Dovid BT-
“ A person in the crowd with a rifle, who is competant at using the weapon, should easily been able to fire back at the shooter. A few such people firing at him would have stopped him.”
While I have no problem with normal sane people owning a gun for possible self-defense, your suggestion seems to be a bad idea. The shooter was shooting and hitting people from over a quarter of a mile away (report said 1700 feet) The likelihood of any legal gunowners having something that powerful and accurate with them to shoot back at the shooter is probably quite low. And now you have, according to your suggestion, several shooters firing at the hotel which also is housing many potential innocent victims behind windows in the nearby rooms that will be hit in the return fire. And shooting over a panicked crowd with fired bullets falling to the ground (this can be very dangerous) over them.