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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   37743 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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This is how I know the Trump assassination attempt was done by a rando. He tried going for a headshot. You never go for a headshot, you aim for center mass. People who think a headshot is what you do get their ideas from games and tv shows.

You don't know whether he went for a headshot.

It's a common joke really. "1: nice shot, you got him right in the head." "2: I wasn't aiming for the head"

Exactly, they watch too much TV instead of looking at the actual data. The reason assassinations like Kennedy and Lincoln were unsuccessful were because the assassin went for the head, whereas in successful attempts like Roosevelt and Reagan, they aimed for the body.

I am inclined to believe that a modern combat rifle round would have gone straight through Roosevelt, assuming he were not equipped with tougher armor than his speech and glasses case.

why? late 19-20th early century rifles (e.g. Mosin) used more powerful cartridges than later assault rifles ("intermediate cartridge")

Roosevelt was shot with a .38 Special, which is like 250J when shot from a short barrel, almost half the energy of a 9mm Luger cartridge, another handgun round, or about the same energy as a high-powered .22 LR cartridge.

You are right that any rifle round would've gone straight through Roosevelt, though.

I thought it was a .32-20. basically the same really

He's just comparing the 32-20 black powder carbine/pistol round with a modern smokeless rifle cartridge, which is <300 joules to 1800 joules.
(I know Roosevelt wasn't shot with a blackpowder version, but the original loading still limited chamber pressures, and the non-expanding semi-wadcutter bullet is much less lethal than modern hollow points, let alone engineered-fragmentation rifle bullets)

Too early for irony, only one cup of coffee in this a.m.

before the advent of modern medical care and decent body armor , aiming for the torso would have been better . infection would have been lethal if initial bleeding/trauma wasn't

From what I’m seeing a direct torso hit only had a 62% death rate in the civil war era. If you have a better than 62% odds of hitting their head, you would have been better off aiming for the head. Doubly so if the person is particularly healthy and hardy, given it was usually days or weeks till they actually died, and those with robust immune systems had much better odds.

On the other hand Trump is in his late 70's and if the objective was 'Trump can't be President' that'd likely be accomplished by even moderately wounding him considering recovery timelines at his age and needing to campaign.

Ah yes, point blank and multiple shooters. Really, it's all the same thing.

Multiple shooters?

Referring to Kennedy. I don’t know if I like the grassy knoll theory, but several of the alternatives still have a second shooter (including my personal favorite, accidental discharge by adjacent Secret Service officer).

Mary Todd double-tapped Abe while Booth was distracting everyone by jumping on stage.

and shouting "sick simping trannies"?

This article makes the same argument.

It's always funny to see these blogs where some random nobody (or at least, nobody with any credentials relevant to the case) gives a detailed argument in support of a definite claim that turns out to be entirely and utterly wrong.

Yeah true.

photos and eye witness describe it it being a riffle

it instantly killed one of the audience members after being hit to the head

snipers regularly aim for the head ,as the secret service had done for example. they didn't shoot his torso

Shooting from an elevation into a crowd, head hits are more likely.

Snipers aim for whatever's showing.

To be fair, his head was probably all they had to shoot at if he we peeking over the peak of the roof from prone.

Thank you for using the right word. I see everyone using "peaking" nowadays and it's driving me crazy.

"Sniper peaking on the roof" like damn, he really enjoys his work

trump was wearing body armor . Given that Trump had medical staff within feet, the killer's only choice was a headshot which would have been instantly lethal. even aiming for the upper torso could have been survivable with armor and rapid medical attendance.

The reason that you shoot for COM is not that it's a bigger target, it's that heads bob around a lot and centre-of-mass does not. (as anyone who's done defensive line in hockey, soccer, or football knows perfectly well)

Trump's (20"x20" or so) torso is surely not a killshot -- but the 10-12 inches around his heart definitely is, .223/.308/doesn't matter. This is kind of a textbook case against headshot efficacy -- Trump literally moved his head just after the guy decided to pull the trigger; if he'd shot for the heart with the same accuracy we would be living in a very different world today.

but the 10-12 inches around his heart definitely is,

Theodore Roosevelt not only survived being shot at torso, but even continued his speech for 1.5 hours after being shot.

.223/.308/doesn't matter.

of course it does, size of bullet and whether it rotates on impact makes different size hole, .22LR might fail to reach heart vs. vest + rib at that distance.

Here's what cheap-ass .223 ammo does to soft armour:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=T71ku4Fjn3w&t=479

Note all the action in the ballistic gel -- this is not something you want going on anywhere in your torso, and absolutely makes you D.R.T. if your heart is in that area.

Yes, .22LR or whatever bullshit pocket pistol cartridge was used on Roosevelt are quite a different thing -- these are literally an OOM less powerful than centrefire rifle rounds, even .223.

Sorry if ".223/.308/doesn't matter" was unclear -- the 'doesn't matter' refers to centrefire rifle rounds; any of them (with very limited exceptions; .22 Hornet maybe?) will go through soft armour like butter at this range, and retain enough energy to create a hydrostatic wave which will shred/explode one's heart given a true COM hit. Other parts of the torso (eg. lung shot) might be survivable with prompt medical heroics, but would still have been a pretty bad time for Trump.

I don't think you need to penetrate body armor at all. You just need to pump enough kinetic energy into the heart area. And at trumps age chances of it being fatal are not low.

Fat standing between unpenetrated vest and heart area would distribute kinetic energy pretty much

Trump wasn't wearing some fancy battlefield armor with ceramic plates. Meaning any rifle round apart from (maybe) hollow point small rifle ones would have gone right through.

Also, he was being shot from the side, which is a direction where soldier armor doesn't have ceramic plates so rifle rounds are lethal.

Really, had the shooter used a better gun, practiced more and went for center of mass, he could have killed him easily.

Odds are cca 50% that a torso hit with a .30 rifle kills a person. And he's a spring chicken only when compared to Biden.

Odds are 50% that the shot would have splattered Trump's brains. And it's not a non-zero probability the body shot would have missed as well.

Apparently the shooter missed because Trump turned his head at the last second pointing at the poster that was there..

FWIW, I regard the whole idea of assassination by medium-long range gunshot at a well-known public event to indicate a crazy rando. Someone seriously experienced or some sort of elite intelligence operative would work on acquiring and leveraging specialized intelligence for a much simpler and more certain kill, and good chance of the assassin surviving and escaping.

Especially for someone with a little less protection like a former president and candidate, it's likely that at least a dozen times a week he's just walking around in some random public place with a bunch of random people nearby who haven't been checked for weapons or inclination, with a few USSS bodyguards around. This is mostly reasonably safe since it's highly secret and hard to predict exactly when those encounters will be. If you were super-elite, you'd try to learn about some of these ahead of time, choose one where you're reasonably likely to be able to get away clean after you shoot, and take the shot. Get away clean, and it's a super-mysterious event. It'd be hard to prove afterwards whether it was a crazy rando that just got lucky or really was some kind of elite operative acting on masterfully-obtained evidence.

Depending on the connections, certain randos can roll their own shaped charge.

Randoms being the same as the Stasi, now.

I'd note that that incident wasn't exactly randos - it was the work of Red Army Faction, which was backed by the KGB and likely receiving training and materials from them. I don't think any randos are going to be constructing a precisely timed shaped charge IED to take out a target in an armored car.

It's possible to get away with murdering a high-ranking official even with a sloppier and more opportunistic approach; just have a clean record to avoid being identified by your DNA, wait until a reasonable opportunity presents itself and then take the shot. Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated more or less this way in the Eighties and the killer still hasn't been conclusively found, though one Christer Pettersson was put on trial (but acquitted in the Court of Appeals) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Olof_Palme

The real give-away of a nutjob amateur is indeed choosing a time, place and method of execution which only guarantees one casualty: that of the gunman.

It could "make sense" if your goal was not necessarily just to shoot him, but to explode his head on national television so the Internet could be flooded with 4k celebratory videos.

Sure, we wouldn't think of that as a rational calculation compared to aiming for center of mass, but I'd go out on a limb and suggest that people shooting at Presidents are not gruff sober Operators concerned with eliminating the target and nothing else.

How do you know he wasn't aiming for center mass?

There's nothing inherently stupid about going for a headshot. It's obviously a high risk, high reward strategy relative to center mass, but there is no guarantee of a death with a center mass shot and the medical care a President would receive. We don't know the caliber of rifle being fired, but if speculation that it was a small caliber is accurate then going for a body shot would risk failing to even defeat light body armor.

The reason I would tend to think the competence level wasn't particularly high is the apparent choice of weapon. As near as I can tell, he didn't have any sort of optics. While that distance is absolutely a makeable shot with an AR platform rifle with iron sights, it's a hell of a lot more assured with a simple hunting rifle and good glass.

It is the thoracic triangle from what I read. Shooting him from beneath the chest would not have been lethal given rapid care . He was wearing armor

Also wouldn't the principal have body armor of some sort on?

I'm seeing online (so let's take a grain of salt) that this shot was from 130 or more yards away. Maybe this is just how good this guy's aim is. Bullets flying wide. We don't know where he was aiming.

I think after seeing he missed his initial shot realized he only had a few seconds left, so unloaded as fast as he could

You don't aim for center of mass if your target is wearing body armor. I don't know if Trump was (probably not, it was too damned hot), but the shooter had to consider that possibility.

agree. this center of mass rule is for police shooting at ordinary civilians who do not have body armor

Basically. There's various youtubes and articles out there about the difference between military (1000 yards/meters+ center of mass) and police snipers (<200 yards/meters head shots) and what they aim for. Assassins are in the later category. Today's events is a case in point. Look how close the shooter got.

Can't rule out that line of thinking, but no normal soft ballistic vest will protect against rifle rounds. They're certainly not strapping up presidents with ceramic plate armor these days, right?

Correct. A soft vest wouldn't stop rifle rounds.

Not at short range, but this was a pretty far shot. The bullet would be going much slower than muzzle velocity when it hits.

this was a pretty far shot.

This isn't a far shot for the cartridge (5.56 is effective out to 800ish yards, but 450 is about the practical maximum if you're not fiddling with the sights) and it'll still defeat soft armor at those distances provided you're using the appropriate ammunition. It won't defeat the cutting edge of body armor, though (the newest-gen UHMWPE stuff).

556 at around 100 yards easily goes through soft armor. Velocity should be at or a bit lower than 3000 ft/s. Let's call it high 2000s ft/s depending on barrel length and ammo.

It put a hole in a hydraulic lift, so I suspect it would easily penetrate a soft vest (unless that shot was really lucky and actually hit a hose). But I think a sniper wouldn't want to count on that with a .223.

I would assume hydraulic hoses are significantly easier to penetrate than any armor, soft or otherwise.

They're pretty hefty actually, I wouldn't be so sure -- hydraulic fluid is at like 5000+ psi, there's several layers of steel/rubber/fibre in there.

Anyways unless he was using some frangible coyote round .223 absolutely does penetrate soft armour at 150 yards, this is not even a question.

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