The Double Tap: From Range Drill to Media Meltdown

No, not a Gregory Hines dance routine! When shooters say “double tap,” they don’t mean Twitter likes—and they sure as hell don’t mean “war crime” every time a second round lands.

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Every time a military op makes the news, you can almost set your watch by it:

1. Something blows up.
2. Survivors are reported.
3. A follow-up strike happens.
4. The “Experts of X” on cable and X (formerly Twitter) start screaming about “war crimes” between DoorDash orders.

This week’s outrage word: “double tap.”
Spoiler: it existed long before Admiral Frank Bradley, drug boats, or blue-check meltdown theater.

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What a Double Tap Actually Is (Hint: Not a Hashtag)

In the real world—not the one where journalists confuse magazines with clips—the double tap is a basic shooting technique:

• Two shots fired in rapid succession
• At the same target
• With the same sight picture

That’s different from a controlled pair, where you take a fast first shot, reacquire your sights, then send the second one. Slower, more deliberate.

There’s also the “hammer,” where you’re so up-close and personal you don’t bother to reacquire sights between shots at all—you just drive two rounds in fast because the target is right there.

Why do shooters train this way?

Because the first shot is often fired as the gun is still coming up, under stress, breathing hard, adrenaline spiking. The second shot is usually more accurate because the gun is now fully extended, more stable, and the brain has caught up to the fact that the situation just got real.

In other words: the double tap is about finishing the job cleanly, not “overkill for fun.”

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From Paper Targets to Drug Boats

Fast-forward from the range to the open ocean.

Enter Admiral Frank Bradley and the controversy over a second strike on a drug boat—what the media now lovingly calls a “double tap.”

• First strike hits the target boat.
• There are survivors in the water.
• Command authorizes a second strike.

Cue the outrage: “war crime,” “inhumane,” “unthinkable,” and every other word reporters just learned five minutes ago from a Geneva Conventions Wikipedia skim.

Here’s the cold math nobody on TV wants to say out loud:

You’re not hitting “random swimmers.” You’re hitting professional criminals whose job is to move poison, fund violent cartels, and destabilize countries—including ours.

Survivors don’t swim to shore, open a bakery, and start a youth choir.
They swim to shore, get another boat, reload the product, and try again. That’s their business model.

Does that feel harsh? Absolutely.
Is it surprising? Not if you’ve spent more than five minutes in grown-up history.

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“But That’s a War Crime!” — The Armchair General Chorus

The same people who shriek “defund the police” from gated communities are now lecturing admirals about use-of-force in real combat zones.

The logic usually goes like this:

“If they’re in the water, they’re harmless and must be protected at all costs.”

Yeah, that sounds nice on a campus flyer. Out where bullets fly and boats explode, it’s not that simple.

• These are not tourists on a cruise ship.
• They are not civilians caught in random crossfire.
• They are professionals who got paid very well to run a high-risk operation in a known war on drugs.

Military decisions are about denying the enemy another shot at you.
That’s literally the job description.

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This Isn’t New: Ask WWII Pilots

The outrage brigade is acting like hard decisions in war popped into existence last Tuesday.

In World War II, the Japanese were infamous for attacking aircrew descending by parachute after their aircraft were disabled. The justification? Same cold logic:

If you let that pilot live, he’ll be back in another plane trying to kill you tomorrow.

Now, we can (and should) argue the ethics and legality of attacking parachutists—modern laws of war treat that very differently. But the mindset isn’t new:

• Let enemy survivors go
• ✅ They regroup
• ✅ They rearm
• ✅ They come back

War isn’t a Marvel movie with clean edges and moral clarity in 4K. It’s ugly, and most of the people yelling “war crime!” only like war when it’s on Netflix with a sad soundtrack.

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Where Chatrodamus Lands on the Drug Boat Double Tap

Let’s be clear for the folks in the cheap seats:

We’re not talking about mowing down fishermen or refugees that Shifty Schiff suggests could just be fishermen. Yeah, right, and those drugs are just candy for Christmas stockings, you pathetic moron!.
We’re talking about drug boat crews—the hired help in an industry that destroys communities, fuels cartel executions, and bankrolls the same violence everyone pretends to care about during election years.

You take that job, you know the risks:

• You get paid for danger.
• You’re not misinformed.
• You’re not a bystander.

So when the first strike hits and there are survivors in the water?

Chatrodamus is not shedding tears if a second strike prevents those same “victims” from reloading and doing it again.

You wanted to be a pirate in the drug game?
Congratulations. The ocean just reminded you that not all sequels are profitable.

Is it cruel? Yeah.
Is it pretty? No.
Is it morally simple? Also no.

But pretending these guys are innocent bystanders who accidentally tripped and fell into a cartel boat stacked with product and weapons is pure fantasy.

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Meanwhile, in Pop Culture: Harry Bosch and the Double Tap

If you’ve read Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels, you’ve seen “double tap” used in a different (but related) context. Just in case you missed these great stories this is who Harry Bosch is: Harry Bosch is a fictional detective created by author Michael Connelly, known for his role in a series of bestelling crime novels and a popular television adaptation.

Connelly helped popularize the term for the general public through Bosch—a cop who understands that sometimes, when life and death are on the line, one shot may not be enough to stop a threat. Fiction, yes. But the logic tracks with how real shooters are trained:

• Shoot until the threat stops,
• Not until the media feels comfortable.

The culture picked up the phrase from novels, movies, and cop shows. Now it’s fashionable to scream it like a slur whenever a military op involves more than one boom.

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Final Salvo

If you want a world with zero double taps, here’s what you actually need:

• Zero terrorism
• Zero cartels
• Zero warlords
• Zero politicians who wink and nod at all of the above

Until then, the grown-ups in uniform will keep making ugly, imperfect decisions in ugly, imperfect situations—while the rest of the world live-tweets their outrage from the couch.

You don’t have to like the double tap.
But maybe learn what it is—and who’s actually in the crosshairs—before you call the people fighting that fight “war criminals” from the safety of your Wi-Fi.

Update: December 6, 2025

These Democrat fools don’t know when to shut up, my blood boils as I type this: What the hell is the matter with these idiots!

In the news today, Democrats are cranking the “war crime” siren back up to 11 while the White House calls the “innocent fisherman” narrative the new “Maryland Man” hoax.

I’m pretty sure it was Jimmy Kimmel who kicked off this “fisherman” nonsense, cracking jokes about our government “blowing up fishing boats” in the Caribbean—leaving out the small detail that these are drug boats headed for the U.S. Democrat lawmakers have been turning up the heat on the Trump administration over a series of military strikes on suspected drug-trafficking vessels since September, now laser-focused on alleged traffickers who survived an initial strike and were killed by a follow-up.

Then Rachel Maddow over on MS NOW, never one to miss a conspiracy, floated the ridiculous claim that President Trump was launching strikes on drug boats to start a war with Venezuela so he could use the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans. You can’t make this stuff up.

“If the reports are true, [Secretary of War] Pete Hegseth likely committed a war crime when he gave an illegal order that led to the killing of incapacitated survivors of the U.S. strike in the Caribbean,”
— Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV)

So according to Rosen, taking out cartel traffickers who just tried to run drugs into the United States is now a “war crime.” Got it.

The White House fired back and connected the dots to the old “Maryland Man” hoax—remember that one? That’s when the media tried to turn Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an MS-13 human smuggler illegally living in Maryland, into a sympathetic headline instead of what he actually is.

This time, the spin is “innocent fisherman.” Same playbook: strip away the context, scrub the word “drug,” and act like the U.S. Navy just randomly decided to vaporize a couple of guys on a boat minding their own business.

Chatrodamus wants to know:

Are Democrats really this stupid?

OR
Is this just terminal TDS—opposing anything Trump does, no matter what?
Is it about grabbing attention with the most absurd, upside-down positions possible?
Or are they running political interference for the cartels, who just might have a few back channels and cash pipelines into the Democrat machine from Venezuela and Mexico?

Because you almost never see these people support anything that’s actually good for the country. All we get is wall-to-wall criticism, never serious solutions.

As White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told Fox Digital:

“The ‘innocent fisherman’ is the new ‘Maryland Man’ hoax – just like the media tried to paint MS-13 human smuggler Kilmar Abrego Garcia as ‘father of the year,’ they are now running cover for foreign terrorists smuggling deadly narcotics intended to murder Americans. President Trump is using every element of American power to take on the cartels and stop deadly drugs from flooding into our country – just like he promised on the campaign trail.”

Democrats have increasingly fixated on a pair of strikes on Sept. 2 against an alleged drug boat from Venezuela. The White House confirmed the military carried out an initial strike on the boat, then a second strike (the double tap) that killed two suspected traffickers—prompting Democrats to scream “war crimes” into every camera they can find.

Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said:

“You have two individuals in clear distress, without any means of locomotion, with a destroyed vessel, who were killed by the United States.”

Oh, those poor druggies!

Yes, Congressman—that’s called finishing the mission. The job isn’t done while armed narcos are still alive and capable of resurfacing somewhere else with another payload of poison for American streets. If one missile doesn’t complete the job, you send another. That’s not a “war crime,” that’s basic interdiction doctrine: neutralize the threat, destroy the platform.

Then Sen. Mark Kelly jumps in with his own contribution:

“Going after survivors in the water, that is clearly not lawful.”

No, Senator—what’s clearly unlawful is running drugs for foreign cartels, funding gangs and violence on our streets, and betting that American politicians will care more about their latest anti-Trump talking point than about the Americans those drugs are meant to kill.

The Double Tap was born as a range drill: two shots, same sight picture, rapid succession. Now the media and Democrats are trying to turn it into a “war crime” every time the U.S. actually uses force to protect its own people.

Out here in the real world, the mission is simple:
Stop the cartels. Destroy the boats. Don’t leave the job half-done.