Snipers in this highly charged political climate are a wake-up call, security experts say

By Josh Campbell, CNN

(CNN) — As gunshots pierced the air from high above, people in two different American cities this month found themselves running from a deadly shooter they could not see.

The nearly undetectable threat of snipers has security professionals sounding the alarm as age-old tactics of assassination become the tool of choice for modern killers often fueled by ubiquitous streams of online hate.

Snipers have been a potential threat for centuries, but security experts say the current toxic United States political climate coupled with the threat of rapid online radicalization and easy access to guns requires an especially urgent adjustment to an emerging form of deadly violence.

Multiple recent high-profile incidents have put security professionals on edge.

At a Utah university this month, a gunman perched on a rooftop less than 500 feet from Charlie Kirk fired one fatal round as the conservative activist was addressing an audience while flanked by a security team providing close protection.

And this week in Dallas, a man armed with a rifle atop a building sprayed bullets into a nearby Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, killing one migrant detainee and critically injuring two others before taking his own life.

Both killings came after an attempted assassin on a roof in Pennsylvania opened fire on Donald Trump during a campaign rally last year, grazing the president’s ear and killing a member of the audience before the gunman himself was taken out by a counter sniper team from the US Secret Service.

“We are witnessing a seismic shift in the current threat environment,” said Jonathan Wackrow, CNN law enforcement analyst and former Secret Service agent, who notes a sniper at relatively close range and using optics on a rifle requires very little training to be lethal.

“The Secret Service and private security firms have developed a good approach to protecting individuals from the close in threat – handguns, sharp edge weapons, direct assault,” he said. “But this is a new environment for them, where they now have to be worried about these long-range threats.”

Security teams ‘shaking off their playbooks’

For security industry professionals, the most critical part of their job comes well before a high-profile person steps foot in public.

“Assassination has always been, and will always be, about physical access to the protected person,” said James Hamilton, former FBI supervisory special agent and founder of the Hamilton Security Group.

While it is standard practice for security teams to monitor threats to individuals under their protection and scope out venues in advance of their arrival, Hamilton said a methodical approach is needed to anticipate threats from afar.

“You go to every single surrounding building, you check every single roof access,” he said. “In the area you control, you put tape on every one of those damn access doors and then you check it again to ensure no one has broken the seal.”

Wackrow stressed that protecting professionals also “comes down to manipulating the environment, breaking up the line of sight” a sniper may have towards the person they are guarding.

It’s about extending protection even beyond the handgun range, 25 or 50 yards away.

“If I can’t block the line of sight to a nearby rooftop, I now have a couple choices: I can either put uniformed police officers up there as a deterrent, or I can shift how the entire venue is structured to protect where the principal is seated.”

Such measures may be beyond what a private citizen can afford or have access to.

Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” said in an episode of the podcast this week that Kirk’s security team faced limitations with the event at Utah Valley University, where he was killed.

“In defense of our security team, people need to understand that they do not have jurisdiction on the rooftops or the surrounding area,” Kolvet said. “Their only jurisdiction on a campus is Charlie’s physical proximity.”

Hamilton advises clients that indoor events are typically far safer than those held outside.

“It largely takes away the sniper, it takes away the thing I can’t see,” he said, adding he expects more politicians, and other high-profile speakers will opt for enclosed venues amid a surge in heated political rhetoric and myriad threats.

While renting an indoor space can be more expensive, it’s easier to screen people coming in through doors with metal detectors and officers conducting searches, Hamilton said.

For government agencies facing threats, like in the case of the attack on an ICE facility or the recent shooting at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, experts say their security teams on the ground must adapt as well.

“I’m quite certain they’re totally shaking off their playbooks right now,” Hamilton said. “Before, the focus was on bollards, barricades, and stopping vehicle bombings. Now, they’ve also got to be thinking about rifles, access, and what can be seen through a scope.”

There are already signs of rising anxiety over snipers and political violence.

A 9/11 memorial ceremony Trump attended was moved from the Pentagon’s traditional site outside the building walls to an internal courtyard, a source previously told CNN.

Multiple members of Congress and their staff also told CNN after Kirk’s assassination they are postponing outdoor events for the near future. And some are using their own funds to hire private security for events away from Capitol Hill.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer recently proposed limiting outdoor events as a temporary solution. Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida, who says he was the target of an assassination attempt, no longer holds outdoor events.

Modern ‘assassination culture’ emerging

Beyond the disturbing tactics used by recent politically motivated attackers, those who study violence have also expressed growing concern over the relatively short period someone with no prior history of violent tendencies can be radicalized, often by torrents of vitriol accessible online.

“This modern assassination culture is a new and emerging threat – a dangerous mixture of grievance and ideology, plus a sense of moral absolutism,” Wackrow said.

Law enforcement researchers have historically looked to a shooter’s past to identify missed red flags, such as behavioral problems, spousal abuse, or criminal activity, that may help explain their progression to increasingly violent action.

“But now, when you look back at the United Healthcare CEO’s killer, he wasn’t a violent person before,” Wackrow said. “You look at the Trump shooting, there was no evidence of this person having violent ideations over time. We didn’t see any past violence with the Kirk assassin. What made them change so quickly and decide to kill?”

One answer, he says, lies in an online culture that can often glorify violence against perceived political enemies, thereby potentially fomenting and inspiring additional ideological violence.

Kirk’s suspected shooter, who grew up in a Utah suburb with a close-knit family, had been radicalized “in a fairly short amount of time,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox previously said. The shooter left messages on the bullet casings that included a mix of internet memes and allusions to video games that suggest a deep immersion in an irony-soaked online world.

And the suspect in the Dallas ICE building shooting had searched online for videos of Kirk’s assassination before he carried out his own attack, and left notes that were “definitively anti-ICE” and indicated “hatred for the federal government,” according to FBI officials.

Experts say one critical solution is for elected officials and others with political clout to lead the charge in ratcheting down demonizing language.

“We have to start suppressing the hate-filled rhetoric,” Wackrow said, “because we’re in this national tailspin.”

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CNN’s Sarah Ferris, Manu Raju, Annie Grayer, Elizabeth Wolfe and Lauren Mascarenhas contributed to this report.