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?
I don’t think we’ll really start to get a feel for this for another couple of days. There’s the aroma of shit all over this.
That bothers me, too. Maybe people were yelling about not being able to see to get out of the area?
No, paradoxically, the hold is the same whether uphill or downhill. You hold lower than with a straight trajectory.
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.
The single head shot comment was to show that the degree of difficulty was not late.
I shot full auto during my Army service, and a few times later in practice and as a writer.
Thats a cool app. What one is it. I have been using Nosler Ballistics for my calculations at the range.
The hardest part would be trying to hold the gun steady using one of those bump-fire type stocks.
Bumpfire has improved enormously from the first days.
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.
First, you assume that every person killed or injured received an individual bullet.
You have not accounted for richchet, multiple body pass-throughs of a single projectile, fragmented shrapnel, and panic-induced stampeding to account for many if not a majority of the injuries.
However, even if we make the assumption that every single injury was from a direct bullet strike, images of the weapons have shown that one with a slide fire stock was also equipped with an EOTech red dot sighting system. Keep the red dot within the "kill box" and the rounds will faithfully follow. Red dots are very useful at night, no tracers required.
And yes I carried an assault rifle for a living for awhile-never had targets as easy as that would have been...horrible carnage...murder...
“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.”
Sure didn’t hear any slow/aimed fire on the video I watched which opened with Jason Aldean still playing his set until the staccato rapid fire began. It sounded very much FA to me and so I’m greatly surprised to find out it was done with a bumpfire. Any video I’ve seen of that was not able to run a full string of 50 shots together before trigger release.
“You hold lower than with a straight trajectory.”
Thanks! I understand the physics - while the bullet might be traveling 500 yards, gravity is only acting on it along the shorter horizontal distance. (I told you I get confused!)
Never shot full auto, but 2 acres is a whole lot of broadsides of barns. Wouldn’t require any skill at all.
On the “dailymail” site with the photos I think they said one rifle was a full-auto. And I think at least two had the “bump-fire” stocks. Other Freepers have mentioned that a lot of the rapid-fire shots are not nice and smooth with equal times between each shot, which indicates the bump fire thing.
I read somewhere where the first shots were at the stage, and then the next set of shots was at the far exit to drive the people back into the venue area.
There is a photo of some cops behind a squad car - they are facing all sorts of directions - they were confused too.
Interesting that the Hispanic looking woman that told the people they were going to die said something like “They are all around you.” Perhaps to further that confusion.
I have. Your point about no tracers is reasonable. It would have made it even easier. But the combo of optics, the densely packed and large crow, and a well-lighted “kill box”...even a moderately familiar shooter could do exactly what happened.
Imagine being about 100 yards up in elevation above the target. The target is a roughly 70-yard square (208 feet) at the end of five football fields in front of you. Now, tilt the other end of that 70-yard square downward some, because it’s not standing up like a billboard. Doesn’t look so high and broadside now.
And see that a faster rate of fire would make the crowd spread out. The victims wouldn’t know what an individual round hitting here and there was, but they would get suspicious with many hitting faster.
‘Minute of Walmart’?! (And I thought I’d heard all of the ‘Minutes of’ ones!)
bump for later
A lot of hay has been made about how hard this would be.
I was an automatic rifleman in my Guard unit, before they received the M249 SAW. I was expected to engage area targets (soft skinned vehicles, crew served weapons and squad elements in the open) with aimed automatic weapons fire using three to five round bursts. I was also expected to be a suppressive fire element to allow the other fire team to flank an engaged enemy, particularly if the a Pig (M-60 LMG) was not attached or was combat ineffective or otherwise engaged.
I qualified on scaled down 600 meter silhouettes and when available machine gun ranges.
All of this was done with an M-16A1, a bipod, and a extra helping of 5.56.
Lets keep this in mind. The shooter had platforms pre-sited to have the proper downward angle. He had at least bipods, thus steadying the rounds and keeping a tighter beaten path to the targets.
He had glass on his weapons, both reflex and magnified.
His targets were almost certainly back lit (so no need to use tracers to adjust fire) and massed so close together that aiming at individual targets was not even a consideration.
A weapon like the M-16A2 has two different maximum effective ranges (maximum effective range is defined as what a normal trained soldier can hit 50 percent of the time). An A2 had a maximum effective range of 550 meters at a point target (e.g. individual soldier with open sights), 880 meters at an area target. (a squad element in the open).
The ranges of this engagement fall well within the maximum effective range of those AR type rifles he had and he only need fire at area targets to achieve the carnage he did. The bipods were instrumental in keeping muzzle climb to a minimum. If he is firing in a typical machine gun configuration, where his support hand is C-clamping the butt stock of the weapon aiding in traverse and elevation, he would be able to fire for a long period of time without undue stress. For what is worth, the felt recoil on a M60 machine gun was much less than a M16 in a prone unsupported firing configuration, at least that was my experience.
Remember, a full burst of auto fire had gone off before anyone even realized what was going on and I suspect that he hit most of the casualties within the first two bursts as the crowd had not yet scattered. Those rounds undoubtedly hit multiple targets apiece and rounds skipped off pavement and caused fragmentary wounds.
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