10-09-2017, 08:39 PM
Double Naught Spy Wrote:This was a no-win situation for your basic folks on the ground. No, cops in the US typically do not carry around patrol rifles. If they had rifles in their cars, their cars were too far away to get to in a reasonable amount of time given the shooting that was going on and the confusion with the crowd.
I will say it. Yeah, not only may they have not had the skills to shoot at unknown (to them at the time) distance at a barricaded individual moving between windows, but that there was no way in hell that they were going to risk shooting into a major hotel at an unknown distance with at a room 32 floors up in the low light situation that was present at the time of the shooting.
Tell me this, in all the video that you have seen of the shooting where cameras are pointed at the hotel, could you ever actually spot the guy in the window or did you just see muzzle flash? Could you tell how many hostages the shooter had with him? Did you know who was in the rooms surrounding him? Did you know the extent of the room/suite/condo that he had?
Just like the vast majority of cops never shoot at distances beyond qualification ranges, most cops with rifles never shoot at distances beyond qualification distances with rifles either and I don't know of any police departments off hand that have their officers qualifying at 350-500 yards.
Just as an aside, did you know that the average police sniper shot in the US is under 100 yards and most are less than 70 yards?
Remember, and this is critical. The issue isn't so much as to whether or not the cops could physically shoot back to try to stop the target, but whether or not the cops would be willing to shooting into a backstop and risk harming other civilians in adjoining rooms.
A muzzle flash is a Target and would be in this situation....An AR15 does not require a lot of hold over at 300 yards.....even if they aimed at the muzzle flash they would have hit close enough to possibly disrupt shooter.....or someone may have got lucky and hit him.....no way to know unless someone tried....even in the little under 10k population town I live in every car has a rifle.....A town of under 5k near me even publicized in the Newspaper about buying new AR15's for every Officer's Car.....Vegas LEO's would be well armed due to population and crime....would not have been hard for a Supervisor to have gotten to area with a proper rifle....