The Las Vegas shooting was monstrous.  Understandably, many wanted to know the motive for the shooting, as this could explain its inhuman dimension.

But it may be that the cause of its monstrous dimension resides not so much with a demonic perpetrator, but with a feeble response.

As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the shooter shot a security guard through the room of the shooter's door.  Two hundred rounds were shot through that door (albeit it is unknown whether they were all shot at once).  The guard informed the hotel desk.  But it appears likely that many guests did so as well.  As the Washington Post reports, "[a]s the noises began, scores of confused guests pressed zero on their telephones."

This shooting – through the door into the hallway – was a full six minutes before the perpetrator began shooting through his windows at the crowd below.

A former FBI assistant director, Ron Hosko, has been reported as saying that these few minutes would not have been enough time to stop the shooting from happening.  Hosko rightly points out that one police officer would not have charged the room at once.

True, in a way, but irrelevant.  Mitigation is all.  Cutting short the attack is paramount.  When one hears rapid-fire shooting behind a door, one does something.  (The same should go for hotel clerks who are informed of shootings by hotel guests.)

One does something.  Like former Marine Taylor Winston, who stole a truck to help those wounded by the Las Vegas shooter.

When the shooter opened fire through his room's windows, it became paramount to stop his actions – or at the very least to try.  Even a sole armed responder could have been successful.

This would have reduced the number of casualties and could have changed "everything" in that the dimension of the crime, being reduced, would no longer have been monstrous.

Instead, there was no one there until after it was over.