An analysis from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (ATF) could not conclusively connect a bullet fragment recovered during Charlie Kirk’s autopsy to the rifle found near the scene of the rightwing political activist’s killing – and the FBI is running additional tests, lawyers for Kirk’s accused murderer said in recent court filings.
In the court filings, Tyler Robinson’s defense team also asked for a delay to a preliminary hearing scheduled in May, saying they need time to review the bullet analysis as well as an enormous amount of other material that could contribute to the suspect’s defense.
The ATF’s bullet analysis report has been kept private, but attorneys have cited snippets in other public filings that say the results were inconclusive.
The defense said in its motion that it may try to use the analysis to clear Robinson of blame during the preliminary hearing while prosecutors aim to show they have enough evidence against him to proceed with a trial.
I have read somewhere that the whole “bullet forensics” process is mostly pseudoscience anyway. A quick search found this article:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-field-of-firearms-forensics-is-flawed/
If a shell casing wasn’t ejected on the scene (like with a bolt-action not cycled) then all they would have to analyze is the what’s-left-of-bullet which is possibly just a mess of lead and copper. May or may not have rifling marks left on it
Yeah, shits not like on TV.
In fact, one of the big reason it’s like that on TV, is just so when cops lie in real life, idiots believe them.
They consistently tell suspects “we know your gun fired the bullet” but they don’t, at most for handguns they can say “a glock fired it” because they use weird octagon rifling.
Matching it to a specific firearm is impossible unless the barrel is real fucked up in a unique way.
A 30-06 will have such massive deformation, I’d be shocked if any rifling is identifiable.
That doesn’t mean the person they claim is the shooter really is tho, all types of shit happened immediately after that only make sense if there was a cover up.
But anyone expecting a bullet to be “matched” to a rifle been watching too much CSI
Yeah, shits not like on TV.

Is that the scene the other fellow ‘helps’ by also typing on the same keyboard?! 🤣

Lovely duet
I’m somewhat of a visual basic GUI expert myself
Yeah, and another guy “solves” it by unplugging the computer.
Yeah the boomer.
Basically CBS is just Boomer Copaganda.
Pick any govt agency with an acronym and CBS probably made a show from it.
It always was, but now that MAGA owns it, it’s getting really bad. They showed up to a murder scene, and it turns out to be some version of law enforcement, and they had to have a forced scene where they all gathered around the body and got emotional about someone they don’t know, simply because he was some cop adjacent person, then got back to work.
Also, all the bad guys are now Muslims and terrorists and immigrants and such. I was expecting that.
I did notice on NCIS that they are still saying Department of Defense and SecDef. Maybe CBS doesn’t approve of Department of War.
The whole CBS line-up is turning into government copaganda - NCIS, FBI, CIA, Marshals, etc.
I was so sad when I found out she was a fake Goth Girl.
Not as bad as when I met Elvira at a signing in the '00s and a middle aged blond woman wearing Mom Jeans and a sweater had taken her place.
Now I’m older and realize that Elvira is very busy and can’t be everywhere at once, so that’s why she hires helpers to fill in for her sometimes.
Now I’m older and realize that Elvira is very busy and can’t be everywhere at once, so that’s why she hires helpers to fill in for her sometimes.
🤭
A 30-06 will have such massive deformation
The article describes a fragment, which is beyond mere deformation. That’s unsurprising with a high-velocity rifle round and would typically be impossible to conclusively match to the weapon that fired it. It could be possible to exclude a particular weapon (wrong caliber, obviously different rifling, etc…).
They don’t seem to be denying fragmentation/massive deformation. In fact, the crux of their comment relies on that fragmentation.
That massive deformation of the bullet comes from massive force, that didn’t happen to kirk’s neck.
The point is that, with the amount of force in applied to fragment this bullet, we do not see a similar amount of force applied to Charlie’s neck. There was no large exit wound, and the projectile did not appear to impact his spine.
That massive deformation of the bullet comes from massive force, that didn’t happen to kirk’s neck.
Have you even looked at the evidence?
Article says “fragment”. Have you seen otherwise?
Did the bullet stop in some conveniently placed ballistics gel behind Kirk?
That round would have turned his neck into hamburger.
Hunting rifles like that are usually going to make a small entrance wound and larger exit wound. I haven’t seen exactly what happened to kirk because I don’t like to watch people die. But I can say from experience with deer hunting that it’s plausible for that rifle to make a narrow wound channel through a person, while being extremely deadly to them, not making a huge wound outside.
Basically those high powered rounds are made to penetrate well through large animals, tougher than humans. Expanding and deforming of the round is intended to begin well after penetration, unlike the way handgun bullets are designed.
So I think it’s totally possible that Robinson did it even though the bullet isn’t able to be matched
The demonstrations I have seen with this rifle, with all types of ammunition including Old World War One ammunition that is less powerful, there’s a fist sized exit wound and bones in the neck would be broken.
But there are other problems with the story, for one thing they claim he disassembled the rifle in one minute and put it in a tiny pack and jumped off the roof with it, and he does not otherwise have it hidden in his pants you can tell. For another thing they brought a bomb / gun sniffing dog through the area where they later found the gun, right by it, the sheriff did, and did not find this weapon, but then the FBI shows up and finds it in the first minute. And obviously they claimed he disassembled it because there is no possible way he could have been carrying a rifle in the video footage of him leaving the scene, but they find it fully assembled. Rather odd, one could say incredible. As in not a credible story. Utah police know it’s a bullshit story this is an FBI fucking Frame Up.
Neat - that in no way answers my question.
Why are you asking me, I am denying it was that gun at all. The story is bs^3.
I’m asking you because you said
That massive deformation of the bullet comes from massive force, that didn’t happen to kirk’s neck.
Have you even looked at the evidence?
It sounds like you’re saying the bullet wouldn’t have been deformed and that you’ve seen some evidence to that end.
Same with fingerprinting and blood spatter analysis. There is very little within the field of forensics that is backed by science. Fingerprints are not admissible evidence in many courts.
“We’re 100% certain the one responsible for destroying the eucalyptus bush is either you or this koala. Why don’t you just admit it now and save yourself some trouble?”
*munches on leaves*
It was the koala!
Eats shoots and leaves!
gangster koala
The sinister panda that has been lurking around the scene of the crime chuckles to itself and capers off.
have you not heard what terrible beings koalas are?
There are points of similarity in fingerprinting, and every state has their own number of points to be a match. They all accept them as evidence.
There are points of similarity in fingerprinting, and every state has their own number of points to be a match.
You mean they bring in an “expert” to testify that the fingerprints match… and when you give 2 “experts” the same set of fingerprints to compare, they literally come to disagreeing conclusions in 50% of tests
It is not a scientific or analytical process with scientifically identified “points of similarity”, its just a person who is deemed an “expert”, who looks at 2 fingerprints and says “yeah these look similar, and they look similar in X different places so 👍”
There are the actual standards, then there are prosecutors perverting them. Prosecutors are the least trustworthy people on the planet. Total pieces of shit, no argument here. But fingerprints themselves aren’t junk science as I’ve read, not like past hair analysis, blood spatter, bite mark analysis, 911 voice recording analysis, or any number of other junk sciences. As I understand it.
But don’t let me dismiss your point out of hand, what gave you this opinion, did you read something as such, you have a source on this?
I searched and couldn’t find any information about fingerprints not being admissible in any courts. I’ve found a lot of stories about how they aren’t 100% accurate (closer to 95-99 percent), but not one story about how fingerprints were not admissible.
Where are these “many courts” that don’t accept fingerprints?
Did you try?
fingerprint evidence is not currently permitted to be reported in court unless examiners claim absolute certainty that a mark has been left by a particular suspect. This courtroom certainty is based purely on the opinion of experts
https://science.psu.edu/news/barriers-use-fingerprint-evidence-court-unlocked-statistical-model
Fingeprints are not admissable, just some guy’s opinion, because fingerprint identification has no real basis in science. Science is not based purely on someone’s opinion. And no, they aren’t 95-99% accurate (especially because it is just some guy eyeballing it), when tested by giving multiple “experts” the same set of prints, the “experts” come to disagreeing conclusions about if the prints match or not over half the time.
Oh, come on. You’re just being pedantic. Fingerprints are allowed as evidence in probably every court in the world, as long as they have been reviewed by an expert. Yes, technically it is the expert’s testimony that is the evidence, but that is the case with most “evidence.” Prosecutors don’t just show the jurors a medical chart and tell them to interpret that evidence. They have a doctor give testimony on why that medical chart means X, Y, and Z.
(https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4008377/)
8% false negative and 0.1% false positive… so 92% accurate in that study. Just slightly better than your “half the time.”
Computers can achieve 60% accuracy with contact-less scanning and 99.5% with contact scanning. A phone app can get 95% accuracy. Again, somewhat better than your “half the time.”
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/history-and-legacy-latent-fingerprint-black-box-study
7.5% false negative and 0.1% false positive.
https://www.uclalawreview.org/reliable-application-of-fingerprint-evidence/
FBI study showed 99.7% accuracy, and Miami Police study showed 95% accuracy.
Partial prints are much less accurate than full prints, but to say that fingerprint analysis is so inaccurate that it isn’t allowed in many courts is disingenuous. Expert testimony on fingerprint analysis is allowed in every court, which is what a normal person would mean when they say fingerprints are allowed as evidence.
I seem to recall that the debate is more about partial prints, which are often all that’s found at a scene. A “100% match” of a small part of a print isn’t the same as a 100% match to the whole print. And even full prints can be of varying quality: the print can be smeared to varying degrees, or on a substrate that allows for diffusion of the print once it’s made (e.g, an oily surface).
not anymore fingerprinting, a study came out recently how fingerprints can be very similar to one or another
And even if it does, they’ll be so mangled as to be useless. Like you could say "ok the rifle has four grooves at 1:8” but you’ve got a fraction of a bullet that was squished into an entirely different shape on impact.
Bullet tracing is mostly a TV fiction. This headline is just the natural state of things.
Especially for 5.56/.223 where one of the major selling points is the cavitation it causes in soft tissue. “cavitation” being a polite term for “makes fucking explode”.
Its why actual footage of mass shootings is so horrifying. Media (and video games that glorify it…) like to paint it as neat little holes when the reality is you have one neat little hole for the entrance wound and a giant fist sized one or larger for the exit.
And all of that does a number on the bullet itself.
… The official story is that Kirk was shot with a 30-06.
A 30-06 is not a 5.56.
The official story is that Robinson shot Kirk with a 30-06, his grandpa’s old bolt-action rifle.
Why are you talking about a 5.56?
That’s nowhere in the article, its not part of the official story / prosecution case.
I don’t think he meant to infer the shooter used a 5.56 or 223. I think he just wanted to flex what he knew about a rifle caliber.
The whole bullet gun fingerprint thing is total bullshit, but it’s not completely impossible to determine caliber depending on the size of the fragment which could rule out a specific firearm.
Edit: I dont fucking trust the forensic analyst either and the article stated there were few specifics. I agree with you but just wanted to point out that it is feasible to rule out some things
Gun “finerprinting” is and isn’t bullshit.
The reality is that for a given configuration of a gun, you do get some rather distinct markings on a bullet. It is less “We can 100% determine this bullet was fired by this bigoted dipshit’s gun so let’s hand it to him so he can dramatically show he took the firing pin out” but you can get within a pretty high level of confidence.
Unless… the shooter cleaned their gun. Even just field stripping can often be enough. Let alone if they actually remove the firing pin and reinstall it (not even replacing).
So it is not useful if someone escaped for days and nobody could find them until they got narced on. It IS useful if you catch them on their way home and they don’t know to do this.
But also? it depends on the bullet being intact. Which, as mentioned above, is not often the case for stuff like 5.56 in soft tissue.
Charlie Kirk’s killing was an inside job. Where was Erika? Where was Trump? Where are the Epstein files?
Erika and J.D. sitting in a tree S.N.I.P.I.N.G.
that made me laugh out loud
I doubt it. It doesn’t make sense to go after him specifically. His reach wasn’t really that big prior to his death. He like many other conservative grifters peaked in 2016, and he’s been declining ever since. It also doesn’t make sense because he’s a big Trump ass licker, and he never really wavered from that. There’s no reason to target him over someone like Tucker Carlson for example.
I think the simplest explanation is often what turns out to be the correct one. I think it’s more likely that some rando who hated him for either being too far right or not far right enough took the opportunity to kill him when they had the chance. Considering how the shooting took place in Utah, there’s definitely no shortage of whackos who would do such a thing.
So when do we get the evidence that this kid wasn’t involved, and is an AIPAC plant?
In a foreign-made documentary that’ll drop in about 30 years.
Or on youtube in a hundred places already but sure.
Completely and totally unrelated question to the topic because your username interests me.
What kind of communist is Tasslehoff Burrfoot?
A kender. All kender society is communist to the extreme. There’s not much in the way of currency, and what does exist, exists because of states outside of Kenderhome. All public property is communal. Hell, the “jail/palace” is only used if you manage to FORGET TO HAVE SEX with another kender, because they are so fucking ADD that is an actual issue.
Most people don’t understand kender at all, and think they are just annoying. That’s not what we are. We’re the counterpoint to the gnomes. We can take anything and make it into something interesting, we don’t really understand private property, and personal property is shared amongst us, so others don’t like us. We take problems apart like there’s nothing that can stop us. That’s why I was picking locks IRL at the age of 2. It’s not to commit crimes, I don’t know if any of us are actually capable of doing that intentionally without a lot of disillusionment. We just want to explore everything, and fix all the problems we see. That makes us extremely annoying to others.
Never. That is what it was though. Something similar to that anyway. We should all know it, but plenty on “the left” here silence questioning the obviously false on at least three points fbi information, officially because some on the right also questioned that evidence and therefore they are opposite of that.
Look at my username. I’m pretty damn far left. There are idiots everywhere, to misquote Mel Brooks, “We’re all surrounded by assholes.”
Truer words have never been spoken. Surrounded, and now under siege, by assholes.
Ahh, ok. Sorry for the misunderstanding on my part.
His neck just did that.
The front fell off.
I just want to be clear, that’s NOT supposed to happen.
towed beyond the environment
This is a nothing statement. It just means that they can’t definitively prove what rifle fired the bullet. It’s something that happens all the time, and there’s plenty of other evidence for them to convinct. Plus that motherfucker is still worm food, so it doesn’t really matter anyway.
there’s plenty of other evidence for them to convinct
Like confessing to the trans roommate? That was surely planted evidence.
It’s not a “this proves Tyler Robinson is innocent” but it casts substantial doubt on the prosecution’s claims. Once they start talking about shot angle and where Robinson supposedly was at the time of the shooting, having this part about the bullet already out of the way will likely clear him… and then we’re going to have proof that someone other than Robinson killed Kirk.
It doesn’t help the state too much that the sheriff responsible for this situation investigation just resigned.
While I’m not deluded enough to dismiss the efficacy of political violence, I’m not keen on having this guy running around out in the wild either. Much like any action, consequences are inevitable, and you l one has to be ready to be on the receiving end of them. That said if he gets off because the cops/prosecution shit the bed, I’m not gonna lose any sleep. ACAB and Charlie Kirk sucked.
There was also the guy the said he did it immediately after it happened. At best they can prove at this point that Tyler Robinson thought he killed Kirk and nobody else nearby had the tools to do it.
I’m sure the autopsy will contain the truly damning evidence because of the shot angle.
They have DNA.
Not surprising. Since high velocity rifle bullets very often get very deformed on impact and some are even specifically designed to fragment on impact. Unlike low velocity pistol rounds which don’t move fast enough to deform a lot.
People need to stop watching CSI reruns.
Here’s the "I don’t read articles " take
A disturbing number of people seem to be reading this as:
“The bullet does not match the gun.” i.e. that there is ‘proof’ that the bullet didn’t come from his gun
Instead of
“They can’t say if it is or is not from the gun due to being a small fragment and not an entire bullet”
It probably doesn’t help that there are a bunch of communities/subreddits who’ve editorialized the headlines to say ‘bullet does not match gun’ and the tendency of people to only read the headline.
Under the requirement to prove beyond reasonable doubt, “they can’t say if it is or is not from the gun” is huge, having a gun becomes circumstantial, and requires additional evidence, and depending on the strength of additional evidence, a good lawyer maybe able to get him off the hook.
There’s a lot of other evidence, I think you’re substantially grasping at straws with “a good lawyer may be able to get him off the hook.”
Ballistics analysis is mostly fake science, like a lot of so called “forensic science.”
Arson investigation is almost totally junk science.
Every high profile murder that happens from now on will be conspiracy-theoried to death. Articles like this fuel it. I think it often makes sense to doubt the story we’re told. But many Lemmy users for example, are not “doubting”. They “know” what happened.
Yup. The smallest fragment of doubt will be a mountain of fuel.
our species is too stupid for the internet
Agree
Removed by mod
From your comment history:
It’s also rumoured, for a long time, decades, that the US has kill switches in most of the world’s computers. A fusible link they can send a message to that bricks it.
Yikes.
I mean, the Israelis kind of had something similar for a bunch of pagers, but instead of bricking the device, they just violently exploded.
I hadn’t hurt about that, that is crazy. But you have to admit “a bunch of pagers” is a lot different than “most of the world’s computers”.
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That is one of many windows into your thought process including your response to me here. I didn’t even state an opinion on the conspiracy theories, you just got mad that you thought someone implied they doubted them.
As for my comments being worthless, it would be much easier to block me than imply you’ve been stalking me and hate me. I’m taking my own advice here just momentarily.
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This story stinks, totally impossible story by the fbi on three counts at least. No shit they didn’t release the ballistics results, because that rifle would’ve made a very different more dramatic wound than whatever hit kirk.
I found it interesting that after Joe Kent resigned from being Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, he went on the record to say that the FBI prevented them from investigating any foreign links to the Kirk assassination.
Edit: also, if anyone hasn’t seen this comedy bit on the assassination, it’s worth a watch.
Between this and the fake assassination attempt on Trump I’m convinced we need to just throw away the CIA and FBI.
Yep.
So many idiots here in this thread haven’t been following this story at all, they known nothing about the autopsy results.
There’s no way a 30-06 from the range and angle that Robinson was at… makes the wounds Kirk’s body had.
Have we considered the possibility of multiple shooters? The gun that killed Kirk may not necessarily have been the one that was found.
Just trying to avoid jumping to conclusions.
That is precisely what I think is the case.
I think Robinson was there, but he was being monitored, being shadowed.
There are many more parts of the FBI narrative that do not add up.
I’m reading a lot, so I have no idea what’s true. Everything reads like a conspiracy theory these days.
Like the sheriff who brought in the suspect abruptly resigning coincidentally when the ballistic report was going to be released.
Or apparently the only other case where this happened, that a bullet of that calibre could not be traced back to the gun, was apparently the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
It all starts sounding very believable, but I guess you can do that with any case if you want.
How about the seemingly insane guy who was in the crowd, who after Kirk got shot, started shouting ‘I did it, I’m the shooter, shoot me!’, got arrested initially, for a few hours they thought this was the actual shooter, then realized he wasn’t.
Then, when this guy was being further questioned, he straight up said that he did that so that the real shooter could get away.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20e1jx0p5jo
https://www.fox13news.com/news/police-man-claimed-have-shot-charlie-kirk-so-real-gunman-could-escape
Yep, totally normal, nothing to see here.
plus trying to bury the story how robinson was a right wing nutter, and conservatives cant have that on the news.
He was from a right wing religious nutter family… he’s from Utah, this is extremely common there, they’re called Mormons…
But, at the same time, he was clearly very much questioning and rebelling against elements of that lifestyle.
I was / am a person not dissimilar to Robinson in at least broad strokes; from a crazy Christian upbringing, began to realize its a toxic, bigotted and factually dubious way of life and worldview as I got to high school and beyond.
Its not broadly accurate to call him a crazy right wing nutter, nor is it broadly accurate to call him a far left gay/trans/furry.
No shit they didn’t release the ballistics results, because that rifle would’ve made a very different more dramatic wound than whatever hit kirk.
They didn’t release the ballistics results because it is evidence in a case that is in progress.
FYI, Kirk was against an attack on Iran, and dared to equivocate Palestinian lives with those of genocidal zionazis, in the sense that perhaps the genocide was a little too heavy. Reportedly, Bill Ackman (head of US mossad zionazi division) tried to donate/persuade him to be more in line with GOP doctrine on the chosen genocidal supremacists, but was rebuffed shortly before the murder.
Joe Kent, director of counter terrorism, who recently resigned from Government because Iran war is purely for Israel, said that he was denied access to “terrorism investigation” related information in Kirk’s death.
Netenyahu has wanted the US to back Israel’s war with Iran for at least 20 years. Trump is the first president sufficiently cognitively challenged to do it.
These people are opportunists, not 5D chess players.Netanyahu, like Trump, is a legend in his own mind.
Imo, the reason trump went along with it is because mossad have trump’s kompromat.
I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if any evidence of that ever comes out.
Who cares? Fuck kirk and his wife wife. And JD vance that fucks her and her sofa.
cool
erika grifting kirk already forgiven tyler.
Nah she forgave the killer (not TR)
Can’t wait for the 2nd shooter theories. Didn’t Kirk’s head jerk back, and to the left?
Bullet analysis is circumstantial and pseudosciencey anyway so the fact they couldn’t get that in their favor is kind of weird.
It was spontaneously created by the Almighty. You didn’t need proof of the bullet’s firing. You just need strong enough belief. If God came down and snatched the bullet from Trump’s ear, he also placed this one.













