I have had several of my readers asking where I have been and to that I can only reply that I have been incredibly busy since a storm last month did severe damage to my home and business has picked up tremendously as the world continues to fall apart.
Several of the most recent messages I received were in the last 48 hours asking why I had not written about the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump. At first I really believed that anything I wrote would be easily shadowed by those with much more experience and knowledge than I possess, but I have decided to give it a shot. Keep in mind that I am a threat analyst and would have been more prone to recognize the rooftops in Butler as the greatest vulnerability and I am not a detective nor a firearms expert.
I will start by stating that I am more than a little relieved that Donald Trump is still standing and I am positive that he was protected by a force far greater than the Secret Service the other day.
In order to discuss what happened the other day, we fist need to look at what the situation really was. While it is the job of the Secret Service to advance on a location, there is great mystery as to why the rooftops within 150 yards of the stage were not all covered or monitored. As I have seen no UAV footage to date, I am beginning to assume that even the simplest of technology was not utilized to secure this location- there has been no release of any aerial footage or still shots of the location.
I believe this was the beginning of the lack of planning and paranoia required to keep someone like Donald Trump safe. When we look at the location of the snipers placed to protect the stage area, one can easily see in both footage and photos that they were ONLY trained on the stage area limiting their scope of coverage and protection for Trump.
I have scoured the evidentiary footage and have not been able to find any outward facing snipers other than those facing the stage directly. To assume you know where your enemy will come from is foolish.
Another observation I wish to make is that we have video of witnesses yelling to law enforcement almost a full 4 minutes before the shooting in an attempt to tell them that someone was on the roof to the President’s right.
It is relatively well known that Secret Service uses their own communications and local law enforcement was not on their frequency so we have two issues here. The first is that law enforcement assumed that whoever was on the roof belonged to Secret Service so no attempt was made to contact them to validate that assumption. The second is that they would have had no way of communicating with Secret Service directly if what I am told by my law enforcement contacts is true about the communication channel limits.
I can only assume that secret Service left details about their personnel placement out of the briefing with local law enforcement for security reasons, but this did leave local law enforcement not knowing who was there and I have to wonder if I would have made the same assumption.
Now on to the hand of God.
As I studied the site, measurements, photos and video, I made several observations that bring me to this statement: Our shooter did not miss. He was definitely aiming for Trump, but not for his ear. His aim was to hit Trump between the eyes and this kid could shoot.
How do I know this?
When we face the stage and watch the seconds before Trump was hit, we see the flag strung between two cranes in the background. Two seconds before the shots ring out, the flag suddenly is flung backward by a gust of wind that I would quantify as about a 10 to 12 MPH gust.
We know that our shooter used an AR-15 style weapon ( I assume a .223) with a scope. The shot was taken as Trump turned his head to his right meaning he was directly facing the shooter.
OK, if the wind is blowing 10 mph from my 3 o’clock as I lay on the roof, then my horizontal wind deflection is .7 inches at 100 yards to my left. This places the deflection at approximately 1.05” at my distance from Trump at 130 yards. The spot between Trump’s eyes is approximately 1.375” to the right of the left ear.
If not for that gust, Trump would have been shot between the eyes. To be technical, wind does not blow bullets around but rather causes deflection as the wind gives the bullet a new vector of motion.
It has been stated that an AR-15-style rifle was what the man the Federal Bureau of Investigation identified as Thomas Matthew Crook (20) was using. I know many of my liberal friends bristle when they hear “AR” but here is a fact… the reason why so many shootings occur with AR’s is because the AR-15 became one of America's most popular guns after the end of the Assault Weapons ban in 2004. Do not argue with me about AR’s being assault rifles. All rifles are assault rifles and all handguns are assault handguns. In fact, I have a baseball bat behind the seat of my truck that can quickly become an assault bat.
The purpose of this article is not to stir you all up.
An AR-15 is a semi-automatic or self-loading rifle that has been called "America's rifle" by the NRA with well over 15 million sold by 2019. " “Semi-automatic: means that the weapon's operator must pull the trigger to fire each shot. This was no specialist that shot at Trump.
The average sportsman with an AR-15 shooting .223 Rem 50gr bullets can hit an 8” circle at 100 yards.
So there was no failure on the part of the shooter. The failure falls elsewhere.
Before the event began, police had a report of a suspicious man pacing near the magnetometers and were apparently exchanging photos of the suspect. That suspect was our shooter. He was not detained.
During the event the protection details were yards, not feet, from Trump and even the stage.
Rooftops within 150 yards were left uncovered and un-monitored.
I have yet to see UAV use at this event which in essence was in a large open farm field.
Secret Service was not only slow but failed to show any fluid movement as a team trained for such a scenario. It becomes immediately apparent (according to every angle of video) that this team was not aware of each other, direction of exit or at one point, even which vehicle was to be used to remove Trump in the event of a forced evacuation. You can clearly see one agent near the passenger side of the vehicle holstering and un-holstering her weapon as if she is not sure what to do with it. Several agents slam into each other as if not pre-assigned to sides of the vehicle.
Crowd containment never does occur in the first 5 minutes after Trump is on the stage floor, in fact many in the crowd push forward or even stand up.
At this point, I will allow other armchair quarterbacks take the wheel as I am out of observations but I truly hope that there is a transparent investigation into the response to this event but also into who planned for this event. As a threat analyst and emergency planner, I am flabbergasted and confused.
With the RNC only now beginning, I can only hope someone else is at the helm.
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