“Gun guys” (and gals) across the country can be reliably found rolling their eyes when leftist politicians fearmonger about firearms. Former President Joe Biden was a particularly egregious offender.
“A .22 caliber bullet will lodge in the lung, and we can probably get it out … a 9 millimeter bullet blows the lung out of the body” was a real doozy.
“What happens now with that assault weapon, with an AR-15, it goes in the body, and it explodes in the body,” made about as much sense as Biden’s assertion that the most effective means of home defense is to “fire a shotgun through the front door.”
NETANYAHU SAYS HE WARNED AUSTRALIA OF POLICIES FUELING ‘ANTISEMITIC FIRE’ MONTHS BEFORE SHOOTING
It turns out that the only people more embarrassingly uninformed about how firearms work than Democratic politicians are the increasingly numerous and painfully annoying online conspiracy theorist “influencers.” Tech writer Mike Masnick famously said that “everything is a conspiracy if you don’t know how anything works,” and I would like to take a moment to explain a few basic realities regarding firearms and ballistics.
Directly following the horrific terrorist attack in Bondi Beach, Australia, where two Islamists killed at least 16 Jews at a Hanukkah celebration, social media was bombarded with videos of the perpetrators firing shots into the crowd with rifles, accompanied by unfounded claims that the shooters must be “professionally trained” since they operated their firearms with ease. Of course, this is almost certainly untrue.
The terrorists used straight-pull bolt-action rifles, which are popular in areas such as Australia that outlaw semi-automatic weapons. Straight-pull actions are some of the easiest platforms to become proficient at operating, and the elder terrorist was a member of a gun club and had held a hunting license for a decade, meaning at least he, and likely both shooters, had plenty of experience using a rifle. The Bondi Beach shooters also used red-dot optics, in lieu of higher-powered scopes, to aid with quick target acquisition.
The same claim that a shooter was “professionally trained” hit the internet in force after the assassination of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, allegedly at the hands of the leftist, trans-obsessed Tyler Robinson. “Only a trained assassin could hit the neck at that distance,” cried engagement-baiters across social media, sometimes to their hundreds of thousands, even millions, of followers.
In reality, “trained assassins,” insomuch as there is a vast underclass of highwaymen murdering people for money, would not shoot anyone in the neck. The killer used a bolt-action hunting rifle chambered in .30-06 Springfield, a common choice by hunters across North America and beyond. We don’t know what specific ammunition was used in the assassination, but on MidwayUSA, one of the largest online ammunition retainers in the country, the most common bullet weight for .30-06 hunting ammunition is 180 grains. A 180 grain bullet out of a .30-06 will drop roughly 4 inches at 200 yards (roughly the shot distance, as reported by law enforcement) with a 100-yard zero. The most common distance to sight in, or “zero,” a hunting rifle is 100 yards, which would indicate the neck shot that killed Kirk was a missed headshot.
Another conspiracy theory peddled by YouTuber Ian Carrol and others was the assertion that since the bullet that struck Kirk’s neck did not exit, the bullet must not have been from a .30-06 and, thus, commentators like Candace Owens must be right that Israel, the CIA, the French, the Egyptians, Erika Kirk, the U.S. military, or whoever else was responsible for the killing. It obviously couldn’t be Robinson, whose own father turned him into the police after he confessed and who now faces trial up against a Mount Everest-sized stack of evidence.
Anyone who has done any serious big game hunting understands that this particular conspiracy theory is preposterous. To put it simply: Bullets do weird stuff sometimes. I never served in the military or law enforcement, and neither have I had to use a weapon in self-defense, thank God. So I can’t speak to the effect of bullets on human beings, but on game, I’ve seen bullets fail to exit when they should have, and vice versa. I have needed multiple shots to take down deer at extremely close range, and I have “bang-flopped” deer at longer range.
AUSTRALIA MOVES TO TIGHTEN GUN LAWS AFTER BONDI BEACH HANUKKAH SHOOTING
If you ask hunters with any substantive experience if they were surprised the bullet that killed Charlie Kirk didn’t exit, you will receive a response along the lines of, “Nothing, in terms of bullet performance, would surprise me.” Many hunters use bonded-core or monometal, as opposed to more frangible cup-and-core bullets, to try to avoid inconsistencies, but, still, bizarre things can happen when bullets hit bone.
There is an entire genre of content explaining firearms, ballistics, shooting, and hunting. There are terrific publications geared specifically toward these issues and no shortage of informative YouTube channels. If you are looking to learn how guns and bullets work, seek out a professional, not your favorite social media influencer.
Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.