It can be plenty political. Just crazy to think it’s going to achieve your goal.
Two stories:
#1 When I lived in Ireland in the 90’s, coming out of church in suburban Dublin, there was the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern shaking hands with folks in cars as they drove out of the parking lot (it was an election year). My wife’s cousin, in the passenger seat, joked that he was going to quickly stick his hand into his jacket as we approached. I STRONGLY cautioned him not to (he didn’t).
#2 In my current South Florida city, Obama came to town to fundraise for Hillary, and we got stopped at an intersection while his motorcade went through … and went through … and went through … and went through …
It was literally impossible to tell which vehicle he was in. Hell, he could have been in the Nissan Sentra bringing up the rear.
However as I understand it (in an “I once heard a lawyer say so in an interview” sense) in practice the actual “not guilty by reason of insanity” defense is almost never actually used, as it’s so hard to pull off (and medically unrealistic). What gets called “the insanity defense” is almost always just a form of jury nullification, where the defense is appealing to the jury’s sympathies, not the law.
Also, for most crimes, in most western countries, it’s usually worse in terms of incarceration time.
It’s a movie myth that being found insane means you’re home in time for cornflakes.
I’m not supporting the not guilty by reason of insanity defense.
I’m sayin assassins are crazy. And that’s why it’s rare. People get murdered all the time.
It is one thing to be a crackpot or someone with “a legitimate grievance”; quite another to successfully execute a plan to assassinate someone who has even a modicum of security. Movies and television like to ramp up tension with a would-be assassin using subterfuge to obtain a moment by moment itinerary, position themselves in just the perfect spot to be seen but be unseen, or disguise themselves as some member of the retinue, or plant a bomb in the target’s BLT order. The reality is that most assassins don’t have this kind of skill or patience, and even if they do it just takes a single delay, change in schedule, or slip up to throw their plan awry.
Most assassinations in history are actually pretty improvised affairs, often fumbling on both the part of the assassin and security. The closest thing to a ‘professional’ successful assassination of a US President was John F. Kennedy, and despite all of the conspiranoia that nutters have created around the incident, it is pretty clear that Lee Harvey Oswald was a disaffected young man who made a very unsophisticated effort and, despite an attempt at evasion and escape, really had no real plan after the shooting. (It isn’t even clear that his intended target was Kennedy). Getting the drop on an unprotected target who is totaly unaware of the threat is pretty easy but even then any number of things can go wrong, especially for a would-be assassin that isn’t really familiar with their weapon, or who has not anticipated things like traffic, locked doors, random security guards or nosy bystanders, et cetera.
There is also no underground marketplace of professional high priced assassins who will take an anonymous order to kill some prominent official in exchange for $10M in a numbered Cayman account, nor is there really a call for such services outside of movie thrillers (or the occasional dark comedy). There are professionally trained assassins and experienced killers-for-hire but almost without exception they work for covert government agencies or organized crime, and even then their efforts are not as flawless and clockwork as movies would lead you to expect. Most amateur would-be lone assassins are not particularly high paid for an act that, if they are caught, would result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and likely decades in prison, and a shocking number of them end up being ‘hired’ by undercover police officers because it is difficult to advertise that kind of service without attracting the notice of law enforcement and their confidential informants who are always looking for a way to get paid off by turning in someone who isn’t affiliated with a gang or crime family that will come looking for retribution. As a business model, ‘professional assassin’ makes about as much sense as ‘cake defecator’.
Stranger
FYI, your remark about King Christian of Denmark is what caused this thread about filking to happen.
I’ve often wanted to start a thread about hitmen but couldn’t figure out a way to do it where it wouldn’t get shut down by mods almost immediately.
My argument was that outside of governments & organized crime they don’t exist, & definitely the latter don’t necessarily want to be all hush-hush about it because they want to send a message to others at the same time. Let’s say I wanted my current/ex/neighbor/cow-orker/whomever gone (I don’t). I don’t want to do it because they always look at family members/people who had a beef with the decedent, miss one little thing in your planning & while ___ may be dead, I’m going away for the rest of my life.
Now, let’s suppose I wanted to put some distance between myself & the act so I look to hire someone. My experience is if I went to a lowlife that I might know they aren’t always as low of a life that the hirer has hoped for & that, very frequently, the ‘hitman’ I’d meet with is actually an undercover cop recording the entire conversation, both audio & video in full view on an upcoming Cops/Dateline/20-20/local newscast/trial. Great, I’ll get out eventually but my intended is still alive, enjoying life, for all those years I’m up the river. That’s a spectacular fail!
In short a successful assassination needs three elements
- complete the deed
- get away short term / from the immediate vicinity
- get away long term.
The Butler, PA Trump shooter got a shot off but didn’t complete #1 & got nowhere near even an attempt to do #2
Now it looks like our CEO killer may have only managed the first two; we’ll have to wait to see if the person they have in custody is charged, but it sure sounds like he’ll be from the preliminary info released.
#2 can be tough because of a random person. What if a cop car turned down the street as he fired or an off-duty/undercover cop was walking past as he did the deed. He wouldn’t have even managed #2 & may have not had the opportunity to be arrested.
It’s my understanding that you don’t so much have “hit men” or “government assassins” as “guys who are occasionally sent to kill people when they aren’t doing something else”, because there’s just not enough of that kind of work to make a profession of it. Not that either organized crime or governments are shy about killing people in large numbers, but assassinations as such are rare for both.
My close run-in with a high profile person was actually on a plane. Commercial flight from DC to Nashville on a small American Eagle plane (Maybe an Embraer 175?). After all passengers were on the plane, secret service came on, moved everyone out of the first 2 rows (I was in row 3), 3 secret service people sat in row 2, Laura Bush came on last and sat in row 1. When we landed everyone had to stay seated until she got off, but we were told it was fine to take pictures. I got a nice shot of the top of her head, the hairdo is quite recognizable.
In fact, WWI started because the assassin couldn’t get to the target. He gave up and was sipping coffee in a raodside cafe when the Archduke’s car drove by because it had gotten lost.
Also, if the guy they arrested today is the right guy and actually made it all the way to Pennsyvania undetected and didn’t ditch his weapon where it couldn’t be found (like bury it in the woods a mile away) then he doesn’t qualify as a deep thinker and #1 and #2 are pure chance.
I shook hands with the Prime Minister once - Joe Clark before he left for home the night before he lost.I assume there were RCMP bodyguards but there was no checking people at the event or other security. The reason I’ve heard is that the PM isn’t (or didn’t used to be) such a big wheel like the US president. There’s a quick and simple replacement process, and the policies are more the party’s that some single politician’s, so assassinations aren’t productive and are rare.
I stood outside the National Portrain Gallery in London once, to watch the Queen go in and out. I couldn’t have been more than 25 feet away when she came out, and nobody had done any serious security scans on the crowd ahead of time. No metal detectors, searches, etc. Jut walk up. The sweet little old ladies in front of us opened their bags and pulled out cameras with huge lenses. (I also was passed by the Queen and Prince Philip in their Rolls as I was walking out of Earls Court affter a military pageant once - again, maybe 15 feet or so away. I didn’t realize it was them until they’d passed and someone remarked about it.)
I was also about 25 feet from Pope JPII - twice. Once he drove by me in Toronto, and we could just go up to the curb and watch and wait as he drove by, standing in his Popemobile. No security, no scans, no searches, not even any cops evident in the scattered crowd. (Pretty sparse and spread out, since it was an 11-mile drive from the airport.)
The other time in Vatican Square (the circle) on Sept. 12, 2001 - they did check people going into the square, and you needed a (free) ticket. But as he was leaving down the center in his Mercedes open-top limo, I walked up through the crowd and got some good pictures from about 15 feet away while standing on a chair. He was accompanied by Vatican security walking beside the limo.
In no cases did I see sniper setups, or hear about manholes welded shut. Security is a lot more lowkey.
I read the story once about the time a president visited an American city and the chaos it cause people complained about the president for days, the traffic standstill, intersections closed, huge long police escort, etc. When they asked who ordered that mess, turns out it was the mayor of the city who was from the opposite party.
Turn of the 20th century anarchist assassins often didn’t care about #s 2. or 3. (with exceptions like the Wall St. bomber of 1920).
Most people these days* would rather rant on social media, or post there in support of killers whose motivations and views they don’t know.
*terrorists who commit murder tend to go for soft targets among the general public; world leaders have sophisticated security which make them hard to get at.
I was also about 10 yards away from Gorbachev once. He was visiting Ottawa and walking down the Sparks Street mall. There was a decent crowd. He stopped to listen to a busker for a bit, with a big smile on his face. I have a picture of him somewhere.
Innocent until proven guilty and all that.
I’m sticking with my mental illness theory.
From the article
“ In one online review by “Luigi Mangione” of the book Industrial Society and Its Future , the anti-technology essay penned by the “Unabomber,” Ted Kaczynski, the reviewer wrote: “It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.”
If your a fan of Ted Kaczynski, you probably should get some counseling from mental health professionals.
“issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. you do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to him.’”
The further back in history you go the harder it is to know what they were thinking. I have no idea if John Wilkes Booth was a little funny in the head. Brutus killing Caesar? Pure Murder in the first degree for a tangible goal would be my guess.
Can anyone name an Assassin in the last 50 years who wasn’t a little funny in the head?
The outright support in social media for the murder of a CEO or even the tacit approval of the the Schadenfreude expressed in some unnamed other websites, are contributing factors. The assassin has achieved his goal of being a hero based these attitudes.
And future mentally ill people with dreams of assassinating the source of evil in the world will want to achieve the same status.
Well, that’s the thing; the non-crazy ones are much less likely to get caught, so we don’t actually know what their name was. Who knows how rational or not the unknown person who assassinated Alexander V. Litvinenko with polonium was.
I think it’s a safe guess to say that was a state sponsored assassination by an intelligence agency working under orders. Not that I condone that.
I don’t think it’s an example of a lone wolf deciding he needs to kill Litvinenko to marry Jodi Foster.
Nor would I put the raid to kill Bin Laden in the same category either.
Still an assassination, though.