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Comment by dfghjkl1 | Hacker News Reader

I think when it becomes normal for 10% or more of the citizens of a country to say they wouldn’t be upset if some member of the opposing political party were to die or when it becomes normal for that portion of the people to make fun or celebrate the death of someone from an opposing party or their murderer, everyone needs to take a step back regardless of which side you’re on and say “Why?” Because these people are not murderers or accomplices, and they are generally good people. These aren’t people that would lynch anyone or burn a cross in someone’s yard.

It’s awful that anyone dies.

Let’s not escalate this on either side. We don’t need another Hitler, and we don’t need a French Revolution either. We just need people that stop trying to outdo each other.

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> everyone needs to take a step back regardless of which side you’re on and say “Why?”

It's easy to get sucked into a learned helplessness doing this, though. We know exactly why it happens - Charlie Kirk explained it himself:

  "You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense, [...] But I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational."

America means guns. It's written in our constitution, reinforced through our history, reflected in our multimedia franchises and sold to American citizens as a product. The only way out of this situation is through it - we can't declare a firearms ban in-media-res without inciting even more violence and dividing people further. At the same time, America cannot continue to sustain this loss of our politicians, schoolchildren and minority populations. The threat to democracy is real, exacerbated by the potential for further "emergency powers" abuse we're familiar with from both parties.

When people push for firearms control in America, this is the polemic they argue along. You can say they're justified or completely bonkers, but denying that these scenarios exist is the blueprint for erasing causality.

No it's not because of the guns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe

Shinzo Abe's killer was captured immediately, he had to walk right in front of him to get a shot off.

Charlie Kirk's assassin is still at-large and fired from a standoff distance, with a conventional long-barrel firearm.

Make of that what you will.

You added the term "conventional", except nothing about this is conventional.

You said it yourself that the shooter is still at large... despite the involvement of the FBI and other agencies.

The firearm certainly seems conventional. Early reports suggest it was a bolt-action Mauser: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/what-we-know-about-weapon-u...

Is there something I'm missing here?

> despite the involvement of the FBI and other agencies.

Many such cases. We're still looking for D. B. Cooper, aren't we? Did the FBI ever dig up Hoffa's body? The feds are hardly a panacea with these things.

Not everything is about the firearm itself and not even the shot, that many people focus on.

And you need more context and the training required to take such a shot and then evade the local cops and FBI, with a solid escape plan from a fuckton of witnesses and so forth. And I did not mention that most people would probably panic and mess up, let alone take the shot and escape. It is much more complex than that. When you look at the pattern fit, it no longer looks like a spur-of-the-moment act by a "typical gun owner".

They gave us some 22 years old kid as the person who pulled this whole operation, allegedly, and acted alone. Even if someone had been shooting since childhood, the rooftop selection, escape route, and casing inscriptions suggest deliberate operational planning and situational awareness, not just trigger skill. Shooting skill alone doesn't cover the logistics and environmental awareness. Plus a 22-year-old who "trained since childhood" might have technical skill, but most young adults still lack the composure and foresight to execute a high-stakes assassination with minimal mistakes, especially under the psychological pressure of killing a person in a public setting.

FWIW, some cases remain unsolved for decades because of scarce evidence, degraded scenes, or lack of witnesses, which does not come into play here at all. Modern investigations, by contrast, often benefit from immediate CCTV, cell-data, social media, and so forth.

...thus I remain skeptical.

What is irregular about the firearm? The only details I've seen are the engraving, everything else is reportedly COTS. Please give me links to the information you're looking at if I'm missing anything.

> but most young adults still lack the composure and foresight to execute a high-stakes assassination with minimal mistakes

This is conjecture, unless you can back it up with a source. The history books are filled with 22-year-old kids shooting politicians and getting away with it, famously the Red Guard uninstalled an entire government with this strategy. With a bunch of riled-up students.

I spent a lot of time at the range when I was a kid - hitting a 200yd shot from an elevated platform is not difficult with a M1903. A modern 63mm loading can easily push 3,000fps in a long-barrel rifle and if you reloaded the cartridge for a single-use assassination, I see no reason you couldn't push 5,000fps if the barrel doesn't explode from overpressure. With those kinds of ballistics its not a very tough shot unless you're shooting into a hurricane. All you need then is a hunting scope, and that can be bought for $170 in cash at Cabelas.

> Modern investigations, by contrast, often benefit from immediate CCTV, cell-data, social media, and so forth.

This I absolutely agree with. It sounds like the only reason they found him is because his friend turned in his Discord DMs, he might still be on the loose if not for the digital breadcrumb trail he left behind.

Bit of a harrowing precedent for online privacy, but I presume that will fall on deaf ears.

Not everything is about the firearm and the shot, I am more interested in everything else (all the patterns and requirements) to pull this operation, including the composure I mentioned. There are many other things as well.

> This is conjecture, unless you can back it up with a source. The history books are filled with 22-year-old kids shooting politicians and getting away with it, famously the Red Guard uninstalled an entire government with this strategy. With a bunch of riled-up students.

Sure, it is, and I cannot back it up. He was operating alone, which is much different from doing it as a team, I believe.

> It sounds like the only reason they found him is because his friend turned in his Discord DMs, he might still be on the loose if not for the digital breadcrumb trail he left behind.

I thought it was his dad that turned him in, but regardless, the Discord messages are suspicious, because he went to great lengths as to successfully complete the mission, but he would talk about it on an online platform? Something makes me skeptical about it, but who knows. It is just pure speculation from me at this point, but it does not align well with the rest of his behavior, IMO.

I get that criminals make mistakes, and perhaps it was just that. We will never truly know.

Just because you can cite an example of a killing without a gun says nothing about the reality about gun violence and gun culture in the USA.

Which example are you referencing here?

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However France has strict firearms control so the scale of violence is still in control and shooting political figures is not common nowadays.

This is quite backwards. Right now revolts in France are useless. When they were useful back in the days, a lot of citizens had guns. Guns laws changed to reduce their powers

They are not useless in the sense that they are visible and at some point the state cannot only respond with more violence from police force forever or else the dictatorship becomes assumed.

But current protests aren't revolts nor violence anyway. There is side/peripheral violence but that is not the point of the protests

   the state cannot only respond with more violence from police force forever

As long as they control the media narrative it's all good it can continue for a long time

Revolts don’t need guns. Look at Nepal. Look at Bangladesh. Look at the Arab spring.

When people are so pissed off that millions of people take to the streets governments fall.

That's only because they cut back on the cartoons they draw.

Many people here will tell you that cartoons represent violence, some types of speech represent violence etc. France no longer has free speech rights unless it is coming from the left

We are 68 million and between hunters and sport shooters we have 5 million firearms owners for 10 million firearms. It's not on par with the US of course but I'd say firearms are pretty common (and it's not even counting illegal ones) and frankly it's not difficult nor long to acquire a good bolt action rifle and learn to shoot an apple at 200m. Long story short: I don't think lack firearms control is the issue in the US, there must be something else.

The French Revolution was such an abject failure that within a decade they abandoned their republic and willingly made Napoleon a dictator.

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