Posted on 10/08/2002 11:34:37 AM PDT by SLB
This will be one of those articles our enemies will try to pick apart in order to make the accusation that the author actually condones what is happening around the nation's capital. It's expected, since it's one of the few ways the left knows how to deal with such a dilemma. Fact is: There have been at least 11 shootings, with 5 confirmed fatalities so far in the Washington DC area. Since despite all the police chest pounding, they probably won't find a suspect by the time this is article is published, there will probably be more.
In our new War on Terrorism, none dare call it that. So let's call it what it really is - war, and deal with it on those terms.
This of course, will make the spin meisters even more upset, since nothing - absolutely nothing since September 11, 2001 will be called terrorism. Not the American Airlines flight over New York City a year ago, not the string of oil refinery explosions, unexplained train derailments, not the nutcases attacking Greyhound bus drivers, and heaven forbid - that Anthrax thing was an anomaly, just like the West Nile Virus and the new cases of malaria popping up in the same area of the shooting. Just individual crazed lunatics mind you, not terrorism.
Meanwhile, the war continues.
If it hasn't dawned on you that this is an actual war in progress on our own soil (don't worry - it's not terrorism unless we tell you), take a look at the affect one lone sniper has had on the social infrastructure of the DC suburbs:
MARYLAND: Anne Arundel County Schools: . All schools locked . After-school activities canceled . After-school childcare will be provided . No evening high school classes . Indoor recess and activities
Baltimore City Schools: . No afternoon pre-kindergarten . No outdoor after-school athletic events; indoor events will be held
Calvert County Schools: . Students being kept inside schools . No after-school activities
Charles County Schools: . Heightened security . Students kept indoors . After-school activities canceled . Tuesday field trips canceled
Frederick County Schools: . Lockdown status . No students allowed outside
Howard County Schools: . Modified lockdown status . No afternoon kindergarten or special education . No outdoor recess or activities
Montgomery County Schools: . Code Blue status . No afternoon pre-k or kindergarten . Extra security in schools . All field trips canceled . Indoor recess and lunch . All after-school activities canceled
Prince George's County Schools: . Code Blue status . All outdoor activities canceled . Indoor recess and lunch . No outdoor after-school activities . No afternoon pre-kindergarten . All school doors monitored by security . Increased police presence in schools
Queen Anne's County Schools: . No after-school activities
DISTRICT: D.C. Schools: . No outdoor lunch or recess . No outdoor after-school activities . All field trips canceled
Archdiocese of Washington Schools: . No outdoor lunch or recess . No afternoon kindergarten or activities . Aftercare will be provided
VIRGINIA: Alexandria City Schools: . No outdoor recess or physical education classes . After-school activities canceled . Increased police presence for dismissals
Arlington County Schools: . All outdoor after-school activities canceled . Indoor after-school activities will be held
Caroline County Schools: . Outdoor activities canceled
Fairfax County Schools: . No outdoor activities
Falls Church City Schools: . Outdoor activities canceled . Police officers at each school
Fredericksburg City Schools: . Lockdown status . No after-school activities
King George County Schools: . Lockdown status
Loudoun County Schools: . Heightened state of alert . Outdoor activities at each principal's discretion
Manassas City Schools: . Limited lockdown status . No outdoor recess or activities
Prince William County Schools: . No outdoor after-school activities Monday or Tuesday
Spotsylvania County Schools: . Outdoor activities canceled
Stafford County Schools: . Outdoor activities canceled
Not bad for eleven rounds. Anyone want to take a guess how many of these students are children of federal employees? Now, let your brain spin. Here's a federal government planning for war, importing and exporting no goods on its western flank, and with a market in a steady freefall, and yet to even submit a budget this fiscal year. But none of that will be on their minds when they wake up - only: who's next?
Just like September 11 - brilliant war tactics. Then again, as any sniper can tell you, psychological terror is a bi-product of this time-tested, lethal art. The only thing America has going for it right now is that there is only one. Surely the profilers are trying to figure out some way of saying this lone gunman is some nut - some crazy white guy that gets a monthly high from reading Soldier of Fortune, probably hates the New World Order, and is of course, a believer in the Second Amendment, Turner Diaries, etc.. This profile (soon to come, I'm sure) will give some antigun nuts a second wind, attempting to get more gun legislation passed.
C'mon - you know this is coming, don't you?
Lest we forget that the state of Maryland already has some of the most draconian gun laws in the nation. And no gun law will slow down this sniper. In fact, only the opposite is true.
We're dealing with a professional, someone who is becoming pretty good at one shot - one kill. This person is not firing several shots at random, and is deadly accurate. Our shooter knows how to take the shot, then relocate. Some amateur could not be this skilled working behind enemy lines, if you will and, knowing there is a dragnet out there, still hit his mark at least 10 times. According to authorities, there is no common pattern with the victims that are being chosen. So if we said the only thing the victims do have in common is that none are Muslim, that would be a stretch, wouldn't it?
If what many people fear turns out to be the case ("sniper jihad"), catching this critter may be difficult, and a few more may have to die to get a bead on this SOB. Not being a sniper expert, I'd say it will take all we have inside us if and when the next round is fired. But I recall something about hitting the ground, and get a good look in the direction where you heard the sound. If it were a war zone, the next line would be lay down cover fire, and fire teams should keep their 'field of fire' in mind, but we don't want to turn the Washington Suburbs into Washington, DC, now would we?
Our little sniper is operating in an enemy environment, but he is also operating in a relatively 'safe' environment. You see, the fact that we really are at war is a concept too many people haven't taken seriously yet, especially in east coast, antigun bastions such as suburban DC. Hence, only time will tell when suddenly concealed carry laws are lifted (or simply not enforced), so that the soldiers in this new war (the citizens), may have the means of neuturalizing such threats upon discovery.
Go ahead. Call me extreme. But attending all those funerals will get old real fast. Legislators can pass all the laws they want, but no police chief or sheriff wants to spend the rest of is time in office counting innocent bodies. I'd suggest the local police make a few inquires to the Pentagon on how to deal with this problem, not the FBI or ATF. No, I'm not calling for military intervention, but gathering background information on someone that clearly has a military background.
To put it bluntly, we've have a region of the country on the verge of societal shut down. The pundits prefer calling this a lone nut than dealing with the obvious.
This person is not a 'right-wing' lunatic. This person is not a terrorist. This is a solider - waging war on our own soil.
I concur for a different reason. No one has gotten a good ID on the perps yet. If you can't ID them, you ain't close enough to take them on with a handgun.
Yep, exactly like OKC. Clinton, as most of us know, had his reasons for not revealing the truth about OKC. Bush has his own reasons for attempting to convince us that not one terrorist incident committed by Islamics has happened on U.S. soil since 9/11 (when in fact dozens have).
Presidents lie, period. They always have, and most likely always will.
Going prone and using a handgun one can hit a human sized target out to 100 yards. Several of the shots have been at about 100 yards distance. Further if someone who is armed comes upon a rifleman sighting in some other direction and sees said rifleman take a shot and an innocent fall then pumps five or six rounds into the shooter that would be an instance where a handgun would do some good.
I heard last night that no shots were beyond 100 meters. An amateur piker could hit a kill zone with iron sights at that range.
A professional sniper would not choose a .223 due to its poor ballistics and mediocre wounding ability.
Most folks can reliably hit 100m targets with a .223 after a day or two of practice. It is unlikely the gunman is a "pro". An Al-Queda terrorist on a tight budget, perhaps.
Just perhaps, an armed citizen might run across this killer. Notice "ALL" of the police were well armed????
1) There isn't the slightest scrap of evidence that terrorism had anything to do with Flight 587.
2) Oil refineries are massive complexes chock-full of things that burn are explode. Sometimes they burn or explode, and this has happened since the first refinery was built. No one has presented any evidence that there are more oil refineries exploding or burning in the last year than usual. And it IS the responsibility of someone claiming these are terrorist incidents to search for and present such evidence, NOT the responsibility of those claiming they aren't.
And believe me, I've had to put up with this garbage before, from the Y2K loons on the old Timebomb 2000 board. You couldn't have a fire in a trashcan started by a cigarette butt at an oil refinery in early 2000 without somebody claiming it was the beginning of the Y2K meltdown.
3) There has been NO increase in train accidents or train derailments in the last year. This WAS researchable and the data was posted on several of the train derailment threads on FR.
4) None of the Greyhound bus attackers were "Middle Eastern", Muslim, or were found to have the slightest connection to any terrorist network.
5) Malaria USED to be endemic in the Continental US and it's not particularly surprising to have it return, particularly with restrictions on spraying and insecticides.
6) New diseases, old diseases arriving from a different area of the world so they're new to the US, or new forms of diseases, pop up. Legionnaire's disease, the 1918 Flu Pandemic, etc. It doesn't require human intervention.
Nobody thinks the 1918 flu was biowarfare. If it popped up this winter, (or something like it, and that could happen ANY year) I think it's a safe assumption that every single person on FR would assume it was bioterrorism, and be violently hostile to anyone suggesting that it wasn't.
Let's face it...the author, like many FR posters, is upset about the relative absence of terror attacks in the US in the last year. We've had a grand total of ONE Middle Eastern Male actually commit an act of terror in the entire US in the last year, and a grand total of TWO Muslims (including Richard Reid, who was at least on an aircraft headed towards the US, though he wasn't actually here when he tried to set off his shoe) committ acts of terror in the US in the last year.
The above aren't spin, they aren't deceptively worded statements; they're simple statements of fact.
And I'm talking about ACTS OF TERROR. Whatever dreams Padilla or those wannabe kooks in Oregon had don't count in ACTS OF TERROR because they didn't actually do anything. Could they have done something if they hadn't been caught? Sure. But we'll never know.
And this is a dilemma for the "ALL Muslims are Evil Terrorists/We're in WWIII" crowd; it's the same dilemma that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton face every day they wake up and some dumb white redneck hasn't dragged a black man to his death behind a truck the day before...and that's pretty much every day, because the supply of violent white racists is far lower than Jackson's and Sharpton's political agendas demand, just as the supply of violent Islamic terrorists in the US is far lower than the political agendas of a lot of people who post on FR, and who are popular writers of articles that get posted on FR, demand.
What about a hangun in the hands of a guy who hears gunfire coming from a van as he strolls past it 50 feet away?
Its a moot point, D.C and Maryland have suspended the Bill of Rights.
In that case, the selection of .223 is idiotic and the guy is not a "pro". Wind drift on .223 starts getting sketchy around 300m. No sniper with military training *chooses* .223.
The interesting thing is that if you're claiming Concealed Carry would deter this sniper you're pretty much arguing this isn't a fanatical Muslim terrorist....and I suspect everyone claiming that CCW would matter against this guy also ASSUMES it's a fanatical Muslim terrorist.
Remember, these are supposedly fanatical suicidal terrorists? How does the fear of citizens with concealed handgun affect an Al Queda sniper?
Let's face it...this particular perp is the WORST possible example to use to argue in favor of concealed carry, and all it does is serve to make Concealed Carry advocates look like idiots when it is used.
Concealed Carry WOULD deter muggings, rapes, carjackings, etc. But in the case of this particular sniper, it's blatantly obvious that citizens with handguns wouldn't have stopped ANY of the attacks so far, or would be likely to prevent any in the future. And this is either a terrorist, or a particularly rare type of highly rational psychopath...."deterrence" of civilians with handguns is unlikely to work on either. Such deterrence WOULD work on a common criminal out for some money or a SUV to take to a chop shop.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.