What would be the point of the shooter bringing that many guns to his room? Would be impossible for him to use that many rifles.
He could use them if the police take an hour to get to him. That security guard saved a huge number of people.
Numbers of rifles, amounts of ammo make it reasonable to ask if he was expecting accomplice(s)
Maybe he simply surrounded himself with his earthly treasures (yes, some people perceive gun collections as a form of "treasure") in a grandiose display before he checked out.
Or maybe, the extra firepower was for his team of shooters who parachuted out the windows before the police arrived?
the point?
What if he was selling the bump stocks and guns?
Picked wrong customer.
Now, this is pure speculation. But videos of the shooting should dispel whether or not it’s a possibility.
The sheriff said some of them were jammed. He probably dropped guns as they jammed and grabbed another. Also, he tried to blow up fuel tanks with long-range shots, which would indicate he needed a high-end scoped rifle.
I think the point of the number of weapons was if the barrels or gas tube fittings melted down, he could switch weapons. If a rifle jammed, he could switch weapons. Perhaps even if the first few got hot, he could switch weapons and give them time to cool before they melted. If the audience just stayed there and didn’t figure out they should run, he could kill a lot of people and be famous.
It’s rather pathetic that he had such low expectations from his life, but I think he saw all those spares as a chance to rack up a large number of kills, almost like a video game score. Pistols might even have been for a getaway, if he ran out of ammo or targets and no one was outside his door. I wonder if he had a second room in the hotel, under a different name.