him, this stay in this hotel, how much of it will we see? how much will help fill in the tale? what happened to this 64-year-old man that made him arm up and carry out the largest mass death by gun in american history. the miserable grizzly numbers dead and injured have been inching up all day. our next hour of coverage will be with nbc's katey tur who is here in our studio. >> thank you. it's 3:00 here in the east it's 12:00 noon in las vegas where we're following the latest on the deadliest mass shooting in u.s. history. cheers quickly turned to screams at an outdoor country music festival late last night as

bullets cut through the crowd. authorities say 64-year-old stephen path paddock opened fire from the 32nd floor of the mandalay bay i hotel onto the people downbelow. at least 58 people have lost their lives and at least 515 others are injured. >> we ran. >> clip after clip after clip. bullets flying everywhere. it was really bad. >> round after round after round he would stop and reload and we would get up from our cover and start running in those moments. >> there was shots going everywhere. and dead people everywhere. it was horrible. >> just minutes ago, president trump and the first lady participated in a moment of silence. the president will visit los angeles on wednesday. this morning he called the

shooting an act of pure evil. >> i know we are searching for some kind of meaning in the chaos. some kind of light in the darkness. the answers do not come easy. >> my colleague and coanchor just arrived in las vegas. she joins us from the strip. >> reporter: this is a city that is reeling. if you look, walking through the airport as i did minutes ago, there are people sitting at the slotman ma sheens, people who are in normal conversations and the many times i've been here, i got into the cab and talked to my cab driver who told me she had just taken two passengers who had been at the shooting. they climbed over a fence to get to safety, still shaking, and she described a city that is reeling from what happened here. one of the people who's been here throughout is nbc's joe

fryer. he happened to be staying at the mandalay bay complex. he spent many hours under lock down in a hotel room. what's the latest where you are. >> we are no longer in lock down here. that lack down lasted about 10 hours. we were here because we were covering the oj simpson story. i was sleeping in a room on the 38th floor when my producer woke me up she heard gun shots, woke up looked outside and could see chaos. this is the window. we are on the 38th floor of the mandalay bay tower here, we're technically in a four seasons hotel but it's part of the mandalay bay tower. you look down below it was six floors below i'm standing, the 32 floor, where the gunman tire fired where this concert was

taking place. imagine that filled with 22,000 people shoulder-to-shoulder listening to jason al deal perfoal dean perform. you look at the scene right now and you can see what was sort of left behind in those patches. you see a lot of lawn chairs and blankets and all the items people left behind as they ran away and scurried to try to get to safety. police have been processing the scene throughout the morning into the early afternoon. right now we are under the understanding they have been able to remove all the victims from the scene here. which is why we're able to pan away and show you what's happening here. as you probably noticed, chris, since you arrived here. the las vegas boulevard, the strip, normally packed with people, cabs and cars, all sorts of things, no matter the time of day is silent right now, only with law enforcement vehicles here. that's because they closed off

this area around here as the investigation continues. chris. >> reporter: joe fryer who is behind me in the mandalay bay complex. thank you for that. i want to go to miguel, who is at a fire station where first responders were mobilized during last night's shooting. i've been to most of the shootings domestic and foreign since columbine. the numbers of the victims absolutely staggering. the response so critical in a situation like that, but it must have been almost overwhelming when you think about the scope of what happened here. what can you tell us miguel? >> chris, more than 500 people were injured obviously as you know during this shooting. and many of the first responders at this firehouse were deployed to go help many of the victims. as a matter of fact many of people that work here were offduty and were involved in the degree i can't imagine immediately following the

incident. they train for any type of incident like this that can occur, but they're very well trained for this. their vehicles are tricked out with this high powered gear. these are kevlar vests and helmets, and med units they take in. they're trained to enter into these active shooter situations. they're wearing vests and helmets and taking their kits inside the these situation. last night they were put in the position they were going into a situation, unsure if that shooter was still very active. they went in with first responders and immediately began to triage. more than 500 people wounded hundreds taken to local hospitals many dozens at a time. that's the situation they were dealing with, saving lives by the minute, trucks by trucks,

ambulance by ambulance. unsure if they would be taking fire themselves. >> extraordinary work and we see it time after time for people in the first responder jobs. thank yous for that. >> we want to dig in to what was going on behind the scenes. i'm joined by jim cavanaugh and tim kelly, jim, i want to start with you, let's talk about the guns he may have been using. experts that have been listening to the videos that witnesses were taking from the scene talk about the bullets fired one after the other. automatic weapons are hard to come by in the united states, certainly since they were banned from purchase in 1986 or so. you can get them as long as they were registered before that, grandfathered in, but could he have used an automatic weapon

there, or could it have been a semiautomatic weapon that was modify today behave more like an automatic weapon. >> it could have been a semiautomatic rifle, like an ar-15 or one of its variance that's been converted by parts and drop in automatic seres and different gun parts to fire it full automatic. it's clearly full automatic that you hear on the video. if you listen closely you can hear a complete empty of maybe a 30-round magazine and then a delay where he's probably reloading and then you hear another empty. it goes on about three or four times. on the video eyewitnesses said they thought he shot as many as 10 or 12 magazines like that. but he holds the trigger down and empties the magazine. you don't shoot a gun like that -- a trained person doesn't

shoot a gun like that. they shoot short burst, to save ammo, be accurate. this guy is just emptying the guns into the crowd. ten guns he can break them down in half, put them in wheeled suitcases, stack it full of ammo and wheel it into the hotel. set up his sniper purj and commit mass murder. that's what he did. >> what does it say to you, shawn, of the psychological profile of a man who shoots into a crowd. >> this was a man with a mission. his mission was to cause as much havoc and death as possible. what was his motivation, what caused him to do this? what type of interaction did he have with other people that caused him to take this step to create this mass carnage? but going there with the amount of weaponry, and the rounds he

had and the way he shot as jim just described, there was one purpose and one purpose only, and that was to kill as many people as possible. >> his girlfriend, his companion was not in the country. officers say they located her, they don't believe she was involved in any way, but what sort of questions will they ask her? >> they'll want to talk to her about his mental state. who's been engaged with? has he been talk gs to people on line? what kind of problems has he had? we heard reports of gambling debt. they'll ask her about their relationship, did they have a fight recently. did he talk about going out and committing violent acts. what kind of things have you heard him say that caused you concern. so she is going to be a treasurer troef of information, as is anyone else who had contact with him. neighbors, et cetera. >> not to mention the security cameras in the casinos up and

down the strip. any time he went and gambled anywhere, he is on security cameras. so i would imagine law enforcement are pouring over those as well. >> that's right. what was he doing in the few days he was staying at the hotel? was he gambling? was he out there? he planned to kill himself and was gam ling money or was this i'm going to take everything i got, roll the dice, i'm a high stakes gambler, if i make the money great if i don't, i'm going out. people would say, who would do that for a gambling loss. but people do things for much smaller things in their lives. they lose a job and kill everybody at work. the sniper in kansas in '76 went on the tallest building in kansas and started shooting because because he broke up with

his girlfriend. >> shawn henry, nbc news contributor. thank you guys both. let's go back to chris jansing who is in nevada. >> it boggles the mind thinking of 500 people being injured in a shooting like this. there's only one level one trauma center and that is umc here in las vegas. university medical center. that's where we find jo ling kent. how are things there? what can you tell us? >> chris, it is an ongoing developing situation here at the university medical center. i'm joined by the director of the level one trauma center. thank you for joining us. >> my pleasure. >> talk to me about where we are right now, the situation going on inside the hospital. how's it going? >> clinically, things are stab liezed. we had a large number of patients coming in around 10:00

last night. and we had operating rooms and icus going all night. several will go back to the operating room today. >> as you treat these patients, it's all hands on deck inside and you were telling me earlier that you guys train for this multiple times a year. when was the most recent training? >> we trained probably three, four months ago on this. we've had other mass casualties here, but nothing as big as this. this is the biggest one we've had in 20 years. >> have you trained specifically for a concert venue type of event? >> yes, we have. >> how are patients doing inside as you've been talking with families? you were saying the patients who made it here alive last night you were able to treat and stabilize? >> that's correct. half the patients are critical but stable condition the other half are serious but stable condition. we are working to get them treated and get them back to

their families. >> how were you preparing for the hundreds of patients that will be coming through these doors and making sure there are resources, people are able to work and make sure all of this continues to be stable? you guys are doing the heros' work right now. >> we expect to get transfers over the next day or two but i think we've seen as many as we're going to in the associated shooting. >> how are the health care professionals doing inside the hospital. >> they're tired but beaming with pride. >> that's because you've been recognized. >> we strained for this, and we've executed the plan perfect. >> i in terms of safety, are you confident it is safe and secure at the perimeter here? >> on many levels, this seems to be a loan shooter event. we're not concerned about a second wave of patients right now. >> thank you very much for your

time, doctor, waiting with us and being live on msnbc. we wish you all the best of luck. thank you very much. chris, we are here at umc, the one level one trauma center here. we'll show you a little bit later what it looks like as people bring supplies, as families arrive here to gram graple with what las vegas is dealing with. >> thank you for that as a plane goes overhead. we can't emphasize enough the one thing we have heard from officials repeatedly, donate blood. if you feel like you want to do something for the people here in las vegas, whether you're here or not, donate blood. all the people at that concert will have horrifying stories to tell. andy houston is one of them. he took a lot of the the photos you have seen over the last many hours, he goes to this festival every year.

first of all, andy, tell me where were you and when did you realize something was horribly wrong? >> so i was -- i was in the vip special suite section, which was on the opposite side of mandalay bay, it took a while to sink in. once the bullets started coming it was surreal, people were shocked. it seemed like it was fireworks or fire crackers. the initial reaction was for everybody to be stunned and then people kind of hit the ground and when the bullets didn't stop coming, that's when people finally realized that they were going to have to do something, get up and run and find some sort of safety. and that's kind of where the mayhem kind of kicked in. >> were you there with the group or people and were any of your friends hurt in the attack? did you all stay together?

were you separated? >> i was there with a group of probably, you know, ten or 15 close friends and by the grace of god, none of my close friends were hurt. but what i -- what i can tell you is that right before the shooting started i posed for a picture with a couple of friends and it was that spot where somebody got shot right when the shooting started. and, you know, there was -- luckily, none of my close friends were were but certainly people were shot all around me. >> when you realized that you were standing in that spot, i mean, i can't imagine you haven't played that over in your head. how are you doing? >> it's -- you know, i'm still shaking just thinking about it. i'm actually in a -- my group of friends and i, we rented a sweet at the luxor, i'm in there now looking out the room, looking

down on the festival fairgrounds and replaying it. it's s it's surreal to see las vegas boulevard with no traffic. it happened so quickly everybody ran and i know that the first place that i got to that was safe was the tropicana, which was a quarter mile away. i remember once i got inside the building i could still hear the bullets coming 5, 10, 15 minutes after it started. i don't know that it still has sank in, you know, what has happened. >> when you think about what it was like moments before that happened -- i can only imagine, you've been to these festivals before, you're there because you know it's a great time. can you even describe sort of the turn that you had to make mentally, emotionally from that feeling of what i'm assuming was

at least happiness -- >> yeah. >> -- this whole group of people that love country music, love this performer, to then in a split second everybody's lives changed? >> that's probably -- it was a euphoric moment, live music is my biggest passion and that's kind of my happy place to be. and the energy of the crowd before the shooting started, it was just, you know, this joy and happiness and people singing along with jason aldean who had just started and then you heard the bullets flying. in an instant it turned on a dime when the music stopped and you see jason print off the stage. and then you see bodies dropping. shock is the only way to describe what happened. it was just shock. >> and then, of course, there are the people at home who may

have been hearing sporadically, family members, friends, knew you were at this concert. have you been able to talk to everyone you needed to talk to? how long was it before you were able to reach your loved ones who must have been terrified? >> it was terrifying. it probably took me about five or six hours to get from -- you know, from the festival to my hotel room in a place that was totally safe throughout -- throughout the night because everything was on lock down. and, you know, when they took everybody in the luxor and put them down in the basement where it was safe and, you know, there was no shooter. my phone had died, which was probably the worst thing. and it wasn't until i got back to my room at about 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning i was able to charge my phone and reach out to people and let them know i was safe. >> andy, we are glad you and all

of your close friends are safe. and we are sorry for this tragic incident that happened. take care of yourself. let us know how you're doing. will you? >> yeah, thank you so much. >> katy, back to you. >> i'm struck, the moments the bullets started firing, how long it took people to realize it wasn't a glitch in one of the machines on stage, it wasn't the backfire of some sort of equipment, it was actual bullets and people starting to run, not knowing where those bullets were coming from, not knowing where, if anywhere, was safe. the voods are horrifying and remarkable at the same time. the president and first lady led a moment of silence in honor of what is now the worst mass shooting in american history. at least 58 people have died. more than 500 others were hurt.

those numbers keep rising every time las vegas officials hold a news conference. the president is going to head to las vegas on wednesday. nbc's kristen welker joins me from the white house. you had a press conference a few moments ago with sarah huckabee-sanders and she was asked whether the president believes this to be an act of terror. >> the message that came out of the briefing essentially was she, the president think this is a moment to focus on the victims, those who are suffering, to call for unity. she was pressed over and over again about what next steps might look like. will this, in any way, cause the president to reevaluate or to think differently about whether there need to be new gun control measures. she said, look, today is not a day to talk about policy. we know president trump in

response to other shootings when he was a candidate, of course, that was a different situation, did at times weigh in on what he would like to see happen politically, but she said today is different. she said it's different when you are president. she was asked also what the president -- what he will be doing, what his message will be when he visits las vegas on wednesday. listen to what she had to say. >> look, i think it's very simple to say that his -- his goal is simply to be there, to show the support of people from around the country, and to stand unit united in not only this act of evil but against all acts of evil. i think that was clear in the president's remarks today and certainly something you 'eel see from his visit on wednesday. >> reporter: president trump tweeted first thing this morning writing my warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims

and families of the terrible las vegas shooting. god bless you. i can tell you the scene here is one of mourning, somber, this is an administration responding to the pictures you were just discussing. senior staffers were in meetings throughout the day trying to figure out what the response would be. i can tell you the flag has been lowered to half staff at the white house as this administration mourns with the rest of the country for everything tha that happened in the zblunt just a sea of bad news for the white house. stephen paddock's brother says he is in as much disbelief as the rest of america. nothing he knew about his brother said he was capable of murder. here was eric paddock earlier today speaking with reporters in florida -- it does not look like

we have that sound. but again, eric paddock was shocked that his brother might have been involved in this. he said he was just a guy. take a listen. >> our condolences to everyone. we just don't understand. it's like i said, an asteroid just fell out of the sky. we have no reason, rhyme, rational, excuse. there's just nothing. >> so why did paddock open fire on a concert killing 58 and injuring more than 500 others? authorities are trying to piece together a motive but so far it is slow going. so far we know he was a 64-year-old of mesquite, nevada in 2015 he bought a two story home in a retirement community there, from 1985 to 1988 he worked for a press december sor

company, lockheed martin. police say he checked into the mandalay bay hotel on thursday, bringing upwards of ten rifles into the room. authorities tell nbc news he was gambling upwards of $10,000 a day as well. joining me now is nbc news justice correspondent pete williams. you said it took an hour and 12 minutes for officers to figure out where paddock was and to break down the door of his hotel room. >> yes, that's based on two things. the first call to the police that shots were fired came at 10:08 las vegas time. and then we know that the door of his room was breached and found him dead an hour and 12 minutes later. so it's that time it took them to realize where the shots were coming from, the mandalay bay hotel, an upper level floor --

it's very plane to the look at the broken windows now during the day, but at night it was hard to tell where the shots were coming from. the police eventually figure out it's the hotel, got into the hotel. the question is with which floor. based in part on phone calls from people in the hotel, and o going floor to floor, they started on the 29th floor and worked up to the 32nd floor. when they realized what room the shots were coming from, they blew the door open and realized he had shot himself. they fired at him, but realized he shot himself before they got there or or at the time they blew the door in. so that entire sequence is 10:08 p.m. to 11:20 p.m., that's an hour and 12 minutes. what we don't know is during how many minutes in that interval

were shots being fired. we know from what witnesses said they heard rounds being fired and then hear a pause and then more rounds. what is apparent is he was either reloading his weapons or putting one down and picking up another one. we know he had at least ten rifles in there. how many of them were outfitted to fired automatically, we don't know. you saw the picture earlier, he broke out two windows because he had, in essence, two rooms -- adjoining rooms in this hotel. one room facing north -- one window facing north, the other east. so he's on the bend of this tower where it starts to make the turn around to go back the other way. it may not look like this, but these are windows. they're tinted to keep the sun from making the rooms too hot, but you can see out. and at night you can see quite clearly out. so that's the time line we believe based on analysis of the

recordings and what the police have said about when the calls came in. >> pete, it's only been about 14 hours since this happened. i understand investigators are trying to figure out what could have possibly brought this man to do such a horrifying thing. what have they been able to figure out so far? >> that's the big question. i don't know that they have any answer at this point. the kind of things that might quickly come to pass, social media statements that he posted on the web, none of that, nothing found in the hotel room, nothing found in the cars, his girlfriend that he'd been living with was in the philippines, it turns out, at the time of the shooting. very early this morning police had described mary lu danly as a person of interest. she didn't have any immediate answer to their questions. nothing of the search of his

home about 80 miles away turned up any obvious clues. so it's going to take time to determine if there are other electronic footprints they can figure out. other people he talked to, did anyone else know about this, try to reconstruct the time line of his life. but at this relatively young point in the investigation, there are no obvious answers. >> pete williams thank you. joining me now is clint watts former fbi special agent. clint, thank you for being here. this man got two rooms in the mandalay bay hotel. he seems to have gone back and forth between them, shooting out of those windows. he had ten guns, rifles in that room. and now there's questions about whether one was an automatic weapon or at least a semiautomatic that had been transformed to behave as an automatic. is there any doubt in your mind that this was premeditated.

>> he had a plan, you just don't know why he had the plan. that's what's confusing about this. usually we would look for technical indicators, electronic kmunss, somewhere posts or surveillance cameras, or behavioral indicators i'm giving away my possessions, maybe heavy gambling or i'm reconning a location i want to shoot at or do violence. that doesn't seem to be the case in this. he seemed to have a plan how he was going to do it, but i have not seen anything to this point to tell us someone would have been tipped off as to what his plot was going to be. >> it's a three-day music festival. he checked into the hotel at the beginning of the festival, on the 28th. nothing happened until last act, until jason aldean takes the stage. what does that say to you? was he plotting?

could he have intended to do it sooner and then couldn't get up the nerve? what are the thoughts going through investigators' minds right now. >> i think the big thing is, in terms of motive, who knew. if he did not communicate this to anyone else then maybe this was a relatively recent decision. if his girlfriend/roommate hasn't been around for some time, did poorly at the casino, maybe he was deliberating this for two or three days and this was his last chance to do it. i'm confuse td about the lack of evidence that's popped up. if you look at the trend going back to the orlando, it's these open mass casualty incidents we've seen in recent shootings and there have been fewer clues as we go into each of these. >> there's no social media for this man. no real swrl that would give an

idea what his thought process was, either religiously or politically, anything of that nature. where do you begin with that? when you have somebody estranged from his family -- he brought his mother a walker recently, but what is the first thing you do when you're looking into somebody who has so small a footprint? >> i think once you move past the social media, you start with communications. you go through that fairly quickly. there have been none that have popped up. then it's to the weapons transactions. he had lots of weapons, bought lots of weapons, was he going to gun shows? how does he come up with a fully automatic weapon or one he's modified to be fully automatic. i think those are the keys who who might have known or had some indication to why he would do this. >> clint watts, thank you for joining us.

let's get back to chris jansing in las vegas. >> everything you've talked about leads us to that question whenever we have a mass shooting that is why we try as human beings to make sense of something unfathomable. why would a man go up to the 32nd floor of the hotel behind me and open fire randomly on a crowd of joyous concert goers. one of the places they will look now for clues is his home, 80 miles northeast of where i am now. we find katy beck there. what can you tell us from his hometown? >> this is a sleepy retirement community. it's a dessert retirement community. people come here to find peace and quiet. that is what presumably 64-year-old stephen paddock was coming here to find. his brother said we thought he was going there to retire and be close to vegas.

today police are executing a search warrant as we speak on his home. they are not allowing the the media to get closer than where we are. the street behind us is blocked off. they have been through throughout the night making sure the property was first secure and there were no explosives inside the home, evacuating neighbors and then making entry into the home to see what they could find. they tell us there was nothing too suspicious about it, it looked like any other home in a retirement community, newspaper in the driveway, coffee cup in the sink. they did recover some guns in the home, but that was not alarming. given the amount of gun owners in the area they say it was all pretty standard. they are still inside hoping to try to find more clues more information what about the motive could have been. neighbors feeling very shocked and emotional here. one of the neighbors told us when he and his wife put the pieces together, they instantly

began crying. how could we have someone with this type of evil inside them and have no idea. that's the questions running their their minds especially in a retirement community where people are generally friendly and come here for peace and quiet. now a lot of questions among these neighbors who had no idea he was capable of anything like this. >> thank you very much for that. i want to go now to the member of congress who's area that is. dina titus, congresswoman thank you for joining us. can you even begin to wrap your head around what has happened here? >> it's just so horrible, you know. i represent the fabulous las vegas strip, the airport, including the mandalay bay and the sight of this hoe ren douse incident. i welcome people to las vegas to say come for the entertainment, the excitement, fun, never

dreamed i would be in a position of trying to offer sol lis and assistance after something like this. >> what's happening right now in your district to help folks? i mean, this has been obviously a traumatic experience whether you're here on ve indicatiacatir you work in the hotels or whether you're a resident. >> a lot of things are happening on different fronts. we have the fusion center with all areas of law enforcement working together, you have some of the major hospitals in my district, umc with the trauma center. those emergency rooms were overflowing last night. people were out in the parking lot. our first responders have saved hundreds of lives by being there on the spot. and then just people coming together on this corner, cars stop and say where can i gi blood? in my office we have calls, we have counselors, immigration,

people wanting to know what they can do to find their loved ones. and las vegas has wonderful private security so that folks at mandalay bay were right on the spot did just what they had to do, coordinating with local law enforcement. everybody is pitching in and even at this filling station here on the corner, this is kind of operations central. >> is there something, congresswoman set up to help people contact with friends and loved ones? i was talk earlier to to a concert goer, who said it was five to six hours before it was safe enough to start reaching people. what can gol folks do? >> they had to close down mandalay bay and the strip, some of that is opening up. there are a number of websites that have been posted. you can look at my website see

where to go, places to give blood, who to call about loved ones. the va has set up a counseling center here in the heart of the district. so the information is available now and you can certainly always call our office. >> i don't want to get ahead of things because the most important thing now is what's happening in the hospital behind you and hospitals elsewhere that the people who are injured here are getting the treatment they need, the people traumatized by this are getting the treatment they need. but las vegas is a city people come to have a great time, have fun. this is a city with a reputation you can come with your family and go to a resort and have a wonderful time. how concerned are you ability the impact this will have on by far your number one industry, which is tourism? >> that's right. we don't want people not to come because they don't feel safe. i would point out again what a good job all our law enforcement

did, how they saved hundreds of lives, coordinated efforts, worked together. we have a lot of active shooter training here, we did one in city hall in my office a couple months ago. there were no indications of this person being a target to watch. i don't know how you can prevent it, but we responded to it as well as possible. and there were stories of individual acts of heroism, there were off duty cops there, and they helped take people to shelter, a friend of my communications director was running, being trampled, somebody opened a car door and pulled her inside so she would be safe. those are the stories of her rowism we're hearing today to find answers before we move down the road towards anything political. >> you can't say it enough the

efforts of people who time after time put themselves on the line to serve us as our first responders and in this case run towards the bullets and not away from it. let me ask you finally the president has said that he's going to be coming here to las vegas on wednesday. do you welcome that? have you been contacted by the white house? >> well, we've been in touch with the white house, and my washington office. we know he's going to come wince, we welcome him. i thought his comments were appropriate. certainly calling for the nation to pull together. what else can you say? he has a property here. he knows what las vegas is all about and i think he's sincere in wanting to offer some comfort. >> congresswoman, we are so sorry for what happened here and our thoughts and pri prayers are with everyone affected by this shooting. thank you for taking the time to talk to us. >> thank you for being with us. >> katey back to you.

>> police confirm they found a cache of weapons in the hotel room where they located the gunman. you might think it's easy to trace those weapons, there's a data base you type in the number and it pops up, that does not exist in this country. the gun lobby stopped that from happening. in order to find out the history of any given weapon, you have to go to a warehouse in west virginia that is essentially run by one man at the atf and he has to sort through thousands and thousands and thousands of boxes of paper records where the guns are registered. that can usually take weeks, sometimes months. in cases like this, it can be expedited but it is a long and grueling process. tom costello is in our dc bureau. i know they're going to try to figure out where these guns were

bought and i know that might take a while. talk about what sort of guns can do what these guns did from that hotel room, that can shoot that far, fire that quickly. >> so most experts who heard the audio of the rapid fire sound this morning immediately said that sounds like a fully automatic weapon. well fully automatic weapons, machine guns, have been illegal in this country since 1986 unless it was registered prior to 1986. so how would you have a machine gun functioning in the country today. it could be before 1986 or more likely it's a semiautomatic, which is legal in america today, a semiautomatic weapon is legal, that was converted then into an automatic weapon and not registered with the atf. that's the loophole. if you want to look at the other loop hope, the $50 kit that

makes it become fully automatic is legal but becoming fully automatic isn't legal. if you think it sounds like it's meant to be full of holes, that's exactly the point. the gun lobby has worked hard over the past 30 years to be sure it is difficult to trace weapons. you talked about how difficult the atf system, it's a matter of paper, there are 300 million guns in america today so tracking each of them by a paper card file in west virginia is laborious and makes it difficult to trace the guns. if it was a legally purchased semiautomatic weapon that was made illegal they might be able to determine, through that paper file, where was that semiautomatic weapon purchased but then determining how was it converted into an automatic weapon that was another ball of wax here. they believe they have a.308 and

these are weapons common by the military in the semiautomatic mode normally. so why is it we have this proliferation now of weapons that have been converted to automatic weapons? according to experts, they say the black market really took off over the last 20 years or so as many enthuseiests wanted the excitement of shooting one of these out in the open range or field, and criminals also took advantage of those $50 kits to convert these semiautomatics into fully automatics. the net result is they are deadly dangerous, as you can expect, and they can fire off 30 rounds a clip. and that means hundreds of rounds were likely fired off here in the space of a few minutes. >> these aren't hard to find. you do a quick google search and you can find videos showing you how to modify one of these guns.

there are companies that sell you modification kits to make sure semiautomatic weapon fire as if it were an automatic weapon. tom thanks so much. if you're curious about the paper records in west virginia, the paper records on guns, look at a gq article from a few years back, charlie houser runs this warehouse down there in wfprima facie west virginia he has it stored in his head where those records would be stored there. you can only imagine what will be lost if he retires. we're looking at the aftermath of the deadliest shooting in american history. and it's the deadliest attacks on u.s. soil since september 11,

2001. here's what we know, at least 58 people are dead, that number could rise, 500 people are injured, first responders are still working to identify victims. the shooter, 64-year-old stephen paddock opened fire on a country music fire on the las vegas strip. there's no link between him and terrorist groups. officials say they need blood donations and need blood donations quickly. they are calling the the the scene a war zone, remember 515 people injured. the majority of which had to have some sort of bullet damage, some sort of injury by bullets. the las vegas sheriff said law enforcement had no knowledge of the suspect before the shooting. police are calling the shooter a lone wolf. police say he brought his weapons to the mandalay bay and that he broke hotel windows with

a hammer like tool norm to shoot down at the crowd. i want to show you a video time line of how last night's horrific shooting unfolded. >> you heard it several, several times. >> upstairs in the mandalay bay. upstairs in the mandalay bay, halfway up. i see the shots coming from mandalay bay, halfway up. we have multiple casualties, gsws in the medical tent. multiple casualties. >> clip after clip after clip. >> that was probably 200, 300 rounds. >> everyone said drop and they dropped and then they got up and

said run, and everyone started stampeding and charging. >> multiple gsws to the chest. several arteries. >> heads on me. heads on me. now. >> we determined there was a shooter on the 32nd floor of the mandalay bay. he is dead. >> the one man was sitting next to me who had a bullet hole in his arm and they were like we can't help you now. >> there was dead bodies on the street, in the place. there was dead bodies everywhere. >> it's just been a little over a year since the rampage in orlando's pulse nightclub. now survivors are sending their support to victims of las vegas who endured what is the country's worst mass shooting in history. >> i was watching tv at that time and all i seen and heard was the gun shots.

it took me back here, june 12, 2016. and let las vegas know that we are with you. we know that pain and we are so sorry that you are enduring and have endured, the loss of those those that got wounded. our prayers goes to you all. >> joining me now is jeffrey ringold, fbi special agent and we live in a country where one group of survivors from gun violence, horrific gun violence, send messages to another group of survivors or family members who have lost loved one from another horrific gun incident. that's just, to me, is unspeakable that this is something that we would even air on television. that it exists to air on television. >> this is just another terrible event that occurred. people enjoying a nice evening, a nice event, become victims.

it should never happen. >> talking about the fact that we keep seeing more and more of these mass casualties situations where the death toll rises significantly, why are we seeing -- i think i know the answer. why are we seeing the death toll rise as much as it has in just the last 10 or 15 years? >> well, again, i think here is a situation where an individual had very powerful weapons. he had clear view field of view for his victims. nobody was stopping him. and he was able to operate unimpinged for quite awhile. i think about ten minutes before he finally stopped. and the people who were the victims, they had no way to protect themselves. >> the -- his ability to use what could be an automatic weapon potentially. maybe he had one, he purchased it before the ban went into place or potentially a weapon that had been modified. every expert that's listened to that has said there is something going on there with the amount of bullets that were fired in

such a short period of time. how does that contribute to situations like this? >> an automatic weapon, one pull of the trigger, rounds keep coming out until you let go of the trigger. in this situation, 30-round magazine, he cab put down 30 rounds in only a couple seconds, reload and another 30 rounds. it's a military style weapon. it's used by law enforcement, and very extreme situations. it's not a weapon that's meant to -- >> he's doing it from the 32nd floor of a hotel. there's no way to stop him. there's no person with a gun who can stop the shooter. >> exactly. he's got clear field of view. he can see where his victims are. he's not even aiming. he's just pulling the trigger n shooting into the mass. he's spraying, praying and spraying and just affecting as many as he can. >> like shooting fish in a barrel. a terrible cliche but one that's appropriate here.

thank you very much. i appreciate your coming in today. let's get back to chris jansing who is still in las vegas. >> he did make a good point that so many times we've seen in these mass shootings they were around celebrations. the pulse nightclub. afterwards i talks to so many gay men who lost their friends and said that was the one place they could go and be themselves and have a good time and not worry about anything. san bernardino, newtown, both around the christmas season. so was paris. they had just shot off fireworks in nice, france, when a man drove a truck into a crowd. when people are at their happiest. some of these events have made us all just stop and wonder and certainly the country music community, which is very close, which really is a community, is reeling today. cal perry has been looking into reaction there. cal, what can you tell us? >> yeah, as you said, very close. and keeping with that theme, look, this is a mainstream music

festival. it's call the route 91 harvest festival and it's meant to bring the biggest stars in country music to the fans that desperately want to see them. in this case we're talking about 22,000 people packed into a very small field. you see there that was the schedule on sunday. this was a three-day festival. this was the fourth year that this fefstival has taken place. the headliner, jason aldean, was on stage when the shooting started. he is a well-known country music superstar, as i said. you see his photo there. he was playing when the shooting started. we have some very, very disturbing video of that moment. take a listen. ♪ [ gunfire ] >> you see there at the end of that video, jason just sprinting

off the stage. clearly he knew that something was going on. he since then posted on his instagram he has millions of instagram followers. a message to his fans. also putting out, of course, condolences to all those who were killed and wounded. while we show you that message, i spoke to a singer/songwriter in nashville. she's in the business and said to me, this festival hits the, quote, classic sweet spot of country music. this festival, she says, is in many ways america and that's really in keeping with the musical acts we saw. another one, a young man luke combs, he'll be well known to many of our viewers. two songs on the top 100. he was actually watching his good friend, his colleague in many ways jason aldean perform when the shooting started. and we've talked so much, chris, about how this noise can be confusing when you're talking about a live event like this.

he spoke about that earlier on msnbc. take a listen. >> we hear the first four shots kind of ring out, and, you know, you are in music for a living you deal with pyrotechnics a lot on stage. so nobody on the stage really even batted an eye after the first four shots because it just seemed like it was kind of part of the show and nobody on stage was concerned. at that point, we were all just kind of standing there and then the first burst happened and still at that point i was kind of under the impression that something was going wrong with the pyrotechnics or some kind of electrical failure. so they were -- at that point it just seemed like they were clearing everyone off the stage because there was some sort of danger to the people directly on the stage. it wasn't for a few minutes after that that pandemonium set in when the bursts kept happening. i know that i've been watching

the news. pretty much been up all night. i'm watching stuff. they said maybe it was four or five clips is what i heard. it had to be upwards of 10 to 12. i mean, at least. from what i heard personally. so, yeah, it was definitely a situation. i'm obviously thankful to be here. >> and that there from a performer. so you get an idea of the chaos there. the difficulty in knowing what was going on. the other thing we've heard from these performers, and it is just terrifying to think about it, the shooting came from above. it really was, as they put it, sort of raining down. and there was no place to go for cover. we've talked about this a lot. people running for cover in an open field when somebody is shooting at you from above and, listen, this isn't the movies. bullet goes through things. they go through tents, through vehicles. so very, very terrifying scene. but the country music industry

is at the heart of america. it's at the heart of american culture and certainly on this day, it is dealing with this unimaginable tragedy, chris. >> cal perry, thank you very much. and katy tur among the people who have put out statements who are tweeting and a community as well, of the performers here in las vegas. many people who consider this sort of their second home who have major shows along the strip. and so this has touched so many people in so many different ways. >> so many communities gather around music and country music community is just one of many. certainly. chris jansing, thank you. that will do it for this hour. we want to leave you today with the words of the people who survived this harrowing and unspeakable shooting. >> we were thing for theest vip stages away from mandalay bay, and they were ricocheting everywhere where we were. so they are were firing from somewhere high, and they were

unloading clip after clip after clip. >> you had people that were getting trampled. i just found a bunch of people in a group and we just all got down as low as we could and luckily, there were some police officers that actually laid over the women that were there to make sure they wouldn't get shot at. >> and everyone started stampeding and charging and knocking over grills, jumping over fences. getting out. >> i thought i was going to die. i called my mom and i called my husband telling him i loved him and that i didn't know if i was going to make it home. >> just spraying the crowd. so many people that just couldn't get cover. there's nowhere to go. ten-foot walls boxing us in. no one could get out. >> this was an horrific event, say the least. this is a classic wmd. this is a weapon and a man of mass destruction. [ bell tolling ] >> last night, thousands of our fellow citizens endured what the

president has rightly called an act of pure evil. one man, 29-year-old sonny melton, traveled from tennessee to las vegas for the concert with his wife heather. when the bullets began ringing down, sonny shielded her from dair danger. lindsey pageant. they fled from the scene and immediately returned with their pickup truck to rescue. what they did says more about who we are as americans than the cowardly acts of a killer ever could. >> just some of the coverage from today thus far. brian williams back here with you from new york. we're going to start our coverage this hour with the death toll at 58 with over 500 people injured. with nbc's steve patterson. he's been on the scene there since early this morning. and he is with us now. steve, what have you watched change from your vantage point? >> well, brian, the scene is