Media: Stop Calling Idiot Shooters “Snipers”

In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Trump, one thing happened that didn’t surprise me at all: people calling the shooter a “sniper.” There was also plenty of other dumb stuff said by “experts” on social media and in the media, as usual, like saying that an AR-15 is especially deadly at long range, that it takes special training to handle the round and that Eagle Scout is an elite paramilitary group.

Yes, I stole that last one from a movie, but you have to admit that it’s an equally dumb statement that would have fit right in.

In this post, I want to explain why it’s foolish for media figures and others to call a shooter like this a “sniper,” and that it could inspire copycats through false glorification of what was really an evil act of mostly dumb luck.

What’s A Sniper?

Before I get into the definition I’d use for a sniper, let’s first get the whole dictionary definition out of the way first:

Let’s break this down into its elements:

• Shoots from a hiding place
• Usually accurately
• Usually from long range

As we’ve seen in videos, the guy did not shoot from a hiding place. People saw him take a ladder, climb onto the roof and then take aim. Nothing about what he was doing was hidden. The only reason he didn’t get shot right away is because it took some time (too much time) for police to notice him and adequately respond, as well as for Secret Service counter-snipers to know that he wasn’t one of the cops that was supposed to be up there. He wasn’t hidden at all and only got shots off due to luck that lined up with incompetence.

So, no, not a sniper, but let’s keep going. Accuracy and long range are important to the definition of a sniper, even if they’re not strictly necessary in common parlance.

When it comes to accuracy, you’d have to accept some very low standards to miss a head-sized target at 125 yards with a rifle. But, I’ll shelf this element because we aren’t sure whether it was bad fundamentals, distraction from a cop who went onto the roof to see what was going on that messed him up or Trump merely moving his head enough in the time to literally dodge the bullet. For all we know, he could have made that shot under other circumstances.

But, it’s indisputable that the shot was not at long range. I’d be impressed with a 125ish yard shot from a pistol, but anyone with much practice can hit a 4-inch target at 125 yards with an AR all day. It requires no special skill or even much dedication to get good enough to make a shot at that short range.

Really, I have a hard time considering anything under 300 yards to be long range, because that’s within chip shot range. For a given target size and a given zero, there’s a set of ranges that require no consideration for ballistics. You can aim straight at the target and still hit it regardless.

For a 6-inch target, XM193 ammunition and a 50-yard zero, anything from zero to almost 300 yards will still hit somewhere on the target. This means that the maximum point blank range, meaning the shooter doesn’t need to hold high or low to make the shot and aiming for a head-sized target for that gun is about 300 yards. To underscore, if you take aim at the center of target and have good fundamentals, you can hit the target without adjusting aim.

So, I’d argue that 125 yards, falling far short of 300 yards, is not long range. It requires nothing but knowledge of basic shooting fundamentals to achieve. You don’t have to get the math wrong. You don’t have to misjudge anything under a 30 MPH wind, either. Expert mistakes don’t have to be made; only rookie mistakes must be made to miss this shot.

When we call shooters like this snipers we risk glorifying what they did far beyond any deserved recognition of skill. A number of dumb mistakes had to happen by both the law enforcement presence there as well as by the shooter for even the missed shot to happen. Making such an unstable fool sound cool in any way risks encouraging other unstable fools to try it, and probably only get themselves, and in this case, other innocent people, killed or wounded.

Instead, we should both take this threat seriously while also making it clear that it was an amateurish attempt unworthy of any real recognition.