Thomas Matthew Crooks managed to graze Donald Trump's ear, kill another man, and injure two more with shots fired from an AR-pattern rifle. This despite the fact, as Myke Cole writes for Slate, that Crooks reportedly didn't make his school's rifle team because of his poor aim. So how did he manage to direct a bullet "an inch away from dramatically altering American political life?" Look to the weapon, writes Cole, who explains that when working as an intelligence officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, he was issued the very similar M4. "I was no expert" shot, he explains. Indeed, he didn't carry his gun for combat purposes. He was to use it in the event something happened to the Direct Action team he was with and he needed to stay alive until he could be extracted.
The similar AR-pattern rifles "are popular, for good reason," he writes. Their smart design makes them "stable, simple, easy to operate, and extremely forgiving for inexperienced shooters. ... Just about anybody willing to hurt people with an extremely powerful weapon can do so with an AR-pattern rifle, without much expertise at all." That, in Cole's view, is what makes it so dangerous that the guns isn't tough to buy, and he suspects Crooks benefited from its ability to help counteract a shooter's weaknesses. (Read the full piece, which includes a detailed description of Cole's own experience shooting the M4 and an explainer or how the "zeroing" process can help better a shooter's aim.)
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