Posted on 10/03/2017 12:23:28 PM PDT by Mariner
Rate the difficulty of this...
With a fully automatic rifle, from a range of 500 yards and a 30 deg down angle, at night with no tracers, put over 500 rounds in a "kill box" of approximately 2 acres.
Knowing a little about ballistics, angles and ranging. And have fired a fully automatic rifle recreationally, this seems to be extraordinary shooting.
Professional grade.
But I'm not a professional auto shooter. You are.
What do you say?
not as hard as some are trying to make it sound like.
Not hard at all. Especially with the optics he supposedly had on the guns purported to be his.
Sweeping. Not that amazing
Very easy with very little experience necessary, especially form a fixed, known position with optical sights.
Fish in a barrel comes to mind.
Pretty hard to miss shooting into a crowd of 22 thousand.
Who says all his rounds landed where intended?
It’s not that difficult to put a fair number of rounds into a target that size.
Form should be from.
With a little practice, he could be making single head shots at that distance.
Sounds like he was just spraying, though, and that was all that was needed for that massed, packed target area.
Have all of you fired full auto as a job?
Area was well lit. Plunging fire. No return fire. Piece of cake.
Barrel and action heating would’ve been bigger issues not to mention shooter fatigue.
From what we know so far, the whole thing stinks.
Indeed.
Not what Id call professional grade.
Lets just say he had the tools, adequate knowledge and plenty of time with the intent to accomplish his evil task.
If he had real full auto belt-fed rifles and more skill, the body count could have been ten times what it was for all the rounds expended. Looking at the photos available online and being familiar with that section of Vegas, the kill box was a good bit larger than two acres. Probably 15 to 20 acres to accomodate 20,000 plus targets.
I’ve operated a few M16s which would cook off after a magazine or two. As soon as I loaded the next magazine and released to bolt it would zip thru the 30 round magazine in about 3 sec.s. I just had to hold on.
Not shooting rapid fire I don't think he could. And the audio I heard it was all rapid fire bursts. I didn't hear any single shots.
Could you do it on your very first attempt?
Or, would it require some practice and experience?
Not hard to do.
Just spray and pray.
No individual accuracy involved, he just aimed for the 25,000 people in the crowd.
Almost impossible to completely prevent .
I’m no expert, but seriously, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. 20,000 targets all bunched together, at least initially, anyway.
At 300 to 500 yards the amount of bullet drop is not that much, and the elevated platform not changing the trajectory that much either. The hardest part would be trying to hold the gun steady using one of those bump-fire type stocks.
Easy. No accurate aiming required really. Point in the general direction and pull the trigger. Spiral the barrel around in the crowd and he will hit people. He had good optics on the guns and could see the general area he was aiming at.
Pick out specific targets? Not so much. But I doubt he was looking for anybody specific. General carnage was his end game.
It’s the caliber. 5.56 and 7.62x51mm are pretty flat trajectory at 500m. With the angle down, he would hit close to where he aimed. Longer barrels also make it easier with a little more FPS plus a brightly lit target area and supported firing position.
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