Sniper Rounds

The Washington Times ^ | 1-23-06 | Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough

[JZelle]

An Army judge advocate general (JAG) temporarily banned Army and Marine Corps snipers from using a highly accurate open-tip bullet. The JAG, we are told, mistakenly thought the open-tip round was the same as hollow-point ammunition, which is banned. The original open-tip was known as Sierra MatchKing and broke all records for accuracy in the past 30 years.

[litehaus]

Laz's is better..........

[herb22]

When asked what he felt when shooting and killing insurgents, the sniper replied " A little recoil"

[vigilence]

The more fundamental flaw in her reasoning is that the only reason we don't use hollow points is because we are a signatoree to the Geneva Convention, which outlaws it. However, the people we are sniping at are not signatorees so there is no actual agreement in place. They have no rights other than what Congress has decided to bestow upon them (at the behest of the almighty Judiciary).

[GovernmentShrinker]

Bull. There are plenty of half-witted bleeding-heart men in the world too. She's an attorney for the U.S. military; she made a serious technical error which put our trrops at risk; if it cannot be shown that she made the error in reliance on information provided to her by another authorized party, she should be subjected to some disciplinary action. And the sniper should get his job back, unless he committed a serious security infraction SEPARATE from blowing the whistle on this dangerous mistake by the JAG.

But I've got another issue here. Who the heck is in command of these snipers (and I expect the sniper-commanders are all MEN), who allowed the snipers under his/their command to act on this mistaken order, and left it to one of his/their subordinates to "blow the whistle"? If the subordinate understood why the JAG decision was in error, the sniper commanders certainly should have known too, and should have responded quickly and decisively by citing the facts to the JAG, to whoever the JAG reports to, and to his subordinates, and ordered his subordinates to continue using the perfectly legal ammo until satisfactory explanation of the order was provided to said commander(s).

[Cessna182]

No they don't. They do go to The Basic School as do all Marine Officers. While there they may get the chance to be a billet holder, but they don't go to the fleet as anyhting other than a lawyer unless they want to compete with everyone else and get whatever MOS the USMC gives them.

[hdstmf]

Her boss should make an appropriate entry on her Officer Fitness Report to reflect poor judgement and failure to understand her job description. She should then be assigned to basic duties(civil documents) until she reaches professional maturity. She may want to consider resigning her commission. The same goes for any male JAG who is dazzled by his overblown ego.

[bikerman]

Time to break out the spit balls.

[mmercier]

I had a 10mm double eagle made by colt. It would stop a Chevrolet.

What a piece of garbage it turned out to be, the thing failed to fire one day at the range; a product I carried for three years as a personal defense item.

I traded it in for a SW wheel gun that will also stop a Chevy but has not yet failed to fire on request..

Belly lint rusted a spring and the thing failed to fire in double action.

I would be dead today if it mattered when the trigger was pulled.

[Uriah_lost]

Everybody is so jumpy now, with all the second guessing going on that I'm not surprised that the commander took the JAG's advice. I'm certainly not pleased but still not surprised.

[Cessna182]

All a lawyer does is give advice. It takes a commander to implement it. So all you chuckleheads need to be yelling at the JAG's commander who was dumb enough to pass this on.

[tanknetter]

But my point is, we can frag em, blow em all to hell with missiles and plethora of other means of blowing the enemy to bits but we can't use a hollow point bullet?

I understand now. The issue is international laws and treaties (like the Geneva Conventions) that the US is a signatory to. I don't know the rationales behind what's permissable and what isn't, let alone being of the ability to render a judgement. But at face value, you make a really good point. My guess would be that a hollow-tip round can be seen as having the intended purpose of wounding/killing through maiming ... rather than a clean kill. But that's just a guess, and if it is true I don't know how relevant it is to this day and age.

I do believe that the article states that the hollow-tip in the formerly-banned sniper round is to improve accuracy, rather than inflict greater damage on the target. So the difference seems to lie in intentended purpose/outcome rather than actual results.

[Herakles]

The JAG that prevented the leader of the Taliban from being predatored was a female too. In that instance, I wrote my local congress critter and asked she be sent somewhere she could do not further harm - some place like the arctic.
It's interesting to see political correctness get in the government's way like it is for the rest of us. Just hope people realize that 99.999 percent of us live in the real world (not fantasy land) where families go hungry and people die when the least best person is allowed to do the job;
I'm starting to notice a trend here.

[Dr.Zoidberg]

This is what happens when you have technically illiterate people in positions of responsibility.

Unless you have more than a passing familiarity with firearms and ammunition, you should be forbidden to make any decisions concerning them.

We see the complete idiocy that results when decisions are made by fools every time the senate and house takes up legislation that effects the Second Amendment. Most of them are so completely uneducated they are easily swayed by the lies and hysteria presented by the anti gun fanatics.

[Born to Conserve]

"Just because you say it's 500x283 doesn't decrease the download time for what's really a 1939x1099 file."

Are you on AOL or something? That file is what your browser is telling you it is -- 500x283, 192,232 bytes.

[tx_eggman]

T3 at work ... Go to the original URL (also found under properties on the pic file), it's 1939x1099 ...

[Felis_irritable]

"All a lawyer does is give advice."

Yeah, so they say. In my experience, if you want to buck the JAG you'd best have a pretty good rationale. Which is more than doable here, unless the commander is lazy or inept. It would seem to me to be easy to explain the concept/reasoning behind HPBT - especially if one was ARMY for cripes sake.

[Unrepentant VN Vet]

"............what in the world makes a soft-point/hollow-point so unspeakably horrible?............."

---

Four little words: Geneva Convention Feelgood Crap

There are now some of the loudtalkers who have decided that napalm and WP (especially if used by US troops) is similarly "inhumane" and worthy of censure.

Nice of my Dad's generation to liberate those twits.

[Arthalion]

I never could figure out the thought process behind the soft-point/hollow-point ban.

In a nutshell, it's because we signed a treaty saying that we wouldn't employ weapons designed to impart uneccesary suffering. Shotguns, RPG's, and grenades all inflict major bodily trauma which causes the person to bleed out fairly quickly. Soft-points tend to fragment inside the body and don't cause the same kind of massive entry point injury. They dont have the mass to cause enough trauma to kill quickly (unless you get lucky with a headshot or heart shot), and usually result in the enemy screaming in agony for ten to 15 minutes as they slowly bleed to death. To comply with the treaty, the US government decided to only allow ammunition that kills instantly/almost instantly, that kills with a minimum of pain, or that doesn't kill at all.

[rahbert]

Thanks for the tip! Gotta try that!

[absolootezer0]

ok, so hollowpoints are banned because they are more likely to wound.
now, someone tell me the story again on why we adopted the .223 as our military round?

so is it just me, or does that seem a little bit hypocritical?