Originally published at: https://peakprosperity.com/experimental-proof-charlie-kirks-neck-could-not-have-stopped-a-30-06-round/
Charlie Kirk Shooting Recreation
The official story of Charlie Kirk’s public execution/murder is that Tyler Robinson, acting alone, used his grandfather’s old Mauser Model 98 .30-06 from the roof of the Losee building at UVU, sending a single round 140 yards into Charlie’s neck where the bullet somehow took a hard pivot and went down into Charlie’s body instead of exiting out the back.
Unsatisfied with this from years of gun range and ballistics experience, I decided to have Nick from the Peak Prosperity team run some experiments for us all. Today, we’re going to conclusively answer the question, was Charlie Kirk shot with a .30-06 from the purported position on the Losee building at UVU from a distance of 140 yards? Secondarily, we also wanted to see if we could recreate the movements of Charlie’s shirt and address the broken necklace chain.
After these experiments, cutting to the chase, here’s what we have concluded:
- There’s no chance a neck muscle-only trajectory stopped a .30-06
- There’s no chance even a bone involved trajectory stopped a .30-06
- The gel-block shots recreate Kirk’s shirt and necklace movements almost perfectly
- The audio data from the shooting is fully supportive of the conclusion that Charlie was struck by a supersonic round, almost certainly fired from a rifle
And here are three things to ponder:
- Hypothesis: For a .30-06 round to stop in Charlie’s body, as has been claimed, he would have to have been shot at very steep angles, both downward and side-to-side
- Otherwise, we’d have to entertain extremely exotic .30-06 rounds. or possibly another caliber entirely, which we will do if or when such evidence is presented
- If Tyler Robinson’s defense does not adopt this data, they are in on the fix
To do this, my team spent roughly 4 days and ~$10,000 to replicate the conditions as closely as possible. To simulate a human neck, we used pork “picnic” roasts to match the diameter and muscle density of a human neck.
Further, some of them were “bone-in” and so we shot straight at the bone to see if that might stop or at least meaningfully deflect a given .30-06 round.
We bought a camera capable of capturing 480 frames per second (fps) and used a second GoPro camera capturing 240 fps.
Because the FBI has not yet released any details about the actual brand and load of the ammunition found in the purported murder weapon, an old Model 98 bolt-action Mauser, we used three different .30-06 loads to see if any could be stopped by a human neck.
So, we used 150-grain full metal jacket (FMJ), an 180-grain ballistic tip hollow point (HP), and a 220-grain soft point (SP). These are the most common loads you might encounter if you walked into a sporting goods shop and bought .30-06 ammo. All were shot from a Remington Model 700 bolt-action .30-06 to mirror the Mauser Model 98 bolt-action closely.
Spoiler: after 38 shots at either the muscle only, or straight through the bone in the center of the roasts, no bullets were stopped or even meaningfully deflected. None. Zero. Nada.
All of them not only went straight through the roasts, they did so easily and with a lot of power to spare, dragging along huge plumes of pork bone and muscle ejecta.
As a second order of business, we wished to see if we could mimic and film the behavior of Charlie’s shirt and broken necklace, which has been the cause of quite a bit of internet speculation.
Many have thought that the movement and puffing out of Charlies shirt must have been the result of an explosion, and worked diligently to explain it that way, but our results clearly show that the cavitation event caused by a high energy rifle round perfectly mirrors what was seen that day.
Only we’ve got it in high def and a high frame rate, so our brains can make better sense of it all.
Three out of three times, the necklace Nick hung around the gel block broke, despite never being hit by a bullet. The cavitation alone was sufficient to break it.
The violence of the .30-06 was captured over and over again in high def, showing almost unbelievable cavitation damage that easily mimicked the chest and neck expansion we saw on Kirk that day, as well as the wild t-shirt movements.
Gel Block Shot #2: Before the shot
Gel Block Shot #2: Frame 3 @ 480 fps (6.25 /1000ths of a second after shot) showing t-shirt flying away from gel block and neck expansion
Gel Block Shot #2: Frame 32 @ 480 fps (66.7 /1000ths of a second after the shot) showing chain broken and cross pendant flying away
Those who say, “Well sometimes bullets do strange things…I once saw a deer wound that…” simply aren’t aware of the physics involved. Those who see strange bullet wounds on the battlefield probably aren’t accounting for the calibers involved (.556 is not even remotely comparable), or the trajectories involved (ricochets, or being shot at a steep angle because of lying down, or from a very far distance, which changes the terminal velocity and performance data enormously, etc.).
Our data shows that a .30-06 round fired from 100 yards is a true beast of a round, and a human neck, either with bones involved *or not*, is simply no match. At least not at a relatively flat 10-degree angle.
Now a steeper angle…that’s another story.
Or an exotic round. Or possibly it wasn’t a .30-06 at all.
But without the autopsy data, or X-rays, or the actual cartridge supposedly used, we’re still in something of a guessing game.
We call on the FBI to release the appropriate information to limit the guessing. We call upon TPUSA to release the other footage they have. We call upon the state of Utah to release the autopsy photos, X-rays, and/or other data.
Or, at a minimum, we call upon Tyler Robinson’s defense team to gather this data and work with a competent crew who can help parse the data appropriately.
Until we get more data, our conclusion is that Charlie Kirk was shot with a high-powered rifle round, possibly a .30-06, but not from the stated location on the Losee building. The actual shooting location had to be both at a higher angle and a steeper off-axis location.
That’s the only way a .30-06 round could have possibly stayed within his body.
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