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Thread: American Sniper Author and Vet Killed at Shooting Range

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    Exclamation American Sniper Author and Vet Killed at Shooting Range

    http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/n...,4541295.story



    By Matt Pearce and Molly Hennessy-Fiske

    February 3, 2013, 4:53 p.m.

    A killer and a survivor, Chris Kyle had left the dust-worn places where he had to worry about enemy fire -- or even friendly fire.

    Kyle, 38, an author and former Navy SEAL sniper, was shot dead Saturday in Texas by an unemployed, 25-year-old Marine veteran, officials said Sunday afternoon. Another man, Chad Littlefield, 35, was also killed.

    The suspect, Eddie Ray Routh, used a semiautomatic handgun to shoot Kyle and Littlefield multiple times at a secluded gun range at the Rough Creek Lodge southwest of Ft. Worth, investigators said at a televised news conference. Routh probably will face two capital murder charges.

    The Associated Press reported that Routh remained a reserve with the Marines after serving with them from 2006 to 2010, with a deployment to Iraq in 2007.

    Kyle, who was married with two children, was known to take troubled veterans to gun ranges as part of giving back -- shooting and hanging out as a kind of therapy, with the idea of having a good time.

    "The shooter is possibly one of those people," Erath County Sheriff Tommy Bryant said, hinting that Routh's mother, a schoolteacher, may have reached out to Kyle to get help for her son. Officials couldn't confirm whether Routh had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. They said there were no witnesses to the shootings.

    Routh appeared to be one of the nation's numerous unemployed veterans, and Kyle was one of the crop of Navy SEALs to leave the anonymity of military service and enter the public sphere.

    In Kyle's book, "American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History," he claimed that he'd recorded the most confirmed kills of any American sniper -- more than 150. His autobiography was unapologetically politically incorrect, reflecting the man: During one visit home between deployments, Kyle got a tattoo of a crusader cross on his arm.

    "I wanted everyone to know I was a Christian," Kyle wrote. "I had it put in in red, for blood. I hated the damn savages I’d been fighting. I always will. They’ve taken so much from me."

    Kyle won adulation and a spotlight and appeared on the NBC reality show "Stars Earn Stripes," in which "celebrities are challenged to execute complicated missions inspired by real military exercises."

    In an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, Kyle claimed to have punched former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura in 2006.

    News of his death spread quickly through the Navy SEAL community, according to Rorke Denver, a reserve SEAL team lieutenant commander based in San Diego, who served with Kyle on SEAL Team 3 in Iraq.

    “We’re such a small brotherhood that when something happens to anybody here or overseas, word travels fast,” Denver told The Times on Sunday.

    Denver said the news was “really hard to believe,” and he called Kyle “one of our real champions and battle stars.”

    For Denver, one of the toughest parts to believe was that Kyle was “not only killed, but on a range with someone he was trying to help, another veteran.”

    “I knew Chris had been working with other veterans, folks with PTSD, trying to help them get better,” Denver said. "It’s hard to stomach that someone he was trying to help would turn on him.”

    Denver said that during the last day, he has fielded questions from civilians who can’t understand why Kyle would have taken someone with PTSD to a shooting range — but as a veteran, he understands.

    “That type of shooting can actually be cathartic, calming,” he said, “letting your heart settle,” particularly for veterans who have just returned home after being accustomed to carrying weapons.

    Officials said they don't have a motive for Routh's attack and that he didn't have much of a criminal record. The three men apparently traveled to the gun range together in the same truck.

    Police said they tracked Routh to his home in Lancaster, Texas, on Saturday evening, where police tried to convince him to turn himself in. Instead, he made a break for it, and police gave chase.

    He was arrested without a fight after officers spiked his tires on a freeway, Bryant said. Authorities said a handgun was found in his home. They wouldn't comment on whether he had any other weapons.

    Routh was being held on $3 million bail and didn't have an attorney yet, officials said.

    A recent sampling of 1,388 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine reported that one-third had shown aggression toward others in the past year, with 11% reporting they'd used or threatened to use a knife or gun against another person, gotten into a fight with someone or tried to rape someone.

    PTSD, homelessness, substance abuse and joblessness were listed as risk factors.

    In Kyle's book, he hinted at the struggles he faced when combat slowed down -- mentally replaying the times he'd been shot, brooding over his own mortality, which he'd pushed away during combat. He said doctors put him on drugs to help him cope with the psychological stress he faced after his fighting days were over.

    Kyle also recalled the tension his wife felt over his deployments: “If you die, it will wreck all our lives," he quoted her as saying, adding that she was furious that "you would not only willingly risk your life, but risk ours, too."

    Kyle wrote of being at peace with his work and his faith.

    "When I die, God is going to hold me accountable for everything I’ve done on earth," Kyle wrote at the close of his book, adding: "But in that backroom or whatever it is when God confronts me with my sins, I do not believe any of the kills I had during the war will be among them. Everyone I shot was evil. I had good cause on every shot. They all deserved to die."
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    Helping people with mental issues by giving them guns to fire?

    Genius!
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seshmeister View Post
    Helping people with mental issues by giving them guns to fire?

    Genius!
    That was my initial reaction too....

    Got PTSD?......come shoot guns with us, you'll forget all about it.



    My second was, Damn, ELVIS is never going to believe the "lone nut" theory on this one.....

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    I guess he wasn't the best sniper after all
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    Yeah, this is just unbelievable. I mean, hats off to the guy for trying to help troubled vets. But handing any troubled individual a loaded gun is just tempting fate. I understand what he was trying to do, but man was that the wrong way to go about it. Just damn tragic.
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    beer and boobies might have been the better option.
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    Quote Originally Posted by ashstralia View Post
    beer and boobies might have been the better option.
    Always. There's no problem beer and boobies can't solve..

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    Boobies that give beer?

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    Quote Originally Posted by SunisinuS View Post
    Boobies that give beer?

    Oh man, that would wipe out infidelity forever...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Seshmeister View Post
    Helping people with mental issues by giving them guns to fire?

    Genius!
    Yeah. They should have gone out for ice cream instead.
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    Sammy's tits squirt Cabo Wabo.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DONNIEP View Post
    Yeah, this is just unbelievable. I mean, hats off to the guy for trying to help troubled vets. But handing any troubled individual a loaded gun is just tempting fate. I understand what he was trying to do, but man was that the wrong way to go about it. Just damn tragic.
    I guess someone with a good imagination probably wouldn't make the best sniper.

    If you want someone to calmly and coldly kill people you don't want them to be the kind of person that sits thinking for ages about the possible consequences.

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    Quote Originally Posted by El Bastardo View Post
    I guess he wasn't the best sniper after all
    Too soon!

    Actually, he was a great sniper. Close Quarters Battle, meh...
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    Quote Originally Posted by Seshmeister View Post
    I guess someone with a good imagination probably wouldn't make the best sniper.

    If you want someone to calmly and coldly kill people you don't want them to be the kind of person that sits thinking for ages about the possible consequences.
    I was watching a program on WWII dogfights and one of the pilots said he shot a German plane and passed close enough to see the pilot on fire and in a panic trying to get the canopy open. He said that really bothered him because it was the first time he actually saw the carnage. Before it was airplanes he shot at, not people. Also one problem the military has is getting the infantry to actually shoot other human beings. Often solders will fire their weapon but intentionally miss. Most people aren't killers. The people in charge want to make war as impersonal as possible. The biggest killer in war is artillery. You can load shells into an artillery piece, fire it, and kill lots of people but you just don't see it happening.

    A sniper sees their victim in that scope. I've gone hunting with people that want to get a deer or elk real bad and then they get the animal in the scope picture and just can't pull the trigger. Why? They see that animal up close in the scope. The sniper is the most hated person on the battlefield. Your own people will look at you as kind of a spook and the enemy hates you more than anything. Snipers usually leave one round or have a pistol. Why? They want to kill themselves before the enemy can capture them because they don't want to be taken alive. It's nasty business all around.

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    PTSD + Marine + Rifle + Sailor nearby = recipe for disaster

    Does Charles Whitman ring a fuckin' bell?
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    I guess that "If he had a gun" argument can be thrown down the shitter.

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    Quote Originally Posted by BITEYOASS View Post
    I guess that "If he had a gun" argument can be thrown down the shitter.
    God created all men. Sam Colt made them equal. It's whoever hits their target first.

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    Quote Originally Posted by BITEYOASS View Post
    I guess that "If he had a gun" argument can be thrown down the shitter.
    Yeah, especially the Wayne LaPierre bullshit about "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun".

    Didn't work so well for this "good guy"
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    Speaking of which...

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    Quote Originally Posted by Nitro Express View Post
    Also one problem the military has is getting the infantry to actually shoot other human beings. Often solders will fire their weapon but intentionally miss. Most people aren't killers. The people in charge want to make war as impersonal as possible.
    When the US military discovered that 10% of troops were doing almost all the killing and many of the rest were as you say aiming to miss or not firing at all, they did a lot of work to up this rate.

    I can't prove this but I wonder if this hasn't had a downside where US soldiers became trigger happy leading to more 'friendly fire' and civilian casualties.

    That's definitely been the perception here since the Gulf wars. I think in the first Gulf war more British troops were killed by Americans than Iraqis.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Seshmeister View Post
    When the US military discovered that 10% of troops were doing almost all the killing and many of the rest were as you say aiming to miss or not firing at all, they did a lot of work to up this rate.

    I can't prove this but I wonder if this hasn't had a downside where US soldiers became trigger happy leading to more 'friendly fire' and civilian casualties.
    The case has been made that this is what contributed to the perceived higher rates of PTSD rates on Vietnam Veterans. But the truth is that a minority of soldiers tend to do the most killing - probably about 20% of the soldiers kill about 80% of the enemy KIA's in firefights...

    That's definitely been the perception here since the Gulf wars. I think in the first Gulf war more British troops were killed by Americans than Iraqis.
    I think that's a bit misleading, as the Iraqis largely showed themselves incapable of killing Coalition troops, and the rapid advance and technology leaps made friendly fire inevitable. But there were plenty of instances of fratricide in WWII and so on. I think almost 200 American soldiers, including a senior U.S. general (Leslie McNair), were killed in a tactical bombing raid designed to shock the Germans in Normandy right before the "Breakout" after D-Day...

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    Well to be fair I imagine watching the US bomb one of their own generals would have at least surprised them if not shocked them.

    Too soon?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Seshmeister View Post
    Well to be fair I imagine watching the US bomb one of their own generals would have at least surprised them if not shocked them.

    Too soon?
    He was a bit of a cunt that made a series of horrendous decisions in WWII that probably exacerbated U.S. (an by extension, British and Allied) casualties - decisions that tended not to be based on the reality of the war, but on theoretical prewar dogma. McNair getting whacked was in a sense poetic justice for all the poor "replacements" and tankers in the Sherman he sent to their deaths with his shitty policies.....
    Last edited by Nickdfresh; 02-06-2013 at 08:06 PM.

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