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Notes -
Trump shot during rally.
The biggest news. The biggest! It literally just happened. I don't know what to say. Commentary beggars one's belief. I apologize for the brevity of this post, but the implications of it are mind-boggling. Political violence has escalated (perhaps, degenerated) into new levels of unforeseen disaster. What do you Americans think?
Interestingly, the New York Post describes the shooter as “a Chinese man.”
Not sure what to make of that, but that seems to me to be a strike against theories of “antifa” and “right-wing schizo”, although obviously more info is needed. (Do they mean “Chinese-American” or “a Chinese national?)
Post updated it to say 'white male'. Disappointing that we won't kick off 2025 with a declaration of war against China 'for trying to get at me'.
The only question now is leftist, psycho or deep state. My money is 50/40/10. I put no money on foreign assassin, but it'll be fucking wild if it is.
100% on psycho but
30% leftist
20% Muslim
20% Identifiably right wing
5% Christian extremist
25% total dingbat
I confess to forgetting about muslims. If its a palestinian (black haired man, so not a small chance its an arab) with a social media history of pro-palestinian leanings I will fucking laugh. I think an attempt will be made to make the shooter right wing regardless of leaning, like how Europe defines muslim antisemitism as right wing because islamism is a right wing ideology according to the authorities. In this case if the shooter at any point expressed concerns about state overreach he will be cast as right wing, if the fact that he held a gun without bursting into flames isn't enough for that label to be thrown.
If its MUSLIM, fully expect it to be entirely memory holed and for endless pro-islam marches to be made. Pulse nightclub is now cast as a right wing incel attack, and the Fort Hood and DC sniper attacks are also forgotten. Fuck even 911 is forgotten by leftists who find it irritating that America dared to strike back against brown terrorists.
I honestly doubt its a right wing gun nut. Any gun enthusiast will know that a .22 is a joke round and will go for .223, 30-06 or .308 for an assassination. Someone using a .22 seems just bafflingly incompetent.
As someone who doesn’t know about guns, what’s the difference? And why not the common 5.56 round?
.223 is just a cheaper generic version of 5.56. .223 is technically a lower pressure round than a 5.56 but they're interchangeable in any firearm chambered for them.
.22 is a small round not recommended for using to shoot at anything bigger than a squirrel. A sniper in particular should be using a deer cartridge like .308(the standard US military sniper round) or 30-06, both of which are substantially bigger and more powerful rounds than a .223 which is more powerful than .22.
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Simplified version: 5.56 is .223, 5.56 uses the same bullet as .22 but throws it a lot faster. Speed makes aiming way easier, and just like in car accidents, speed kills.
We don't know yet. Shooters of this type tend to be shockingly incompetent (generally because there are other things wrong with them)- and making aiming harder in a life-or-death situation and using a round that isn't sufficiently powerful is incompetence.
I think you meant to say .223.
No, .22 and 5.56 use what is, functionally, the same projectile; the simplest explanation for 5.56 is just a .22 with anger issues.
Sure, the projectile for 5.56 needs to be pointier and covered in copper so it doesn't disintegrate due to spinning at ~300,000 RPM, but it's not meaningfully different in terms of weight (from "slightly heavier" at 55-62 grains to "exactly the same" at 40) and identical in terms of diameter.
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.223 is, essentially, 5.56. There's some variations between the two as .223 specifications were developed by civilians and 5.56 specifications were written by the military, but it's essentially the same round for most practical purposes, and most guns can fire most loadings of the two rounds interchangably.
.22 refers to .22 Long Rifle, an extremely weak round used for hunting rabbits and target shooting. The .22 LR has the same bore diameter as a .223/5.56, but has a significantly shorter and lighter bullet, and fires it at significantly lower velocity; 1000 feet per second, rather than the 3000 feet per second of the later. .22 LR would be an extremely poor choice for an attempted sniper assassination; it's plenty accurate at a hundred yards, but the low velocity means bullet drop, wind drift, and lethal effect are all greatly reduced. A perfectly-centered .22 shot to the head from a hundred yards has a so-so chance of killing the target. Anything less than perfectly centered and it's entirely possible the round would deflect off the skull or fail to penetrate into the brain.
By contrast, a perfectly-centered 5.56 to the head from a hundred yards is a modulo-certain instant kill, and has a decent chance of literally blowing their head apart from the hydraulic force of the impact.
Reminds me how this is a plot point in Day of the Jackal, where the assassin deliberately picks explosive rounds to make up for it.
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To add on to this, @mdurak, 5.56 is basically .223 described in international-standard (rather than American) terms, in order to aid military standardisation among NATO. .223 means "0.223 inches across the rifle barrel, in the rifling grooves" - imperial measurements and the American practice of measuring calibre across the grooves. 5.56 means "5.56 mm across the rifle barrel, not in the grooves" - metric measurements and the international practice of measuring calibre across the ungrooved parts of the barrel (the "lands"). (5.56 mm is, as you might expect, very slightly less than 0.223 inches.)
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