The Las Vegas shooter's road to 47 guns

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Investigators are still trying to pin down Stephen Paddock's motive for opening fire on thousands of country music fans in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and wounding nearly 500 in the worst mass shooting in modern US history. What they have uncovered -- in his 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel, his car and his homes -- is a remarkable collection of firearms commensurate with the s cale of violence he unleashed before he killed himself as police closed in.

He had 47 guns.

In all, authorities have found 47 guns of varying size and power that belonged to Paddock. Investigators discovered 23 guns in his hotel room in Las Vegas in the immediate hours after the attack, plus another 24 at his homes in Mesquite and Verdi, Nevada, near Reno.

It's not clear how many guns were rifles or handguns. But at least 12 of those in the hotel room were outfitted with bump stocks, which allowed the semi-automatic weapons to mimic the gunfire of automatic ones, according to Jill Snyder, special agent in charge of the ATF's San Francisco field division. Such a large collection isn't necessarily unusual, Sam Rabadi, a retired special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told CNN "There are states in the country where there's a lot of hunting, outdoor activities. There are also areas where you have a higher population of collectors," Rabadi said.

"The purchase of that many firearms in and of itself don't necessarily raise red flags for us." Police also discovered more than 50 pounds of exploding targets and 1,600 rounds of ammunition in

He bought most of them recently ...

Paddock was "a man who spent decades acquiring weapons and ammo," Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said during a Wednesday news conference. But while some of the weapons were bought over the last 20 years, authorities believe 33 of the 47 guns -- most of them rifles -- were purchased between October 2016 and last month, an ATF spokesperson said.

at stores across the Southwest.

Paddock amassed at least some of his collection from a variety of gun stores throughout the southwestern US. He visited gun stores in Nevada, Utah, California and Texas, where he purchased rifles, pistols and shotguns, Snyder said. Chris Michel, the owner of Dixie GunWorx in St.

George, Utah, remembered selling a gun to Paddock, he told CNN affiliate KTVX. "(Paddock) didn't set off any alarms. I didn't think there was a problem with him," Michel said. "He came in, he wanted a firearm, he knew exactly what he was looking for. He just wanted a shotgun."

He raised no red flags with authorities ...

There is no federal limit to how many firearms or how much ammunition someone can buy, and there's no national database that tracks gun purchases. Federal law does require firearm dealers to conduct background checks on those purchasing weapons, which would check things like criminal history.

Several gun store owners Paddock purchased weapons from told CNN that no red flags were raised during his background checks. "My staff takes their job very seriously and if there were any red flags during this transaction, like any other, it would be halted immediately," said David Famiglietti of New Frontier Armory in Las Vegas, where Paddock purchased a shotgun and a rifle this spring.