I hope all these sources get on the same page soon because I have some old head friends who read all this stuff and believe he was a Chinese national working for the Iranians, set up next to snipers in a building cleared by locals. They say he was then confronted after he climbed a ladder but before he bear-crawled 25 feet to aim, only to be interrupted by local cops forcing him to fire quickly but was killed by snipers who had been watching him use a range finder for hours.
Please get it together, all these 50-year-old conspiracy theorists are going to start having heart attacks lol.
One sniper inside spotted the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, outside and looking up at the roof, observing the building and disappearing, according to the officer who spoke to CBS News. The sniper observed Crooks as he returned to the building, sat down and looked at his phone. At that point, one of the local snipers took a picture of Crooks.
Next, the local sniper observed Crooks looking through a rangefinder, an instrument routinely used by marksmen to determine the distance of a target, and he immediately radioed to the command post, according to the local law enforcement officer. The local sniper also attempted to send the photo of the gunman up the chain of command.
Officials then lost track of Crooks, who disappeared, but soon returned for a third time with a backpack. The local sniper team called for backup — alerting the command post that the gunman had a backpack and was walking toward the back of the building.
Two other municipal police officers who heard the call for back-up attempted to climb onto the roof. Butler County Sheriff Michael Sloupe told CBS Pittsburgh station KDKA that an armed municipal officer with Butler Township was hoisted by another officer onto the roof of the building where the gunman had taken a position. Crooks focused his rifle towards the officer who ultimately let go, falling off the roof. Moments later, the shooter began firing into the crowd.
In a reasonable world, Crooks wouldn't have even been allowed to go near the building. In a less reasonable world, Crooks would have been confronted by armed men as soon as they saw him look through a rangefinder. In a world that was the least bit reasonable, Crooks would have been shot the moment he took a gun out of his bag. But here we are.
This is the fundamental problem with protecting a candidate whose entire base is really big on guns, big on having guns on them, big on using every inch of their already permissive rights, and no matter what, the candidate's rally is a highly likely place for them to flex their pieces, even if they can only wave them around in the parking lot.
You can't just do the obvious thing and put rounds in everyone you see with a rifle. White girls are going to be out in the parking lot doing influencer dances with AR-15s. The muzzle might wave in Trump's direction while she boot scoots. We don't know what kind of orders that sniper had, but probably something along the lines of "look all these fuckers are going to be strapped if they can be strapped, stay chilly on the trigger and think twice, take no shots without orders."
By the time anybody acted like a clear threat, the bullets were already flying. So what if he had a rangefinder? That doesn't count as a "pull trigger now" level threat, not with this crowd. What an absolute bastard of a thing to provide overwatch for, you know?
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