A Sniper isn't the most popular person on a battlefield. In basic terms, they are even looked down on by soldiers in their own side. It's because of the nature of what they do and how they do it. Even if the outcome serves your side of an engagement, you understand that what a sniper does is not very classy. It's seen as more callous than normal. A cowardly way to kill someone.
To become a sniper you have to pass a rigorous training regime which mentally and physically taxes a potential candidate past a point most people could tolerate. I'm not talking about just a casual amount of mentally abuse, I'm talking about days and days and days and days of not moving a single muscle in your body, no making a sound, nothing to eat, and not going to the bathroom. If you think you can do that, then you still have to be an amazing shot with a rifle from distances up to A MILE away. The current record for a confirmed kill by a rifle is 1.5 miles by a Canadian sniper. It took the bullet three seconds to travel that distance and hit the target.
OH, and you have to be willing to kill people. On purpose. With a cold malice in your heart that says, This isn't personal, it's just a job.
Most soldiers have no idea if they have killed someone or not. They go to war and death just surrounds them. They aren't sure if their bullets or actions are the ones which bring the death they see. And if it happens they either own it or they do everything they can to hide from it for the rest of their lives, or both. Perhaps in the moment they want to own it as it furthers their image as a soldier and satisfies the training they were subjected to. Almost ninety percent of the military training is designed for one purpose - killing. Make no mistake, it may not be pulling a trigger but it can make pulling the trigger possible.
No matter how much they want to own the killing of someone in the moment as time passes, killing someone begins to weigh heavily on the heart and mind. It's not easy to live with the idea that you killed somebody, no matter if it was intentionally or on accident. That's why death fascinates us and frightens us at the same time. Not everyone can kill another human. Most people can't kill an animal, or a bug, even though the notion may cross our minds from time to time. And even if you could end a life, the hardest part is living with it. As the saying goes "their blood is on your hands and it doesn't wash off."
Many soldiers, regardless of their training, don't have the stomach for death. More importantly, they don't have the soul for it. If you think you can watch death or see dead bodies, I recommend you going to YouTube and finding video clips of dead bodies either killed in car accidents, or by warfare, and see how long you can look at them. There are websites like gore.com which used to post videos of people actually dying. Graphically. Most people can't stomach a real death. Why should soldiers be any different? You can't train someone to accept it. You either have the ability to tolerate it, or you don't. If you force someone to accept it, their soul suffers and their heart is scarred. It's almost impossible to bring them back. Impossible.
A sniper has no such worry. They have to be the kind of person who can kill and live with it. There is a term we use for someone who can kill and it doesnt' bother them. Go look it up. A sniper knows their work results in death. They witness it firsthand through a scope. Their willingness to do this sort of work, on top of their already inhuman mental toughness makes them rare in our world. So rare, they become legends. It's a talent.
Recently a Navy Seal sniper was gunned down - ironically - at a shooting range in Texas. He was killed by a man whom he was trying to help. The killer was a Marine who was not able to live with what he and seen and done in Iraq and Afghanistan. He suffered from what they now call, "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" or PTSD. In the past they have called it, "Shell Shock" or "Soldier's Heart" or "Battle Fatigue." It's the state of mind a soldier has when they come back from an intense environment where they can be killed at any moment, or have to kill at any moment. That environment requires the soldiers to accept what they see around them and continue on as if everything is perfectly normal. Wake up, eat breakfast, go out, kill someone, almost get killed, come back, eat dinner, go to bed. Start again tomorrow. After weeks and weeks of this, you're lost. Then, if you survive, one day it all just ends. You go home. You have to figure out a way to turn back on what you have buried down deep in your mind.
Soldiers are trained how to kill; they are trained how to live a life of preparedness; they are trained how to be a part of a machine; they are trained how to be a part of something... but they are not trained how to walk away after it's all over. When their service is up, they are simply cut out of that machine and they are no longer a part of something larger than themselves. They are also not told how to live with what they've done, or what they have been trained to do. They walk away with a void inside them. Here's a medal, there's the door.
The Navy Seal sniper who was gunned down was working with former military personnel who were suffering from PTSD by using guns. I'm not sure what the rationale was there, but he felt that if you gave people guns who were mentally unbalanced that it would somehow make them better. It would restart what was turned off. Instead it got him shot.
The sniper in question wrote a book and made several claims which are worth noting. He claimed he had killed more people than anyone in US military history. An odd thing to brag about but he's a sniper and that is just the sort of thing that a sniper would think is important. He was proud of this boast. He wrote a book about it. And the book was very popular, why? Because, again, we make legends out of famous snipers.
Here is a list of top snipers in history.
1. Simo Hayha. 705 kills (rumored to be more than 800). Finnish. He killed them all in less than 100 days in 40 below temperatures. World War Two.
2. Francis Pegahmagabow. 378 kills. Canadian. Ojibwa native. World War One.
3. Lyudmila Pavlichencko. 309 kills. Soviet... And a woman. World War Two.
She looks like Alicia Keys, doesn't she?
4. Vasily Zaytsev. 242 kills (rumored to be over 500). Soviet. World War Two.
Quite a list. All of them have had movies made about them. We are fascinated by their talent.
When I think about the dead Seal and the man who killed him I can't help but think of the this; It is a quote from former US Marine sniper Charles Mawhinney who was active during the Vietnam war. During the conflict the enemy sent out a rival sniper to kill him but Mawhinney got to him first. He said, "it was the ultimate hunting trip: a man hunting another man who was hunting me. Don’t talk to me about hunting lions or elephants; they don’t fight back with rifles and scopes. I just loved it. I ate it up.”
If we are going to train people to kill, then we had better train them how to live with it. If they can't live with it, then we hadn't bother training them at all.
To become a sniper you have to pass a rigorous training regime which mentally and physically taxes a potential candidate past a point most people could tolerate. I'm not talking about just a casual amount of mentally abuse, I'm talking about days and days and days and days of not moving a single muscle in your body, no making a sound, nothing to eat, and not going to the bathroom. If you think you can do that, then you still have to be an amazing shot with a rifle from distances up to A MILE away. The current record for a confirmed kill by a rifle is 1.5 miles by a Canadian sniper. It took the bullet three seconds to travel that distance and hit the target.
OH, and you have to be willing to kill people. On purpose. With a cold malice in your heart that says, This isn't personal, it's just a job.
Most soldiers have no idea if they have killed someone or not. They go to war and death just surrounds them. They aren't sure if their bullets or actions are the ones which bring the death they see. And if it happens they either own it or they do everything they can to hide from it for the rest of their lives, or both. Perhaps in the moment they want to own it as it furthers their image as a soldier and satisfies the training they were subjected to. Almost ninety percent of the military training is designed for one purpose - killing. Make no mistake, it may not be pulling a trigger but it can make pulling the trigger possible.
No matter how much they want to own the killing of someone in the moment as time passes, killing someone begins to weigh heavily on the heart and mind. It's not easy to live with the idea that you killed somebody, no matter if it was intentionally or on accident. That's why death fascinates us and frightens us at the same time. Not everyone can kill another human. Most people can't kill an animal, or a bug, even though the notion may cross our minds from time to time. And even if you could end a life, the hardest part is living with it. As the saying goes "their blood is on your hands and it doesn't wash off."
Many soldiers, regardless of their training, don't have the stomach for death. More importantly, they don't have the soul for it. If you think you can watch death or see dead bodies, I recommend you going to YouTube and finding video clips of dead bodies either killed in car accidents, or by warfare, and see how long you can look at them. There are websites like gore.com which used to post videos of people actually dying. Graphically. Most people can't stomach a real death. Why should soldiers be any different? You can't train someone to accept it. You either have the ability to tolerate it, or you don't. If you force someone to accept it, their soul suffers and their heart is scarred. It's almost impossible to bring them back. Impossible.
A sniper has no such worry. They have to be the kind of person who can kill and live with it. There is a term we use for someone who can kill and it doesnt' bother them. Go look it up. A sniper knows their work results in death. They witness it firsthand through a scope. Their willingness to do this sort of work, on top of their already inhuman mental toughness makes them rare in our world. So rare, they become legends. It's a talent.
Recently a Navy Seal sniper was gunned down - ironically - at a shooting range in Texas. He was killed by a man whom he was trying to help. The killer was a Marine who was not able to live with what he and seen and done in Iraq and Afghanistan. He suffered from what they now call, "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder" or PTSD. In the past they have called it, "Shell Shock" or "Soldier's Heart" or "Battle Fatigue." It's the state of mind a soldier has when they come back from an intense environment where they can be killed at any moment, or have to kill at any moment. That environment requires the soldiers to accept what they see around them and continue on as if everything is perfectly normal. Wake up, eat breakfast, go out, kill someone, almost get killed, come back, eat dinner, go to bed. Start again tomorrow. After weeks and weeks of this, you're lost. Then, if you survive, one day it all just ends. You go home. You have to figure out a way to turn back on what you have buried down deep in your mind.
Soldiers are trained how to kill; they are trained how to live a life of preparedness; they are trained how to be a part of a machine; they are trained how to be a part of something... but they are not trained how to walk away after it's all over. When their service is up, they are simply cut out of that machine and they are no longer a part of something larger than themselves. They are also not told how to live with what they've done, or what they have been trained to do. They walk away with a void inside them. Here's a medal, there's the door.
The Navy Seal sniper who was gunned down was working with former military personnel who were suffering from PTSD by using guns. I'm not sure what the rationale was there, but he felt that if you gave people guns who were mentally unbalanced that it would somehow make them better. It would restart what was turned off. Instead it got him shot.
The sniper in question wrote a book and made several claims which are worth noting. He claimed he had killed more people than anyone in US military history. An odd thing to brag about but he's a sniper and that is just the sort of thing that a sniper would think is important. He was proud of this boast. He wrote a book about it. And the book was very popular, why? Because, again, we make legends out of famous snipers.
Here is a list of top snipers in history.
1. Simo Hayha. 705 kills (rumored to be more than 800). Finnish. He killed them all in less than 100 days in 40 below temperatures. World War Two.
2. Francis Pegahmagabow. 378 kills. Canadian. Ojibwa native. World War One.
3. Lyudmila Pavlichencko. 309 kills. Soviet... And a woman. World War Two.
She looks like Alicia Keys, doesn't she?
4. Vasily Zaytsev. 242 kills (rumored to be over 500). Soviet. World War Two.
Quite a list. All of them have had movies made about them. We are fascinated by their talent.
When I think about the dead Seal and the man who killed him I can't help but think of the this; It is a quote from former US Marine sniper Charles Mawhinney who was active during the Vietnam war. During the conflict the enemy sent out a rival sniper to kill him but Mawhinney got to him first. He said, "it was the ultimate hunting trip: a man hunting another man who was hunting me. Don’t talk to me about hunting lions or elephants; they don’t fight back with rifles and scopes. I just loved it. I ate it up.”
If we are going to train people to kill, then we had better train them how to live with it. If they can't live with it, then we hadn't bother training them at all.
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