Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet on Saturday said Charlie Kirk’s surgeon called it an “absolute miracle” that the bullet that killed him didn’t exit his body because dozens of people were standing behind him when he was shot.
“I want to address some of the discussion about the lack of an exit wound with Charlie. I’m usually not interested in delving into most of this kind of online chatter, and I apologize this is somewhat graphic, but in this case, the fact that there wasn’t an exit wound is probably another miracle, and I want people to know,” Kolvet, the executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” wrote in a lengthy post on X.
I mean if it deformed enough to curve into bone I’m pretty sure we don’t call it a miracle we call it fluid dynamics.
Either it didn’t, and this is a lie, or the bullet that hit Kirk was not a 30.06 from ~150 yards.
Somebody is lying here.
Yes, lower caliber rounds can and do actually do what is being described.
Not a 30.06. A 30.06 will blow apart a cinder block at that range, easily.
A 30.06 at 150 yards has about 2200 FT/LBs of kinetic energy.
A .22lr pistol round is much more likely to do what is being described here… even from less than 50 yards, you’re talking more like 100 FT/LBs of KE.
A 9mm at less than 50 yards? Around 250 FT/LBs.
5.56mm? At 150 yards? ~950 FT/LBs.
Again, a 30.06 at 150 yards is ~2200 FT/LBs.
The actual physics of fluid dynamics and composite materials do not work with the scenario we are being told happened.
You know who is well known for covert assassinations with .22LR rounds? And preemptively denied involvement?
I actually don’t know that, what is your answer?
The Mossad, Israeli special forces
Awesome.
Wonderful.
I love this timeline.
… God damnit.
I’m not a expert, but I know a fair amount. I haven’t really gone into any detail examining this though, nor have I kept track of any theories. This guy was familiar with firearms and experienced. I would bet he had access to a loader. Is there a possibility this was a custom load with much less powder than you would normally have? I don’t know how little energy you can give a 30.06 and still have a predictable ballistic profile.
30.06 only describes the size though, technically not the amount of energy. Usually rounds will have approximately the same energy, but it all depends on the load.
For a 30.06 round to be packed with so little, or such degraded powder that it would not penetrate through human bone at 150 yards, to even stand a chance at doing what the surgeon has described, it would need to have a KE of roughly less than 200 FT/LBs at 150 yards.
You typically only see that kind of wound behavior when the rounds invovled are roughly at or less than that amount of KE, either low powered pistol rounds, or moderately powered pistol rounds that have travelled a significant distance, or rifle rounds that have travelled a very, very, very significant distances… or from rounds that are actually ricochets and have thus already bled off a lot of energy, and also likely mass.
What is being described is a straight on shot where the bullet stops ‘just under the skin’, presumably against the collarbone, possibly against a vertebrae.
No wacky internal terminal ballistics trajectories, no shattered bones, nope, just a bit of skin and soft tissue in the way, under an inch.
Also, no body armor, just a tshirt, no one has yet claimed officially that the shot ricocheted off of either armor or the ground or a wall or anything.
An average 30.06 bullet weighs ~180 grains.
To achieve only 200 FT/LBs of energy in that weight, you are looking at about 700 feet per second of velocity.
The average KE of a normal 30.06 round is around 2,200 FT/LBs at 150 yards of travel, has an average muzzle velocity of about 2700 feet per second.
A normal 30.06 round will have bled off maybe 300 to 400 fps after travelling 150 yards, from air resistance, down to 2300 to 2400 fps.
That means our theoretical underpowered, 180 grain, 30.06 for this scenario has to have a muzzle velocity of around 1000-1100 feet per second, less than half what a 30.06 typically does.
So, there, it would have to be a roughly 1/2 to 1/4 as much powder loaded, potentially also just less potent powder, as compared to a typical 30.06 180 grain round.
Sure would be neat if any of the casings with the messages etched into them…were, you know, photographed, and we could see those photos?
As far as I am aware, no pictures of the shell casings and or unfired cartridges have actually been published.
Hand loaded or custom loaded rounds usually have a number of tell tale signs you can use to differentiate them from factory rounds.
Anyway, reduce the muzzle velocity that drastically and you also drastically reduce the accuracy of the shot.
That likely is not even enough speed for a 30.06 to stabilize in flight, it would be tumbling over or around itself, ‘yawing’, not remaining stabilized, on point.
The most underpowered 30.06 rounds I am aware of, without going into custom reloaded rounds…
(which no one has yet even officially posited at all, and which there would be physical evidence of, reloading presses / crimpers, and powder stores and such, but they already searched his home and didn’t mention any of that)
… are managed recoil training rounds, which fire a 125 grain bullet at approximately 2175 feet per second of muzzle velocity.
Thats about 1300 foot pounds of KE leaving the muzzle (thus between roughly half and a third the recoil, thats why they are training rounds), and after 150 yards of travel, it would have about 830 foot pounds of force, and be travelling at about 1725 feet per second.
Still roughly 4x too much energy to just be gently caught by a bone.
It is certainly possible, arguably even almost easy, for someone with moderate marksman training to make the shot Robinson is purported to have made with a normal 30.06 with a scope.
But uh, reduce the muzzle velocity down by more than half, and there is not a single sniper in the world who would tell you they could make that shot, on the first shot, in one shot, because they know how amazingly innacurate such a shot would be, no matter their shooting technique.
https://www.vcalc.com/wiki/30-06-springfield
Here, theres a bunch of ballistics calculators for you, if you wanna run all the numbers yourself.
I haven’t actually seen any evidence that there isn’t an exit wound. I more meant if the load could be low enough to not just explode his neck. That’s the one thing that we can actually know for sure right now. Anything else is just taking other people’s word for things that I’ve seen no evidence of, and seems incredibly unlikely even with a smaller lower energy round. Even a .22 isn’t going to have an issue going through a neck.
Short answer:
No, a 30.06 round that underpowered would not be capable of making that shot.
Longer answer:
The wound profile at that point doesn’t matter, thr shot itself is… not technically impossible, but absloutely absurdly unlikely to make an accurate hit on Kirk, on the first shot and only shot, if Robinson is the shooter, to Kirk’s front.
Also, I am not just taking peoples words for things.
I am a shooter. I have shot weapons. I have gone to different ranges, many times, with different weapons, and different targets.
I can also do the math to try to explain this in technical terms, to convince people like you, who have absolutely no experience with firearms.
I say you have absolutely no experience with firearms, because it is immediately obvious to anyone who does, that none of this makes any fucking sense.
I am just one of the rarer of those people who can do the math and the theory as well.
Here’s the idea:
The gushing neck wound we all saw?
That’s the exit wound.
Meaning, the round did not come from the front, it came from somewhere in the right to the rear of Kirk.
A normal 30.06 round, from the front, where the neck wound is an entry wound, that would have produced roughly a volume the size of a softball being blown away from Kirk’s neck, if not larger.
We have not seen any evidence of any exit wound, if the gushing neck wound is the entry wound.
Were the entry wound the neck gusher, from a 30.06, we should have seen a much larger chunk of flesh removed, there should have been blood and viscera spatter all across that white tent wall behind Kirk, on the ground behind Kirk, and probably also the interior ‘ceiling’ of the tent as well, possibly even on the people standing nearest him.
We should have seen this from basically any close in angle of the shooting.
It would have been apparent from the footage of Kirk’s body being rushed into a car to be driven to a hospital.
There is 0 chance that a normal 30.06 round would not cause a massive exit wound.
None.
There is also a near 0 chance a ludicrously underpowered, custom or massively degraded 30.06 round could have made ‘Robinson’s shot’, in one shot.
Please, go watch footage of guntubers shooting ballistic dummies or other things with a 30.06 to get an idea of how powerful this round is.
If the gushing neck wound is the entry wound, there should be a massive blow out exit wound, like, JFK level chunks of flesh blown off.
The caliber used to blow out Kennedy’s brain was of similar size and power to a a 30.06, from a similar range, if you go with Oswald took that shot.
In fact, that round, the 6.5mm x 52mm Mannlicher-Carcano, is smaller and less powerful than a 30.06, which equates to 7.62mm x 63mm in metric notation.
You’re being rude.
I specifically said taking their word on there being no exit wound. I have seen no evidence of that. Only the word of someone.
I do have experience with firearms. I don’t have experience with a .30-06, or shooting people. I’m assuming you probably don’t either.
I don’t think you can know that. It hit an artery, which has high pressure. It will gush no matter what. It doesn’t matter if it’s the entry or exit wound.
That’s why I asked the question about the underpowered round.
Comparing a shot that hits the skull to one that hits the neck is not remotely similar. To use your language, go watch some guntubers who shoot the fake skull ballistic replicas. Even small round create pretty dramatic effects when they crack the skull open.
I don’t disagree that it’s unlikely a .30-06. I was proposing a possible alternative that I don’t have the knowledge to estimate without putting a lot of effort in. I never made an argument it was the case. I proposed an alternative hypothesis specifically saying I don’t know if it’d make sense.
I don’t care.
From my perspective, you are being rude, with your immense ignorance about firearms and wounds generally, and not being appreciative that I am deciding to apparently waste hours of my time doing a lot of research and analysis that you likely are not capable of, in an effort to explain the answers to the questions and concerns you are asking.
Evidently you have much less experience than myself.
No, I have not shot a person.
I have shot an array of pistol and intermediate rifle and high powered rifle cartridges though, out of a similarly diverse array of guns.
I myself do not even presently own a firearm, but, I grew up in a household that owned a good deal of them, and had ‘gun buddies’ who would allow us to use their weapons at various ranges as well.
Usually we would try to do some kind of even swap for fired rounds, or occasionally reimburse someone if one side chewed through a lot more, or a lot more pricey ammo than the other.
I have only myself shot 30.06 a few times, as I have a fairly thin build and frame, and the recoil is extremely unpleasant.
But I have certainly watched other people shoot 30.06, in person, spotted for them or did range callouts or whatever.
See, I said ‘Here’s the idea’ to convey the concept that it is a theory.
If your only criticism of this theory is that I cannot be 100% certain of it, then congratulations, I guess you don’t believe in any empirically based theory of any kind.
Also, it matters a lot, actually, whether or not the neck gushing wound is an entry or exit wound, because that massivelt alters a forensic reconstruction of the trajectory of the fired round, and thus the position of the shooter.
You evidently did not go for Visual Calculus in your Disco Elysium playthrough.
As to the JFK comparison:
Yes, I know its a rough comparison, I’m trying to baby you through this because you have apparently never seen for yourself what kind of exit wound a 30.06 produces on a deer.
Congrats, it doesn’t, you can thank me for explaining why later, or never, your choice.
I didn’t ask you to do that. Be upset with yourself.
I do not care about your experience. You don’t see me listing mine, because it isn’t relevant. You writing all that out added nothing to the discussion. You can be right with no experience and wrong with all the experience in the world. I never pretended to know it all. In fact, I explicitly said I don’t. I asked a question. You can be civil. I believe in you.
You posed it as a statement of fact. You also said you weren’t taking people’s word for it, and then said something like this, which was totally wrong. I’ve watched enough people die in warzones to know wounds can gush from entry and exit wounds. That doesn’t mean anything.
It doesn’t matter to the fact it’s gushing. Of course it matters for where the shooter shot from. In what world do you feel the need to stretch my words to mean that? It’s the most basic statement anyone has ever made. “If the bullet came from this direction, the shooter must have been in the same direction.” Obviously. Why are you trying to hard to make it sound like I said something I didn’t say?
So you use a totally unrelated situation? Yeah, I haven’t seen it on a deer. I’ve seen plenty of rounds hit people. A shot in the neck, which is pure muscle, is significantly different than a shot to the skull, which is basically a balloon with a hard casing. Hopefully that’s babied down enough for you.
Thanks for putting in the effort. Maybe leave out the insults next time. I didn’t make you do it. Also, maybe don’t misportray stuff that isn’t true, and also stop thinking you’re the smartest person in the world. All you did was Google some stuff. I could have done it too, but I didn’t want to spend my time on it. Clearly you didn’t either, so you shouldn’t have if it made you so uncomfortable. I guess you did it to sound smart, but that information is available to anyone so all it proved is you can use a search engine.
I think the range for total round weight is 55gr-220gr.
But based on what I’m seeing that doesn’t seem to effect the total energy much.
But watching it again, there was no shockwave in his skin either.
If they found the kid with a weapon chambered for 30.06, the 30.06 didn’t kill him. Something else, probably by someone else, killed him which something much smaller.
Or it wasn’t 200yards away and damn impressive shot for a much much longer distance
You know. I hadn’t thought about that. I’ve seen that round hit a deer, and my thinking before was that it instantly killed the deer sort of like Kirk.
But that hole was much bigger and it was knocked clear off its feet. Like it got hit by a car.
Kirk was still sitting upright and the would was far too small.
Yeah, I am enough of a gun nerd, and video game /software nerd, that I have actually made more than one milsim level ballistics simulations as mods or sort of toy models from which to then try and optimize down to something that could work in realtime with many players as a reasonably true to life ballistics and player damage / effects model.
And I’ve also shot a decent bit in real life.
I actually originally taught myself matrix algebra and transforms simply to be able to properly do richochets as a Source mod, way way back.
… Maybe not quite the same degree of fidelity as the people that code say, the actual material physics simulations used to model exactly what different tank rounds would do to exactly what kind of tank armor, how much spalling there would be…
But yeah.
The scenario we are being presented with is indeed miraculous, as in, it completely defies the laws of physics and is literally impossible.
Like, the reason world militaries went down from something like a 30.06 as a mainline infantry combat round, down to something closer to a 5.56 … is that a 30.06 is massive overkill when it comes to killing a human.
You do not need that much power, you rarely need that much range, that much recoil, you can down caliber and still be very deadly, but also now your soldiers have a lighter weapon, more ammo, and can more easily get off multiple, accurate, lethal shots in a shorter time frame.
You do not need your entire armed force to be equipped with roughly ‘sniper rifles’.
not in this country we don’t 😤⛪🙏