Transcription
Jesus Christ, that's Jason Bourne. No, it's really not. And today I'm going to explain why in nosebleleeding detail. So, let's get after it.
I'm James Merritt, emergency manager and career soldier, and this is Radist Nation. So, at this point, we know that Charlie Kirk's assassin was just a dumb college kid. But before we knew that, for some reason, the conspiracy theory was circulating that this was a professional hit. But for anyone who actually knows anything about the business of killing, as soon as the first evidence started dribbling out, it just became more and more obvious that this murder was committed by someone who had no training whatsoever.
So today, I'm going to explain what professional capabilities actually look like. So that next time, and tragically enough, there's sure to be a next time, you won't be fooled by the people that for whatever reason are trying to convince you that dumb kids are actually master assassins.
But first, I need to address the 900lb gorilla in the room. Now, if you've seen my other videos where I discuss politically sensitive issues, you know that politically I'm a moderate centrist. And as such, I was not a fan of Charlie Kirk. But that means it should carry more weight when I say it is absolutely unacceptable that a man was just murdered for saying words that people don't like in a country where you're constitutionally guaranteed the right to say words that people don't like. He wasn't inciting violence. He wasn't fermenting insurrection. You just disagreed with him about values and policy. And those are unacceptable reasons for these children to not have to grow up without their father.
So, if you've been egging this crap on or you're celebrating his death, you need to take a long look in the mirror and think good and hard about who the real existential threat to our republic actually is. But this video isn't about political violence as a source of civil instability, though that is definitely a video that needs to go on the slate now. Today, we're going to discuss all the things to look for after an incident like this so that you can tell for yourself if it was carried out by a wannabe or a pro.
The first thing we need to discuss is that after both the Trump and Kirk shootings, there were people trying to say that shots taken at less than 200 meters somehow equates to the shooter having advanced training. But it really, really doesn't. So, first we need to put these engagement distances into context, then go over what actual sniper engagement distances really look like.
To put these engagement distances into context, we need to discuss basic rifle marksmanship training in US Army basic training. For basic rifle qualification, all soldiers of any MOS must shoot and qualify at least annually on a pop-up rifle range in which there are targets at 50 m intervals from 50 m to 300 m. These targets pop up from behind BMS and only stay up for 2 to 6 seconds depending on the distance. Some exposures have multiple targets come up at the same time, and the shooter gets the combined time of each target individually to engage both targets. There are 40 targets in the course of fire and you get 40 rounds, meaning one shot per target. To pass, you have to hit everything out to 150 m. To get the highest qualification, you have to hit everything out to 250 m. And back when I went through basic training more than two decades ago, we were using M16 A2s with iron sights.
Now, US Army basic training is broken down into three 3-week phases. The middle phase, white phase, is the marksmanship phase. So, every trainee has to learn to effectively and consistently engage targets out to at least 150 meters in only three weeks. And this is whether you've ever touched a real gun in your life or not. Furthermore, you personally aren't shooting for 3 weeks straight because every soldier in the training company also needs to do the same. So, typically, you personally are only getting about two firing iterations per day. And those iterations aren't even all live fire shooting. There are dryfire iterations and simulator iterations before you ever even shoot live rounds. So, you're only getting about 10 to 12 live fire iterations during this training. The point here being that it doesn't take a ton of practice to be able to consistently hit out to 150 m. And a lot of soldiers are significantly better than that after the 3 weeks.
So, the engagement distances in the Kirk assassination, now confirmed to be approximately 130 m, and the attempted Trump assassination of approximately 140 m, are not difficult shots at all. Anyone could easily practice on a civilian rifle range to be able to make those shots in a relatively short period of time.
In contrast, the gold standard for shots made by school trained snipers is 1,000 m. So assuming they're firing a weapon with a maximum effective range of at least 1,000 meters, any school trained sniper should be able to make that shot. Back when I was an infantry officer, every light infantry battalion had a scout sniper section. And they were equipped with either an M110 semi-automatic sniper system, which has a published maximum effective range of 800 m, or an M107 anti-material rifle, which has a published maximum effective range for anti-personnel use of 2,000 m. Furthermore, the longest confirmed sniper kill on record is now 4,000 m. That's just under 2 and a half miles.
As such, based on engagement distances, there is no reason to believe a shooter in any instance like this has any significant training unless they successfully made a shot that was at least 500 m. I mean, squad designated marksmen who are regular infantrymen who are just good shots train to shoot out to 500 meters with stock M4s with ACOGs if you're in a unit that isn't cool enough to get special rifles for them. So, I wouldn't even say that the distance is evidence of special training until you're out to at least 700 m. And I wouldn't say that we're definitely dealing with someone with sniper level shooting capabilities unless they made a shot at 1,000 meters or more.
Editor James here. Most of this video was based on my personal training and experience in the army. But given some statements made in videos that have come out while I've been editing mine, I need to both address a valid point and add some additional doctrinal information. So, first, one of the things that was pointed out that is valid is that sniper shots are so difficult because you have to account for wind, temperature, barometric pressure, elevator between the target and the shooter, and account for the deviation caused by a cold bore on your first shot. These are certainly all real things that failure to account for past 300 m will really start to tell on you and out at extended ranges will absolutely cause you to miss entirely. Snipers have to take several measurements and do a lot of math to be successful.
But at less than 300 m, you don't bother with any of that. In basic rifle marksmanship, we do talk about holds, adjusting your point of aim to account for things that will throw off your point of impact, but that's it. And most soldiers don't even bother and aim center mass on every target anyway. So out to 150 m, the impact is marginal. And whereas I tried to prevent this video from becoming murder porn out of respect for the departed and a surviving family by not showing or even discussing the wound Kirk suffered, I have to discuss it to address this point. If you haven't watched the video, Kirk was struck in the neck roughly 2 in to the right of the center line. No one aims for the neck. That's not a thing. The assassin was either aiming for his head or he was aiming center mass. So, he was either about 10 in low or about 10 in high and 2 in to the right.
So, if snipers do take all of those measurements and do all of those calculations regardless of the distance to target so that the round always strikes true, the assassin clearly did none of that based on the fact that he was 10 in off with a scoped rifle at only 130 m. So, this is all actually further evidence that the shot was definitely not taken by a professional.
Additionally, the claim was made that during GWAT, the majority of sniper kills were made between 300 and 500 m. I was not able to verify this, but I don't doubt it. During GWAT, snipers were primarily used to provide overwatch during urban combat operations. And in urban operations, all engagement distances tend to shrink. But bear in mind that the low end of this range is about 2 and 1/2 times what the sniper shot. and on the high end about four times the distance. So again, this is actually evidence against the shooter being a professional, not for it.
But moving on to the additional doctrinal information about engagement distances, 50 to 300 m is without question basic rifle marksmanship distance. But in the years since the early days of the program, squad designated marksmanship training has become more standardized with a two-week advanced marksmanship course. Squad designated marksman engagement ranges are generally agreed to be 300 to 600 m. Sniper engagement distances also begin at 300 m and in the days of the M24 sniper rifle extended out to 800 m. But in 2010, the M2010 enhanced sniper rifle was adopted, extending the range out to that 1,000 m gold standard I was talking about. And once the Mark22 rifle fielding is complete, that gold standard will push out to,200 m. So whereas snipers will take whatever distance shot the mission calls for in the near future any school trained sniper will be capable of hitting targets out to at least 1,200 m. Now of course someone capable of making a longer shot could take a shorter shot but taking a longer shot will give you more tactical options which leads me to my next point.
The infill xfill and shooting position were not professional at all. Now I'll preface this with saying that I'm not sniper qualified. No officer is unless they picked it up while enlisted. And they don't send medics to sniper school either. But as I said, I was an infantry officer and every light infantry battalion has a scout sniper section. As such, sniper employment is the domain of infantry officers. So understanding the basics of sniper operations is integral to making sure that you're not sending your snipers on a fool's errand. So whereas someone who is sniper qualified could speak to this in much greater detail than I can, I am, however qualified to provide the following analysis. But with that said, what follows will be purposefully vague enough to not teach the next guy how to do a better job.
So, the first thing we need to talk about is infiltration. In sniper operations, the sniper first has to get into position to take the shot without being seen. They call this stalking, like stalking prey. And if you're compromised on infill, you could be killed or captured before you even get to take the shot. So professionals very carefully plan their route and painstakingly make every movement along that route to ensure that they're not compromised. Kirk's assassin did none of that. He literally just climbed up on the roof, ran over to his shooting position, and was compromised in the process. Kirk's assassin was seen running to his position and then caught on video while in position before the shot.
>> Get right up.
>> Yeah. You think he'd already be in place?
>> You would think that. So, there's somebody on the roof right there. Just saying. Huh?
>> He just ran from uh over Where's my finger? Well, from over there, ran in and now he's right there. Just saying. Just
>> Now, setting aside for a moment, the guy who took this video not telling the cops immediately. We'll come back around to that later. But this piece of evidence demonstrates two major indicators that this is not someone with any level of training. And both of them have to do with the use of angles for concealment. The first one is that anyone with training would have known that if you stay low and away from the edges, people can't see you on an elevated surface. As such, a professional once on the roof would have stayed as far away from the edges as possible and lowcrolled into position to ensure that he wouldn't be seen. Second, snipers need to set up their shooting positions in as concealed a spot as possible so they can't be seen even after they take the shot. From what I understand, the final exam in sniper school is they need to stalk for a significant distance to their shooting position without being detected. Then they need to successfully engage their target at significant range. And after they take their shot, the instructors, who are standing as far away from the shooter as their target, looks for them with binoculars. If the instructors can spot the shooter, he fails.
In the bush, concealing your shooting position is accomplished primarily through the use of camouflage and foliage. But in an urban environment, it's overwhelmingly done with the use of angles and shadows. As such, my understanding is snipers don't want to be on roofs. They want to be shooting out of open windows while tucked all the way in the back of that room. Or better yet, the room across the hall, shooting through both rooms open doors and then out the window. This almost completely prevents any possibility of being seen. But if you have to shoot from a rooftop, the effective use of angles becomes even more critical. So again, you need to stay as far away from the edges as you can. Being just close enough that your bullet will clear the edge of the roof when fired, but only your weapon and a small portion of your head would be visible to any observers. But from these pictures, it appears he's as close to that corner as he can be without his rifle hanging over the edge. The shooter who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump in the summer of 2024 made the same mistake, coming up way too far on a roof that was perfectly slanted to offer him maximum cover and concealment. He's now missing his head for having made that mistake. So again, this is an amateurishly poor use of angles. A professional would only select a shooting position if they were confident that they could move into that shooting position and take the shot without being seen. And were confident that their position still wouldn't be spotted even after taking the shot.
The next indicator of having no training is that after he took the shot, he just stood up and booked it diagonally across the roof with no concern about being backlit and no use of available cover and concealment. One of the biggest differences between amateurs and professionals is how good their axill plan is. Zealot ideologues who want their name associated with their ax may not care if they get caught. But professionals always intend and thus plan to live to fight another day. Now had he effectively used angles and lowcrolled in to an appropriate shooting position without being compromised after he took the shot, staying prone and only moving back slightly would have made him completely invisible to anyone at ground level. As such, he could have low crawled back to the raised section of the roof and used it to break line of sight and then gotten off the roof from behind it, thus making it impossible for anyone at ground level to the front or sides of the building, seeing as Xfill at all. Furthermore, had he low crawled away from an appropriate shooting position. If this video taken from an elevated floor of the building across from the shooting position saw anything at all, it would have only picked up a black blob that wouldn't have even been identifiable as a person. But instead, after taking the shot, he stood straight up, fully backlighting himself, making it clearly obvious to anyone looking that the shooter is on the roof of that building and is now running away. So after the shot was taken, he did just about everything possible to draw attention to himself. A professional, on the other hand, would be taking the shot from a position where they won't be seen and can easily slip behind some available concealment, fully breaking line of sight, where they can then slip away undetected.
But even had he taken every precaution that I outlined so far, he still would have been cooked because of his next failure. Absolutely no counter surveillance plan whatsoever. He was caught on camera from three sides of the building. He could have avoided being filmed from the front and the side using the techniques that we discussed. But the surveillance camera from the rear still would have caught him, and he seems completely unaware that it's even there. It's this surveillance camera that captured his egress route and ultimately led authorities to where he ditched the weapon. Which, by the way, ditching your weapon in the woods along your egress route isn't particularly bright either. But the fact that he was unaware of the surveillance camera means that he didn't do a counter surveillance sweep. And thus further demonstrates his lack of training.
Snipers don't just shoot high-V value targets. They're also reconnaissance assets. So they not only engage in high fidelity observations of the operating environment for their own operational needs, they also gather reconnaissance on the operating environment to feed back to hire to drive future operational planning. As such, a professional would have made note of all the stationary surveillance and security measures around the objective ahead of time and would have reassessed any additional or mobile surveillance and security measures on scene at the time before committing. So professional would have definitely identified that security camera and either would have eliminated it or deemed the shooting position that the assassin used to be invalid and adjusted his shooting position and schema of maneuver accordingly to avoid being seen by that or any other camera.
The final failure, and I explain all of this in my video prepper still understand Greyman, is that the shooter went full-on wannabe spy with his clothing choices. all dark-colored clothing with a dark-colored hat and sunglasses, but then made it much worse with a distinct high contrast design on his shirt. So, this both made him look distinctly different from everyone else in the crowd and also made him the poster boy stereotype for who we're looking for when we're searching through a bunch of surveillance footage for who's the guy in the crowd who just assassinated someone. But then, the distinct high contrast pattern on his shirt made him easy to identify and track from video to video from different cameras. but also even with lower resolution cameras and cameras that were further away. So again, not professional at all.
So in summation, if we ever do see professionals engage in political assassinations, it'll be a shot taken from far enough away that no one around the target even knows where the shot came from. And it's possible that no one near the target even hears the shot. The shooter won't be seen moving into position. They won't be seen after the shot. And they won't be seen during exfiltration. or if they are seen by anyone on Axeville, they won't present any indicators that will cause the witness to even realize that they're looking at the assassin. These are the actual indicators of a professional with advanced training and a great deal of practice. What we saw in this assassination was exactly what you would expect from an idiot college kid who just plays too many video games. There was exactly a 0% chance that he was ever going to get away with this.
Now, with all that said, I want to cover a couple of key takeaways for preventing these things from happening in the future. The first takeaway is that security teams need to get a lot more diligent about locking down the venue out to at least 200 meters. Both the Kirk and Trump shootings would have been prevented by this. And if you don't have the security to do that, you need to move the event indoors. Second, don't be that guy who takes video of something super suspicious but then doesn't tell anyone. Be the lady at the Trump rally who was pointing and yelling about the guy on the roof.
We have >> on the roof. We have people >> right here. Not on the roof. >> If there's security or police in the area, alert them immediately. If there aren't any security or police around, don't be scared to call 911. They'll be able to alert the police on the scene or in the vicinity to the situation. But also, don't underestimate the value of just continuing to point and yell, "Sniper!" at the top of your lungs. And if you're in a crowd and someone is pointing and screaming sniper, look where they're pointing. And if you see a guy in an elevated position with a gun, join in pointing and yelling sniper. If enough people do this, it will have two effects. The first effect is that you can facilitate the observe and orient elements of police and counter snipers udaloop. Hastening their response to the threat by doing this. I talk about the udaloop in my video, what you don't know about the 21 ft rule could get you killed. The second effect is that if the shooter sees that he's been compromised, he may just abort and run without ever taking the shot. Or if he still tries to take the shot, knowing that he's been compromised will likely cause his heart rate and respirations to elevate. As such, unless he's done significant practice with stress shoots, his physiology becoming erratic will most likely cause him to miss. So by the crowd, simply pointing and yelling, you may very well be able to prevent the next assassination.
Now, some of you may be concerned about your personal safety in doing something like this. And if you're in the line of fire from the shooter to the target, by all means, get out of the way as quickly as possible, but you can point and yell while doing so. As for the shooter targeting the crowd directly, it's unlikely a sniper is there just to indiscriminately shoot into the crowd. I'm only aware of that happening twice in US history. The Las Vegas shooting in 2017 and the Texas Tower shooting in 1966. But in both cases, no one saw the shooter before he opened fire. Because you don't need to set up a shot to shoot indiscriminately into the crowd. You just get into position and start shooting. So if you see a gunman in position and he isn't already shooting up the crowd, he isn't there for you. As such, the danger to you of pointing and yelling is low, but the potential for saving the life of the person you're there to see is high. So on balance, even if there is some risk to the public in doing this, I would argue it's a risk well worth taking.
But that's going to be it for me. So, if you found this information useful, give me the old controlled pair on the like and subscribe buttons. And if you found this information useful enough that you want to buy me a beer about it, there's a link to my Patreon and Subscribe Star in the description. So, until next time, this is James Merritt for Readiness Nation, reminding you to always be the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.