The general public massively overestimates how difficult it is to be a proficient shoot at 200m or less. A “weekend warrior with a fetish for assault weaponry” absolutely could have done it. It’s not easy, and not everyone can calm their nerves in such a high tension situation, but the actual shooting skill is not rare at all.
There’s an avalanche of conjecture and calumny on YouTube now, from Kari Lake, Mike Rowe, bros in ball caps and beanies, etc. All with no real information, since the assassin is still at large, but sure in their convictions.
…those convictions being the desire to milk American resentment of every last drop into their own bank accounts. And for this, Charlie Kirk did not live nor die in vain.
Pretty much the only thing I watch on YouTube is music videos. I follow no YouTube channels of any political leaning or subject matter.
About 20 years ago I did some target shooting at 200 yards using my FAL (7.62X51 NATO ammo) with open sights. It was a challenge for me to keep the POIs inside a man-sized silhouette. I’d like to think my group sizes would have been much better had I used a scope, but I dunno… the slightest movement of the muzzle while squeezing the trigger will throw the POIs way off, regardless of what sight is used. So I doubt that I would be able to maintain a decent group size at 200 yards even with optics.
So whoever did this was either very experienced or very lucky. Either way, I agree with the governor that the murderer needs to pay the ultimate price for the horrific and evil action he committed.
Or even someone who decides to go “do something” with no actual knowledge. I’m half convinced the reason that Trump and Scalise, among others, are still walking around are because the shooters fell into the “scary gun” trap. Which isn’t fully true, I realize, and that many others have died in these incidents going back to at least Giffords. And as much as I hate to say it, that point blank head shot to Giffords should have killed her. And of course any gun can make you dead.
I don’t think we’re really on the verge of that much more political violence than we have seen in the last fifteen years or so. But if the people doing the violence increase their competence it could get uglier. I suspect at least some politicians are scared since this was one well placed shot and not some idiot 150 or 200 yards away spraying a crowd trying to hit his target.
The bad thing about the professionalism is that it makes it more likely to be political. Which isn’t to say that there are no good shots that happen to be insane, but there are fewer sane bad shots that think “yeah, I’m gonna do this, no problem!”
It almost has to be a lucky shot. Unless someone was showing off, who would even aim at the neck? It’s an even smaller target than the head. By lucky I don’t mean inexperienced, just that they didn’t quite hit what they were aiming for.
I very much doubt it was a deliberate neck shot. It was most likely a head shot or a chest shot that missed, the neck is an unusual thing to target for shooters. It’s a smaller target, and while vulnerable, it’s probably no more lethal than a headshot.
The bad thing about professionalism is that it is driven by the process not the target. A couple of guys with the equipment and skill simply decide to demonstrate how easy it is for pros to pull off a perfect shot and get away with it. No manifesto or media posts or public display of weapons. No connection to the asshole they selected as a target, just an asshole.
It could become a competition, with the competitors known only to themselves.
Define lucky, I guess. Again, I keep bringing up hunting as a point of comparison. If you’re out to bag a deer and are shooting for the broadside shot, it doesn’t matter too much if you hit the lungs or the liver or the heart, the animal is hopefully going down quickly and relatively humanely. But when a coworker of mine years ago showed me the picture of a deer he took down by hitting it right in the heart, that was both well placed and lucky. I doubt he’s ever done it again though I don’t know. And, of course, ideally with a single bullet. If the shooter was going more center mass and pulled it up, that’s the neck. If he was trying to be splashy with a headshot and it either dropped more than he expected or Kirk moved somehow, that’s the neck.
It’s not difficult, but does require practice of some sort. A lifelong hunter or someone with a military background could make that shot fairly easily. 200 yards was the standard for qualifications when I was in the military. I never qualified less than ‘expert’ at that range. A moving target is a different degree of difficulty. Kirk being hit in the neck probably means that the shooter was firing from an elevated position and was aiming at the head (always a poor choice) rather than center of mass. Or at center of mass and jerked the weapon when he pulled the trigger.
This just in:David Icke makes sense
Remove the words “up against,” and you’re right – he makes sense! (Matt Walsh, specifically).
Are we QUITE sure it’s 200 yards. I saw a report that said 200 feet, then I started reading “200 yards” in the forums.
I saw a more precise estimate of 142 yards.
Or 129.845 metres for the civilised world!
(Sorry, USA, I prefer the decimal system)
That looks like the distance to the space station to us.
But of course the Yankees must have earlier had a moment of silence for Melissa Hortman, the Democratic state legislator from Minnesota who was killed by a politically motivated shooter, right? 
What is that in football fields?
A nation in thrall to a swarm of selfish bullshitters (“mountebank blatherskites,” for Aunt Petunia’s delicate ears).
This will either rile them up as hoped, or bring them closer to the point of exhaustion. How well do you know your Americans?