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Paddock's gun purchases spiked significantly between October 2016 and September 28, 2017. He purchased over 55 firearms, the majority of them rifles, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He also purchased a number of firearm-related accessories. Prior to that, he purchased approximately 29 firearms between 1982 and September 2016, mainly handguns and shotguns. His girlfriend noticed the increase of firearm-related purchases but believed his interest in guns was just a hobby.

On the night of October 1, 2017, at 10:05 p.m., Paddock fired more than 1,000 rounds from his hotel room, Room 32-135, at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, onto a large crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, killing 58 people and wounding 869 others. He then shot and killed himself.

In addition to the firearms and accessories found in Paddock's hotel room, there was a note that included handwritten calculations about where he needed to aim to maximize his accuracy. The note contained the actual distance to the target, his own elevation, and the bullet trajectory relative to the line of fire. There were also a number of laptops in the suite, one of which was missing a hard drive. Computer forensics discovered hundreds of images of child pornography on the laptops. On October 25, 2017, Paddock's brother Bruce was arrested in North Hollywood, California, on charges of possessing over 600 child pornography images. The charges were dropped in May 2018.

During an interview with local CBS affiliate KLAS-TV, Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Paddock had reportedly been losing "a significant amount of wealth" since September 2015, which led to him having "bouts of depression". According to his girlfriend, she noticed a decline of affection and intimacy towards her from Paddock, who had been romantic at first during their relationship; he attributed it to his declining health.

According to chronology of the events established by the authorities in the following days, the first two police officers reached the 32nd floor of the hotel at 10:17 p.m. A minute later, they were shown the location of Paddock's door. Between 10:26 and 10:30 p.m., an additional eight LVMPD officers joined them and began clearing other suites along the 32nd floor hallway. At 10:55 p.m., eight SWAT team members entered the 32nd floor through the second stairwell nearest to Paddock's suite. Once all the other rooms on the floor had been cleared, at 11:20 p.m.—more than an hour after the first two officers arrived and 65 minutes after Paddock had ceased firing—the police breached his door with an explosive charge and entered the room. Paddock was found dead inside his suite from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.

Paddock lived in Texas and California, and then in a retirement community in Melbourne, Florida, from 2013 to 2015. In 2016, he moved from Florida to another retirement home in Mesquite, Nevada. According to property records, he bought a new house in Mesquite in January 2015, and sold his two-bedroom home in Melbourne. Paddock lived in Mesquite for several years with his girlfriend whom he had met in Reno, Nevada. According to neighbors, they also lived together in Reno. Many Mesquite residents recalled only seeing him around town; those familiar with Paddock described him as someone who did not speak much and kept a low profile. The local gun owner community never saw him at any of the gun clubs or shooting ranges, including makeshift ones in the nearby desert.

During his last months, Paddock reportedly smelled of alcohol from early morning and appeared despondent. He was reported to have filled three prescriptions for the anti-anxiety drug Valium, in 2013 and again in 2016, and finally 50 tablets of 10-milligrams each in June 2017, four months before the shooting. The chief medical officer of the Las Vegas Recovery Center said the effects of the drug can be magnified by alcohol, as confirmed by Michael First, a clinical psychiatry professor at Columbia University.

At some point during the attack on the concertgoers, Paddock – who had placed a baby monitor camera on a service cart outside his room – fired about 35 rounds through his door. The shots wounded approaching hotel security guard Jesus Campos. The unarmed Campos had attempted to enter the 32nd floor first at 9:59 p.m. on an unrelated matter, but he found the door to the hallway screwed shut by Paddock. At 10:05 p.m., Paddock began firing hundreds of rounds in rapid succession at the crowd below. For unclear reasons, he stopped shooting ten minutes later at 10:15 p.m. It is speculated that, at that time, Paddock committed suicide by shooting himself through the mouth.

Paddock's only recorded interaction with law enforcement was a minor traffic citation years before the shooting, which he settled in court. According to court records, Paddock also sued the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas in September 2012, claiming he "slipped and fell on an obstruction on the floor" and was injured as a result; the lawsuit settled, and was dismissed with prejudice in October 2014.

In 2010, Paddock applied for and received a United States passport. He went on 20 cruise ship voyages, visiting several foreign ports including in Spain, Italy, Greece, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates. He was accompanied by his girlfriend on nine of them. They went to the Philippines together in 2013 and 2014. During the last year of his life, they traveled on a cruise to the Middle East. Paddock had his pilot's license since at least 2004 and owned two small planes.

Relatives said Paddock was worth at least US$2  million when he sold off the real-estate business. Among his most profitable investments was an apartment complex purchased in 2004, which gave him more than $500,000 in annual income by 2011. IRS records show he made $5–6 million in profits from its sale in 2015.

Paddock was married and divorced twice. He was first married from 1977 to 1979, and for the second time from 1985 to 1990, both marriages in Los Angeles County, California. Family members say he stayed on good terms with his ex-wives. His brother Eric said that Stephen had no political or religious affiliations of any kind. Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo said Paddock was "happy" with President Donald Trump because the stock market was strong.

Paddock worked as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service from 1976 to 1978. After that, he worked as an Internal Revenue Service agent until 1984. He was a Defense Contract Audit Agency auditor for one year, in 1985. Toward the end of the 1980s, Paddock worked for three years as an internal auditor for a company that later merged to form Lockheed Martin. He is known to have run a real-estate business with his brother Eric.

Paddock attended Richard E. Byrd Middle School and Sun Valley High School, graduated from John H. Francis Polytechnic High School in 1971, and graduated California State University, Northridge in 1977, with a degree in business administration.

Paddock lived in the Greater Los Angeles Area and owned personal property in Panorama City, Cerritos, and North Hollywood from the 1970s to early 2000s. He also owned two apartment buildings in Hawthorne, California. In addition, he owned an apartment complex in Mesquite, Texas, which he sold in 2012.

Paddock was born in Clinton, Iowa. The family lived in Clinton at the time. He grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and the Sun Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles, as the oldest of four sons of Benjamin Paddock. Benjamin was a bank robber who was arrested in 1960 when Stephen was seven years old. Benjamin was later convicted and escaped prison in 1969, subsequently appearing on the FBI's most-wanted list. According to Stephen's brother Eric, "he was never with my mom", and Stephen had "limited interaction" with Benjamin following the latter's release from prison. According to one of Paddock's ex-wives in a police interview, he had spoken about how growing up with a single mother and the family's financial instability caused him to prioritize being self-reliant and self-sustaining.

Stephen Craig Paddock (April 9, 1953 – October 1, 2017) was an American mass murderer responsible for the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, in which he opened fire into a crowd of approximately 22,000 concertgoers attending a country music festival on the Las Vegas Strip. The incident is the deadliest mass shooting by a lone shooter in United States history, with 59 fatalities (including Paddock) and 869 injuries, 413 of them by gunfire. As of November 15, 2019, one of the victims injured in the shooting died well after the event, although the coroner has yet to confirm if the injuries she sustained were causative. Paddock died in his hotel room by shooting himself.