Trump ally and conservative pundit Charlie Kirk shot at Utah event [now reported deceased, same date 10SEP2025]

Hold the rifle in the crook of your left elbow. If you’re shooting with support, just rest the forend on the support. If you’re using a shooting sling, just let the rifle hang from the sling. With a properly adjusted sling, it won’t drop more than a few centimeters

What I’m describing is something I routinely do on the range. One of my rifles has a Remington-style ejector, and I can’t be arsed to crawl around picking up spent brass.

This may be true (I have no idea). What I wonder is…

Why does this detail matter?

Because WSJ claimed that the casing had been found inside the murder weapon, which makes absolutely no sense since it’s a pistol ammo casing.

You can definitely put an empty 9x19 casing into the chamber of a .30-06 chambered rifle, but there’s no way you can fire a 9x19 round from a .30-06 chamber

It looks like ‘the powers that be’ want to play dumb and pretend that Trans people have their own bullet manufacturing factory! It fits their agenda to dehumanize Trans people.

Jesus Christ, every person who has ever reloaded has used ‘used’ brass and nobody ever stamps/prints engraves the base. ( I can’t tell if this brass is straight from factory or reloaded anyway )

This casing is from ammo originally manufactured by the manufacturer’s code ‘TRN’ which Stranger has tracked down to a manufacturer in Turkey. At the time it was purchased it might have been cheaper; that happens.

This sounds like a lead up ( excuse? false flag?) to start a Pogrom against Trans people.

And if the bottom of the round had said, H&K, it would have meant “Hit and Kill”; and if the bottom of the round had said WIN, it would have meant “Good luck with your shooting”; and if the bottom of the round had said, H&H, it would have meant “Hit and Hurt.”

Sarcasm off. For all that these people revere guns, they sure don’t seem to know much about guns and their ammo.

You’re talking about the WSJ who reported “trans ideology”, so what does that have to do with “people who revere guns”? The shit you’re talking about is typically what people who hate guns make up.

Right wingers revere guns. The WSJ is right wing. Therefore, it should love guns and ammo; and what’s more, know about them.

Apparently, it does not, and consequently, is making stuff up to reinforce its right-wing anti-trans arguments; the Turkish manufacturer’s TRN inscription on the bottom of the illustrated round, for example. The WSJ interpreted this as somehow in support of trans people, but this is not a round that is meant to be fired in support of trans rights; TRN simply means that the round’s origin is Turkey, as has been established.

For the record, I don’t hate guns. I’ve shot many: handguns, shotguns, and rifles; and I actually own a few. I like shooting. As I mentioned upthread, I was a competitive rifle shooter, competing at very high levels. I have no problems with guns. I do have a problem with people who revere guns, yet don’t know much about them or their ammunition.

Just like they went back in time to assassinate Horst Wessel to stop Chekhov from finding his great-grandson Nuclear.

There are 2 videos circulating that I’ve seen. One from about 30 yards where you can’t really hear the interview, and one from maybe 5-10 yards where you can clearly hear the exchange. Went something like:

Audience member: “Do you know how many school shootings there were last year?”
Kirk: “Including gang-related or not including gang-related?”

Then, “pop”.

Oh come on, this is stupid and you must know it. The WSJ is moderately economically right wing, so every journalist they employ must be a gun worshipping expert?

To be clear, I’m not trying to make excuses for the WSJ, I just think that “wsj journalists must know the difference because they must all worship guns” is a silly line of thinking.

If the WSJ reporters actually thought that the casing in the image upthread was full of “trans and antifascist ideology” because of the rear stamping, that’s some of the worst journalism of all time. For one, the casing pictured is to a 9mm pistol round, not something you’d find after a rifle had been fired. Secondly, there’s no way you could conclude that “21” and “9x19” were somehow antifascist sentiments and therefore TRN must also have some secret meaning about trans rights. Or if you think that 21 and 9x19 are manufacturing stamps, but the shooter did his own metal stamping to add “TRN” with the same type of stamping machine, that’s even more absurd.

And even beyond that, assuming “TRN” was made by the shooter, it’s a huge leap to assume that’s a message about “trans ideology”, and to assume that “21” and “9x19” are antifascist ideology makes no fucking sense as far as I’m aware. AND to then release that story to the public which they know is going to be looking for revenge violence is wildly, even criminally irresponsible.

I have a hard time believing that the linked image above along with the explanation that that’s what the WSJ interpreted is true, because it would be such a stupid and irresponsible piece of journalism that I have a hard time believing that a serious news source could possibly make that mistake, but if it’s true, if they released that headline because of the stamping on the 9x19 casing, then everyone involved in that story should be fired, every subscriber should unsubscribe, and they should just shut down the whole fucking paper for making a mistake that stupid and irresponsible.

It gets better. The source for that Wall Street Journal report about ammunition bearing “transgender and anti-fascist ideology”? It was “an early bulletin circulated widely among law enforcement officials.”

I mean, in fairness, you can’t expect law enforcement to be familiar with what ammunition looks like.

It sure sounded that way when you characterized them as “moderately economically right wing”. The WSJ is owned by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch. That’s all that anyone needs to know. They are essentially a print version of Fox News. I recall a few years ago reading an editorial in the WSJ that was an outright denial of climate change, spouting outright pseudo-scientific total bullshit. Is that “moderately economically right wing”?

I can’t speak to the gun expertise of their journalists, but they’d better be in favour of gun nuttery if they want to keep their jobs.

Benjamin Netanyahu has confirmed that Israel did not kill Charlie Kirk despite social media conspiracies to the contrary – in fact, they were bestest buds – so law enforcement can rule that one out.

Social media has of course responded with the following joke:

Does it? By calling them moderately right wing, I’m making excuses that they should know better because all their journalists are obviously gun-worshipping experts? Do you think my position is somehow worse than Spoon’s position that because they’re right wing, like all right wingers, they revere and are experts on guns?

I don’t read the WSJ so I’m just going by reputation. Chatgpt says

Which sounds about what I’ve read about it in the past. It’s not, as far as I know, a Fox News bullshit propaganda outlet. So for me to say that if they reported “trans ideology” based on what people are claiming, it was out of character for how irresponsible and stupid their journalism is.

I know that if I were the head of a country with an extremely secretive spy agency that had carried out a covert assassination, I would immediately tweet “I know nothing about this” even before any news reports about it came out!

One thing you can reliably say about social media: collectively, they’re not very bright.

It’s a Murdoch paper. It’s not going to be “FoxNews - the dead tree version” because that’s not what the WSJ’s audience is after, but editorially you bet they’re ideologically aligned.

Which is entirely separate to the point about gun knowledge. RIght-wing or no, I wouldn’t automatically expect the WSJ to be rife with gun nuts.

Maybe not consistently, and that’s fair enough. But they definitely did not hesitate to publish outright lies about climate change. A “moderately economically right wing” position would be supporting lower business taxes and less regulation, and potentially questioning the costs of climate change mitigation, not outright lying to the public that it’s not happening or that global warming might even be beneficial, so why worry?

Modern, profit-focused “journalism” largely consists of re-writing the publicity releases of whatever group they are investigating, because that’s the cheapest and easiest option. They likely aren’t going to be experts in anything, guns or otherwise because experts cost more.

“A person is smart, people are dumb panicky dangerous animals and you know it.”

“A mob is a beast with many legs and no head.”

And so on. Without careful organization - which by nature “social media” doesn’t have - a group of people tends to be significantly less rational and intelligent than most of the individuals the group is comprised of. The least common denominator is pretty low.

I saw that the “Kate Bush’s Husband” account made that claim, is it actually confirmed that’s what the “internal memos” or whatever are based on that? I haven’t seen anything other than that one screenshot so far, what’s “Kate Bush’s husband’s” source for it?

As noted, that doesn’t appear to be the right type of bullet?

My guess at this time is that the original story is bullshit and so is this particular “debunking”, unless we get some evidence that the “Kate Bush” tweet has an actual source.