

Maybe part of Stephen's motivation was that he wanted to outdo his father in terms of badness.

Paddock himself had not been unsuccessful: his brother reported that he had been a multimillionaire real estate investor.

This is the first case of a multimillionaire mass shooter I've heard of. Given that this country had treated him so well, his final act was the ultimate in ingratitude.

It's also been reported that he was a heavy gambler, and moved to Nevada so he could gamble more. is it possible that he had gambled his fortune away and felt that at age 64 he had nothing left to lose? That's not clear yet either.

Is it possible he had just gotten some bad news about his health, possibly a cancer diagnosis, and just didn't want to face an infirm old age?

One of the worst things about all these mass shootings is that they always seem to target young people. Whether they take place at a concert, a school, or a nightclub, it's mostly young people, who had their entire lives ahead of them, who are massacred.

His family was evident shocked by the massacre, or at least claimed to be. Some of his former neighbors were shocked, too. They described him as a nice, friendly guy. But another report mentioned neighbors in Nevada who had described him as "aggressively unfriendly."

So which was it?

What is Paddock's psychological diagnosis? The first thing that comes to mind is, sociopath. But while basically all serial killers are sociopaths, mass shooters are more likely to have Aspergers Syndrome. But most killers are also relatively young, Paddock was not only the deadliest shooter in US history, but, at 64, also the oldest.

In any case, we just don't know enough about him to say. The fact that Paddock's father was diagnosed as a psychopath,would tend to lead us in that direction. The fact that he was apparently a gambling addict is another clue leading in that direction. And there's no questioning the evilness of his act. But we'd have to have more of a sense of his entire life, especially his upbringing and his relationships, before we can be sure.

The truth about Paddock will gradually emerge. But at times like this, sometimes it almost seems as if it's not even worth reading any of the reports -- or formulating any theories of your own -- until the second or third day.