Politics

[cwpayton]

A thought on conspiracy theories , I gave an opinion, my own derived from personal knowledge and past info. I dont even read X. unless someone forwards it to me. also Im pretty independent and could give a damn what someone else says or thinks. Im not nor have I been a sniper, Ive shot with navy seal snipers and raider snipers,[marine] thats it.
Their are snipers Im sure on this site, my understanding is that a center mass shot is to take out the enemy from the fight ,not positively Kill him it could be a kill shot but 3 ' off and no .
In Vietnam a chest wound 'sucking' was definitely survivable ,get it covered with some type of seal like a poncho. to prevent air leakage. My father ,a raider marine told me he saw a man shot 7 times in the chest and he lived.
center mass is a larger target .
To kill ,take a head or neck shot , how was John kennedy hit ,bobby kennedy, Ab lincoln, , I could go on.
If the assasin was a duche bag 1 0ff amatuer we will know for sure if a professional ,paid sniper we may not ever know, Im talking about C I A ,mossad , FBI , and pro terriost .
Bottom line is he must be caught and held to justice, if not then more to follow. I cant see a amateur escaping so easily , just luck huuh or did he have help.
Why would anyone of dog shat caliber want to even go to the trouble of wasting their life unless they were paid big $$, deranged maybe. I hope by the time I post this the man , or woman or it ,is apprehended for Charlieses sake and justice and freedom.

 

[Ray B]

I think the shooter thought that he would be considered a folk-hero and receive celebrity status- much like the guy who shot the insurance executive in the back- The only notariety this guy will be referred to a the 21st centuries John Wilkes Booth.

 

[John Wasmuth]

.

 

[rookhawk]

A few more comments on the rifle and the competency of the shooter.

The pic online of the rifle is here:

The media is reporting it was an older imported Mauser chambered in 30-06.

I would think the person/s were either very lucky, or very good. They selected a weapon that may not be traceable as there were a lot of pre-1968 rifles that had no serial numbers or that would trace back to original military serials that may not be properly recorded by BATF. It was sporterized with a new 30-06 barrel, a two position safety, a turned down bolt, and a synthetic stock. Accurate and hard to trace.

As to whether lefty nutjobs are competent, I'd point the readers to the Socialist Gun Owners of America that have chapters in many States. They are actively training for revolution and how to use firearms effectively. I relish the day they are declared a domestic terrorism organization but right now they are equally valid as the NRA and GOA.

 

[wesheltonj]

I am guessing but I think it’s someone watching to many movies and Trying a headshot and closed there eyes and pulled down and left

Idk and really doubt we will ever know for sure

I suspect you are right about the head shot. You would not want the body shot as the victim could survive that or may be wearing a vest.

At 150-200 yards to make an intentional neck shot, you would be a skilled shooter.

 

[Red Leg]

I'll simply suggest that any reasonably experienced 12-year-old in this state could make that shot - I assume he was aiming for the head. The rifle could not be more common. He left physical and photographic evidence in abundance going and coming. He seems about as professional as a - oh I don't know - a radicalized college age loon looking for depraved immortality?

 

[Brent in Az]

Regardless of shot placement, the shooters intended end result is what he wanted.

A good man is dead.

 

[rookhawk]

I'll simply suggest that any reasonably experienced 12-year-old in this state could make that shot - I assume he was aiming for the head. The rifle could not be more common. He left physical and photographic evidence in abundance going and coming. He seems about as professional as a - oh I don't know - a radicalized college age loon looking for depraved immortality?

I guess we'd have to split hairs on the word professional. Is he military quality professional or do I think a foreign power did this? Absolutely not, its a lefty tranny nutjob. But even the FBI and police say it was well planned because he made it in and out with 1200 people there unscathed. He had an exit route. He didn't use a follow up shot. He abandoned a hard to trace weapon in the woods. He wrapped the rifle in paper towels suggesting he wiped it down for prints before he dropped it. He wore sunglasses on film making face recognition technology far from accurate (pupil/eye spacing is a key matching criteria).

Lets just say that this nut job was far more professional than the nutjob that tried to harm the president and far more professional than the nutjob that gunned down the UHC CEO.

I pray for swift justice and comfort for the grieving widow of Charlie's.

 

[TnKen]

Not necessarily..

Kirk is a private citizen.. he isnt POTUS, or a governor, or even a major metro area mayor..

His estimated net worth at the time of his death was +/- $12M.

Do you have any idea what a professional protective detail costs?

My budget when I ran the PPU at the World Bank was just north of $4M annually.. and we were under manned, under equipped, etc for the mission set we were expected to perfom.. and that was 20 years ago.. that same detail today would easily cost $7M+ a year minimum..

There are only so many potential threats that can be addressed.. Assume Kirks personal security team was 4 guys (which would be pretty heavy for someone of his prominence, exposure, etc... most celebrities, entertainers, senior executives in the fortune 50, etc roll with 1-2 people MAX plus a trained driver).. they then get augmented by the University Police Department, who ARE NOT trained in protective services, but generally handle crowd control and petty crimes issues related to any event on the university campus..

The most obvious and most prevailing threat to Kirk almost certainly was physical attacks onstage or when inbound or outbound to/from the stage.. with a limited security apparatus, you prioritize threats and address what you can with what youve got.. if there was a KNOWN threat of assassination, it is highly unlikely Kirk would have been at the event at all, or there would have been a major plus up of University and local municipal police requested to help mitigate that threat..

In the private security world when threats like that become known the most common threat mitigation technique is simple avoidance... you just dont go "there" or do "whatever" it is you were scheduled to do..

While at the WB I also had something called the "Watch Office".. the budget for our watch office was close to $12M a year.. it was staffed with a significant number of former CIA, DIA, NSA, etc personnel... their job was to monitor global information sources and to conduct analysis of that information to help us understand the threats to WB leaders we were charged with protecting..

They did a good job of detecting things in advance for us.. like at one point we knew the "activist" that had "pied" Bill Gates and others was planning to do the same thing with our protectee.. we were able to coordinate with local law enforcement (we were doing a series of events in Europe at the time) and have them detain the guy when he entered the controlled area of the event..

99.99999% of the protective details in the private sector dont have access to a "Watch Office".. they dont truly know what active threats are out there.. sometimes if a federal agency like the FBI becomes aware of a threat, they will contact the security team and let them know and share information... but far more often than not, they dont....

Its a pretty safe bet that Kirks security people were doing the best possible job they could with the very limited resources and assets they had available to them.. and that the University PD was in the same boat.. you cant possibly mitigate or avoid every conceivable threat out there.. the only way to do that is to lock the protectee in a lead lined basement 20 stories underground and never let them come out to see or be seen.. They simply dont have the same kind of resources that even a major metro area mayor has (like Chicago's Barry Johnson who has 150 personnel assigned to his protection... or back when I was doing that sort of work, the Memphis, TN Mayor had 18 personnel assigned to his protective detail (no clue how many are assigned today).. and they definitely dont have the same level of resources or assets of a major state governor, or a POTUS, VPOTUS, or even a FLOTUS..

I wouldnt be so quick to blame the security people here..

SPOT ON.
The barrier to high level security is Cost and Convenience. In the private sector the actual cost is always a factor. Execs and the famous don't want to be inconvenienced or cause it with their supporters. People often prefer the illusion of security, than real security due to the above factors.

 

[Flbt]

A thought on conspiracy theories , I gave an opinion, my own derived from personal knowledge and past info. I dont even read X. unless someone forwards it to me. also Im pretty independent and could give a damn what someone else says or thinks. Im not nor have I been a sniper, Ive shot with navy seal snipers and raider snipers,[marine] thats it.
Their are snipers Im sure on this site, my understanding is that a center mass shot is to take out the enemy from the fight ,not positively Kill him it could be a kill shot but 3 ' off and no .
In Vietnam a chest wound 'sucking' was definitely survivable ,get it covered with some type of seal like a poncho. to prevent air leakage. My father ,a raider marine told me he saw a man shot 7 times in the chest and he lived.
center mass is a larger target .
To kill ,take a head or neck shot , how was John kennedy hit ,bobby kennedy, Ab lincoln, , I could go on.
If the assasin was a duche bag 1 0ff amatuer we will know for sure if a professional ,paid sniper we may not ever know, Im talking about C I A ,mossad , FBI , and pro terriost .
Bottom line is he must be caught and held to justice, if not then more to follow. I cant see a amateur escaping so easily , just luck huuh or did he have help.
Why would anyone of dog shat caliber want to even go to the trouble of wasting their life unless they were paid big $$, deranged maybe. I hope by the time I post this the man , or woman or it ,is apprehended for Charlieses sake and justice and freedom.

The problem with your example only JFK was sniped and there still questions about it.
The rest were close range

 

[rookhawk]

Not necessarily..

Kirk is a private citizen.. he isnt POTUS, or a governor, or even a major metro area mayor..

His estimated net worth at the time of his death was +/- $12M.

Do you have any idea what a professional protective detail costs?

My budget when I ran the PPU at the World Bank was just north of $4M annually.. and we were under manned, under equipped, etc for the mission set we were expected to perfom.. and that was 20 years ago.. that same detail today would easily cost $7M+ a year minimum..

There are only so many potential threats that can be addressed.. Assume Kirks personal security team was 4 guys (which would be pretty heavy for someone of his prominence, exposure, etc... most celebrities, entertainers, senior executives in the fortune 50, etc roll with 1-2 people MAX plus a trained driver).. they then get augmented by the University Police Department, who ARE NOT trained in protective services, but generally handle crowd control and petty crimes issues related to any event on the university campus..

The most obvious and most prevailing threat to Kirk almost certainly was physical attacks onstage or when inbound or outbound to/from the stage.. with a limited security apparatus, you prioritize threats and address what you can with what youve got.. if there was a KNOWN threat of assassination, it is highly unlikely Kirk would have been at the event at all, or there would have been a major plus up of University and local municipal police requested to help mitigate that threat..

In the private security world when threats like that become known the most common threat mitigation technique is simple avoidance... you just dont go "there" or do "whatever" it is you were scheduled to do..

While at the WB I also had something called the "Watch Office".. the budget for our watch office was close to $12M a year.. it was staffed with a significant number of former CIA, DIA, NSA, etc personnel... their job was to monitor global information sources and to conduct analysis of that information to help us understand the threats to WB leaders we were charged with protecting..

They did a good job of detecting things in advance for us.. like at one point we knew the "activist" that had "pied" Bill Gates and others was planning to do the same thing with our protectee.. we were able to coordinate with local law enforcement (we were doing a series of events in Europe at the time) and have them detain the guy when he entered the controlled area of the event..

99.99999% of the protective details in the private sector dont have access to a "Watch Office".. they dont truly know what active threats are out there.. sometimes if a federal agency like the FBI becomes aware of a threat, they will contact the security team and let them know and share information... but far more often than not, they dont....

Its a pretty safe bet that Kirks security people were doing the best possible job they could with the very limited resources and assets they had available to them.. and that the University PD was in the same boat.. you cant possibly mitigate or avoid every conceivable threat out there.. the only way to do that is to lock the protectee in a lead lined basement 20 stories underground and never let them come out to see or be seen.. They simply dont have the same kind of resources that even a major metro area mayor has (like Chicago's Barry Johnson who has 150 personnel assigned to his protection... or back when I was doing that sort of work, the Memphis, TN Mayor had 18 personnel assigned to his protective detail (no clue how many are assigned today).. and they definitely dont have the same level of resources or assets of a major state governor, or a POTUS, VPOTUS, or even a FLOTUS..

I wouldnt be so quick to blame the security people here..

Well stated. I would also say its really hard to define a "credible threat" to a personality like Charlie Kirk or any of the other right wing commentators. (Shapiro, Watson, Knowles). Reason being, the left is pretty excited to ideate violence online about the conservative commentators in explicit detail. A hundred promises of bad things about to happen stated by a twitter-bro is pretty hard to quantify since their prior tweet was them wearing women's clothes and claiming they will murder their parents.

Threat intelligence platforms available to the civilian world are pretty weak on matching with loonies outrageous statements.

 

[Brent in Az]

In todays radical political and social media landscape, it might be prudent for these high profile speakers to have a bulletproof shield in front of the microphone. Just like Trump had after Butler.

 

[rookhawk]

A Tweet that made me realize Idaho is a sane place today:

 

[Altitude sickness]

More than likely, this guy will end up being like the last few my profile shootersthat think they’re smarter than everybody else. Think about it. It really was not that hard to plan.

Kirk was a private citizen at a college. The shooter could have dumped that rifle off on the roof a week ago.

Think of it this way. If he was a student or employee at the school, it would be like someone at work hiding a weapon at work then a week later knowing exactly where it is and where you want to shoot from, and having access then doing it. Not that hard


He’s had how many examples of what not to do in the last year. The two Trump shootings would’ve taught anybody what not to do and what works.

I think we’ll learn He’s no Jackal.

 

[CJW]

I don't think it pays to speculate right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if people in that crowd, even those asking him those final questions knew what was about to happen. Antifa, independent radicals, who knows? Hopefully that's not the case.

There's one thing that I can't get over and something that has bothered me about Charlie and other prominent conservatives for a while. At this moment it makes me feel sick to throw any kind of criticism his way but here it is. I think these outdoor events should have been called off a long time ago, especially after the attempt on Trump's life. Ben Shapiro said yesterday that this is probably the end of such things and I believe it has to be. It seems to me that they have been too cavalier about their safety which was essentially echoed by Ben himself. An attitude of "it just won't happen, you're over reacting". Well, here we are. Charlie sat stationary on an elevated platform, amongst flat roofed buildings at a well advertised event. He knew how dangerous these people were. As shitty as it is to say that a young, non politician, calm headed American can't speak publicly because psychopaths will kill him.

Reinforcing my unease and regret of this situation was a video I saw a couple of hours ago. Charlie was asked if he would run for president in 15 years. Part of his reply, more or less to the negative or perhaps indicating that it was just too soon to think about was, "I'm just having too much fun". He was making money and positively influencing young people, but the people he was educating them against aren't fun people. Just look at what the anonymous lunatics and MSM have said since yesterday if you need more proof.

I feel absolutely gutted for he, his family and the nation.

 

[Vashper]

I am guessing but I think it’s someone watching to many movies and Trying a headshot and closed there eyes and pulled down and left

Idk and really doubt we will ever know for sure

The rifle was aimed at 100 yards, this goat aimed at the head, hit a little lower. I don't think he was aiming for the neck exactly, it's difficult.
In my opinion, the Mauser always has four-digit numbers on most parts. They usually end up in the file during registration.

 

[Hunt anything]

With all of those exposed roof tops they could have had several drones up looking or even hired a helicopter to watch the roof tops. Hindsight is 20/20

 

[rookhawk]

The rifle was aimed at 100 yards, this goat aimed at the head, hit a little lower. I don't think he was aiming for the neck exactly, it's difficult.
In my opinion, the Mauser always has four-digit numbers on most parts. They usually end up in the file during registration.

@Vashper I hope you're correct. What you may not know is that in the USA we did not require serial numbers until 1968. WW1 and WW2 military mausers came into the nation in droves, often with mis-matched serial numbers, often with no serial numbers. These could be in military configuration, or they could be sporterized versions sold at our major department stores in the 1960s-1970s.

The other thing you may not know is that we have no gun registration in the USA. The way it works is if a gun is recovered that is used in a crime, the BATF goes to the manufacturer and asks what distributor received serial number 1234? The distributor then pulls paperwork and finds out what dealer received 1234. Then that dealer has to provide paperwork to show what customer bought 1234. Then the customer is contacted to find out where they sold that gun which requires them to follow up on old leads. Private parties that sell or gift their old gun to someone else is required to keep the paperwork for ten years, meaning there are many untraceable guns in America.

Then ask yourself how many thousands of mauser rifles in America have serial number 1234 and the answer is thousands.

It will be a difficult task to trace that weapon if it truly was a rifle sold in the USA more than 30 years ago.

 

[Flbt]

The rifle was aimed at 100 yards, this goat aimed at the head, hit a little lower. I don't think he was aiming for the neck exactly, it's difficult.
In my opinion, the Mauser always has four-digit numbers on most parts. They usually end up in the file during registration.

How old a Mauser? There a lot that never went through a gun shop.
I have 3 that are older than 68

 

[Red Leg]

I guess we'd have to split hairs on the word professional. Is he military quality professional or do I think a foreign power did this? Absolutely not, its a lefty tranny nutjob. But even the FBI and police say it was well planned because he made it in and out with 1200 people there unscathed. He had an exit route. He didn't use a follow up shot. He abandoned a hard to trace weapon in the woods. He wrapped the rifle in paper towels suggesting he wiped it down for prints before he dropped it. He wore sunglasses on film making face recognition technology far from accurate (pupil/eye spacing is a key matching criteria).

Lets just say that this nut job was far more professional than the nutjob that tried to harm the president and far more professional than the nutjob that gunned down the UHC CEO.

I pray for swift justice and comfort for the grieving widow of Charlie's.

Again, I do not think the evidence shows that at all. The only difference between the nut job who shot at the president and the one who shot Charlie is the university event had no protection in depth. Had the level of security in PA been like this one, the shooter would have run off and it would have taken days to locate him. This character has left a trail of evidence that will get him caught or dead. Numerous people, not all of whom are sworn pals, will recognize him from the imagery - easily. Speaking as someone who has sold integrated perimeter security systems including facial recognition, to customers as picky as ARAMCO, there is plenty to ID this guy in the photography. Because of his age, what he likely will not have is an extensive online profile. What they will likely harvest will be a sub=set of individuals who can be sifted by other means.