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.
22,000 fish in a box.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I can’t claim to be a “pro” per se, but, as a former machine gunner (M-60 and M-2 - both crew-served weapons) and having carried and used a full-auto M-16 for several years, 500 rounds in a 2-acre area is no feat at all, especially from an elevated position of approximately 320 feet (10 feet per story). I participated in a few machine gun competitions and putting 250 rounds into a 400 square meter target (20m x 20M) at 300 meters was pretty commonplace - and that was on pretty level ground where we had to “walk” our rounds into the target.
Noticed that one of the newly released photo’s of one of the AR’s not only show the Bump-Fire stock as we have heard, but also a 60 rd Mag as opposed to the standard 30 rd. May be out there, but have not seen it mentioned regarding what appears to be a Surefire 60 rd Mag. Twice the firepower before mag change.
https://postimg.org/image/5wask0s2dn/
https://postimg.org/image/6l4241g0tn/
With 55 grain at about 3000 fps, drop would be about 4 /1/2 to 5 feet at 500 yards.
At that distance and elevation the elevation componsated distance to target I would think would be no more than 225-300 yards.
A distance most anyone with a few hours on a range can handle.
He wasn’t head hunting. He was just lobbbing rounds into a crowd of 20k. As I said yesterday, there has to be a very large number of pass thru shots that injured or killed others.
Not at all difficult to just hose the area which is what he did. Just be glad he didn’t have tracer rounds in the mix to help him judge where his rounds were falling.
Downward angle into a kill box is not that hard. Especially with that much ammo and time. If this has any significant windage or elevation issues, I’d be more conspiratorial, than my screen name implies...
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.
Never shot full auto, but 2 acres is a whole lot of broadsides of barns. Wouldn’t require any skill at all.
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.
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.
Plunging frontal, oblique and flanking enfilade fire with a significant beaten zone against an area sized target of 25,000 people. That is what automatic weapons fire is made for. What limits the weapon is the lack of a quick change barrel on an AR-15 when it begins to overheat.
I think you're trying to turn this into a Kennedy style conspiracy plot involving the CIA, the Mafia, and hit men sent by Castro.
The Vegas shooting was nothing. A huge target of 22,000 people less than 400 yards away. What is it about that you can't comprehend?
Bkmk