- John (Williams) MuhammadI am god!
And so it seems to have passed.
To start with, this Monday morning quarterbacking might appear a bit like an "I told you so" post. It is not meant to be that way. What I am attempting to do with this post is to review my thinking and the thinking of others through and after this sniper incident.
You folks that don't live around here may not appreciate exactly how taxing these last few weeks have been. I've spent some time on Dana's forum communicating with her. She was within a handful of miles of most of the shootings. If you weren't there, you just wouldn't understand...
I had the misfortune of literally crossing paths with the dirtbag. Because he (they) were threatening to shoot children (and had already shot one), all the greater Richmond area school systems closed down last Monday and Tuesday. So there I was trying to cart my two boys around town, getting the one to daycare and the other to the in-laws. And this extra inconvenience actually put me on the same roads - at the same time - that the sniper was using. I finally ended up at my in-laws place, only to be greeted by him excitedly telling me they had caught the sniper. Actually they just missed him, and instead caught a few hapless illegal aliens driving a suspicious white van with tinted windows and spending a LONG time at a phone booth.
So... Why do I post?
To start with, I wanted to go through some interesting speculations and theories that were being tossed about. Folks thought:
1) It was Al Quaeda
2) It was a military sharpshooter.
I thought neither. Why? To start with, I go into a certain scientific mode of thinking in something like this that is similar to the way student thinks when doing criminal defense work.
DON'T JUMP TO CONCLUSIONS BEFORE YOU HAVE EXAMINED THE DATA.
When the Oklahoma City government building was bombed, Katie Couric was asking anyone who would be interviewed whether or not it was the work of Muslim terrorists. It made her look pretty silly when we found out it was "one of our own." A similar thing happened to the poor fellow that happened to be helpful at the Olympic bombing. That poor fellow had his life ruined.
So, what was I thinking?
Did anyone remember that the sniper MISSED on his first shot? It instead went through the window of a Michael's department store. He actually got better over time, but didn't always get a great shot. Why was his kill rate so high? Well the .223 round:
1) travels 3000 to 3500 feet per second,
2) breaks up into pieces when it hits.
Any fool with a scoped AR-15 (AK 16) with a little bit of target range practice can cause this much damage. Van actually guessed the AR-15, and he might be right (we will see).
Was this guy a crack shot? No... He was a mechanic that worked at a military base where they trained snipers. He was a wannabe.
I am also HOPING that the military screens people a little better before they send them off to very specialized work. I hope to hear I am right. Meanwhile, there are more than a couple of losers (like Timothy McVey) that sign up for the military and end up doing a little of this and a little of that. The cream rises, and **** sinks in any decent organization. Neither John nor Timothy made it THAT far.
What about the Al Quaeda connection? Well no good Muslim would write "I am god." on a tarot card. No good terrorist with a political agenda would leave his work completely unsigned.
Meanwhile, there were more than a few bad guys in this world watching with fascination and likely slapping their foreheads...
So, it turned to be someone who tuned trucks NEAR people that practiced sniper shooting, and SYMPATHIZED with the folks that brought us 9/11.
It was a whacko with shallow goals - money and an easy life at others' expense.
Scumbag...
More later on why I called the FBI and what that was about.
- Bill
