don’t give the MAGAts breathing room on January 6th

Okay, let’s talk about how guns aren’t magic, why physics matters, and why conspiracy theory wishcasting about the Trump assassination attempt really is a very bad thing to do.

To get the latter sorted first, there are a few key reasons why chasing conspiracy theory bullshit is always a bad idea, and is a particularly bad idea right now.

First: someone around here has to hold on to reality. If you’ve got some evidence – and I don’t mean “tHeSe tWelVE pIxEls hEre” evidence, I mean real evidence – than I’m not talking to you. You aren’t the problem. But everyone I’ve seen pushing this is on Team I Want It To Be True So It Is, which includes both Team Too Damn Convenient and Team Twelve Pixels.

(For the record, “Too damn convenient” absolutely can be a reason to look for evidence, but it is not evidence in and of itself. Similarly, the absence of evidence is not evidence.)

Second: This is MAGA thinking for the left. It really is. We don’t need a MAGA, we already have one at home. Please stop.

Third, and most important by far: stop giving them a counter-conspiracy to balance January 6th.

Their big lie about the January 6th insurrection is that it was fake, that the media are lying about it, that the media are overplaying it, in the face of all the visual and audio evidence in front of people’s eyes.

To the “low information voter” that I keep talking about, particularly white ones, arguing without real fucking good evidence that the shooting was a “set up” or a “con” looks exactly the same as MAGAts arguing about January 6th not being a riot, or an insurrection.

It balances the two in the eyes of the white low-info voter, and those are people we absolutely have to reach. It makes you look less credible. The “crazies” all have to stay on their side, thank you – doubly so since actual reality, all by itself, does in fact sound pretty crazy, even to me, who has seen it coming for a long, long time.

Don’t set a fleet of that up on our side too.

Now, let’s talk about why the arguments going around don’t work.

The first is the “glass shards” argument, in particular the “teleprompter glass shards” version which was the first to gain traction, and is still coming up. I’ve already talked about this, but to sum: the teleprompters were fully intact after the shooting and there are pictures taken immediately after, as in mere seconds after. It’s not glass shards.

The second is, “those weren’t real bullets.” One dead and two others injured are a fuck you very much to that argument, so shut the hell up right goddamn now.

The third is this image, which I will deface:


 

The idea being presented here is one of These Massive Things can’t touch any part of you without completely tearing that part up. Even that’s not true, but more importantly, these aren’t what get fired from a gun.

These aren’t what get fired out the muzzle of any gun!

(Well, other than a Portal turret, but Portal’s a videogame, and that was a bit. So stick with me here.)

The only part that’s actually fired is the little bit at the end. The much smaller tip. That’s the actual bullet. The image above shows three rounds, which, to be fair, are often called “bullets” in shorthand. But they’re made of multiple parts, only the smallest of which is the actual bullet.

The big part is called a cartridge, and it’s filled with the second biggest part, the gunpowder packing.



In this image, we have an AR-15 being fired. The bullet goes towards the targets. The cartridge – the biggest part – is tossed away out the side. You can see it, and I’ve pointed an arrow at it in this photo:



Here's the size of the bullet in a standard AR-15 round. It's a .223, which is to say .223 inches, which is to say, less than 1/4" wide, and something like an inch long, depending.



Here that is with a ruler and two common small pens for comparison. One pen is a Sharpie Fine Point, the other is a Pilot G-2.


 

I knew the direction and general path of bullet travel as soon as I studied the video and listened to witness descriptions in the first hour or so after the shooting. I knew it went parallel alongside the length of his head, clipping his ear, just like the later photo confirmed. From the blood trails, I thought maybe it’d been even closer than it was, but I was within a couple centimetres of actual trajectory so I’m pretty happy with my analysis.

You see, I used to shoot, both archery and firearms. I was a gun club member, for a little while, and considered a pretty decent shot, particularly with a pistol. And I don’t expect people to know this stuff in general, which is why I’m explaining it here.

The damage caused by AR-15 rounds is due to the speed of the projectile, not the size. k=½mv² – adding more kinetic energy – impact, effectively – to a bullet is far more easily done by adding speed, not mass or size. (And there’s the promised physics.)

That speed is, ironically, one of the many reasons this kind of wound is very credible, even without the other photos. It cracked across the top of his ear and wasn’t slowed down by it much at all. It didn’t get diverted, it didn’t bounce around somehow on his ear like a superball. It kept on going right through that thin, thin tissue, leaving a wound behind.

And yes, it could’ve gone through his ear – not just grazing it – and still kept going.


 

The shooter got off one good but rushed shot, because he’d been discovered and had to shoot before he really wanted to, we know that now. Then he took a couple of not-so-good shots, and then some desperation shots before the Secret Service took care of him. I was confused by those later shots, at first – until I found out he’d been discovered before he could pick his actual best moment to fire.

You see – an AR-15 is a pretty high-precision rifle. It’s not a spray-and-pray like the old AK-47 that was the symbol of “scary military rifle” for such a long time. The old AK was way more focused on sending out as much lead as it could in a short period of time, and it used significantly larger rounds. It was a pretty bad rifle at range.

Now, I admit, to people who don’t know or want to know anything about firearms, they’re both military rifles so look kind of alike, much like a Tesla Cybertruck looks like kind of like a dumpster. And both rifles contain bullets, much like a dumpster and a Cybertruck both contain garbage. But they are still very different, and in ways that matter.

The biggest difference for our purposes here is accuracy. At the shooter’s range,in the hands of someone reasonably well trained, an AR-15 is a pretty accurate rifle. Not amazing, not like some of those guns the Finnish Army snipers carry around, but it’s good. I don’t have direct experience with it, but I know the type.

The point is: that was a tremendously makable shot.

Trump was out there the day after saying if he hadn’t turned his head at the last minute, he’d’ve been killed.

By the time that was reported, I had already come to that same conclusion.

And that’s because, again, I do know a little about shooting. I’m not an expert, I’m just someone who has shot a reasonable amount, been in a gun club, and has read up further for the purposes of writing my stories. (Mostly novels, but not just.) I’m no expert markswoman, but when in practice I’m not bad, and I did do decently well in archery in undergraduate, at the club level.

And based upon my experience, and my knowledge, I counted back in the video from the actual injury – where Trump reacts first, as he starts to grab his ear – to the point in time where the actual decision would’ve been made by the shooter to pull the trigger. The no/no-go moment. And I looked carefully where Trump’s head was, then, and where I knew the bullet had to have travelled.

To the best of my admittedly entirely amateur ability to tell, that shot was aimed right at the back of his skull. A little above where you want to aim if you want to drop someone like a sack of potatoes, but not far off. Close enough. It probably would’ve got the job done.

Now…

Tell me again that this was a fake. Tell me it was a kayfabe.

Or better yet, just fuckin’ keep it to yourself.

109 days remain.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.