Sounds like he had bags filled with ceramic tile over his hidey hole and bolted to a vehicle. A bystander photo-d the plate and gave it to law enforcement. And then he just sort of hands in the air surrendered himself when they caught up. No conspiracy theory yet, from me, I’m going to give it a bit, see what info shakes out.
His vids make him sound like a Libertarian who voted for Trump the first time because he thought it meant real change, for democracy draining the swamp and all the other stuff, and now he wanted to shoot trump because he felt it was the only way to defend democracy. Yes, the phrasing matches the Harris campaign.
It’s a bizarre rabbit hole. He has a lot of social media vids. And he’s always wearing some kind of flag print in his vids, even if it’s just his blue and white hair in combo with his red face. Went to Ukraine. And some weird stuff with Afghanistan. I stopped watching because, ick. Consumption of that guys media is unpleasant.
I think this is the other side of the nationalism push. You don’t just get a community that likes to wave flags, like evangelicals waving their arms at a tent revival. You also get the Jan 6 crowd. And you also get these two shooters and whomever else from that fully over the cliff segment is sitting in a basement, planning some other horrific bit of violence, right now. You probably can’t separate out all 3, it’s all or nothing. And something trump himself started fomenting in 2016. Years of anxiety and angst feeding on itself, which yes, won him 2016, but now? Where’s it going and does he have any real grip on it anymore?
Scary. And likely not the end of it from this crowd.
David Aronberg, State Attorney for Palm Beach County, Florida, said the suspect said nothing as he was detained.
“He knew enough to stay silent,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Sunday evening. “He did not apparently speak to officers, he was calm. So, it looked like a person who has done this before, not necessarily this crime, but someone who has had repeated interactions with law enforcement.”
Person: says nothing
Florida DA: Obviously they're guilty of several career-long crimes
Based on his behavior I would guess that he has bipolar disorder. Moving to Hawaii, going to Ukraine, all this other erratic behavior in the past, all sounds like mania. This was probably a manifestation of delusions of grandeur. If he wrote out an explanation beforehand it will probably be complete nonsense to us that made complete sense to him at the time. If he didn't give an explanation beforehand, it will probably be impossible for him to explain his reasoning after the fact.
No we ask how is he still alive. At that range if they meant to kill him he should be dead.
No. And, I'm disappointed so many blindly believed.
The initial information was 200-300 yards. A good shooter with range ammo (medium quality) and a decent rifle will shoot about 2 MOA or "minutes of angle" accuracy. A better shooter with better ammo and rifle will shoot about 1.5 MOA.
The math conveniently works out such that 1 MOA is 1 inch at 100 yards. At 1 MOA and 100 yards range, the distance from the furthest spaced rounds in a small number of rounds will be 1 inch.
At 300 yards 1.5 MOA is 4.5 inches. At 200 yards it's 3 inches. At 300 it'd take three shots to be sure. At 200 it's a likely one shot kill.
The news of 200-300 yards was intentional uncertainty. We sheep aren't to know the actual risk to Trump's life.
Ring-winger gun-nuts: the 2nd amendment is meant to keep us protected from a tyrannical government!!!!
This is the second attempt on the life of your wannabe god-emperor...are things starting to click into place yet or are you ready to admit it was never about "rights" and "freedoms" you just really like having guns
I mean if they were serious about guns being used to make sure the tyrants and would be tyrants are always in fear of an assassin's bullet then what has been happening lately is EXACTLY what the 2nd amendment is intended for... and they are pissed because they are a bunch of wanna-be brownshirts who want to be the armed militia of the tyrant and kill his enemies without fear of prosecution. They just want to do it with their own personal weapons.
Tbf they actually view the other side as the tyrannical one and think their side is the savior, it isn't actually that hard to understand their feelings on that one.
Not saying that they're right, just that this is the explanation for this oft cited "disconnect." Basically just "nobody thinks they're the bad guy."
I sort of wonder how much longer 2A idiocy will last in the US. The NRA has gone bankrupt and since they aren't able to funnel Russian money to politicians like they used to be able to, their influence is basically zero at this point.
With them out of the picture, there's really not a powerful gun lobby getting right wing media to talk about Democrats as gun grabbers.
If you peruse conservative spaces like I do, you'll notice that talking point has evaporated.
The 2nd Amendment will likely be in place long after all of us are dead, because it is a right that the majority of Americans support, and because amending the Constitution is required to change it, and because amending the Constitution is very difficult.
Constitutional amendments require a 2/3 majority vote of both houses of Congress to pass (initially) then must also pass ratification by 3/4 of state legislatures. Only takes 13 red states to vote NO to block it. All of the red states are going to vote against it, every time, because the right to bear arms is an inherent right that we will never give up.
The NRA is bankrupt and has no influence? I hadn’t heard about that.
I do notice now that they are charging school shooters parents as well as the kid, maybe that will get people to start thinking about this differently. Maybe.
Throw in Trump has stated to take people's guns without due process, and Pence had to talk him out of it to ensure the 2A voters wouldn't turn against him, now apparently he wants to do outdoor events behind shields of some sort... I can imagine it will be long before MAGA followers agree it is to dangerous to have people buying guns without proper background checks... Which would have likely prevented this person from owning an AK, as he has previous weapons charges.
People have handguns on their hips in grocery stores. And you don’t know where the concealed carry is (most don’t) because it’s…you know…concealed.
Kahr made concealed carry its advertise/sell point and doesn’t hit the bar for most clip capacity restrictions, so it’s pretty available.
Ok, this is a large, not concealed gun. But my point is, many Americans have guns and carry them, both concealed and otherwise, even while grocery shopping with their families.
How is this walking around with a gun thing a question? It’s been even more normalized the last 10yrs than ever before since the Wild West times ended.
What’s more interesting is this is shooter #2 who was once a trump supporter and then, quite dramatically, changed his mind. This deserves some analysis. We’re getting almost no analysis on the first guy.
I don't think it's the fact that they're armed that makes them not feel safe. It's the constant fear propaganda they're fed via Fox News, Facebook, Twitter, and other right wing "news" sources. The alt right propaganda machines scare these people into thinking that everyone and everything is out to get them so they go out and buy a gun. In more civilized progressive areas, people aren't exposed to alt right fear mongering as much and if they are, their community disproves and supports them so they don't fall down the "I must arm myself to kill anyone who might harm me" rabbit hole.
Open carry is a really dumb idea. If a crook who wanted to steal someone's gun they can easily ambush the carrier to snatch it and escape. The job would be easier if they were working as a gang. Also if a mass shooter does come by and has half a brain cell, they'll scan the area for anyone openly carrying and take them out first before starting their shooting. You'd have to be REALLY paranoid when open carrying to prevent that kind of thing from happening, and 99.99% of the time you'll end up pulling a gun on an innocent person and get into some serious legal trouble for it.
What’s more interesting is this is shooter #2 who was once a trump supporter and then, quite dramatically, changed his mind. This deserves some analysis. We’re getting almost no analysis on the first guy.
We don't have much information on the first guy because there wasn't much info to be had. The best way I can analyze his behavior based on what was released to the public is 'hmmm, I want to kill a politician and it's going to be... let me think? Who is the closest and most convenient for me to get to right now? Oh yes, Trump is having a rally. So Trump it is!'
There is no evidence that he had any thing against Trump personally or politically. He just wanted to kill a politician. If Trump wasn't doing a rally there, but the mayor of the town was going to make a speech or presentation at that very spot, then the mayor would have been the target. Crooks just wanted to kill a politician, and wasn't too picky about which politician that was.
Also he apparently planned a whole spree of shootings right after. Not thinking that trying to kill an ex-president is going to make escape practically impossible. I don't think he even realized there would be Secret Service snipers on the roof tops, and one already had him in his sights before he started shooting, thus making any escape attempt impossible.
People complain that these types of rifles count as conceal carry when it comes to bans because you can get a folding stock and keep it in a backpack on you or in your car. IMO, it defeats the purpose of concealed carry if it's not immediately available. At that point you're just transporting it.
Meeeh, leave the guns be. It's people who kill people, not guns - give man a knife and you got stabbed! Please ignore the fact that it's a lot easier to shoot someone than stab someone and thus even cowards can stab people at distance.
Let's just give USA a little bit more time. At some point one of the parties will score big win, and the other side will finally rally aaaand VIVA LA REVOLU- why is everyone dead?
I think Trump and the secret service keeps getting lucky that his assailants are idiots regarding their weapon choice. This guy was 300-500 yards away and had an AK.
An AK is a 4-5 MOA rifle at best, so even with perfect optics, a perfect shooter, no wind, and a steady position, you're looking at a precision of 2 feet at 500 yards, and that's ignoring that precision gets progressively worse at range.
At 500 yards, a 7.62x39 round has gone subsonic, lost 80% of its muzzle energy, and dropped 30 feet.
Anything under 1000 ft/lbs of torque force isn't considered powerful enough to ethically hunt a whitetail deer. At 500 yards, a 7.62x39 has less than a third of that energy. It's enough to be lethal, but not consistently.
And all that is the starting point for the first shot. It gets worse firing semi-auto.
The cool part is that the two "would be" assassins were probably not at all related to each other and acted completely independently.
I wouldn't be out there golfing in open air if I was the orange stain bag. I would go find me a nice moldy hole to hide into with my friend putin so I can watch when they drag putin out first lol.