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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.
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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.
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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.
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