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Las Vegas Shooter Was On Diazepam, Showed Signs of Mental Illness

Robert Farago - comments No comments

Kirstie Alley tweets about drugs and mass killings (courtesy twitter.com)

Marilou Danley, the woman investigators hoped would provide key details into the motive behind her boyfriend’s deadly shooting attack, said she remembers [spree killer Stephen Paddock] exhibiting symptoms such as lying in bed and moaning.” nbcnews.com also reports “She said he would lie in bed, just moaning and screaming, ‘Oh, my God.'” Strange that NBC hasn’t shared the relevant revelation from The Las Vegas Journal that . . .

Paddock was prescribed diazepam in June; as he had been the previous year. The Journal says . . .

Paddock purchased the drug — its brand name is Valium — without insurance at a Walgreens store in Reno on the same day it was prescribed. He was supposed to take one pill a day.

Diazepam is a sedative-hypnotic drug in the class of drugs known as benzodiazepines, which studies have shown can trigger aggressive behavior. Chronic use or abuse of sedatives such as diazepam can also trigger psychotic experiences, according to drugabuse.com.

I’m not sure how someone experiencing  psychotic episodes could have planned the Mandalay Bay spree killing. That said, while correlation doesn’t equal causation, there’s no doubt that plenty of mass killers were on benzodiazepines.

And this not the first time observers have pointed to a connection between psychiatric drugs and suicides, homicides and mass murder. The question is, did the medication somehow trigger Stephen Paddock’s murderous frenzy or did it prevent him from carrying it out sooner?

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Robert Farago

Robert Farago is the former publisher of The Truth About Guns (TTAG). He started the site to explore the ethics, morality, business, politics, culture, technology, practice, strategy, dangers and fun of guns.

0 thoughts on “Las Vegas Shooter Was On Diazepam, Showed Signs of Mental Illness”

  1. No motive, multiple reports of multiple shooters….whatever. When you believe false narratives, you’re hostage to the planned outcomes from the interests who designed the false narratives.

    Reply
  2. These drugs could push a very few to do these things, but the few were damaged in the first place. I wonder if certain street drugs combined with Valium or other drugs of this type could set this few off.

    Reply
  3. Well personally I’m not even keen on bump fire stocks. Stick with Binary Triggers, they’re more reliable and controllable.

    But of course, this just like any gun control argument against them is just blatant hoplophobia by the same people that DEMAND we all say ‘Not All Muslims’ every time a nut job pops off, but when a just normy nut job picks up a gun we have to ban them all.

    Reply
  4. I have taken about every possible combination of SSRIs and benzodiazipams over 30 years and never felt the slightest abnormal homicidal urge. Fantasizing about auto-cannon use on bad drivers is quite healthy and normal. I realize that this is anecdotal and that other people have different reactions. A shitload of people take these drugs though so it would have to be a very tiny subset of them that were so affected.

    Reply
  5. I reread the summary of SSRI effects. It seems like those drugs might be partly responsible for suicide spree killers who are below the age of 25. Killers like Holmes, Lanza, etc. There is only a very slight probability of causing suicide “ideation” in middle aged men. And it actually reduces suicide ideation in middle aged women.

    So Valium is not an SSRI. But he could have been on both, not that it would likely matter at his age.

    Reply
  6. I seldom agree with the cult of Scientology. But Ms. Alley nailed it. The shooter was obviously damaged. And his dad was a psychotic bank robber. Hitler was insane but that NEVER excused his evil…

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  7. Too bad we are seeing so much fake news here. Just the other day TTAG stated he could not have used bump fire stocks because it wouldn’t work using bi-pods. Now we are reading articles suggesting a pilot would not have known about jet fuel being as combustible as kerosene. Please get your facts before you write.

    Reply
  8. I wonder if the marketing department at IMI Systems is half-asleep? When TTAG posts headlines such as:

    IMI Systems Quote of the Day: Semi-Automatic Guns Are The Tools of Mass Murder

    it immediately gives an impression that IMI is being quoted as stating that semi-auto guns are tools of mass murder. Maybe TTAG should reformat the way it posts this column.

    Reply
  9. I blame the drug, on that stuff you do not have to abuse it in order to go off the wall, I know that it is prescribed by head doctors for PTSD. and that after a few weeks it gives some weird reactions, voices, distortion of clear thought, increased paranoia, certain kinds of music are inspired not of this world. the symptoms of drug reactions are muted too self, and if mentioned bring Hostility

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  10. NRA is selling out too politics! they want to be in control, like all greedy companies, its money and control, not freedom, we were made to be free people, leaders of this world have modified those freedoms into servitude freedoms!
    Screw the NRA

    Reply
  11. All of the killers also had fairly severe mental illnesses, were male, used guns, ate, peed standing up (probably), and nearly all were democrats. All of them were almost certainly psychopaths or sociopaths (2 sides of the same coin, and not controlled by meds). Lots of common factors. Which one caused them to snap? Maybe all of their mothers made them pee sitting down. Or more likely, those psychoactive drugs simply didn’t tame their mental problems. And in one or two cases, may have made them worse.

    Tens of millions of people take psychoactive drugs and are able to live normal lives as a result. Every drug has negative side effects. Even aspirin. Most of the hype about the dangers, opiates being an exception, are created by the extremely lucrative lawsuit industry.

    Reply
    • -“nearly all were democrats”

      Plenty of these shooters have no stated political affiliation and many come from various backgrounds. Just look at the list of mass shootings from the last few years. Pretty diverse group which includes Republicans and others on the right. The only real connection is that most of those who go nuts and kill large groups of people are relatively young men.

      Reply
  12. “‘Jack-booted government thugs,’ the phrase that has aroused such ire since the NRA used it to denounce federal agents in a fund-raising letter (in 1995), was first uttered by Rep. John Dingell in 1981.”

    https://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-16866559.html

    Yeah, the ATF absolutely is a bunch of jack-booted government thugs. So what. It’s here to stay. It doesn’t need the NRA to “legitimize” it. It’s billion dollar budget does that all by itself.

    Reply
  13. I have not seen this written anywhere, does anyone know if the proposed bill would grandfather in the bump stocks bought before the inaction of the ban?

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  14. She’s actually correct (Holy shit! A Democrat knows how the separation of powers work?). There is no regulation the ATF can apply to them that isn’t a ban. Only two groups can write federal law: Congress and a group of 3/4ths of the States.

    The NRA’s request the ATF “regulate” them can only mean two things: The NRA wants a ban or the NRA wants to totally throw the Constitution out the window and have the ATF write new law. Both are more than enough reason to toss the NRA

    Reply
  15. If you look at this attack numbers wise, it was an abject failure. He had a target pool of 22,000 people, in a small area with no cover and he could only kill 59 and wound/injure 500. Do the math, that is .26% killed and 2.27% wounded. And while I understand that those lives lost were tragic, that is a small number compared to what he could have done.
    Timothy McVeigh killed 168 and injured over 680, with an estimated 646 people in the building. Imagine the death toll had another, more effective method been used.

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  16. The NRA is the 600lb gorilla in the room. Can’t be ignored. Make your voice heard, vote for board members that think and act the way you prefer. At the same time, support the other civil rights groups that you believe are moving in the right direction. SAF, GOA, NAGR, state and local organizations. Hell, if you use Amazon, you can have Bezos send money to the SAF by using smile.amazon. A difference can be made.

    Reply
  17. Nancy Sinatra calls for firing squad of murderous NRA members. I’m scared. Feds may not do anything to keep me safe from her.

    Reply
  18. Most expensive stupid range toy, ever?

    I had no idea those things were priced at $200 to begin with. I could see maybe $50 for something like that, but, golly! I suppose if you have enough disposable income to turn piles of ammo into noise for no other reason than giggles, then I guess you can afford a $1,250 stock to enable that.

    Capitalism. Isn’t it wonderful?

    Reply
  19. No more money to the NRA for me.
    We have been trying to emphasize for years that’s it’s not the gun, it’s the killer. The NRA just said “well it really was the gun after all”, opening the doors for a downhill slide that will be near impossible to correct.

    Reply
  20. That diatribe is so old coming from the left, rocks don’t live that long! As for the above list, scratch off heart attack, car accident, falling, any other accident, and assault with firearm. Been there, done that and I’m still alive because I chose to shoot back! It continually amazes me how many democrats and liberals are responsible for most of the mass shootings, assassination attempts, deranged shooters and murders. A serious study once came up with a figure of well over 55% of all those were by those individuals. All assassination attempts were liberal or democratic. So perhaps an appropriate statement would be if “democrats or liberals have a gun in their hands or possession, your odds of being shot are 1 in 256!” So the serious discussions on gun control they have been crying for are to find ways to keep firearms out of the hands of liberals and democrats.

    Reply
  21. Hey mate nice story.

    Let me tell you, once you go up in caliber there’s no coming back! It really ruins the novelty of hunting with smaller calbers and it’s never the same again.

    I own a .375 H&H mag and it’s great fun to shoot, there’s something reassuring about no longer having to worry about dinosaurs when your out in the back woods by yourself.

    Now i’m thinking hmmmmm, wouldn’t it be awesome to go even BIGGER?

    Lately I’ve been eyeing off one of those a Sako 85’s in .450 Rigby

    Reply

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