Some Thoughts on the Recent Would-be Assassin in Washington, D.C. and His Lack of Firearm Knowledge and Comic Book Fantasy Hero Nexus
Another side step from the garden and colored corn patches and into American politics and society. My brother likes to give me a bad time that my Substack postings are rather long so this is a shorter one but I see it’s still over 2,000 words. Oh well, that is just my style, I never was a journalist or reporter who needed short copy.
I’ve owned some version of a Mossberg pump 12-guage shotgun for almost 50 years. It’s a solid and non-finicky firearm, sort of like the older Chevy Impalas; not much for being flashy with lots of extra bells and whistles but something useful as a utilitarian tool. One feature of the Mossberg 12-guage pump is that the barrel can be quickly taken off or put back on compared to a number of other shotguns. That’s useful for bird hunters who also want to hunt waterfowl where a magazine “plug” is needed to obey a 125-year-old federal law that restricts the ability of a shotgun to hold no more than three shells to hunt ducks and geese. The magazines of most shotguns that can hold more than two shells (think a double barrel) is a long tube with a spring that is under the barrel. The number of shotgun shells (or more generically “rounds” in overall firearm parlance) that a Mossberg pump (and a number of other brands) can hold are six standard length (2 ¾ inches long) shells, with one in the chamber (ready to fire) and five in the magazine. If using heavier loads (by weight) 3-inch shells, then the gun’s holding capacity is reduced to five with one less in the magazine. Stay with me, there is a reason why I’m giving all of these technical details, and some more yet to give.
My current Mossberg pump 12-gauge shotgun that I probably bought sometime in the mid-1980s or so. If you don’t know why shotguns are classified with “gauge”, it’s an old English (I believe) term of how many lead balls the diameter of the bore of the gun it would take to make one pound (454 grams) in weight.
The reason why a “shotgun” has the word shot in it is because, in most cases, the shells are holding many lead or steel round pellets inside a plastic “wad”. The wad holds this loose stack of pellets together as it travels down the shotgun’s barrel after firing but then quickly falls away as it loses velocity whereas the denser and more ballistically efficient pellets head down range at 1,300 to 1,500 feet per second (396 to 457 meters per second) as they spread away from each other. The further the pellets fly, the wider the spread, the closer the shot, the tighter the spread. The standard 2 ¾ 12-gauge shell total projectile weight is 1 ¼ ounces (35 gm), with steel loads being a bit less in weight than lead. The smaller the pellet size, say for smaller game such as doves, partridge, and bunnies and squirrels at closer range, the more pellets there are, thus a denser “pattern” of the shot spread. The larger in diameter of the individual pellets, the fewer in number within the entire shell load.
The heaviest pellet shell that can commonly be found is called “buckshot”, with the heaviest of that being “00” buck. For a standard 2 ¾ inch shell, there are 9, 30-caliber (about a third of an inch [or 8 millimeters] across) 00 buck pellets. These have far more “foot pounds” of terminal energy than say #6 or #4 shot used to hunt pheasants or earlier season ducks. At close range, a center of mass hit by 00 buckshot can be devastating, at further range it will clear alleys of rioters who would often be wounded by a pellet or two but usually not killed. That’s why old police, non-SWAT long guns were pump action shotguns often called “riot guns”.
An old Remington 870 pump police shotgun. It holds two more rounds in the tube magazine than the previous Mossberg and has a shorter barrel. This particular Remington was manufactured in the late 1950s.
Two last technical details, with the first being what is called a “choke”. This is a slight diameter restriction on the end of a shotgun barrel that can help the shot column to stay tighter (or not) together as the pellets leave the gun. Waterfowl hunting is often the longest range using smaller pellets so a “full choke” keeps the shot spread denser of pellets at say 50 to 60 yards (46 to 55 m) than other chokes. The choke that is the loosest (besides no choke at all) is called an “improved cylinder”, which is what typically were on police riot guns because at 30 to 50 or more yards (27 to 46 m), the pellets would tend to do more wounding than actual killing, and thus allowing a suspect to be captured or to “clear the streets”.
The other aspect is that a shotgun can shoot a single projectile, usually called a “slug”. These are often used for deer hunting in certain states, such as southern Minnesota or Iowa (at least in the past) because their overall effective range (before they start heading towards the ground) is about 100 yards (91 m) or a bit more, much less than lighter and faster “spun” bullets leaving high powered rifles. Old fashioned “flying man hole covers” 12-gauge slugs weren’t that much different than American Revolutionary War musket balls, although modern shotgun slugs are more ballistically efficient, now often using saboted, sub-barrel diameter projectile. A shotgun slug has great penetrating power at close range and with typical sheet-rock walls of a common American house, can penetrate several rooms before running out of terminal energy.
The would-be White House Correspondents Association dinner assassin, in his “manifesto”, made a rather big deal about his choice of not using shotgun slugs because they might penetrate the walls of the ballroom and injure innocent hotel staff, thus his shotgun was carrying some sort of shot shell, mostly likely buckshot if he actually hoped to kill POTUS or some other member of the government that was in attendance. Of course, this was based on his fantasy of actually getting into the ballroom where his desired targets were located. The reality was that Mr. Allen was stopped on the floor above the ballroom and would still had to have come down another flight of stairs and a bit more hallway before being able to get to his targets. And he mostly certainly would have faced more armed federal law enforcement within that space, so the chances of him getting into the ballroom were fairly low for even as far as he did get.
However, let’s say that the would-be bad guys fighting Super Hero had managed to get into the ballroom where POTUS and over 2,000 other people were located, how would have Allen’s revenge fighting probably played out? He would have had his six-shot shotgun loaded with buckshot or at least heavy “goose’ pellets, his pistol (probably a standard 15 or so round vertically staggered magazine with his type of pistol firing single projectiles per round that move out at about shotgun velocity or a bit more), and his collection of knives for final, direct person “combat”. What would have the warped mind Super Hero probably accomplished before being gunned down by federal agents within the ballroom?
A typical staggered magazine for a semi-automatic pistol (this one is in 9mm). The magazine can hold 15 rounds, although currently its only loaded with nine to avoid wear on a fully compressed spring.
First of all, Mr. Allen most likely would not have been able to get off six shots with his shotgun unless he was just firing blind into the room as fast as he could work the trigger, firing pin, and pump. If his loads were buckshot, he would have probably done a lot of wounding with his shot spread unless he was shooting at the closest people. I’m not sure where Allen would have entered the ballroom if he would have gotten down the flight of stairs and through the last hallway but let’s say it would have been at the side of the stage where the Vice President was located, who was also the first one off of the stage via his security detail. That would have been the only one of his main “targets he might have gotten a close up enough shot to hit with most of the pattern of a buckshot load. Otherwise, Allen would have probably wounded people on stage in various degrees with his shot load spread because of using a looser choke on the end of the barrel.
But let’s say that Allen would have entered the ballroom further down from the stage and tried running up the outer pathway near the wall towards where POTUS, the First Lady, and the VP were sitting, firing at least a couple of rounds at maybe one or more of his recognizable targets that were out in the main crowd, where the cabinet secretaries were located. Secretary Hegseth and POTUS’ advisor Steven Miller both were standing, shielding their pregnant wives in the room, but mostly likely too far (Hegseth) for Allen’s buckshot pattern to be very effective. Most likely Allen would have killed some unlucky dinner attendee who happened to be the closest to him when he stormed the room. He truly would have needed to be “Super Hero” lucky (or magic) to nail one of his main targets.
And Allen would have never been able to reload his shotgun before getting effective return fire. That is one of the reasons why infantry men work in pairs because if one of them has to drop a mag and replace it with a fresh one, the teammate can cover him—I’m sure it’s a bummer to run out of a mag when you are in the middle of shooting at bad guys at fairly close range (full disclosure, I’ve never been in combat or had to shoot at anyone). If Allen would have survived getting his six shotgun shells off, he most likely would have dropped that weapon and reached for his semi-auto pistol. Hitting a person with a pistol is more difficult than using a shotgun or a rifle because with the latter two weapons, a person usually has the butt up against a shoulder and thus stabilizing the platform with a steadier hold and getting better target alignment.
Allen would have most likely been firing wildly with his pistol but those individual bullets would have had more terminal energy than individual buckshot pellets, so potentially more lethal at medium range (25 to 30+ yards). Again, Allen’s nailing of his specific administration targets would have had a low probability and so he would have ended up hitting non-target dinner attendees. It’s doubtful he would have been able to empty his 15 or so shot magazine without being rendered incapable of any action by the coalescing federal security details. And he sure as shit, to put it vernacularly blunt, would have had almost no chance to use his three knives he was carrying when he was captured.
The above “analysis” on my part shows that Mr. Allen was delusional or naïve at best about his strategy and any success that it would have had and most likely is at least partially psychotic in reality. His idea that he could actually do any real damage to the current national leadership that was in the Washington Hilton ballroom that night was probably the result from playing too many adult super hero video games where the good guy can always wail (mostly) on the bad guys as a player works their way up the gaming proficiency ladder. But digital gaming isn’t reality and even smart people, especially if wired a bit “differently”, can be led astray that their screen reality can become actual reality. Luckily or through the hand of Providence nobody in the ballroom and even Mr. Allen himself suffered serious wounding or death in his fantasy. As some security experts have stated in the aftermath, next time it might not work out as well if a similar determined but much more heavily armed, including good amounts of explosives, small group tried the same attack. Hopefully federal security officials learn from their overall venue mistakes and plan for just such a small group assault. And those such killers probably don’t even play video games…
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