Lone Gun Theory

The recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump (and murder of a spectator), has prompted much speculation about the shooter and his motives.

Today the head of the Secret Service was grilled by the House oversight committee, who had some pretty blunt questions about how this happened. But in the moments after the attack, the first thing being asked was who did it. The gunman, Thomas Crooks, had been killed on the spot by snipers.

Various photos of him were quickly shared on social media, with the community diagnosis that he was an “incel” or “redditor”. While further information (like whether he left a note or manifesto) has not been made public, people were pretty quick to fill in the blanks themselves.

As John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich wrote yesterday in the Washington Post:

“Where he fits into the ever-expanding catalogue of notorious American gunmen could take years to understand, according to experts and historians. He’s hard to categorize, in part because his still-evolving portrait evokes the profile of a mass shooter, at least one of whom he researched. But Crooks wasn’t a mass shooter, instead becoming what some historians believe to be the youngest person to make an attempt on the life of a current or past president.”