# Motivation for July 13th Trump shooting: speculation, conjecture, moving to evidence supported hypothesis **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [July 14, 2024, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219 "2024-07-14T20:07:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/81 "2024-07-16T16:48:53Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > Probably the same category that Squeaky Fromme and Sarah Jane Moore ended up in. Hinckley is more remembered because of his obsession with a certain female celebrity. …and Fromme is more remembered for being a member of the Manson Family. Ford himself is already about as forgettable as Garfield or McKinley. Trump on the other hand… ---
**Author:** ![Disinfectus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/disinfectus/32/11085_2.png) [@Disinfectus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disinfectus)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/82 "2024-07-16T16:57:42Z")
> [@Jim1](#): > > He must have done a bit of planning, to drive from his home with a rifle stolen from his father. He didn’t steal the rifle. He simply asked to borrow it. > ABC News learned that on the day of the shooting, Crooks told his father he wanted to go to a shooting range and asked if he could borrow his dad’s AR15-style rifle, said a source familiar with the matter. Since the father had occasionally allowed Crooks to go target shooting with the semiautomatic firearm, he didn’t think anything was suspicious when he let him use the rifle again on Saturday, the source said. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/83 "2024-07-16T17:30:57Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > > [@RickJay](#): > > > > I’ve always found it odd that while most educated people know who John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald were, even pretty smart people will be stumped if you ask them who Charles Guiteau and Leon Czolgosz were > > Unless they’re [Sondheim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins_(musical)) fans, of course. Or they’ve seen _Unforgiven_: > JOE > All I want to know is what son of a bitch shot him is all. > Was it one of those John-Bulls? > > BOB > Oh no, sir. I believe the would-be assassin to be of French ancestry, > or so it would seem. I don’t wish to give offense when I observe that > the French are known to be a race of as-sassins, though they can’t shoot > worth a damn. Any Frenchmen in the present company are excluded, of course. > > PASSENGER > Says here a fella by the name of Guiteau, G-U-I-T- > > JOE > Sure as hell sounds like a John Bull to me. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/84 "2024-07-16T17:40:14Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > Just a check on this. Do we know how many guns the father owned? Because a dozen or so shouldn’t tick the “fetishist” label. Thank you. I own 12. I have not purchased a single one of them. Basic stuff. No assault weapons. All inherited. I have thousands of rounds of .22LR because my father was SURE society would collapse because of Y2K. It would be a way to hunt very small game, or use as barter. I suppose that’s true. I’m not gonna sell or give away my grandfathers .22 that is over 100 years old. It was handed down to me when I was 10yo. I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of some of the others. But will keep a few. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/85 "2024-07-16T17:49:03Z")
My husband and I have three guns: the one he bought himself, the one he bought for me, and the one he bought because he liked it more than the first one. The one he usually carries is mine. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/86 "2024-07-16T17:53:54Z")
My guess would be that this guy was bullied by Trump fans, some of whom may have been the rifle team guys who disdained his marksmanship. He decided that shooting Trump would be a good way to show them all, and/or end it all. If/when his politics come out, I’m sure they will be an incoherent Rorshach blot. Lots of young people have incoherent politics, and I think this would go double for someone with Libertarian parents. So while we may learn a bit about his beliefs and preferences, I doubt we’ll learn that he was trying to achieve any specific political outcome. He was a weak, bullied loser, and wanted to build himself up by killing the powerful guy idolized by his bullies. I doubt there’s much more to it than that. ---
**Author:** ![Calder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Calder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calder)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/87 "2024-07-16T17:57:00Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > > [@snowthx](#): > > > > Just a check on this. Do we know how many guns the father owned? Because a dozen or so shouldn’t tick the “fetishist” label. > > Thank you. I own 12. I have not purchased a single one of them. Basic stuff. No assault weapons. All inherited. I have thousands of rounds of .22LR because my father was SURE society would collapse because of Y2K. It would be a way to hunt very small game, or use as barter. I suppose that’s true. > > I’m not gonna sell or give away my grandfathers .22 that is over 100 years old. It was handed down to me when I was 10yo. I’m trying to figure out how to get rid of some of the others. But will keep a few. Shrug, I think I would change it to purchasing 12 guns to classify someone as having a firearm fettish\being really into guns. I agree with you if you just inherited several guns then you don’t qualify. I agree with the prior poster on the line being about 5-6 guns. ---
**Author:** ![Thing.Fish](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thing.fish/32/9168_2.png) [@Thing.Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thing.Fish)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/88 "2024-07-16T20:07:33Z")
It does seem really weird and unusual that the guy left no apparent statement of his motivation at all; not only no manifesto but no social media trail, no known extremist associates. I can’t think of a single other example of a political assassin leaving the world to wonder exactly what his beef was. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/89 "2024-07-16T20:17:30Z")
Agree. I think someone mentioned “school shooter” upthread - this seems more in line with that sort of thing than “political assassin”. Basically, the same story we have all sadly have become accustomed to (a nut case with a gun goes on a rampage), but this time with a high-profile person involved. ---
**Author:** ![MulderMuffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldermuffin/32/2862_2.png) [@MulderMuffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MulderMuffin)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/90 "2024-07-16T21:12:11Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > I’d say 3. Twelve seems like an insane number. > [@snowthx](#): > > To a non-gun owner, one or two “seems” like enough and yeah six “seems” like a lot, but we need a few gun owners here on the board to chime-in. Whoops. I must be insane, because i have dozens. With an s. With five or six -s’s, even. Many are collectors items, some are for fun, some were inherited when my father- in- law moved into a retirement community…I also have a really big safe to lock them up in, of course. Not a hunter, but i like putting holes in paper to blow off steam. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/91 "2024-07-16T21:18:04Z")
Yeah, I’m not into guns, but if I were into them, I’d probably have a lot, because I tend to collect things that I’m into. It’s easy to say nobody needs a dozen different ARs, and while that’s true, it’s also true that I don’t need a dozen different Lego Star Wars spaceships, and yet here I am, surrounded by blocky TIE-Fighters. ---
**Author:** ![PhillyGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ed655f/32.png) [@PhillyGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PhillyGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/92 "2024-07-16T21:21:29Z")
> [@Thing.Fish](#): > > It does seem really weird and unusual that the guy left no apparent statement of his motivation at all; not only no manifesto but no social media trail, no known extremist associates. I can’t think of a single other example of a political assassin leaving the world to wonder exactly what his beef was. In the internet era, I suppose you are correct. Maybe he used a VPN and a big social media presence will be discovered in a few weeks. But, if not, we are looking more at a pre-web timeframe where it could take at least a few years for true crime authors to get the right interviews. I’d be a little surprised if, say, five years from now, neither parent had been willing to talk to any journalist. The longer the investigations, both police and journalistic, go on, the more people will have jumped to their own conclusions, and be unwilling to abandon them. But I think we will eventually know the motives. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/93 "2024-07-16T21:25:53Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Yeah, I’m not into guns, but if I were into them, I’d probably have a lot, because I tend to collect things that I’m into I guess we need to define our terms. I think “into guns” and “gun fetish” are pretty closely related, although the latter obviously has a more negative connotation. Sure, a lot of people have 12 or more guns. But most are not, as far as I can tell, casual gun owners. They are gun enthusiasts. ---
**Author:** ![Jim1](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jim1/32/16477_2.png) [@Jim1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim1)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/94 "2024-07-16T21:33:58Z")
OK… Doesn’t change anything. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/95 "2024-07-16T21:49:18Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > They are gun enthusiasts. Yeah, an enthusiast to me is someone who likes putting holes in paper, and has a number of ways to do that. A fetishist seems more like the guy dressed in camo exercising his right to open carry at the grocery store. I think there is a difference, and the number of guns is not a great indicator - unless it gets to the point where someone has an arsenal larger than the local police. ---
**Author:** ![aurora\_maire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aurora_maire/32/328_2.png) [@aurora\_maire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aurora_maire)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/96 "2024-07-16T22:40:49Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > Basically, the same story we have all sadly have become accustomed to (a nut case with a gun goes on a rampage), but this time with a high-profile person involved. Which is why this is _the_ most perfect 2020s-era-America event. Trump wasn’t shot by some political lunatic, just by a fucked up kid who shouldn’t have had easy access to a gun - as generic as it gets. And the crowd chanting “USA!” as chaos unfolded was the chef’s kiss. ---
**Author:** ![BlankSlate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blankslate/32/80_2.png) [@BlankSlate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlankSlate)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/97 "2024-07-16T23:02:23Z")
He was 20 years old, so if his little manifesto is anywhere, it’s probably on his phone. I don’t think the FBI has released any info about the contents, only that they had ‘cracked’ it. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/98 "2024-07-16T23:21:30Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > Sure, a lot of people have 12 or more guns. But most are not, as far as I can tell, casual gun owners. They are gun enthusiasts. That’s not quite right either. I do have 12 guns. I’m certainly not enthusiastic about them. They are tools. Given to me. Nothing else. Knowing how they work does not make you a gun enthusiast any more than knowing how to cook makes you a food enthusiast. ---
**Author:** ![Disinfectus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/disinfectus/32/11085_2.png) [@Disinfectus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disinfectus)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/99 "2024-07-16T23:23:13Z")
I was just correcting inaccurate information. We do that sort of thing around here. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2024, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219/100 "2024-07-17T01:20:32Z")
Late in her life, my mom remarried. We were kind of long in the tooth, and no one thought we should call him step-father. If we had to say something that identified where he was in the family, he was Mom’s husband. When he was younger, he had hunted and fished. He had also done pistol target shooting at an Olympic or near-Olympic level. He had a bunch of rifles and pistols, just like he had a bunch of fishing rods. I think it was mostly a matter of being able to upgrade when he got raises or promotions, and partly a matter of what was available. Although he may have inherited a couple. He died before Mom did. When we costed out his pistols as part of Mom’s estate, one was markedly pricier than the rest. There were more than 20 firearms in his collection at the end. He wasn’t any sort of gun fetishist. To him, guns were tools and having good tools made jobs easier. In fact, he also had multiples of other tools and multiple work tables in the garage. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/motivation-for-july-13th-trump-shooting-speculation-conjecture-moving-to-evidence-supported-hypothesis/1004219.md?page=6)