sniper

[Carrol Cox]

I think it is grossly misleading to try to find large causes for
particular small events. Some years ago Counterpunch had a brief article
pointing out that after every war, murder rates increase -- BUT they
increase among _every_ sector of the population: old & young, veterans
and non-veterans, male and female, etc. etc. etc. And it would be an
unacceptable plunge into some kind of sidewalk freudianism to try to
draw any specific causal lines explaining that.

Shit happens. It is apt to reflect headlines in some way, but unless you
are capable of living inside the shooter's mind I think it silly to
speculate on causes in such case.

Social causes (that can be grasped in analysis) operate at much more
abstract levels.

Military training does _not_ include (for the vast majority) much
training in marksmanship. Only a very few soldiers are trained as
snipers. There are probably more expert marksmen trained in hunting,
etc. or in shooting clubs than in the military. My wife's father is an
excellent marksman, _and_ he was in the Marines (at Iwo) -- but he
learned to shoot as a teenager, hunting, not as a Marine, where his task
was primarily to carry around belts of machine gun ammunition, which
doesn't do much for accuracy as a rifleman.

Carrol