871
Possible snipers seen at OSU. Administration says they're not snipers but should be treated like they are.
(midwest.social)
cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/11490010
Update, yes there are snipers:
OK, so lets think this out. These are pointed at the crowd correct so lets assume the threat is from the crowd.
You have some Ne'er-do-well in the crowd who is planing some type of trouble, you notice this person looking "dastardly" from your sniper nest. You radio in and get the go ahead to take the shot with your trusty Remington M700. You shoot centre mass as you have been trained to do and the villain drops like a puppet with its strings cut.
You saved the day right? Oh no that is just the start, since the round fired was a 7.62x51mm NATO (there is no "rubber" round for this firearm) it went straight through the torso of that protester with a box knife and into and then back out of at least a few other people in the dense crowd (must be their fault for not wearing better body armour). The gunshot is still noticed even with the police issued silencer and at seeing the carnage the crowd does what crowds do, they stampede.
After the chaos settles down the body count will be a lot higher then that one person with a box cutter could ever manage (not that you can even say they where going to do anything).
These are not there to protect people, that is not their role, this is not an action movie.
I imagine there are situations where benefits outweigh the risks. Probably not your interestingly creative scenario. But congratulations for your vivid depiction.
The issue is I can not even with my vivid imagination can think of a scenario where shooting into a crowd (where these teams have their rifles pointed) would have benefits that outweigh the risks.
The use for sniper teams on roof tops is in VIP protection (as in fuck all the little guys as long as the important one is safe) and offensive actions.
I don’t need to go back in time by far. Moscow shootings. One or four well positioned snipers could save some lives there.
Probably someone in a car driving over protesters, someone shooting an automatic weapon. Any person or humanoid unleashing high explosive fragmentation devices.
In all these cases the teams would have to reaim outside of the crowd, and also unless they have been given permission to shoot at their discretion (oh please no) they need to call it in. Not really a great solution where the benefits outweigh the risks.
And since no snipers saved the day in Moscow it does not really work as an example of snipers being used to defend a crowd. I also doubt with what we now know about the internal workings of the Russian federation I kinda doubt their snipers would have been fully capable.
And yet they are always present during such events so some people that aren’t random internet experts, like us, must see the benefit.
Your yearning for fitting this into narrative got the better out of you this time around. I blame twitter.
Never had a twat account, sorry. I am more coming at this from a gun nuts thinking, Oh and the complete absence of any evidence of sniper teams being used to save a crowd. But maybe I just am not looking hard enough.
Or you know, like, deterrence.
From protesting or attacking protesters? Its getting hard to tell.
Yes and probably yes. But that answers why they are there.
I think you either overestimate overpenetration at range or underestimate the training a sniper has on that very subject.
As someone who has shot this round, no I don't think I am overestimating the penetration. Also as it turns out police (I think state troopers in this case) snipers operate at ranges of 100 yards or less according to the police https://www.police1.com/swat/articles/a-first-of-its-kind-effort-describes-police-sniper-use-of-force-engagements-in-us-j7JjrYjYZmPtsoMt/. I know of no way to magic a bullet fired into a crowd to not over penetrate and yes I checked if there was some sort of less lethal or low pen police round (I found none).
Know your target and what is beyond it. This is basic firearm safety, but that seems to not be common in the US of A.
There are a million low pen rounds, they're called expanding hollow points or fracturing rounds. They are designed to dump all their energy in soft targets, they are ubiquitous in hunting.
(And practically everyone has fired a 308 or equivalent, 300 win mag they are not)
Funny you should compare the round I am assuming they are using (just went with the current most common police rifle) to a 308 but not a 300 win mag. They use both the 308 and the 7.62x51 NATO from what I can look up.
The 7.62x51 nato has more punch then a 308 and a bit less vilocity then a 300 win mag. Now if you where to compare it to a 30-06 or a 7.62x54R then yeah sure. The point is the police are not using anything more fancy then hollowpoint according to what little I can find https://oklahoma.gov/content/dam/ok/en/doc/documents/policy/section-04/040106aa.pdf and I don't know any even slightly competent shooter (hunters more so) that would take the risk of that hollowpoint stopping at the first target with a 308 or hell even a .223.
I think we are getting lost in the weeds but my point is you don't set up sniper teams to protect people, you set them up to take people out or intimidate.
You absolutely set up sniper teams to protect people, such as every US president in a long time and most major sports games. Obviously there is a risk in taking someone out like that and that risk is weighed before giving an order to fire. And I'm not comparing 308 to 7.62x51NATO arbitrarily, they are virtually identical rounds like 5.56 and .223
Welp, thankfully you have a very easy way to identify if you're right or if you're wrong.
If you wake up tomorrow morning and 24h news cycles are megaphoning the murder of innocent protestors, you were right.
If nothing happens, you'll learn you were wrong, and hopefully you'll learn from it.
How does this make me wrong? All I see is 40ish arrests so far and unless they save the day with some sniper shot my point still stands. I am not sure how you think if the police don't kill people somehow that is an own. This is not a rational response to a protest unless you are in a place with very poor civil unrest or one that is not very free.
I was unaware 40 protestors have been arrested. nonviolent?
Looks like they just grabbed them. I was reading it might be the biggest mass protester arrest since the Vietnam era, but I am waiting for the final picture.
High angle means it would likely go into the ground. Also could use hollow point though, I don't know if police use hollow point on rifles.
They use various soft point rounds (you can't really use hollow points on high velocity rifles). The rounds are basically hollow points with a plastic ballistic tip.
I would not want to be behind someone shot with a .308 fragmenting round or not.
Here is a video showing the sort of penetration at 100 yards (what distance police snipers shoot from)
https://piped.video/watch?v=qB5OizvSPG4
it depends on how densely packed the people are and how high the approach angle of the bullet is, at 45 degrees, in center mass, it's only grazing a foot or two before being at knee level lol.