The Second Apparent Assassination Attempt On Donald Trump Just Doesn't Make Sense

Just two months after Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to assassinate Donald Trump, the FBI claimed that another possible attempt was made on his life. On September 15, 2024, the bureau said it was "investigating what appears to be an attempted assassination," CNN reported. The incident took place at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, where the former president was playing the fifth hole.

According to Fox News, law enforcement officials identified the alleged gunman as Ryan Wesley Routh. At approximately 1:30 p.m, Secret Service agents spotted a rifle barrel in the brush between the chain-link fence, and one official fired at least four rounds at the suspect. He fled in a black Nissan and was later apprehended 40 miles away, Reuters reported. A scoped AK-47-style assault rifle, two backpacks, and a GoPro camera were found near the suspects firing location.

After the Secret Service failures that led to the first assassination attempt on Trump, many similar questions are swirling around the second apparent plot. Namely, how was another shooter allowed to get so close to the politician? Here's what we know.

Since the July attempt on his life, Donald Trump has been traveling with an "enhanced security team," Forbes reported. Yet despite this increase in resources, law enforcement officials admitted that the golf club grounds were not secured as much as other locations. "The level where he is at right now, he is not the sitting president," Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said in a briefing, per CNN. "If he was, we would have had the entire golf course surrounded. But because he's not, security is limited to the areas the Secret Service deems possible."

But per CBS News, law enforcement noted that the shooter was just a few holes ahead of where Trump was golfing, and Bradshaw suggested the officials would likely be reworking their strategy in the wake of the new apparent assassination attempt. "I would imagine the next time (Trump) comes to the golf course, there would probably be a little more people around the perimeter," he said. Still, he praised officials for their work — a stark contrast to the many reports of experts baffled at their failures in the wake of the July plot. "Secret Service did exactly what they should have done, and their agent did a fantastic job," he said.

In July 2024, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to get onto a roof 147 yards away from Donald Trump and take aim at the former president, PBS reported. It's a reasonable distance for a marksman: To qualify with the M16 assault rifle, U.S. Army recruits must hit a human-sized target at 150 yards in basic training. Crooks used an AR-style rifle, which he somehow got into the Butler, Pennsylvania rally. According to CNN, the Secret Service said the suspect in the second apparent assassination attempt, Ryan Wesley Routh, was 300 to 500 yards away from Trump — significantly farther, and he used an AK-47-style rifle.

When testing on proving grounds, Harvard University says the AK-47 is less accurate than the M16 when shot farther than 200 yards, but under stressful conditions these differences are effectively insignificant. With such a large and powerful weapon on-hand, it's unclear how Routh was able to access the perimeter of the course without arousing suspicion, especially with a former president — one that had recently been the focus of an assassination plot — using the grounds. John Porter, owner and operator of Wyoming's Morning Creek Outfitters, told Outdoor Canada that when hunting animals from long-range, his success rate is 90 to 95 percent when 500 to 600 yards away.