> “It took 13 minutes for them to get to the shooters door. He shot a Hotel security guy through the door, and probably committed suicide at that point, because the shootings outside the hotel stopped. The SWAT team blew in the door an hour later. It likely took so long, because the shooter had stopped shooting, so they knew they could take the time to get it right.”
Yes, I don’t fault them for that. If he’d continued shooting (with over 20,000 persons as targets), then despite the risk I do think lightly armed police and guards should have tried to stop him. He didn’t, though. After one guard had already been wounded, the mere possibility that he was reloading wasn’t enough to justify trying to get him before the SWAT team arrived.
One thing that did surprise me is that Paddock had free access to a spot in a tall building from which he could shoot down into over 20,000 people. I thought we’d known since JFK that you can’t allow people with rifles to have access to a position over an area you wish to protect.
Unfortunately unless you use metal detectors for entrance into every tall building, there’s no way to keep wackos from sometimes shooting at ordinary groups of pedestrians. A concentration of over 20,000 persons, though, should have better security than that.