Lessons I Learned In Sniping Weaponry.

Many years ago, as a young sniper trainee, I learned that anything and everything that you do involving your precision shooting or sniper rifle can effect it either to the good or bad side of things. Any changes you make in anything can improve or throw off your accuracy.

When the military talks about snipers, they are talking about a whole system. That system includes but is not limited to: the highly trained sniper, the high grade and expensive sniper rifle, the various day and night scopes, the high grade and costly ammunition made to specific tolerances and other devices as needed from time-to-time to make a sniper more deadly or successful in his missions. During the Viet Nam War, ammo for a regular infantryman's rifle varied from 3 to 5 cents per round. A sniper's ammo cost about 25 cents per round and took much longer to produce because a sniper's ammo was not mass manufactured.

Many people think of snipers as being cold-blooded killers. The truth is that concept is completely wrong. A sniper is more like an engineer who has to solve a problem which involves a human who is causing a problem. The sniper researches the problem/human, thinks over the situation and gradually works out a solution that leads to a termination of the problem. Not all sniper missions or solutions involve killing people, believe it or not. Much of what snipers do is gather intelligence for their higher authority commanders. Good information can often be as useful as anything when it comes to a battlefield situation. To know where a large enemy group is situated is often worth its weight in gold and can save a smaller friendly unit from annihilation.

More often than not, snipers don't always shoot at targets of opportunity. Sometimes they observe and relay information back to higher headquarters so scout airplanes and helicopters can be used to track enemy soldiers as they move to gather a larger picture. FLIR comes in handy to augment information discovered by field snipers.

Most people also think that there is just one kind of sniper. The long range, medium bore rifle shooting sniper. Not so! There are 5 distinct and different kinds of snipers that the public doesn't really perceive as such. It took me a while to figure them out too.

Have you ever seen the John Wayne movie "The Green Berets?" Remember the scene when Jack Soo uses a silenced 9 mm S&W pistol to take out 2 communist guards in front of the mansion? Well.... What Jack Soo was portraying there was a variation of a close range precision (pistol) sniper using a silencer. Certain spy groups have some close range pistol shooters who actually have pistols that have pistol scopes and silencers mounted on them for taking out guards, guard dogs, geese and so on. The Russian Spetsnaz is the biggest group known for using these guns. Technically, these shooters aren't true snipers BUT, sometimes, such a shooting assignment involving precision shooting falls to guess who? Yep, the local sniper.

So, on some military teams a sniper may carry a silenced pistol or one that has a scope mounted on it and has a barrel with a threaded end on it for a silencer. This original Model 39 Smith and Wesson pistol used for taking out guards and so on had a name. It was called, "The Hush Puppy."

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/03/17/smith-wessons-hush-puppy-used-us-navy-seals-vietnam-war/
https://www.bing.com/images/search?...vt=hush+puppy+pistol+during+vietnam&FORM=IGRE

Your second group of snipers is the general purpose sniper or the guy with the medium caliber rifle who shoots out to about 1,000 yards/meters. This is the guy who goes out on patrols and recon missions. This is the guy who becomes a Carlos Hathcock of the USMC using his talents to take out enemy soldiers at long ranges..

The third kind of sniper is the big bore, say .50 bmg shooter, who generally is used to take out really long range targets or light vehicles. Rob Furlong of the Canadian Army is a good example of such a shooter. Rob took down a couple of enemy at over 2,000 meters over in Afghanistan using his big bore rifle to get the job done.

The fourth kind of sniper is a specialty sniper who never leaves a perimeter and guards a special unit, compound or, sometimes, a business. Yep. More often than not, these snipers are often associated with Air Force facilities and perimeters. I have, however, seen two such snipers used in association with a small town rural bank. Every morning two guys would set up across the street from a small town bank, set their scoped rifles just inside the door of a house that the bank owned and sit on the front porch of the house all day playing cards or checkers. In reality the two snipers were watching the main floor of the bank and watching for trouble or armed robbers. If something happened, the men were to take whatever action they thought was needed at the time. USAF snipers are sometimes used to guard nuclear stockpiles or command centers, from a distance, when high security alerts are in effect. These kind of snipers generally do not shoot great distances but they are very precise in their close range rifle shooting when they do shoot.

The last and newest kind of sniper is the one that is just starting to come into being: the laser sniper. Don't get too excited about this one. It's not the Buck Rogers kind of thing you might be thinking. Right now, laser devices are being used to guide precision or smart bombs on to a target. In order to hit the target, a code has to be relayed to the aircraft dropping the bomb so that the bomb knows what signal to follow down to the target. The laser sniper "paints" a large area of the target with a spread of energy which attracts the sensor of the bomb to the area. The bomb strikes the area painted on the target with precision and destroys the target. It is hoped, down the road and in the future, that the laser sending devices will become more user friendly and sort of shaped like rifles for better control and precision. Hence the term laser snipers.

So. from all this information you can see that different rifles, pistols and snipers fall into different categories and do different jobs. There never is one simple definition for a group of people like snipers. Also keep in mind that each sniper is as different personality-wise as any other group of people. I've seen snipers who were natural woodsmen who could track, hunt and kill the enemy like they hunted deer back home but that same guy couldn't read at a 3rd grade school level. Another sniper I knew had a Master's Degree in education and taught school. So all the extremes get met in a group of snipers.

 

all very interesting but this is a civilian survival forum not a military or militia one, and most of us are interesting in avoiding bloodshed and putting food on the table.

Lone Wolf, it's just for information because in a survival situation you never know what you may bump into. Keep in mind that people who were once military eventually get out and return to civilian life but they keep their military skills in them. It is possible that, when you least expect it, you could bump into one of these characters. If you do, and if you have read the information here, you might have a little better idea of what you could be facing. Granted, not everybody will be a sniper or an experienced threat. I give you that. It doesn't hurt to be cautious though and think ahead of trouble. The more options/knowledge a person has, the better their survival chances are.

 

Many of our(UK) military personnel are likely to be deployed overseas and those remaining will be like the rest of us, more concerned about protecting their own families. We are more likely to encounter
civilian gangs using stolen weapons.

 

The key to survival is knowledge. All people use knowledge, instinct and research, along with preparation if they're smart, to their advantage. Over here in the U.S., we found a few years ago that gangs were sending some of their people into our military services to learn military tactics so that they could bring those tactics back to the gangs. So now our police have to worry about whether or not they're facing military trained gangstas. Because of that, firearms instructors, SWAT team people and patrol officers have to be much more alert especially in gang territories.

Something else to consider too is: When you guys in Great Britain go to bed at night, many of you take certain protective measures like double check your doors and windows to make sure they're locked. Some of you will go to sleep with a knife, club or even a sword close to your bed. That's because that's about as good as it gets for legal protection for you. Here in the U.S. we have more firearms than people. Our Department of Justice once estimated that there are like over 400 million firearms and about 350 million people living in the U.S. When many of us here in the U.S. go to bed, we sleep with guns close to us. Now suppose, for some reason, you come to the U.S. for a visit...

Maybe you came here for a vacation or a business trip or you won an all expense paid trip to the U.S. Then imagine all of a sudden you have to go into survival mode because of a CME or EMP. Without the knowledge you glean from various survival sites, you could end up in some really bad situations. Sooner or later any one of us can end up like that.

I've been in survival situations for real in a variety of situations. Some were in a war zone and many were outside of a combat theater. I know that survival is like chewing gum. Most people can do it but they have to know how to do it and what to look for. Debris shelter? Yep. Searched for water? Yep, done that too. Let me give you an example of one thing that both military and civilian survivalists will do: forage for food.

When a civilian is foraging for food most of us think that they're looking for canned goods, fresh meat and so on. Well, it's the same exact thing for the military people too. Survival is survival. That's the plain and simple of it all. In Alaska, the state police up there are mandated to go through survival training which requires them to learn about debris shelters, snow caves, skinning, cleaning and cooking wild game.

So, everything is relative. Depending on where you live, visit or happen to be when things go pop, any little bit of information can help you survive.

So, have the gangs in G.B. been sending people from their groups into the military services over there to learn military tactics? I would be surprised if they haven't....

 

we send in our firearm renewal some Police just sit on the renewal notice for a few weeks until it runs out, then they do a home inspection, you are then arrested for having guns in the house but no valid licence, you can then go to prison for 5 years.....

Had a similar problem over here for a while. now you just need to prove you have sent it in like a receipt for fees paid!

 

In UK as long as you submit your renewal application in good time - usually at least 12 weeks before your current shotgun certificate (sec2) expires, any delay in renewal is likley to be down to bad management
on the part of the police, which often depends upon which police force you are dealing with (some are very good, my own included). If the delay is the fault of the police and your certificate is about to expire
you should demand the issue of a section 7 temporary certificate which the police are obligated to issue immediatly free of charge. The only downside is that you cant buy cartridges on a sec7 certificate but you
can continue to use any which you already have in stock. I am not sure if this also applies to a sec1 firearms certificate (for rifles) there may be a slight difference in the procedure. My advice to all UK shooters
is to join B.A.S.C. if only for the insurance and legal cover in case of a refusal to renew by the police. B.A.S.C. have an unrivaled record for sorting out uncooperative police forces.

 

Geezzzzz I thought New Jersey is bad and it is

 

You are half right and half wrong!
A law abiding man here has no need of a gun for self defence unless he go's looking for trouble!
Australia is not a savage dog eat dog culture like the USA !

 

Both my father's and mother's families came from oh-sh##! poor. I come from hillbillies -- Protestant Scots who had supported William (Billy) who came to live in the hills of Southern Appalachia. Being good with a firearm was essential to having meat on the table. My maternal grandfather had been a subsistence hunter -- he taught me to hunt and fish. As a child, I knew no man who didn't own a firearm or several. My dad's mom kept a revolver nearby. There is nothing macho about a firearm to me. I can't express how grateful I am to my ancestors! A rifle being an extension of my biological arms -- something hard-wired into my brain -- may one day save the lives of my loved ones.

If we substitute the descriptor "a very good shot" for the word "sniper", then we readily understand the import of the civilian preparing for hard times to become a very good shot. For security, for game-getting, a firearm is necessary -- and a firearm is useless unless its owner be skilled in its use. A shotgun will put you in good stead, however sometimes in survival situations you gotta "reach out and touch someone" or some critter. Do you want savage roaming gangs to get within handgun or shotgun range of your family?! Me, I don't and I won't. Roaming murderers are going to get to meet Mr. 7.62NATO ... and in the worst sort of way. And if they do get in close, whatever they are hiding behind I will put a round through to ventilate them. The odds of government protecting civilians all across this vast nation is slim to none. I doubt they'll be able to protect the urbanites (who'll be their highest priority).

As to hunting, let's face it, when it hits the fan, the wildlife is going to get thinned out and quickly so -- especially in my neck of the woods where there is not shortage of hunters. Game had gotten rather thinned out when I was a boy, so Pap and I had to be good if there was going to be squirrel gravy on the table that night. In Germany after WWI and its subsequent depression, there was almost NO game left -- Germans were eating the leaves off trees. We here in the States are lucky that game levels have come back (deer are horribly OVER-populated; doe season is short), but boys and girls, hard times will make folk shoot Bambi in a heartbeat. That's when its the best shot at distance who'll be providing his/her family protein and vitamin B12.