In the hours after the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on the campus of Utah Valley University on Wednesday much of the speculation focused on the shooter: What was his training? What weapon did he use? What were his motivations?
Robert Bohls, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Salt Lake City field office, said in a news conference Thursday morning that “a high-powered, bolt-action rifle” was recovered in a wooded area near the site of the shooting.
Beyond that, with the gunman still at large, there is little information that has been made public. This is what is known:
A single shot was fired from a rooftop around 100 yards away from where Mr. Kirk was speaking, authorities said. The shot hit Mr. Kirk in the neck, killing him. Two people have been questioned and released, and a manhunt is underway.
This is what is unknown:
The type and caliber of the weapon. At that range it is safe to say that the shooter did not use a pistol given that handguns are highly inaccurate when shooting at that distance. If the shooter used a “high-powered, bolt-action rifle” like the one recovered, that could mean a range of calibers, including .30-06, .308, 6.5-millimeter, 8-millimeter, .300 Win Mag, .338 Lapua and others.
A bolt-action rifle is a firearm common among marksmen and hunters. Bolt action refers to the mechanism that inserts and extracts the bullet into the chamber after each shot is fired, meaning the bolt needs to be manually operated after the trigger is pulled, unlike a semiautomatic firearm. Bolt-action weapons have slower rates of fire but are generally more precise than their semiautomatic counterparts.
A bullet of almost any caliber hitting a person where Mr. Kirk was shot would inflict similar damage. The weapon’s loud report, caught on multiple phone recordings, suggests a rifle was used, but even that fact remains unclear, at least to the public. No information has been released on the bullet that hit Mr. Kirk.
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