I hope all these sources get on the same page soon because I have some old head friends who read all this stuff and believe he was a Chinese national working for the Iranians, set up next to snipers in a building cleared by locals. They say he was then confronted after he climbed a ladder but before he bear-crawled 25 feet to aim, only to be interrupted by local cops forcing him to fire quickly but was killed by snipers who had been watching him use a range finder for hours.
Please get it together, all these 50-year-old conspiracy theorists are going to start having heart attacks lol.
Oh now there old friend, I wasn't making a generalization as to a whole ass generation. I am sure I could commiserate with you as to the fuckery boomers have shit down our backs since they traded in free love for free hate but I try real hard not to drag ass on a bitch after 5pm if you get my meaning.
I’d suggest reading the article. It gives the play by play of how the events occurred. I think you’re reading headlines and then constructing your own picture of what happened.
Bless your heart, I read it right before I posted. Thank you kindly for the advice though.
At some point, everything I wrote was in an article just like this one, only citing "sources in (insert official entity here)" and always starting with "sources say."
Well, except for the Iranian one, that one was a separate incident but a buddy of mine mentioned it right before I read the post so I added it.
He was a 20 year old kid who knew he was seconds away from death, who had just scared off a cop who had come up the ladder after him. I'm not sympathetic for him, but I could understand him being jittery and missing. Paper and clays don't shoot back. It's not true practice.
Yah, jesus, I get shaky just lining up a nice sized deer still, and I've been hunting for years. And I don't have anyone breathing down my neck and 30 seconds to shoot.
The fact he just barely missed with a shitty AR-15 at over a hundred yards is a minor miracle.
I didn't hear anything suggesting he used irons, that'd be a very odd choice. Most modern ARs don't come with irons or an optic and you can get red dots much better than just irons for under $200.
And irons would decidedly be harder but 100 yards still is very achievable by a novice who follows fundamentals.
I think it's easier than you think, especially from prone and especially if you have any previous experience, which I assume the shooter did.
Here's a page out of a US military training manual to get an idea of how "wide" the front sight looks on a human size target. And remember, Trump is considerably wider than these silhouettes.
This is the fundamental problem with protecting a candidate whose entire base is really big on guns, big on having guns on them, big on using every inch of their already permissive rights, and no matter what, the candidate's rally is a highly likely place for them to flex their pieces, even if they can only wave them around in the parking lot.
You can't just do the obvious thing and put rounds in everyone you see with a rifle. White girls are going to be out in the parking lot doing influencer dances with AR-15s. The muzzle might wave in Trump's direction while she boot scoots. We don't know what kind of orders that sniper had, but probably something along the lines of "look all these fuckers are going to be strapped if they can be strapped, stay chilly on the trigger and think twice, take no shots without orders."
By the time anybody acted like a clear threat, the bullets were already flying. So what if he had a rangefinder? That doesn't count as a "pull trigger now" level threat, not with this crowd. What an absolute bastard of a thing to provide overwatch for, you know?
This is the fundamental problem with protecting a candidate whose entire base is really big on guns, big on having guns on them, big on using every inch of their already permissive rights, and no matter what, the candidate’s rally is a highly likely place for them to flex their pieces, even if they can only wave them around in the parking lot.
If police snipers started opening up on random people at a Trump rally who were simply parading around their most tacti-cool looking hardware, imagine how much safer the convention could be.
You can’t just do the obvious thing and put rounds in everyone you see with a rifle.
They absolutely can and they absolutely should. Treat the RNC like its Oakland during the OJ Riots or New Orleans during a hurricane. Just start blasting anyone who looks vaguely threatening and don't stop until you feel safe again.
Anyone who argues otherwise simply isn't serious when they say "Blue Lives Matter". I mean, ffs, can you even imagine what the world would have lost if Thomas Matthew Crooks had adjusted his aim and hit one of our brave servicemen?
Every single American police officer needs to treat these thugs and their guns with absolute seriousness. Lives are on the line. And not just the lives of school children. Important ones.
You would think, though, that it would be a "get some guys with guns onto that roof before he comes back" sign. 20 minutes is plenty of time to get at least some guys with pistols/their own AR-15s over there to secure the area. Also, simply having the right to own and carry weapons doesn't give you the right to point them at people intentionally, much less set up a sniper's nest on a divisive public figure. If a random guy in the crowd started pointing his pistol at Trump, then I'm fairly certain that would give Secret Service the right to at least tackle the guy or tase him, not to mention all the other people who would rush to control him.
This is pretty much my thinking. The sniper likely thought the kid was setting up a picture from the rooftop or something, and didn't want to shoot someone so young when they may very well be doing something harmless.
Being US president is like one of the most dangerous professions in the world. And that is the example of the level of expertise the US has in protecting one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.