What we know about the guns used in the Las Vegas massacre

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (KTRK) -- The suspect in the Las Vegas mass shooting was heavily armed. He had rifles, handguns and even explosives. One question has been swirling around much of the day. Did he use an automatic rifle to kill and wound so many people so quickly?

From Sandy Hook, to Charleston, Nashville, Northern Virginia, and Orlando, mass shootings have taken lives in numbers sometimes difficult to comprehend, but in none of those cases did the killer use an automatic weapon.

In the violent chaos of the mass shooting Sunday night in Las Vegas, authorities at first believed the attacker was using an automatic weapon. A weapon that fires multiple rounds quickly with a single pull of the trigger.

We now know the suspected shooter had 16 weapons and two of them were mounted on tripods.

None of the guns were automatic. There were two high powered rifles that might have been modified to behave as automatic weapons.

There is evidence a rifle stock called a bump stock or even possibly a modified trigger were used to convert the otherwise semi-automatic rifles. This would allow them to fire similarly to the automatic weapon.

As for how the suspect got 19 weapons into his hotel rooms without suspicion that might not have been as difficult as one may think.

"You break it down, you put it in a suitcase, you break it down, and you carry it in. You're not going through security. People don't tend to check your bags," said former FBI agent Brad Garrett.

The ATF is already checking the ownership and the purchase history of all of the weapons found at the scene. They're looking into how the suspect bought them and where.

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