(UPDATE: 2025-09-16 There is one BIG flaw in my analysis and it is this: believing the weapon was a Mauser pattern .30-06, I assumed the gun still had its original furniture. The same flawed assumption affects Charlie Kirk Murder Weapon. The gun was a Mauser but it’s been sportsterised.
The only long guns I ever owned were 7.62x39mm assault rifles - fun to shoot, and lots of cheap Cold War era surplus ammo was available back then. As an Iowa transplant to Omaha during my gun owning years, there was a local range for pistol/carbine, and outdoor places to exercise the assault rifles when I’d visit my parents. There’s nothing to hunt in Iowa where a rifle like that would be allowed, deer are the only big game, and shotguns with slugs are what the law allows.
I just don’t know much about that class of weapons outside the context of military use. Good thing someone took me aside and schooled me on the topic.)
Charlie Kirk was assassinated yesterday. This is what we know:
One shot from 200m.
.30-06 caliber gun.
Mauser pattern rifle recovered.
Report mentions importer details.
Gunman unknown and at large.
Single empty casing & remaining three rounds had pro-trans slogan inscribed.
White male person of interest image has been released.
Tentative ID of shooter’s shirt is disable veterans gear.
What this tells me, as someone who’s owned firearms for fifty years, who has fired rifles at woodland game up to 100m distant, and who has fired, but never owned a .30-06, are the following:
Probable South American Gun:
You have a Mauser pattern gun in .30-06, it’s very likely a South American military rifle. It was imported, the report mentions that, so rules out the new American reproductions.
Trained Shooter:
This is not someone who bought the gun last week, fired a couple boxes of shells, and then showed up to end Kirk. The .30-06 kicks like a mule. If I were handed a strange gun and two boxes of ammo I think I’d be able to hit a standing 55 gallon drum by the end of the last box, assuming shooting from a prone position. I wouldn’t want to bet on hitting just the end of it. Me hitting a dinner plate sized target at the same distance would be just dumb luck.
There is one huge question here that immediately stops all inference:
Were there optics installed on that rifle?
Until you know that, you don’t know what we’re dealing with here. A modern reflex sight would make a shot at that range relatively simple. If the gun has the standard military ring sight, we’re dealing with someone who has done this for a living.
Shooter Identify:
We have no idea who did this. The purported slogan on the cartridges used has merely been described, not seen. There’s a video of the person but apparently little identifying information. A white male Democratic voter was arrested, then a Muslim man. Both were quickly released.
While drafting this the Salt Lake FBI released this image as a person of interest. The ID of the shirt was done by a hacker scene figure I know and it’s been broadcast.
This remains an unknown and more importantly given what we know about the scene and the weapon used, it EXPANDS the scope of inquiry, unless you’re an ideological idiot who will seize upon one reported aspect as confirmation of your existing biases.
Possible Actors:
Here are some not implausible theories, based on what is known.
Kirk was a hated ideologue, so maybe this is an MTF trans woman who made the shot of her life. The shooter image does not rule out small breasts and a jog bra.
The use of a South American weapon hints just a tiny bit at cartel involvement upon first glance, we must wait for detailed type and importer information to know more, and that information will NOT make it to the press quickly.
If there were no optics installed we are looking for someone who does, or at least did this sort of thing for a living. The required skill is beyond your average infantryman, this person distinguished themselves as more than a basic MARKSMAN, I see a former SHARPSHOOTER opining that this was the work of an EXPERT. Beyond those ratings are the dedicated snipers.
If there are optics then the scope of possible actors expands dramatically. One would only need someone willing to do the act with standard firearms handling skills and a bit of prep time.
Putting it all together, here’s a workable theory:
A professional shooter was given a gun that says “cartel”, ammunition marked to support the “violent trans” trope that’s been going around, transported to the site, they did a bang up job, and then were extracted without leaving a trace. This was not a lone act, it was an organization’s operation.
Which organization? We’re going broad here because we’ve got a couple large, known unknowns, and a bunch of unknown unknowns.
15k - 19k trans military people just lost their pensions. Organizers more than shooters, I don’t think there were a lot of FTM infantry serving today, they’re more likely intel, translators, medical specialists, not combat MOS.
Kirk had recently publicly turned against Israel. Don’t jump to Mossad, also consider wealthy right wing Jews and former IDF willing to end Kirk to send a message, or perhaps to set things in motion.
Cartels have been under stress from their government and ours. Perhaps knocking down an A list right wing figure would have been seen as a means to upend that instead of fighting a war against two nation states.
There has been a recent article here on Six Republican Factions. I don’t know enough about them at this point to guess at which one might engage in red on red accelerationist violence. Some of them do have an end of days ethos.
Much more broadly, there are a LOT of accelerationist right wing groups out there that have the means and motive to do something like this, while trying to cast blame on someone else. And there are plenty of foreign funders.
So there are a variety of explanations but overall it feels gamey to me. Not just a lone nut, someone gamed out what the responses would be and intentionally made this confusing and ripe for misinterpretation.
Precautions:
Having spent a lot of time slinking around the dirty end of the internet, and having a misspent youth before that, these are the things that come to mind.
The gun must be untraceable. No recent form 4473, let it trace back to someone who died twenty years ago, with the wife dead as well, and the estate sale company long gone out of business. Paperless guns are a bit of a fetish, but there are a LOT of people who believe that’s for the best.
The shirt was bought at Goodwill more than six months ago (surveillance video) and the buyer paid cash. Chasing the small volume sales of a speciality shop will lead to a LOT of suspects, but it’ll never resolve.
Shoes are a type never worn before and are not just discarded, they are destroyed along with the shirt after the ground trail breaks. Burning after getting a safe distance away would be best.
There will be DNA on the cigarette butts left at the shooter’s location. Bonus lulz if they were picked up from a female smoker earlier that day.
No phones, not on the shooter, not in the vehicle he left in, just nope. There are radios that would serve for comms and there need not be much for this operation. A spotter in another location with a camera, seemingly taking crowd photos, a few short transmissions about the situation on the ground, that is all.
Vehicle purchased with cash, dealer plates, there are plenty of places in Utah where you could burn a truck in an isolated wash with some shoes and a shirt inside, then just drive away.
The big issue here are phones. They’re going to have all the data from every cell tower in the area. I’d have cash burners and they’d be turned off in a steel box two hours before hitting the city limits. Then they get smashed first, fragments tossed out the window going down the interstate on the way out.
I’ve been dealing with right wing extremists for the last fifteen years and sober for thirty. I meant what I said about misspent youth, a couple of those thoughts are based on personal experience in the late 1980s to mid-1990s. I saw people who were not detail oriented given years to think about their mistakes. I seldom have to learn the same lesson twice, since 2010 I’ve been proactively reading detailed criminal complaints of the incautious, and that’s been a companion to a lot of counter-insurgency oriented studies.
Conclusion:
We have more questions than answers at 1033 11 Sep 2025. This event seems tailor made to fuel the conspiracy nuts. I will follow up on this post once, either when there is a resolution, or when the flow of new information goes cold for a significant period of time.
The only surprise I feel on this is that it took so long before it happened. The next unwanted milestone will be a mass shooting involving a fire team, rather than an individual. The shift in law enforcement attention from an operational to an ideological focus ensures this is going to occur.
It's inconceivable that someone who made that shot & got away clean left cigs w/ dna.