Posted on 06/30/2008 3:23:40 PM PDT by WOBBLY BOB
CARCASSONNE, France (AFP) — President Nicolas Sarkozy promised swift and severe punishment Monday after a soldier shot and wounded 17 people, including a three-year-old boy and both his parents, at an open day at an army barracks.
The sergeant opened up with an assault rifle, firing live rounds instead of blanks into a crowd of hundreds of visitors watching a hostage-taking exercise Sunday at the base near the southwestern city of Carcassonne.
A man who witnessed the shooting told AFP that "suddenly, people were falling, we thought it was part of the exercise, and then we saw blood."
(Excerpt) Read more at afp.google.com ...
You know after one shot that you are firing blanks or live ammo. Plus, you must have a blank firing adapter to fire blanks. Firing live ammo with an installed BFA will blow up your rifle.
Something else is going on. Jaques Muhamed?
Just off the top of my head, I am thinking that someone switched his magazines. Who, why I have no way of knowing, but that is a line of inquiry that needs to be followed.
If you’re assured of never having to partake in a real military campaign, why bother to drill and train. Just pencil-whip the thing till you’re called on to perform and then just hope for the best. Obviously, a breakdown in discipline.
I should have noted my sarcasm... The French have fought bravely and heroically in many wars, including Afghanistan.
I just can’t help myself sometimes... I love kicking the French while their down for the less then enthusiastic support for American policy.
Whatever happened, I just don’t see this as an accident.
Someone(s) messed up big !
I’m not a French apologist, but enough is enough. The French fought valiantly in WWI and in WWII were basically let down by their leadership. The following stats speak for themselves:
World War I cost France 1,357,800 dead, 4,266,000 wounded (of whom 1.5 million were permanently maimed) and 537,000 made prisoner or missing — exactly 73% of the 8,410,000 men mobilized, according to William Shirer in The Collapse of the Third Republic. Some context: France had 40 million citizens at the start of the war; six in ten men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-eight died or were permanently maimed.
I don’t have a problem with kicking the French when they deserve to be kicked . . . this simply does not appear to be one of those times.
Has the shooter been named yet? Is the long naming delay a sign that a mooslim might be the perp?
The one time I saw it happen a live round got loaded in a mag full of blanks. All it did was fire the metal plug thingy 25 yards down range. The weapon was still fully functional and undamaged.
No one could figure out how it happened and no one was injured but after that I insisted that only “I” load my magazines and in practice exercises I never aim directly at anybody.
The guy who fired it felt really bad and insisted that he did not load the magazine with the live round which was probably true but it would have been of no comfort if someone was injured and he knew it.
No offense intended. Don’t take it personally — this wasn’t an attack on your family, just general mockery of the French. If you don’t think its funny, that’s fine — you don’t have to.
Lighten up a bit. I don’t know you, your wife, her grandfather, or her great-grandfather ... so this clearly wasn’t directed at you.
H
Thanks for the first hand report, I never saw one happen!
What’s the soldier’s name?
That’s something we’d like to know.
One full mag of Simunitions?
Personally, if I’m training for combat scenarios, I’d rather have a full loadout.
I am thinking Jacques Mohammed. We will know soon.
Yeah and shooting 17 people in a crowd of spectators? That is incomprehensible by accident. He had to aim at the crowd deliberately, then keep shooting and shooting and...
So much for
French Military "marksmanship"
You want a real loser army? Take the Ottoman Empire's army. Though there were some major failures in command and control in 1870 and 1940, overall the French Army has been better than most of its European counterparts, and even Hitler admired the bravery of the French soldier.
So the first one gets shot and no one checks their ammo.
The 2nd...
3rd....
1oth...
My mistake, I read WWII.
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