Haven't seen the layout of the plazas in relation to the highway and surrounding topography.
Are we assuming there is a vehicle involved in close vicinity??? Do we really know the shots were made from a vehicle???
It sure would be easier to walk away in the confusion...Nobody would notice someone running or walking away..it would be a normal reaction.
What's the range on that handheld weapon?? They were talking about a silencer..
Sac
I shoot sillhouettes regularly. We use handguns out to 200 meters (or yards, depending on the firing range used), and while I am about a 10% shooter at that range (revolver, open sights or with scope, not much difference for me), others are downright deadly with their TC and XP100 race guns.
The black powder cartridge boys use those "quigly-down-under" style rifles, open sights, out to 500 meters, and even with a 20-30 foot drop in the bullet path, they tip them over easily. Some of the pistol shooters compete equally well at those ranges, usually with something like a 7mmTCU or something similar.
A silencer slows the expansion of the hot gasses so as to muffle the sound of the shot itself, but if the bullet is supersonic it will still crack with a sonic boom. In the case of the unfortunate (or somewhat fortunate, as the case may be) lady who survived, I don't see how they can say that it was not a rifle round, although it could have been slowed down to subsonic velocity (I doubt it though).
My experience with 10mm and 9mm pistol ammo is that after 100 yards, assuming you were still on target, you have lost too much velocity to do much good. Most of the common pistol stuff behaves similarly, until you get into the hot 357s, 44 mags, etc. Now, a 454 or 45 win mag, or some of the off-the-wall stuff like a 38 Casull might be effective, it would be an unlikely choice for a marksman. That is based on limited hunting and blowing-up-cinder-blocks and the like, so take it for what its worth.
My gut tells me that this was done using a 22-250 or 220 swift, not a 223 or 222, but if the LEOs were just speculating and had not recovered an intact bullet, it could have been something like a 6mm PPC or some other benchrester round known for accuracy. Heck, it could be an ugly old 243 from walmart. Point is, there are dozens of combos that could have been used, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the method or motivation, from a criminal profiling perspective.
With a silencer, you are limited to about 200 yards, even with a nice rig like a .300 Whisper AR-15 conversion. Sure, you could go a bit longer in theory, but the bullet is moving mighty slow to begin with. Lots of oomph, but not much velocity. Not so hot on the penetration side.
The advantage of using a suppressor over a silencer is that full-power ammo can be used, giving the gunman the full range and power of the rifle. The sonic boom created by the bullet isn't as loud as the muzzle blast, and it doesn't give away the position of the shooter. The bullet makes the sound as it flies, so the direction of the noise would actually be the bullet itself. This makes the getaway a lot easier, people are less likely to look in your direction after the shot is fired.
Are we assuming there is a vehicle involved in close vicinity??? Do we really know the shots were made from a vehicle???
It sure would be easier to walk away in the confusion...Nobody would notice someone running or walking away..it would be a normal reaction.
I'm glad to see that folks are thinking about these shootings beyond what the news and police and county executive, etc. are reporting. The information they are giving out does not satisfy all the questions I have, especially as I know the area where the cluster of shootings occurred fairly well.
The Michaels, Mobil, car dealer and Leisure World locations are all pretty open spaces, with large expanses of greenspace (grass, stands of trees, pet and people cemetaries, golf course property) facing them from across the roadways. The Shell station is in a little more difficult to describe location, with mostly commercial locations all around, but it does have one side that is at a higher elevation than locations behind it. The Shoppers store (formerly a Hechingers store) is in unrestricted sightline of the Wheaton/Glenmont station of the Montgomery County Police Department; and it also has a direct line to another area of tree cover - although that is a parking lot for some garden apartments, which are adjacent to a regional park and nature center.
In all those locations there is good cover available within shooting range, and the cover area is not far at all from well maintained roads, where one could easily access a vehicle for anonymous escape.
So, while I am not obsessing on the whole thing, I do have to wonder if the police chief and others are misleading the public for some reason (and not necessarily ill-intended) regarding the white Isuzu box truck. My instincts are telling me the truck is not a part of the story. But my instincts have been wrong before.
As to the type of firearm used, I'm not too knowledgeable, but .223 "projectile" is used by more than just hunters of 4-legged prey. It's pretty common round for reaching out and touching things. And alQaida and other Islamist terrorist types are very likely to have trained with rifles that use the round.
so, the shooter has been narrowed down to include: competitive shooters, hunters, military, police, terrorists. Narrowed that right down, didn't I?
The one thing that is certain is that I am very pissed-off by what has happened, and I want the shooter found and killed. And I want all the terrorists-in-training/hiding in the US to be hunted down by the authorities; and I frighten myself when I find myself thinking that I want them to resist when caught so that we won't have to waste taxpayer dollars on a trial.
I ponder all this ugliness today, 15years and 10 hours after I celebrated the birth of my beautiful baby girl, which probably explains why I want anyone who threatens my kids' lives (as these shootings have done) to be killed without mercy.