0.63 MOA Away - That's it

the two take aways from the 13 July assassination attempt

What is the cost of our governmental dysfunction?

First of all, I want to take a moment to recognize that because of all the below, a wife and two daughters no longer have a father, Corey Comperatore.

All he did was one of the most fundamental people do in a free republic: he went to a political rally on a bright, blue July day with his family.

By the literal misjudgment of a slight breeze, our nation was saved from a political catastrophe.

Political assassinations at the Presidential level, both in office and during campaigns, are not unknown in American history, but they have been blessedly rare in recent history. The last one was against President Reagan in 1981, 43 years ago. The last attempt was against President Reagan in 1981, 43 years ago. The last successful one was eighteen years earlier against President Kennedy in 1963, 61 years ago.

When I was a small child, yet to reach pre-teen years, high profile assassination attempts against Presidential candidates were shockingly common; Robert F. Kennedy (1968, killed), George Wallace (1973, paralyzed), Richard Nixon (1974, hijacker killed), Gerald Ford (1975, two attempts all misses), then the aforementioned attempt on Reagan.

We are not in new territory as a nation, but we are in uncomfortable territory again.

So, now we have this attempt on former President Trump. If you, or people you know, would not have a similar reaction to this event as if it were against President Biden, RFK Jr., or any of the other candidates for president, then you need to reset your mind because you are broken.

How close did we get? Look at the graphic above I took from Erik Prince. I’m a hunter, as some of you are. I also play around in the precision rifle shooting world. 135 meters is not a long shot. I know people, including your humble blogger, who can hit a squirrel at that range with confidence with a rifle.

I’d encourage everyone to take a moment and get a ruler or tape measure. Measure out one inch. Walk over to a mirror and, in front of your face, hold that with your finger at the 1” mark where your ear comes out of your skull. Now look where the end of the tape is..

It may be slightly different for a few of you, but I’m a good proxy for President Trump. I am roughly the same height and have a noggin just as large. For me, that 1” in is right outside where my eyelids meet. 1” in, and that would have gone right through the temple. Instantaneous death.

Why did I pick 1-inch?

Look at the picture at the top of the post. The wind was slight, about 5 mph or so, coming from about 90-deg from the direction the shooter was firing.

Let me define a term in the title, MOA.

MOA is “Minute of Angle,” an angular measurement of 1/60th of a degree. A 1 MOA deflection is about 1″ per 100 yards. (actually 1.047″)

1 MOA is a different size at different distances, 8″ at 800 yards is still just 1 MOA.

100 yds is 1”. 200 yds is 2”, etc.

Without getting too geeky on ballistics for you, bullets are mostly affected by gravity and wind. How far they deflect is measured in MOA, which can then be converted to inches/centimeters, etc.

We don’t know as of the writing of this post, but let’s assume the shooter was using one of the more popular 5.56mm rounds, the Lake City 62 grain M855. Here’s the ballistics for that round on the day in question.

That is how close we got. 135 meters. 0.63 MOA. One inch. Five knots of wind one way or another and our nation would have been in a very different place, a much worse place.

But we’re not. So, what do we do with this lucky moment for everyone but the Comperatore family?

Put the politics to the side, we have more important things to contend with - two things to be specific.

One item is hard and unfixable, but we need to recognize it and act as best fits our circumstances.

The second may seem hard, but it isn’t. All it takes is moral courage and the willingness to make enemies of people you really don’t want to be friends with anyway.

The hard and unfixable issue is that a not insignificant portion of our countrymen have a very dark and primitive core to their brainstem. It is an ancient core, one that has always been with our species.

A nationwide poll last month found that 10 percent of those surveyed said the “use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.”

That is your baseline core, your minimum numbers, well north of 33 million Americans.

On top of that, you have another percentage, harder to measure, but happy to create the conditions for violence. They even have representation in Congress.

Today, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), Ranking Member of the Committee on Homeland Security, introduced the Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable Former Protectees Act or the DISGRACED Former Protectees Act (H.R. 8081). This legislation would reform the U.S. Secret Service’s protective mission by automatically terminating Secret Service protection for those who have been sentenced to prison following conviction for a Federal or State felony—clarifying that prison authorities would be responsible for the protection of all inmates regardless of previous Secret Service protection.

Those who have signed on to the bill are:

• Rep. Carter, Troy A. [D-LA]

• Rep. Lee, Barbara [D-CA]

• Rep. Wilson, Frederica S. [D-FL]

• Rep. Clarke, Yvette D. [D-NY]

• Rep. Watson Coleman, Bonnie [D-NJ]

• Rep. Crockett, Jasmine [D-TX]

• Rep. Beatty, Joyce [D-OH]

• Rep. Cohen, Steve [D-TN]

What that means, in our incredibly heated political environment where everyone to the right of 2024’s Mitt Romney is Hitler, is a kind of Bill of Attainder designed either to get someone killed or to bankrupt them - probably both.

No one operating in good faith can pretend that from the media to politicians, the images and words attacking former President Trump have not brought the fringe to the mainstream. It has to stop—and I’m not going to wander into bothsidesism. It isn’t even close.

Then you have the cohort of people I found when reading through the timeline of a couple of left-of-center social media accounts I follow. They were brimming with a stew of whataboutism, conspiracy theories, and direct and indirect disappointment that the shooter was a better shot.

What percentage does that bring us to?

Then we have the group of people, I’m not sure what kind of sociopathy this is, who in the first hour after the shooting made the pitch that this was in some way the fault of Pennsylvania’s gun laws. This is the transition from hard bad-faith to just petty partisanship that refuses to acknowledge the very non-partisan evil political assassinations represent in such a diverse republic as ours.

Even Senator Sanders (D-VT), a man of the left if there ever was one, stepped up early on to say the right thing - this has no place in our system.

Our traditional media was disgusting - CNN was the worst - calling this everything but what it was, an assassination attempt. They are so sociopathically political they could not do straight up reporting until they were sure which way did or did not align with their leadership’s desired political outcomes. Most finally moved into a respectful zone, but the initial hours was a clarifying moment.

What percentage does that bring us to? Less than 20% or more?

It does not matter, but what does matter is that these political sociopaths always keep an eye on one thing: power. What messages is the leader of their tribe sending out? From the very top on down, the language needs to be dialed back or copy-cat, revenge, or just the unstable looking for an excuse will take others in their sights as well.

From that position, we bring ourselves to the easier problem, the second on our list. We have another data point that what are supposed to be our elite governmental institutions are anything but.

Congress must hold oversight hearing as soon as possible about what is going on at the US Secret Service. They only need to call one person, U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. She isn’t just underqualified for her job, what she is most know for is her DEI Uber Alles “30 by 30” view of her primary mission.

How is that working out for everyone?

Just watch the video below and tell me this is some kind of elite protection service for our political leaders.

Who decided that someone 5’3” can effectively physically secure a 6’3” man? Why are there so many 5’3” people, many clearly out of shape, some cowering, some cannot even handle their weapons properly or know what to do, guarding one of the most threatened politicians and a former President trying to be the next President? I don’t care how much attitude you have, an out of shape 5’3” person can not physically secure a 6’3” man who weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 240 lbs.

There are a few in the incident response who seem to know their job, but they don’t seem to have ever trained together and many of them seem to have forgotten much of their training. Your own eyes can show you that former President Trump’s security detail had a core of solid professionals, but the cadre was fleshed out by the D-team. In a nation as larger and as rich as ours, in the week prior to the convention for the political party whose head was almost killed, for this to be the state of affairs is a national disgrace (another one) and a crisis.

What were the Rules of Engagement?

135 meters, on a roof, in daylight, seen by people in the crowd and it appears members of the security detail - one of whom reports have running away from him before a shot was fired - how?

We don’t know much this Monday AM. Some of what we think we know will in time prove incorrect. We will find out more details in the days and weeks to come - but what is clear is this; we have too many people in this nation who are OK with political violence - including that which digs a bloody trench from Eugene Simpson Stadium Park to the Butler Farms Show Grounds.

We also know that we have - again - evidence that we have the wrong people with the wrong ideas running institutions they are unqualified to lead and that our nation cannot afford such a lack of effective stewardship of our inheritance.

The number of unserious people in critical jobs, and no one being accountable for failures of epic proportions, is - to repeat myself for emphasis - a national disgrace and crisis.

We need to do better. Fewer excuses. Less tolerance for poor performance. Better appreciation of a democratic republic. More fear of allowing our base nature to control our destiny.

Don’t forget: people are policy. Policy impacts lives, for better or worse.

A republic cannot rely on unpredictable wind for its future.