While many are praising the Secret Service for their quick reaction to the attempted assignation of former President Trump, I have a completely different perspective. They utterly failed in their duties, and people should be fired because of it.
Every single rooftop in a 500 yard radius should have been secured. Here is why.
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You wouldn’t know it looking at me now, but 23 years ago I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. A huge focus of boot camp was marksmanship training. A famous scene from the movie Full Metal Jacket very accurately highlights what the training is light. There is a clip below.
Marines are trained to shoot from up to 500 yards away using open sites from a prone (laying) position. Imagine what Marines can do with a high powered scope on their rifle.
This means that all Marines who graduate boot camp have the skill to hit a human size target from 500 yards away. Yet, the Secret Service found it necessary to only secure up 300 yards away.
What is even more alarming is that we know the Secret Service is aware of this because many Marines go to work for them after their tour of duty.
A 20-year-old male was able to outsmart what is supposed to be the most prestigious law enforcement group in the country. He did so easily and was able to fire multiple rounds before being shot himself.
There has been no explanation of why these roofs were not secured or why the Secret Service didn’t have a reasonably clear security radius. Anyone who knows how to shoot knows that all of those rooftops in the 300 and 500 yard range are prime locations for shooting a target.
Yet, this shooter not only was allowed to be on a rooftop unmolested, he was found on the closest rooftop. And thus conspiracy theories will start swirling.
Secondly, the way the Secret Service removed Trump from the stage was not handled properly, in my opinion. If I can see his face on TV, a second shooter could have easily seen him and scored another head shot. Yet 70+ year old Trump was able to overpower his Secret Service agents to show his upper body clearly to the crowd.
The building that the shooter was located on has a white roof and would require time and effort to get up onto. Nobody, including Secret Service snipers, saw a man in dark military garb either with a ladder or somehow climbing up the side of a building and setting up and laying on a flat white roof less than 150 yards from Trump. That alone is insane.
Did they have roving guards walking around those buildings? Were they cleared before the event? Was there a hard perimeter, and if so, why didn’t it include those adjacent buildings? Were bomb sniffing dogs present? If the answers to these questions are yes, then the failure is alarming. If the answers are no, that is even more alarming.
This incident reeks of failure on top of failure. Substantial resources should be dedicated to how and why this was allowed to happen. The leadership and staff responsible for the failure should not be able to get a job as a mall cop, much less any real law enforcement position again.
