Question for EXPERIENCED Full Auto Shooters - Pros

The Dead Curiosity Cat | October 3rd, 2017 | Mariner

[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?

[Nachoman]

One of the primary missions of automatic weapons is being an area denial weapon. In other words, the gunner picks a piece of real estate that he doesn’t want occupied and proceeds to hose it with lead. The Vegas shooter had all the right ingredients for this which resulted the high casualties.

[Avalon Memories]

He wasn’t a sniper in the usual sense of that term. He wasn’t picking off individuals. He was firing indiscriminately into a crowd numbering in the tens of thousands. He came equipped with the firepower to do it with comparatively little skill. Given his elevated position, clear line of sight to a very large crowd and some 70 minutes to do the deed, the wonder is that he killed a small number of people relative to the size of the crowd. Don’t make this guy out to be some remarkable marksman. He was remarkable only in that by their mid 60s most people are well past the age when they would act out like that.

[Mathews]

Yep, but mostly machine guns like the M-60, M-240 and the .50. Very rarely went auto with a rifle unless we were friggin’ around while the more senior folks were gone. 20 Years in military service.

[TalonDJ]

stupid easy.

[RightInEastLansing]

I read that he was using bump stocks to achieve full auto. Bump stocks are cool but not very accurate.

[discostu]

The important part there is a killbox of 2 acres. Pretty much if what you’re trying to hit is measured in multiple acres the answer is yes you can hit it, over and over again.

[DCBryan1]

Earlier reply to sound signature and distance below:

It may be 600+ yards or more including drop. So there is all kind of sonic garbage going on there according to video. I'm still voting an AR/AK with a slide fire stock or ECHO trigger AR and 75 rd drum(s) or surefire mags. Ok 3-400RPM or more at muzzle (sounded weird and slow for belt fed MG)....time for the muzzle signature to reach the microphone...then sonic cracks as the bullets pass objects and hit objects (30 caliber bullet makes a hell of a crack when it hits the target at 600 yards)....and all of that echoing around.

The speed of sound at sea level is 340 m/s so if the shooter was 680 meters away it would take a full two seconds for the sound to arrive from the first shot.

Time of flight of the bullet is 1.6 seconds at 700 yards rounding up (If it was AK 7.62x39 variant faster if 7N6 round). So there could be a crack near target then the muzzle crack arrives a half second later.

Although it looks as if the bullet drops sub sonic at 550 yards...: Source: http://gundata.org/blog/post/7.62x39mm-ballistics-chart/

Conclusion: Extended range might have lessened the number of deaths and severity of injuries if my assumption is right. But its all speculation until we know the platform/caliber.
Hattip to Willbird

< 43 floors tall, he was on floor 32

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mandalay+Bay/@36.0932095,-115.1731837,454m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80c8c5cffb824261:0x97f68a25c5b4ddef!8m2!3d36.0918777!4d-115.175245L

I measured a random car as .100", I tape measure 11-1/2 inches as a good general distance from motel to the back of that fenced area. So that is 115 car lengths...1996 caprice is 214" long.

So 115x214=24610 feet 24601/3=638 yards !? That is giving me 683 yards ??

so 350-400 to an area right in front of the stage is probably about right :-).

good exercise :-).

Easy shooting into that kill box. He could have done it with .22LR but with much less lethal effect.

[familyop]

Difficult enough with the 2 acre plane at that oblique angle at 500 yards at night without tracers. Probably not very successful.

But with the civilian bump fire toy and sight without magnification, probably extremely sloppy. And the crowd would scatter sooner.

He most likely caused most of the wounded casualties by firing more slowly at them at first with semi-auto, a good rest (bipod or whatever) and longer range sight. Those poor folks probably didn’t know what was happening for some time. There would have been music noise, individuals cheering at the music and not as much attention to perceived fainting.

Many times in the past, people have been hit for some time without realizing that they were hit by small bore fire. Combat soldiers are taught to check themselves by feeling their bodies with with their hands after firefights. Shock, adrenaline and all of that.

[eyedigress]

22,000 fish in a box.

[CyLyte]

20 acres in downtown Vegas? Not a chance. That was barely bigger than an acre which helped him because the targets were packed together. I had the same question about the physical ability to do this and it seems from responses here that he could have. Then the real question is who supplied him and the guns and why did he do it. There can’t be that much mystery here. I think we’re just not being told because the media doesn’t want to.

[DCBryan1]

Can you imagine the carnage if he got ahold of a minigun? Iraqis lost over 100 of them when they beat feat as ISIS swarmed from Syria into more than 50% of Iraq.

[21twelve]

My daughter at 18-years old is a pretty good shotgun shooter. She went with a boyfriend to shoot his rifle - never having shot one.

He had a 30-06.

“I did good - I missed the gong the first time, but then hit it the other four times.”

“Wow - really? How far away?”

“300 yards.”

“Oh honey - I think you mean 300 feet. 300 yards is three football fields.” (A gong is probably 18 to 24” diameter.)

“No - he said it was 300 yards - it was a long ways. But his gun had a scope - all you had to do was look through the scope - not like the shotgun. Except I did shoot better than he did!”

I looked up the gun range they were at - it has a gong at 300 yards.

I get confused on the steep slope when shooting - it has been so long since I hunted on them. But the angles do present a bit of a challenge. Something like have to hold below the target if shooting downhill, and above the target if shooting uphill? I’m sure a few minutes on google would solve that. And it isn’t much. At 500 yards you are talking a hold point difference of 6 to 12 inches I would guess.

So while a novice hitting a specific individual from his perch would be difficult - hitting 10’ x 10’ clusters of people would be pretty easy.

[MPB]

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.

Imagine you're 500 yards away, and uphill, from a forest. Now, could you as an inexperienced shooter manage to hit a bunch of trees, given 10 minutes and thousands of rounds? It would be amazing if you didn't hit a bunch of stuff.

That's what makes this attack so insidious is that basically we had a "fish in a barrel" situation. Checking people as they came into the venue was meaningless when some evil guy just uses a higher vantage point to wreak havoc. Nothing you can do about that except, what... ban large outdoor gatherings within rifle range of tall buildings?

As usual, the real solution is improved mental health options and recognizing crazy people before they get all murdery. And also as usual people will ignore that and try everything else first like passing laws that wouldn't have made a bit of difference.

[x1stcav]

As others have pointed out, not hard to do. targets all concentrated, no return fire, etc. Wouldn’t be hard at all.

I’m questioning whether his weaponry would’ve been up to it. Barrel overheating is a real factor, real fast, on rock and roll.

[TigerClaws]

He owned 3 planes.

Would he have flown into he crowd after loading up the plane with gas and whatever bomb making materials they found and killed more people?

If so, why use the guns?

He had an arsenal in the room. Weapons, bullets. In a hotel. Presumably the “NO SERVICE NEEDED” sign was out on his two doors? And he lucked up that no manager or staff members checked the room while he was gone?

[TalonDJ]

“Or, would it require some practice and experience?”

It would require no practice. But in the state of Nevada it would be incredibly easy to find a place to simulate that shooting area and practice. I could find a dozen spots with 5 miles of my house just by picking the right hill and watching where the dust kicked up from the shots.

But that is literally as easy as hitting the side of a barn from across the barnyard.

[DesertRhino]

Not at all professional. This was literally 500+ minutes of angle. I keep hearing how this is “expert” shooting.
His skill level could be attained in an afternoon in the desert.

This was minute of Walmart building accuracy.

[Augie]

I think 2 acres is 300’x290.4’.

My Gramma could close her eyes and put 500 rounds into a space that size from a quarter mile away.

[GOPJ]

If a Southern white conservative drove up to New York and shot up a bunch of liberals at a Guggenheim Art Museum Event would the press ‘muse’ about the possibility he was a conservatives that hated liberals? AND that was the motive? Or would they discuss the types of guns he used? And the quality of his marksmanship?

[mazda77]

Especially when the target zone is 350,000 square feet at 25° downhill from 750 to 1500 feet away. Shooter is in the dark and the venue was lit up like a Christmas Tree.