No, Charlie Kirk Was Not Shot With a .380 ACP ‘Cell Phone Gun’

Our Ideal Conceal “Cell Phone Gun” video (embedded below) on the Shooting News Weekly YouTube channel has been blowing up with views and comments due to a ridiculous Charlie Kirk assassination conspiracy theory. So we’re here to tell you no. Just no. Charlie Kirk was not shot with a .380 ACP derringer.

Swing open the bottom of the Ideal Conceal IC380 “cell phone gun” and you now have a pistol grip, a visible trigger in an open trigger guard, and a gun that looks and points like a flat, boxy derringer. Which it is.

The IC380 has two barrels, one above the other, and fires a single round of 380 ACP with each trigger pull.

As this conspiracy theory goes, the guy in the white hat and white polo behind and to Kirk’s right is not, in fact, clearly holding an obvious cell phone — much like hundreds of people in the audience were — but was, instead, holding an IC380 pistol.

The conspiracy theorists assert that he moves his hands and reacts in an incriminating manner — recoil? — just as Kirk is shot, which occurs mere moments after the screenshot above was taken from one of the slew of videos that captured the horror of that day. They’re convinced that the copious amounts of blood seen in the videos comes from an exit wound caused by a 380 ACP round fired by the man in white.

No. That’s not what happened. Here’s the deal . . .

My Take

I was in the Black Collar Arms shop when news of the shooting first hit. Videos of the incident were on Instagram and elsewhere almost immediately. One of the guys showed me the footage while the latest breaking news was stating that Kirk was arriving at a hospital and being stabilized, and the only information available or known by anyone was that he had been shot.

On the first viewing of the video, I stated, “Well, this time it wasn’t an AR-15. That wasn’t a 223/5.56, that was probably a bolt gun firing a full-power rifle caliber. That impact was too heavy for 223 and it looked and sounded like it wasn’t a very close shot.” One of the guys couched that by reminding me that the AR-15 is, of course, the most popular rifle in America by far, but agreed based on his hunting and other experience that the impact looked heavier than that of a 223 round.

We agreed that the shooter had a fairly direct shot facing Kirk more or less head-on and that he “missed,” because obviously no one aims at the neck on purpose. Most people who know what they’re doing would have aimed at the center of the chest, but we speculated that this was likely some screwball whose only real experience was with video games. He probably stole his dad’s scoped rifle, we speculated, aimed at Kirk’s head, and missed a little due to firing from a longer range than the gun was sighted in at, or he just pulled the shot.

When the official word became official — a scoped, bolt-action rifle chambered in 30-06 fired at about 200 yards from a position facing Kirk relatively square-on — it all checked out. That’s exactly what it looked and sounded like in the videos. It’s what we had guessed or estimated or recognized, though I admit I guessed a slightly more modern cartridge when I pressed myself to be more specific than “full-power rifle cartridge.” It wasn’t a magnum round or larger, it wasn’t super-high velocity. I had guessed in the 308 Winchester family based on the terminal effects of the bullet.

With the official line precisely matching what we had deduced within a minute of watching the video, it was easy for me to ignore all the conspiracy theories. Those sophisticated social media algorithms tried to feed me conspiracy videos asserting that the security dudes — or whoever they are — standing behind Charlie were somehow involved.

Secret baseball-style hand signals to the shooter, white shirt guy sending messages via his phone, and then . . . the brilliant Ideal Conceal cell phone gun crap was born, which I chose not to ignore because it was blowing up the comments on our video.

“It’s Not a Phone, It’s a Gun”

Here’s a reality check. IF the white shirt guy had been holding an IC380, he’s holding it in a manner that’s entirely inconsistent with being able to shoot at Charlie.

The gun can’t fire without the grip being folded out first. When the grip is folded out, it looks fairly conspicuously like a pistol and necessitates being held and aimed…like a pistol. With the grip folded out the trigger is clearly visible thanks to the empty airspace in the trigger guard where a trigger finger must go.

Okay, okay, you could modify the gun to remove the grip portion entirely and it would technically still be functional, albeit hard to use. But that trigger guard would still be highly visible and you’d still have to point the business end toward your target. White shirt guy is clearly holding a cell phone with the solid (i.e. no trigger guard) back face of the phone facing toward Charlie taking video, just like half the audience that day.

If the object the guy was holding had been an IC380, it would have to be oriented lengthwise between white shirt guy and Charlie with its top or bottom edge pointing directly at him. At no point in the videos — and we have multiple angles — does white shirt guy’s phone come anywhere close to that orientation.

“White Shirt Guy Clearly Fired Something”

Apparently the fact that white shirt guy reacted to the sound and sight of a gunshot and its impact “proves” that what was in his hand fired and recoiled. A YouTube commenter admitted that the recoil shown in our IC380 review video is much less than the jump in the guy’s hands seen in the Kirk videos.

Yeah. That’s because the guy heard both ends of a gunshot and he flinched.

Another YouTube commenter asked if it’s possible white shirt guy’s “cell phone gun” was modified to fire a 30-06 round or similar, which might account for heavier recoil. The truth is, even if you did make that gun, keeping it inside the footprint of a typical phone as seen in white shirt guy’s hand would leave you with so little barrel length — perhaps literally no barrel — that the recoil would probably be less than a 380 ACP, not more.

That assertion comes from direct experience, as I’ve made both a 4-inch (seen above) and a “zero-inch” (the projectile stuck out the end of the barrel) 308 handgun. With barrels that short so little of the gunpowder burns and the bullet has such low velocity that the muzzle energy is effectively gone. That 4-inch 308 was LOUD, but it recoiled like a pellet gun. The “zero-inch” AOW (no rifling) may as well have been a primer-only charge.

“It’s An Exit Wound”

I’m sorry, no, it just isn’t. I don’t really know how to explain this other than saying that if you’ve seen rifle bullets impact mammals of this general size, you know what it looks like. And this is what it looks like. Based on the way Kirk’s body moved, he was hit in the front. Based on the delay between the impact and the visible blood, it was an entry wound. Based on more gruesome aspects of the blood’s presentation and such, it was an entry wound.

He was not shot from the angle of white shirt guy…not with a 380 ACP and not with any other caliber, either.

Debunking the Caliber

The 380 ACP round is a fairly weak handgun cartridge. On average it produces about half as much energy as the more common 9mm (AKA 9×19, AKA 9mm Luger), which itself isn’t considered a particularly powerful handgun round.

In no world is 380 ACP capable of the terminal effects and impact energy seen in the videos of Kirk’s murder. Not if he was hit from the front, not if he was hit from where white shirt guy was, and not if he was hit from anywhere else.

In short, he very obviously was not shot with an IC380 “cell phone gun.”

Another commenter on YouTube spoke of a different dude in a white shirt who was in the audience, maybe 15-or-so feet away, basically directly behind white shirt guy. Apparently he’s under deep suspicion as well. This commenter asked something along the lines of, “What if it was that dude firing a 223/5.56?” Well…that would result in an exit wound and it would look in every way very different from what’s seen in the video, from the way Kirk moves to the presentation of the wound.

The reason we were immediately able to guess — recognize — the approximate cartridge size and that it was a shot from decent range was because everything about the terminal ballistics seen in the videos speaks to that. That’s what it looks (and sounds) like to be hit with a .30 cal round from about 200 yards. It just is.

“Scientific Audio Analysis”

YouTube commenters have stated that the IC380 firing in my video sounds just like the gunshot sound in the Charlie Kirk videos. First, I don’t agree. Second, most cell phone and camera microphones max out between like 95 and 109 dB. NO online video sounds like real gunshots. You’d have to wear hearing protection to watch the dang videos. Sometimes you can tell a tone difference between rifles and pistols and such, but for the most part all the gunshots are clipped to the same max volume level, the sound ends up getting compressed, and they all sound more alike than they do in real life.

Another commenter mentioned that a couple of people are doing in-depth, “scientific” analyses of the gunshot audio in the various videos and they’re using that to suggest the shot came from much closer to Kirk and, therefore, we’re being fed more lies. This was my response (copied-and-pasted from YouTube comments) . . .

The audio to me sounded correct for an average rifle from 200 yards recorded on cell phones and uploaded to Instagram and such. If professional footage with synched audio is available later it will mean more. The theory here is that it’s a supersonic rifle round and the bullet would arrive before the sound. I think it sounds correct in the videos I watched. I’ve edited my own videos of this scenario and IMHO nothing was out of the ordinary in the Kirk ones. You’re talking about less than a quarter second between bullet impact and gunshot sound getting there, and filming that on a cell phone then uploading it to social media where audio sync gets hurt (YouTube is better, but when we upload to Instagram and such it always slightly alters the audio sync) makes this a poor way to try to calculate that from the video. AND a random dude is likely to hear the supersonic crack of the bullet and mistake it for the gunshot, which would cause him to think there wasn’t enough delay between the two (and therefore the shot was closer) when, in fact, at the location of the target you’re going to hear the supersonic crack almost immediately when the bullet arrives (easily confused with gunshot sound) and then you’ll also hear the actual gunshot noise itself after whatever its delay is based on bullet velocity and range. Also also, what I said previously about microphones maxing out still applies, because the sonic boom from the bullet may well be loud enough to cause the mic to clip, which suppresses sounds for a couple seconds, which would muffle and obfuscate the slightly delayed gunshot sound (which, at 200 yards away, may actually be quieter than the bullet’s supersonic boom). A person would have to understand all this and more to attempt to determine how much lag between bullet arrival and gunshot sound existed. Not to mention the video is only 30 frames per second and who knows how rapidly the audio is actually captured, so there’s a distinct limit to how granular you can even calculate bullet arrival time and sound arrival time.

ANYWAY… the bottom line is it sounded normal to me for a .30 caliber rifle from 200 yards.

He’s a Magician

You can’t convince me that a guy standing right next to the center of everyone’s focus, Charlie Kirk, who was himself highly visible and exposed, fired at the victim and there was no reaction to that from the people around him, the [other] security guy(s), etc., or from the “shooter.” No witnesses have said anything that corroborates white shirt guy as a shooter. No one tackled him, no one ran away from him, no one reacted as though he was the threat. He didn’t react as though he needed to escape.

Sorry, no, white shirt guy didn’t fire a pistol in full view of thousands of people and then just behave as if he didn’t do it while everyone else played along, too.

“So what do you actually think happened?”

That’s a directly-quoted YouTube comment, and here’s my directly copied-and-pasted answer:

I think he was shot with a 30-06 from that roof, because I saw the videos as soon as they came out — before anyone even stated that Charlie had passed — and my coworker and I immediately said after seeing the video for the very first time, “that wasn’t an AR-15 this time. That was a heavier caliber than 223/5.56, probably from a decent range like past 100 yards, more or less directly in front of him, and probably from a bolt gun firing a full-power cartridge.” We guessed 308 family. Not a magnum, not a super high velocity round, not a mini action round like the 223. We guessed this because what you see and hear in the videos is exactly what that looks and sounds like. That’s what getting hit by a full-power/battle rifle cartridge more or less head-on from a couple hundred yards away looks like. When the rifle and caliber and range and location were announced, it matched everything we had ‘guessed’ based on what we saw. Absolutely nothing about “the story” conflicts with what’s seen in the video. That’s an entry wound, that’s how your body moves when you’re hit with that caliber from that direction and range, that’s what it’s going to sound like, that’s damage consistent with that caliber and velocity…it just is what it is. We saw the video and could tell immediately. It wasn’t close-up, it wasn’t a 223 — you can SEE the weight of the projectile and the approximate velocity range based on its physical impact — it wasn’t a pistol caliber, it wasn’t a shot from behind or off to the sides, it wasn’t an exit wound, etc. I’m perfectly open to conspiracy theories and I’m into a few, but this one sucks.

Move On

This conspiracy theory is just dumb. Charlie Kirk was absolutely, categorically NOT shot with an IC380 “cell phone gun.” So please, move on.

Breaking:

Today’s episode of The Daily Wire’s Morning Wire features white shirt guy, who’s actually Charlie’s good friend Frank Turek: