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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.