Lawrence Person asks the important question:
The Secret Service agent that engaged the would-be Trump golf course assassin missed six shots despite being five feet away.
How does that even happen? How can even you even miss from that close?
It’s a really good, and ultimately important question.
I remember that in a long-ago post castigating law enforcement for being terrible shots, one of my Readers commented that while my comments might be true of the average city cop’s shooting skills, it was certainly not true of dedicated officers like those in the Secret Service.
Ha.
Perhaps the answer might lie in this little tidbit, still from Lawrence:
I’m an adequate shot (not a Secret Service agent who presumably visits a shooting range every month), but I don’t think I could miss a human target from that range.
Forget monthly. How about weekly? Actually (and I admit to not knowing the truth of this), I might be persuaded to bet that the SS quali sessions are annual, or at best quarterly.
And in my own case, I am no more than an adequate handgun shot (as anyone who has shot with me will attest) but bloody hell, I shoot my carry 1911 about three times a month, and if I can’t put all eight shots from my first mag into a palm-sized group at 15 feet (three times more than the five above), I keep shooting until I get at least four mag loads in a row into that area. (If I dump the first mag successfully, I might only do a couple more mags, just to be sure.)
Generally speaking, my first magazine’s boolets tend to end up inside a 2″ hole at 15 feet, with a flyer — and this comes as a result of endless, self-critical practice because as I said, I’m only an adequate handgun shot.
Hell, I shoot my 2″ backup S&W Airweight snubby more accurately than that clueless SS agent, and I only practice with it about every other month. (Which reminds me… I need to shoot it later today — pack a box or two of .38s, Kim, and you might as well do a little with the bedside .357 while you’re there.)
Jeff Cooper would have wanted it that way.
Here’s a thought for whoever’s going to be in charge of the President’s protection detail: weekly quali sessions, with a very exacting standard for marksmanship (e.g. like mine). And for anyone who fails to meet that standard, suspension from the detail for a month — said month to be spent on daily range sessions until the marksmanship improves.
This job is too important to be delegated to Barney Fife types — and especially so as Trump has already proven to be a tempting target for assholes. That hapless agent who missed from five feet should be fired, period.
That I should even have to say all this makes me want to puke.
Maybe the Barney Fife type can be reassigned to the office to move paperwork or sent to Pedo Joe’s detail
I’m calling bullshit.
5′ from where?
The muzzle of the gun?
Or from the shooter’s body?
There’s 2-3 feet of difference in those 2 points.
Regardless, it’s not really possible to be that close and MISS the target.
My guess is that something is majorly amiss in the reporting.
BTW, where did the fired bullets go?
Maybe the SS marksmanship instructor is that guy in the picture of some African rebel holding an AK over his head firing?
It’s my opinion that 99.9% of law enforcement, any branch, is mostly incompetent with firearms. Always has been that way too. Reading history (wild west stuff, early 20’s and 30’s of the last century, etc.) indicates that very few law men were real gun guys. The reason we remember Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill, Bat Masterson, Frank Hamer and others is that they stood out among a vast sea of mediocrity. We simply don’t remember the average retards, of which there were many. The only reason most modern-day cops “win” in gunfights against the bad guys is that the blue gang shows up in greater number, with better gear, and has some (very basic) understanding of strategy. Otherwise they are just chickenshit cowards as evidenced in Uvalde. Meal Team Six is more than just a meme.
I’d wager that for most (excluding free-fire zones like Chicago) we could go the route of the old British Bobbies and have them only carry a billy club and a whistle. It’d be safer for everyone, most especially our dogs, but also domesticated squirrels and raccoons.
As for the Secret Service, I’d like to see Trump fire every manager, administrator, and maybe 90% of the field personnel. Hell, I’d like to see him do that to every single federal agency.
When I was on the Small Arms Competition team in the military we would spend the afternoon four days a week at the range. One day would be rifle and the other 3 on pistol. I can still get all of my shots on a 6″ target at 25 yards with my 92AF INOX.
Back in the Long-Ago when I still had eyes that worked reasonably well I competed in NRA bullseye shooting. That’s (slow) timed fire at 25 yards and along with everyone else I was shooting a 1911 in .45 ACP. I’m not that good a shot, and the best I ever did in competition was to come in 7th out of 25 shooters (I was thrilled). Watching those guys put 5 rounds in the 10-ring with 4 “x’s” was alway amazing. But I practiced about once a week, usually with a .22, and then a couple of magazines of .45. During practice I could occasionally go completely zen, and almost be able to think my rounds into the center of the target. It never lasted long, and I was never able to do it during competition due to the stress/nervousness. But keeping a .45 in a 5″ or 6″ circle at 25 yards gets to be pretty easy after enough practice.
The range where these shoots were held was also used by local law enforcement agencies for qualification shoots. The first time I saw uniformed officers desperately trying to keep rounds on a full-size silhouette target at 7 yards I very nearly laughed out loud, and then realized that it really wasn’t funny, but both sad and dangerous. The overwhelming majority of officers could not have hit the broad side of a barn unless they were standing inside it. But with enough rounds (all taxpayer funded) they could usually, eventually, put all of their qualifying rounds at least somewhere on the target and pass their annual test. They’d load up their service weapons with fresh defensive ammo (they’d usually shoot ball for qualification), and head back out onto the streets now fully qualified to be an Only One capable of carrying a firearm in public. Heck, I’m guessing that a majority of them never bothered to clean their pistol after qualifying.
Of course there are exceptions. Mostly the sheriff’s deputies, some of whom were excellent shots and competed in local IPSC or IDPA. But the huge number of terrible shots in the local LE organizations was a real eye-opener.
The would-be assassin was on the other side of a tall, dense hedge. There’s a reason why only the muzzle of the rifle was seen as it was pushed through the fence. Routh was in shade on the other side of this, which looked to be sunlit on the agent’s side at the time of the shooting: https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/trump-assassination-suspect-hiding-spot-golf-course
I seriously doubt the agent actually had a real glimpse of Routh and was shooting at where he presumed he must be based on the rifle muzzle. Based on similar hedges I’ve walked by, I don’t know that I could’ve done any better, with the additional possibility of the chain link fence or hedge deflecting bullets. Routh did attach two pieces of armor to the fence, as well, but I’ve no idea if a bullet struck one of those or not.
The real crime here is that no agents or local police had secured the assassin’s side of the fence and hedge since it had previously been noted as an obvious problem area. That’s not this agent’s fault, of course, who did have the sense to immediately engage and did thwart the assassination attempt.
One of my cousins is a Secret Service agent, and he did protection detail for 18 years before “aging out” in his early 40’s (so now he is a fraud investigator based in Los Angeles as a holdover from when SS was part of Treasury instead of Homeland Security). I never went to the range with him, but several family members did and they said he was nothing short of amazing and he could do speed shooting (to the point other lanes would stop firing and peek over to see who was doing that) with every shot on target up to about 20 yards before his accuracy seemed to go down a bit. He said he felt he was “middle of the pack” for shooting skills among the agents that he worked with. That said, he was on an “elite team” that trained to be a quick response force and they had to rappel headfirst out of helicopters and such, so he and his cohort may not really be representative of a standard agent.
Still and all, if these other agents we’re hearing about now are missing from much closer ranges, I really wonder if their training is down the tubes, or if the agents are deliberately missing.
99,
Deliberately missing.
No other explanation fits.
.
from the press-release:
* “…How can even you even miss from that close?…”
.
Eugene Oregon.
A couple decades ago, my buddy Dan and I teamed in the mixed leagues at Baron’s Den, the indoor range.
We ridiculed and chastised each other mercilessly anytime one of us did anything other than a One-Hole group at 50-yards (fifty paces).
.
Of course, instead of traditional bull’s-eye targets, we used pages torn from the local marxist weekly or similar nincompoopery such as Cosmo and Mother Jones.
We just needed the proper motivation.
.
Sadly, Baron retired, sold the business to some youngsters.
Apparently, for insurance, those whippersnappers get all kinds of upset if we use human targets.
So, naturally, we quit asking permission.
.
After a session, we return our mandatory-issued targets unharmed with a shrug and the sheepish explanation “All misses…”.
The real problem is that Routh was there nearly 12 hours before Trump even decided to go golfing, but the Secret Service rushed to the golf course just a few minutes ahead of Trump. Routh wasn’t psychic nor had special sources of information. He merely learned, as any local who was interested could, that Trump golfed at this course most days. So he went there, found a hiding place, and waited.
The SS should have had a few agents there even earlier, to spot the good hiding places, to wait and watch for anyone going to them, and to do a security sweep before Trump got there. But apparently they were too stupid to notice obvious patterns in Trump’s movement.