Well, I don't know about the quick dismissal of zeroing as being totally irrelevant. It's conceivable to me that a shooter might in fact want to set a zero for their scoped weapon given their anticipated most likely maximum point blank range settings that allows for minimum to no adjustments thereby enhancing quicker set and shoot without fudging with doping the shot.
An actual
shooter would, but I don't know that it applies in this case. The process of zeroing the rifle is not completely irrelevant, but an article that makes it sound like the rifle makes it impossible for even an inexperienced person to miss is not only irrelevant, its falsehood.
As to the rifle, I haven't seen anything but a very blurry pic from a distance. Not even clear enough to tell if there was an optic sight, of some kind, only that there does not appear to have been a full size scope on it.
The FBI reported that the ATF trace on the rifle came back as a DPMS made AR, bought by the shooter's father in 2013.
Now, there are only a couple of possibilities, neither of which is proven at this time. First possibility is that the kid had authorized access to the rifle, had used it, and likely had it sighted in, for himself.
The other possibility is that it was his father's rifle, which the kid took, without permission, and it was likely sighted in for and by his father.
Different people look through sights differently and a rifle that is "on" for one shooter can be "off" by inches at 100-150 yds or more.
It has been reported that the shooter bought 50 rounds of ammo, "just hours" before the shooting. IF true, its likely he was using that ammo, (which has not been identified as to what exactly it was) and its very unlikely that he took the time to shoot, and zero the rifle for that ammo, before shooting at Trump.
At this time, there is nothing to suggest he even knew he needed to do that to be accurate with what he bought.
Different loads, even different lot#s of ammo can have different points of impact, and it is unclear how much the shooter actually knew about how firearms and ammo actually work.
Additionally, it appears that he was rushed, and unlikely to be making his best shots, assuming he was actually capable of doing so.
Because he is dead, there are a lot of questions we can never know the answers to, and speculating on things where the basis is an unknowable thing is a waste of time, unless you are in the media and getting paid to do just that.
