VERBATIM
I am a great fan of armed and trained civilians. But I’d like to
point out that the “hundreds of thousands of deer hunters” are no
military snipers and do not overmatch regular infantry. A very well
trained rifleman with a sub-MOA rifle can indeed score a first shot hit
on a 500 yard foe. What happens then?
The hit may be stopped by the armor. If effective, the hit may be
fatal or not: due to better emergency medicine in the army, they will
save most of their non-immediate casualties. Irregulars have
historically lost over half of their wounded.
The direction of the sniper would be indicated by the backsplatter
from the wound. In case of a miss, the projectile trace in earth or
trees would just about pinpoint the location of the shooter. At which
point, the infantry would use smoke to obscure themselves from the
shooter, make his egress perilous with suppressive fire and get close
enough to exact retribution. The civilian shooter would have no land
mines to disrupt their progress.
A really good shooter can make 500 yards hits on bullseye targets.
Can he do as well on camouflaged foes who move, use cover and can put
literally a hundred times his rate of fire with their squad MG or SAW?
An individual rifleman might be limited to 300 yards, but a SAW with a
scope fired from a bipod can reach out more than twice as far.
Assuming that the sniper can manage to retain his stand-off distance,
what can he do about air or artillery response. Insurgents world-wide
have to brave close combat to get away from the firepower available to
the regulars with one radio call. Against well-designed sniper hides
that cannot be reached by artillery or airpower, short-range rockets
would be used. The hide would have to escape detection in visible, near
and far infrared ranges to remain secure.
Multiple snipers might do better, but the regulars can just continue
using smoke to remain safe from long shots while encircling the whole
area and plastering it with mortars or just mining the perimeter and
leaving it at that.
I am a great fan of rifle marksmanship. But we shouldn’t overestimate
its value in warfare. Unsupported by regular troops, most snipers die
quickly. Most hunters may be marksmen, but they aren’t even snipers —
that skill set goes far beyond the basics of fieldcraft and marksmanship
required to bring down deer.
For that reason, the reliance on armed response indicates a loss for
the side forced to fight as insurgents. The kind of expedients required
for a successful guerrilla campaign tend to warp all participants out of
recognition as the “forces of good”. So our best bet is political
proselytizing and raising the next generation to love freedom, and to
respect the freedoms of others. The opium pipe dreams of the
“restoration of the Republic” through another revolution are best left
for those who don’t much value a connection to reality.
