Replies

Definitely not a tin foil conspiracy theorist, but someone brought up a good question on the internet yesterday. Could a PFC Combat Engineer, kicked out of the military for sexual misconduct, become a trained sniper able to take out 11 Dallas cops? Possibly, if none of them had protective armor and bum rushed his position. Occum’s razor would tell us that it is more likely that multiple assailants were involved...

You start with an assumption that he was a trained sniper. I doubt that. Certainly, a trained sniper could have done the job, but many others could have done it as well. You do not need to be a trained sniper to accomplish this crime at the ranges involved and the time available. As an Engineer, he received Basic Rifle Marksmanship in Basic Training. He probably had additional training before he deployed to Afghanistan. That training may or may not have been sufficient, but we don’t know what additional practice/training he did.

Speculation like this will not lead to a conclusion that there were multiple shooters. Evidence will lead to that and according to the Governor, the Mayor, and the Police Chief, such evidence has not yet been found.

Ever fire an AK74? The 5.45 round is very gentle in recoil and it is very easy to keep the rifle on target. They must shoot like a dream in full auto. I much prefer it to the 7.62 AK, and between the two it would absolutely be my choice for relatively rapid, moderate distance shooting. Put a good optic on it and anyone can be “accurate enough” with it. That’s the thing people miss when they get all wrapped up in the AR’s inherent accuracy advantage over the AK—the AK is plenty accurate for combat. Also, IIRC, many of the Dallas cops were returning fire with pistols, which would basically leave them as sitting ducks for someone with cover and a rifle. The guy was no sniper; he was basically plinking away at opponents who posed no real threat of effective return fire. Cops at a protest that had the potential to go bad should have been armed with carbines, not handguns, and they should have sought cover before attempting to engage the shooter. I rant and rave about militarized police, but an AR15 today is about the same as grandpa’s 30-30 70 years ago. It’s the everyman rifle. Hell, save some money and equip police with AK74s. They can ride around in squad cars forever and still run when needed.

"Could a PFC Combat Engineer, kicked out of the military for sexual misconduct, become a trained sniper able to take out 11 Dallas cops?"

There are two general kinds of combat engineers--the combat kind and the construction kind. The murderer was one of the construction kind. His specialty was that of doing carpentry and masonry work.

The combat type does frequent combat drills, while the construction type does building tasks.

To answer your question, anyone can be trained to ambush others or train themselves to ambush others. Anyone can also acquire weapons with which to to do. But those who do so by way of strong emotions like hatred and vanity are generally not as effective.

Something even more important here. Criminal minds do not consider the consequences of their evil deeds. That's one characteristic that distinguishes the minds of criminals from the minds of moral people.

Dallas gunman Micah Johnson honed tactics at local combat school

The school was a civilian commercial business, by the way--civilian meaning not military.