REVEALED: How Stephen Paddock carried out the Las Vegas shooting like a sniper

The killer chose his room to look out onto the country music festival target from above, turning his suite into a gunman’s bolthole.

Picking a corner suite on the 32nd floor meant he could successfully spray hundreds of bullets onto the unsuspecting crowd.

At least 59 people were killed and more than 527 injured when Paddock rained bullets from his room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in the horrific attack on Sunday night. 

Paddock, who had been holed up in his hotel room since Thursday September 28, sprayed hundreds of bullets for several minutes before eventually killing himself. 

MSBNC law enforcement analyst Jim Cavanaugh said Paddock’s position gave him an unobstructed and protected view of the people attending the Route 91 Harvest festival and was effectively a sniper’s perch. 

Mr Cavanaugh, a retired special agent with the federal of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), added: “It doesn’t take any great level of sophistication to accomplish this.

“Shooting from such an elevated position into such a dense crowd, one would expect this carnage.”

In the aftermath of the atrocity, police told reporters the gunman shot multiple rounds virtually uninterrupted. 

While it is still not known what of kind of weapon Paddock used, Mr Cavanaugh said it was likely a submachine gun fired from a very high up position which allowed the gunman to “rain down death”. 

A submachine is a handheld, magazine-fed weapon that fires several bullets with a single pull of the trigger. 

A federal law from 1986 prohibits the sale or transfer to civilians, but the weapons are available on the black market. 

Police recovered 23 weapons, including a handgun and militia rifles, from Paddock’s room, while a further 19 guns were found at his home in Mesquite, Nevada. 

Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo characterised the ammunition found as .308 caliber to .223 caliber – rounds used in larger weapons such as semiautomatic and big-game hunting rifles. 

Nevada has fairly relaxed gun laws as no state permit is required to purchase or possess a rifle, shotgun or handgun. 

There is no gun registration and state law does not prohibit people from openly carrying a firearm.

Mr Cavanaugh said there was not much the people at the scene could have done to protect themselves. 

He added: “They did what they could and ran to any cover or concealment.”

Bill Bratton, the former New York City Police Commissioner, said the fact that Paddock fired his rounds from the hotel indicated some degree of planning. 

He told MSNBC: “The weaponry, quite obviously, was capable of traversing the distance of what has been described as about 300 yards, which would indicate a military-style weapon.”

Police are still piecing together a motive as to why Paddock, a 64-year-old retired accountant, unleashed a hailstorm of bullets on the concert goers. Authorities believe he acted alone. 

As of April this year, 630,019 machine guns were registered to civilians and police forces in the US ─ including 11,752 in Nevada.