Level 4 plates are rated to stop at least one round of AP 30-06, and make short work of any .223 on the market. The ones you can buy yourself affordably are heavy bitches, but if cost is no object and you have access to ones that are sold as LEO/MIL only you can get under 5 lbs per plate.
That is true for the one shot but how about the others. I would have thought he could have landed at least one of them. Or did he start shooting people in the crowd instead of Trump? He was laying down where he could steady the rifle on the roof so it was even easier than it would have been had he been standing and shooting with nothing to brace the rifle on. For whatever reason I am happy he missed Trump and I am sad for the families and people he did hit.
Stop being so dismissive. The authorities have already confirmed they were tracking the shooter for a few minutes but lost him. This was more than “a lapse in SS protocol.”
Sure. You still have to absorb the impact force. That's not going to be an awesome day and 300 feet isn't a lot of air to slow it down. Also level 4 plates don't stop everything.
This is the correct analysis. Luck is what saved us from a much less interesting speculative conversation. What a time to be alive though, never thought I'd be around for a genuine presidential assassination attempt.
He is likely already wearing Flexible Rifle Armor. Easy to conceal. But the energy transfer from a 223/556 or 762 going 3000 fps on FRA is nasty.
This wasn’t a high powered rifle. It was an AR-15 shooting an intermediate cartridge (likely .223 Remington or 5.56x45mm NATO) at an intermediate distance for that cartridge. Definitely still plenty lethal, but can be reliably stopped by level III or greater plates or flexible armor without serious injury to the wearer.
There a plenty of options for soft style flexible vests to prevent rifle rounds but they are $2000 range so most don’t use them when you can get ceramics for $150 and a plate carrier at your local CrossFit box.
That's kind of the point here though. A 20 year old with a Walmart rifle was able to take a shot at a former US president in 2024. Simply astounding and we're lucky it was just that.
Sure but that's not the argument and nothing is stopping a .50 cal. I seriously doubt a 78 year old dude healthily responds to absorbing almost any size round at that distance. The point is it's clearly a mentally unwell kid and the real issue here is that anyone who had any hand in making decisions or training those that did needs to be fired, but on Monday because it's still business. Edit: also to be completely fair I would have had complete trust in the secret service and not worn a vest. If our prospective leader feels the need to do so I think they've picked the wrong job
I can’t decide if Trump was super lucky the kid missed, or super unlucky that the kid got a rifle near the him, climbed on a roof unencumbered was spotted by snipers and not shot, confronted by police and not stopped.
Perhaps the SS director worrying about making sure at least 30% of SS recruits are female by 2030 had her focused on the wrong agency mission. Perhaps she should worry about physical and cerebral ability more than whether recruits can be labeled as female?
I may be wrong but I’m guessing he is already wearing flexible armor. It’s light and fits almost like a tight tank top.
Both. I would have had a reasonable chance of hitting him with the compound bow I found in an abandoned shed when I was 9.
I don’t know, but we’re all damn lucky he turned his head. Because had he not, you would never succeed in convincing many Trump supporters that the Secret Service didn’t intentionally let him get killed, because that’s how many seemingly obvious things had to go wrong for the kid to get shots off from that close.
Trump moved after the first shot. This is what leads me to believe the guy was not particularly highly trained. The first shot is relatively easy. You have time to set up, build your position, control your breathing, take up your trigger slowly etc. Once you break the shot, your sight picture is getting disturbed by the recoil of the gun and you’re going to be on a clock to get that second shot off before someone starts shooting back. That’s going to be a massive adrenaline dump and you’re going to lose any ability to be smooth with your movements, which is what leads to loss of accuracy. if you’re a shooter, try this: next time you are out on the range, have someone with a shot timer with you and set up for a shot of at least 100 yards. Have the timer started when you break the first shot and try to put the second inside a paper plate. Time how long it takes you. My guess is a lot longer than you think it will, and that is with the knowledge that nobody is shooting back. I say that as someone who knows it takes a bit to get back on target even with something like a big heavy 6.5CM precision rifle with a muzzle break that is designed to do exactly that.
