Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - [SPECIAL] - Weapon of The Assassin: Larry Johnson on the Ballistics

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Sept. 13, 2025 - Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano

23:11

[SPECIAL] - Weapon of The Assassin: Larry Johnson on the Ballistics

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	Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
	Welcome to this special edition on Assassination Ballistics with our dear friend and regular uh collaborator Larry Johnson.
	Larry, we found you at the uh Charlotte Airport.
	And we deeply appreciate your finding the quietest corner you can in the I mean sure first class lounge uh in chatting with us on this.
	Larry, what do we know about the weapon uh that was used to murder Charlie Kirk?
	Well, it's uh it's a World War II era weapon updated, obviously, called a Mauser.
	Um it shoots a round of ammunition called a 306, 30-06.
	That's the same round of ammunition that US soldiers uh use is firing the M1 Garand in World War II.
	Anybody that's ever watched Band of Brothers, for example, they have that distinctive ping when the uh clip uh and the M1 Grand actually has a clip, not a magazine, but when that clip fires out.
	So uh it's it's a round, it's about the size, you know, of a normal uh a normal man's hand about the size of your ring finger, um three inches.
	Um so it it's a very powerful round, and it's it's used, you know, it's used commonly today for hunting, hunting big game, because it will take it take down a large animal.
	And uh, you know, in the case of Charlie Kirk hitting him in the neck, it was it was an immediate depth though.
	Uh Chris, uh, can you put up full screen one?
	Is I assume you can see this from where you are, Larry.
	Is this a fair?
	This is not the weapon, but it is a weapon as you've described it.
	Is this a fair depiction of it?
	Yes, yeah.
	Uh you see it's a bolt action, which means it can you chamber, you have to mechanically chamber around, put around into the chamber so you can fire.
	Uh these, you know, these rifles, even with iron size, as opposed to that optic, you know, the UL, the telescope that's on top of the wife.
	Um, they're very accurate.
	Uh you know, I've seen with I I have an M1 Garan myself, and uh I've been able to shoot accurately out to 300 yards even with my old eyes.
	Uh so but but in this case with with an optic like that and firing at 200 yards, you might you know the bullets travel over distance, they drop because of the curvature of the earth and gravity.
	Uh so if if this person was aiming the uh at the middle of Charlie's head, the fact that it fell down to the neck, you know, would make some sense.
	So but it's just it's a very it's a lethal round.
	Um Chris, can you put up the uh full screen of the uh weapon again?
	I'm gonna pretend I'm an FBI agent and ask a question, the answer to which is rather obvious, but just to set the stage for a next series of questions.
	This is not collapsible, is it?
	Well, yeah, no, you can you can break it down actually.
	Uh you can there's a way to disassemble so that you can get the barrel out.
	Um the barrel of the gun rusts on what's called the receiver.
	Uh and then you've got the stock.
	So yeah, you can actually you can reduce it, get it broken down where it could be into a backpack.
	It wouldn't be quickly, you know, you wouldn't sort of reassemble it in a minute or two.
	But if you took the time, you you could get it reassembled.
	How how uh big or bulky is it when it's disassembled, and how long is it when it's fully assembled?
	Um I don't again without knowing the particular rifle, I don't know the full length, but uh looking at the backpack that he was carrying, it very well could have fit in that backpack.
	What kind of skill is necessary to use this, Larry?
	What kind of training, preparation or familiarity with the weapon?
	I mean, could you teach me to use this weapon in an hour, or would it take uh a couple of days of practice?
	Well, no, I I could I could teach you to shoot it in 15, 20 minutes, but um in his case, he clearly had some training because with these with the rifles and with an optic, you have to do what's called zero the weapon.
	Well, that means that when you look through the uh optic, you want to make sure that the bullet hits where the optic or the cross hairs are lined up.
	And so normally you go to a range, uh, and in this case, you would shoot at maybe 50 to 100 yards to try to get that zero.
	Uh so and there are ways on the optic itself, you can make adjustments or what's called elevation up and down and adjustments for windage right to left.
	Uh and once you get it zeroed in, then you can be pretty confident that you know you can you you know at roughly 200 yards uh what distance you're gonna be shooting.
	So the the zeroing in process does it occur at the scene while he's looking through the scope at Charlie, or does it occur there?
	This would have been done uh a day, two, three days before.
	And the other thing that means he had pre, you know, he had pre-scouted this position because he'd probably gone up there with a range finder so that you could measure, calculate the distance from the roof to the spot where you think the Charlie uh Kirk would be, and then you know exactly rough months, you know, more or less what distance you need to be zero at.
	Uh so this means there was pre-planted.
	Now, how did he know exactly where where Charlie Kirk was you know going to be seated?
	You know, there maybe the turning point uh organization was pretty sloppy with how they released information.
	Uh you know, you could see where Charlie was going to be and how to line up.
	Um I mean it's just uh just horrific.
	But what this was not this is not a spur of the moment uh effort by this guy to just grab his gun, run out there and fire off a stop.
	This was pre-planned, and it took some scouting ahead of time, a day or two ahead of time.
	So you know, he had to make sure verified that he had a way to get to the roof.
	He had to make sure he had a way to uh carry uh the firearms, the rifle in his bag and be able to also get it uh reassemble.
	Is is it likely he now now I'm asking you to get into his head, the killer's head, that he did this on his own or was it Patsy?
	No, no, I don't think he's a Patsy.
	Um the uh you know, we don't know enough about his motivations yet because you know, on paper, he was a he was an uh an intellectually smart person.
	But to get this twisted where you feel compelled to kill somebody, particularly like Charlie Kirk, I I I just I don't begin to understand the hate directed at him.
	Charlie Kirk was a 31-year-old.
	You and I both can barely remember what it's like to be 31, and you know how our views and our ideas have evolved over time.
	And what we witnessed with Charlie Kirk and his you know short career is he did he he was evolving in his views.
	He wasn't he wasn't a rigid ideologue, unwilling to entertain change.
	You know, some have claimed that he was just a blind Zionist.
	Well, that's absolutely not true.
	He hosted a uh he hosted a debate between comedian Dave Smith and this uh reporter Josh Hamber.
	Dave Smith is a he's very much uh outspoken against what the Zionists are doing.
	Now, if Charlie Kirk was some hardcore Zionist, he never would have given a platform to Dave Smith.
	But it was just the opposite.
	And then actually, the day before Charlie was killed, he was on with Ben Shapiro and saying, hey, look, there's a need to really question what Israel's doing.
	So he was starting to ask questions.
	Yeah.
	But yeah.
	He certainly certainly he certainly was beginning to come around in a way that Mossad would not have been happy about with the uh the extent and nature of his uh followers.
	Uh well, uh Judge, let me just interrupt.
	If you if you saw that debate with Dave Smith, 75, at least I'd say 66% to 75% of that audience, the young audience was supporting Dave Smith's position.
	Right.
	Well, Dave is Dave is uh an extraordinary articulator of the views that you and I in this program uh advances on uh war and peace.
	The the 30 aught six does it shoot straight at 200 yards?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	In fact, in fact, it's almost level, it's almost level at that distance.
	So it's does that mean that um the killer was aiming for Charlie's throat, or was he aiming for the head?
	You know, at that distance, again, I don't know what kind of scope he had.
	Um I've been you know, I've got a friend who's got a slightly light larger rifle, uh, or more expensive rifle, 6.56.5 creed more.
	And we were shooting just at 25 yards, but he had this, it was a 15,000 rifle.
	And with that, I was able to put three bullets through the same hole at 25 yards.
	So I mean, you couldn't, all you can see was one bullet.
	All right, what was what was the distance?
	What was the distance between the killer and and Charlie Kirk?
	It's estimated at 200 yards.
	So at that distance, very all I had to do was then aim center of the head, and even if there was a deviation or drop of maybe three or four inches, you still would have hit a vital, a vital organ.
	A next shot with with a round like that, it's it's traveling with I think the the muscle velocity is in excess of 2,400 uh feet per second.
	I mean, it's some you know, and it's horrific.
	Well, this is why General George Patton called the M1 grand the best weapon in the world, because he said that what us World War II, at least for the US uh forces of Europe.
	Uh it is it's a deadly round, it hits you.
	Uh it's it's it's it's going to cause significant damage.
	Was the uh shooter in a prone position, or was he upright, or do we not know that?
	Uh if he was smart, he would have been in the prone position.
	If you're if you're standing or kneeling, or even in what's called a seated position, that's where you know, imagine you're you know sitting uh sitting doing meditation with your legs tossed, you know, that's the seated position.
	So prone is far more stable.
	And uh in that position, uh it would be it would be a fairly easy shot to make.
	Again, it I can't emphasize enough that he had some prior training.
	This was not his first time handling this rifle, and there were a number of things he had to do before he arrived at that site to know that he had the rifle properly uh zeroed in so that he could hit what he was aiming at, which means he would have had to know the distance uh among other things.
	And he would have to have known with a reasonable degree of a probability where Charlie was going to be uh at the at the time of the kill shot.
	Right, yeah, exactly.
	Now these two photographs are each taken at the same time.
	The one on the left is from um video camera showing a silhouette of the killer, and the one on the right is obviously Charlie.
	These are each a few seconds before the kill, and now it looks like he's prone, doesn't it?
	Yeah, no, he's prone, he's in a prone position.
	Um, and it uh it looked like there's an edge, a raised edge on the roof, so that would have given him something that he could rest the gun on to improve the stability uh of you know when you sight in.
	Because everybody, if when you're shooting a firearm, everybody has what's called a natural arc of movement.
	That means as you breathe, as the blood pumps through your veins, you're gonna get a little bit of movement, even looking through uh uh an optic like that.
	And the problem with flight movements is the greater the distance, the greater the deviation of the bullet.
	So you know, he was he wasn't, you know, some have suggested that he was a trained sniper, no, uh, but he had enough training and shooting um with with that wiped one.
	Apparently, his father is in law enforcement, so you know you know, very much uh could have been you know grown up shooting, you know, starting at the age of 12 or 13, you know, being allowed to shoot a rifle like that.
	Larry, would engraving messages on the side uh of a shell uh affect its movement or accuracy.
	No, all it's gonna do is because when you fire when the firing pen hits the primer, that's a little explosive that's in the bottom of the cartridge, it ignites the gunpowder, and then the gunpowder, the explosion from the gunpowder propels the bullet out of the front of the cartridge.
	So anything that you inscribe on the side of the cartridge, it's it stays in the gun, or it's going to be ejected when you pull the bolt back.
	So the the uh messages that we've seen, these are on the shells expelled by the rifle.
	These are not on the bullet that carried into Charlie's body.
	Okay.
	Correct.
	Okay.
	Charlie had a security staff there of a half dozen uh people standing in front of him eyeing the crowd.
	I'm sorry to have to ask this.
	Shouldn't they have had binoculars looking at rooftops?
	Yeah, I don't know why they weren't stirring the roof.
	I mean, that's uh, you know, if these guys are trained professionals, they should have they should have had coverage on the roof, particularly knowing that you've had death threats against Charlie.
	Consistently, and you know, I can't emphasize enough about Charlie.
	The thing was you may not have liked his message, but he was always debating in a in an adult human form.
	He wasn't yelling, he wasn't insulting.
	You know, I've been insulting, so okay.
	I I couldn't take the high road like he did.
	But uh he he was always engaging people in honest, genuine debate.
	He wasn't you know calling them a fat cow or suggesting you know uh that the mother had an adequate uh genetic material, you know, he always kept it by road and substitute, and so to want to kill somebody for that that's out.
	Chris, do you have uh do we have a uh photo that rather famous photo of him uh flipping uh red caps before he started?
	No, we don't okay.
	Well, in that photo, you can see two or three of these security guys, they're dressed in security garb, not police car, but but you can tell they're security guys, right?
	Uh they have the IFPs in their ears that we wear when we're on SNET and that security people wear so they can communicate with each other, they have sunglasses on, they have their hands either folded or on their waist, but they're not looking at rooftops.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So they're looking into the immediate crowd, and again, that's uh that was a tremendous, you know, uh tragic oversight.
	Uh again, I don't as part of their security plan, in my view, that if you're going outside and being prepared, you have to you have to assess what is the what's the security perimeter?
	Are there any possible avenues of attack?
	And to be in that basically in that shooting bullet, that's what it was.
	But anybody could get up on that roof and then have a direct sight.
	Why don't you put somebody uh, you know, and again, we're doing there.
	There's the photo.
	Look, you see to Charlie's right behind the hand of one of the viewers.
	That's a security guy with the uh blue polo shirt uh and the shades.
	There's another security guy about uh off to Charlie's left.
	He's got his he's got a beard and he's got his sunglasses up on his uh on his cap.
	They're they're looking at the people to whom he's throwing those caps.
	They're not looking where the killer is.
	All right, hindsight is perfect.
	I I grant that.
	Um I just uh I just wonder how they could have been so sloppy.
	Isn't this base security 101, Larry, to look at the rooftops?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And and but hey, we saw Secret Service screw that up in July of 2024 on July 13.
	With with President with Donald Trump.
	Yes, they they failed to ensure that the roofs were clear and that uh nobody will should operate a firearm.
	How long would it have taken him uh to uh assemble the weapon?
	Let's just say he had it disassembled in his backpack and he carried a backpack up that ladder and he got to the position on the roof.
	How long would it take him to assemble it that no one would have seen him?
	And he can't assemble it while he's prone.
	He's got to be standing or at least on his knees.
	Well, he could he could have assembled it back in the starbox.
	It would it would have five minutes max to to assemble the weapon.
	Yes.
	So he symbols.
	Once you assemble it, do you need to test it or once you assemble it, it's ready to go.
	Because it appears that he only fired one round, the fatal round.
	Yeah, no, you you work the action, test the test the trigger.
	Uh you can you can press the trigger when you've cocked it.
	You know, when you raise the bolt, pull it back, and then move it forward.
	Uh then it'll talk, and then you can press the trigger and do a what's called dry firing.
	That'll that'll make it go off.
	What is the body?
	Chris, can you put the weapon up again?
	What is the body?
	Uh it looks like it's wood.
	Is it made of wood?
	Yeah, some some yeah, I suspect it was wood on the again if it's a mountain.
	So the the part that's from the you see the trigger, the part of the barrel of the receiver, the blood that's underneath, that's called the receiver, and then you in the part behind the trigger is called the stop and the comb is uh you know where the hand was.
	So again, from that rifle, they'll be able to recover DNA.
	Because he would have, you know, you would have to see.
	How heavy is the rifle, Larry.
	When a summer it's about probably six, eight pounds.
	It's not terribly heavy.
	Got it.
	Got it.
	Well, thank you for this.
	Look, I know you're traveling, and I really appreciate your uh stopping uh in the airport to address this.
	The the audience and I are of profound interest uh in this, it's a monumental tragedy.
	Whatever you thought of Charlie's political message or Charlie the person, it's an assault on a on the quintessential American value, which is the right to stand in a public square and express your opinion, no matter how controversial it may be.
	We don't we don't use violence to to redress that, and I hope this is not the beginning of something awful, but in terms of these specifics of the ballistics, you've been very helpful, my friend.
	Anything else you would add before I let you get on your flight.
	At least at least today I get to say to you what you say to me.
	Thank you for accommodating my schedule.
	You're welcome, my dear friend.
	We will see you at 5:30 Eastern on Monday, if I am correct.
	Not at 11:30 in the morning, but at 5:30, and you can say that to me again.
	And I will say thank you for accommodating my schedule.
	Thank you, Larry.
	Safe travels, have a nice weekend.
	All the best.
	All right, folks.
	Bye-bye.
	This is a terrible uh monumental, horrific uh tragedy.
	It's horrible when anybody dies.
	Uh, but this public assault on the uh on the first amendment is reprehensible, and I pray uh to God that this does not lead uh to anything uh worse.
	I'm deeply grateful for Larry, uh, as you can see in the corner of an airport, uh chatting with us.
	Uh coming up at four o'clock this afternoon, the intelligence community round table with the great Scott Ritter filling in for Larry and of course the great uh Ray McGovern as well.
	We'll be covering not only the uh murder of Charlie Kirk, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, uh, but also the other international uh events, uh, the fallout from the Israeli attack on Hamas in Doha, uh Qatar, the likelihood of the United States involvement and facilitation uh in that, uh, and the Russian military inching closer and closer to achieving its goals uh in Ukraine.
	That's at four o'clock Eastern the intelligence community roundtable.

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