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Analysis
The Scope of Shared Tragedy
Simple Tools, Complex Crimes

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By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 12, 2002; Page C01



There is only one question, really. Who is he? Once we answer that one, the police can arrest him or, if necessary, kill him.

But we don't know.

We know so much else. We know the grief he's caused, the holes he's shot in 10 families and in our society. We know the fear that he brings as his dark claim to our attention. We know he is that most loathsome thing, a man who has himself confused with God and has taken on God's entitlements. We know his particularly profane blend of intimacy and distance: He can study us through his optics, look at the light in our eyes, the shape of our lips, the uncertainty of our hairlines, the eagerness in our young bodies. Then he safely presses a trigger from a long way out and takes all that away.

We know those things but they are not about him, they are about us. Still, we do know certain things about him so far, as inferred from his actions as filtered from the information the police have passed on. This much can be said: At some level, we know what he knows.

This is because he has established a performance baseline, and like any phenomenon, it is available and subject to analysis. Thus certain facts: He has shot 11 times and hit 10 people. Of those eight have died. In most of the cases, bullet fragments have been linked to the same firearm, a weapon that fires some form of .22-caliber centerfire cartridge. One cartridge casing has been recovered from a shooting site, but no one can know with certainty yet whether it's true evidence or a plant meant to mislead. Two of the victims were shot in the head though the torso is his more typical target. The police haven't been explicit about ranges, but the shooting in the District may have been at a range of about 80 yards and the shooting in Bowie was at 150 yards.

What does this tell us about him? How good is he? Is he a master marksman skilled in the use of arms, a wary opponent, a figure out of pop fiction, dozens of novels, hundreds of movies? Could he be a terrorist, intent on bringing to America much of the daily fear that grips certain parts of the Third World? Is he at least a trained man, possibly a hunter or some kind of gun crackpot? Or is he from the more squalid American reality: an embittered loser with nothing happening anywhere in his life, who can't find a girlfriend or hold a job, who, in his immaturity, has let the power of the firearm inflame his imagination and turn him into a monster? Is he even a he? Could he be a she? We don't know.

Let us, therefore, start with the smallest things about him.

He knows more, for one thing, than you could learn in the movies. In the movies, shooters routinely perform feats of marksmanship that are completely impossible in reality. They throw heavy rifles to their shoulders and snap off long-distance shots and people drop. They shoot from the hip, they hold the gun sideways, they shoot while somersaulting or flying through the air. That doesn't happen in the real world. So he's not a punk jerk who's couch-potatoed his life away in front of the VCR while cultivating zits, rejection and grievances. He knows a little something. He's not shooting from the hip or holding the gun sideways. He's not cracking out rounds and watching them hit and splash up dirt and debris.

He has rudimentary marksmanship abilities. He knows, first off, the importance of the stability of the shooting platform. He's clearly shooting off a rest, such as a bipod or a sandbag, or at the very least is supported by a wall, a tree branch, a car window frame. He's shooting to hit.

He also knows several of the sub-disciplines that go into the act of shooting a firearm. He's controlling his breath, though a couple of his nonlethal shots might be attributed to bad breath control; they seem typical of that syndrome. Then, too, he is almost certainly using a telescopic or electronic sight of some fashion, which means he has familiarity with the technical process of zeroing a rifle, that is, adjusting its sighting system to match his point of impact at a particular range. (It could also mean he bought a used but 'scoped, zeroed rifle, letting someone else do the labor; if so, at least he knew enough to do that.) He has elementary shooter's discipline in that he never shoots more than once. If he's using what is so popularly called an assault weapon, he hasn't been seduced by movie imagery or the gun's militaristic architecture into bursts of shots, one of the seductions of that particular style of rifle. He's not a spray shooter, a crowd gunner, in love with the bap-bap-bap of the semiautomatic rifle. He likes the one-shot, one-kill code of the professional soldier or law enforcement agent.

Still, none of these skills compute to the heavily trained operative or a terrorist. They are Shooting 101 techniques, easily learnable in an afternoon by anyone, man, woman or teenager, with routine coordination. They are accessible on the Internet or in any issue of a gun magazine. So far, in my judgment at least, he has not shown any extraordinary shooting skill. He apparently missed his first shot, and two of his victims have survived, one of whom has already been released from the hospital. So he can make a mistake. By aiming at the torso, he is giving himself a relatively large target through a scope even at his most extreme range. He also chooses targets who are fairly still -- people filling their gas tanks being a speciality of his -- which means he hasn't needed the coordination and the computation of leads needed for moving targets.

Furthermore, what little evidence there is indicates he is shooting within what is called "maximum point-blank range." That is the zone in which the bullet will strike reasonably close to the point of aim so that no advanced techniques -- such as holding over the target to compensate for the bullet's drop, or figuring the adjustment to the scope sight before shooting -- are necessary. The drop of a .223-style bullet in most loadings at 150 yards is less than two inches; he can aim and shoot in relative ballistic confidence. He has not shot at any range in which wind is a particular factor, so, even though the bullets are light, again he's not demonstrating advanced shooter's skills. He's not at a range far enough, either, for distance estimation or measuring skills to come into play. He doesn't need any of the inexpensive laser range finders that have become common today.

How much does he know about guns? Is he a "gun person," who reads the shooter's magazines and goes to gun shows and orders sniper manuals from the reprint houses? No credible evidence exists to prove this.

For one thing, he's chosen quite a prosaic, low-cost system. It so happens we are in a period of remarkable advances in long-distance shooting, not merely with those laser range finders, but also with a whole batch of ultra magnum cartridges of very recent vintage, that make shots at heretofore undreamed-of distances possible for the common man as opposed to the skilled professional or heavily committed amateur shooter. He doesn't appear to be using any cutting-edge technology.

His choice of weapon reveals something as well. It's notable that he hasn't selected a firearm or a cartridge that's linked to sniping as it's practiced professionally. The police have described the recovered fragments as being from a ".223 bullet," a particular vagueness that suggests they know a lot more than they're letting on or a lot less. In any event, the .223 family of cartridges -- it could also include a target round like the .222, a varmint round like the .22-250 or a specialized pistol round like the .221 Fireball -- aren't part of authentic sniper practice or the more informal "sniper culture" that surrounds this most disturbing but necessary of jobs. Most government and police snipers use a .308 Winchester rifle because it is far more lethal (its muzzle-energy, which measures force in pounds by mathematical formula, is around 2,300 pounds, while the .223's is around 1,200; in most states the .223 -- or any .22 centerfire -- is illegal for deer hunting because it wounds without killing too frequently.) The .223, as a combat round, has proved disappointing; one merely has to read "Black Hawk Down" or the specialized gun press to sample the discontent with its performance in Mogadishu or Afghanistan.

But again: He's not a dummy. That caliber has some extremely useful features for him. Since he's not a soldier in a firefight shooting someone who is shooting at him or a police marksman ending a hostage situation, he's not concerned with immediate killing power, as they would be. He can wound grievously, even fatally; it doesn't matter to him when, or even if, death arrives. He creates the same miasma of terror, regardless.

The .223 -- or any of the .22 centerfires -- has three further attributes for him that make it far more useful than a more immediately lethal round. First, it has very light recoil. The larger rifles demand a great deal of practice as shooters inure themselves to the blow of the kick. Second is the ubiquity of the ammunition as well as its low cost. It is an extremely flexible, useful cartridge: It may be used for varmint hunting in bolt-action rifles, where it is capable of accuracy out to 300 or so yards (I own a varmint rifle that is capable of this kind of work) on creatures weighing 10 pounds or less like groundhogs and prairie dogs. It may be used in pest control, as in the Ruger Mini-14, a perfect and beloved ranch and farm rifle. It may be used competitively, for match shooting in specially tricked up M-16 style rifles with heavier bullets. And finally (and inevitably) it is cheap fodder for military enthusiasts who want to shoot it bap-bap-bap in semiautomatic variants of assault rifles in matches or informal plinking or target sessions. (I also own one). That ubiquity certainly makes the tracking of any particular rifle much harder.

But its third attribute makes it especially attractive to this monster: Because the recoil is so low, he can watch his bullet strike his target. That is the terrible part: he's planned it so he can watch the dying.

Stephen Hunter, who is a Post movie critic, is the author of several novels on sniper activities, has taken two tactical shooting courses with professional sniper instructors and has hunted widely.


© 2002 The Washington Post Company


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I bet he's an ex marine, or an ex police sharpshooter or something. Or a crazed christian militia soldier or something.

Mind you hats off to him, he is well trained, he isnt a regular guy who bought a rifle and went out 'sport hunting' there is somehting about him that is odd, definetly proffessional.

i disagree that he's something spectacular...

He's not just some regular guy who bought a gun and went mad though, there is some preparation in where he finds his targets. He made the wise descion not to use a building.

But i agree he isnt a golden bullet winner or anything just a guy who watched deer hunter 1 too many times. But he has been out and got a good aim, but i would have had been kind and shot them through the medula so at least then they wouldn't feel it.

I think there is a very real chance that it is an Islamic terrorist. The Al Qaeda terrorist agents have been cut off from their leadership due to the US action in Afghanistan. So it may be that a small cell of Al Qaeda terrorists are working on their own to spread terror around the DC area.

The tarot card? Assuming that it came from the DC shooter(s), it may very well be red herring meant to throw off the investigators. Ditto for the .223 case found by the police, it could have been picked up from a shooting range or gravel pit that is popular with shooters.