CONSPIRACY THEORY

Las Vegas Gunman ‘Ranted About Government Plot to Take Away Guns’

Stephen Paddock reportedly said the public needed a wakeup call to start arming themselves.

Newly released records about last year’s mass shooting in Las Vegas suggest the gunman, Stephen Paddock, subscribed to a common conspiracy theory about the government plotting to take away people’s guns shortly before he committed the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. An unidentified man cited in the records says he met Paddock less than a month before the Oct. 1 massacre after posting an online ad offering devices to convert semi-automatic weapons to automatics, according to the Associated Press. He reportedly told law-enforcement officials Paddock had gone on a tirade about the military and government supposedly conspiring to disarm firearm owners and claimed Federal Emergency Management Agency “camps” set up for hurricane victims were “a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kickin’ down doors and... confiscating guns.” Paddock allegedly told the man the public needed to get a wakeup call to start arming themselves. The allegations, which would appear to shed new insight on Paddock’s motive, have yet to be confirmed by authorities.