There is NOTHING More Political than a Sniper.
On the web, there is an extremely popular sniping website snipershide.com. Owner of the site and associated forum maintains a strict "non-political" policy, but being a former marine corps sniper of the 8541 variety, he hasn't a lot of perception. The "politics" of sniping are beyond doubt. As a tool of warfare, sniping is extremely effective. Lord Nelson having been shotdown by a French Sniper, Carlos Hathcock having shot the North Vietnamese General after his legendary 3 day low-crawl stalk into position. General Hiram Berdan's Sharpshooters and Capt. Herbert McBride's WW-I treatise, A Rifleman Went To War all testify the game-changing potential of The Sniper. Assassinations carried out by same is also undeniably a political weapon and tool.
Let's put up a website and found a shooting school to teach Middle-America how to shoot custom-built rifles with precision at ranges of up to 1 mile, but let's not talk politics.... Yeah, sure... Rather like Ignatius Loyola who thought he was doing "God's Work" in the Spanish Inquisition...
In this blog, I will detail much of my experience in longrange shooting, precision handloading, and with the gear that can be crafted together to make a precision shooting rifle. There will also be discussion regarding identifying snipers by gear and how to discern likely emplacements or hides.
There will also be Criticism of the Shooting Sports Industry and associated websites which do nothing to police the companies that constantly rip-off buyers and fail to warranty defective merchandise of great expense.
The militarization of local police and county sherrif operations which now frequently have duty-slotted sniper(s) employed will also be discussed. The United States Govt deployed snipers at Waco,TX and at Ruby Ridge, Idaho where the FBI's Ron Horiuchi distinguished himself for history by shooting Mrs. Vicki Weaver in the head as she held an infant child in her arms... 93 persons died in the Waco TX debacle with no government restraint or punishment for responsibility. The FBI's Ron Horiuchi was also reportedly at Waco.
Sniping IS Always About Politics... However, thanks to Websites like SniperCountry.com, Snipersparadise.com, Snipershide.com, and others; Sniping has become a Big Hobby and Much Bigger Business. Nothing wrong with Americans learning to shoot well. It is this skill and pursuit of it that largely enabled our victory over The British Army and assured our Declaration Of Independence.
What is Objectionable and what I Object to is touting products that cost many thousands of dollars as "necessary" and "desireable" to those seeking to learn longrange shooting and the defense of businesses that defraud and cheat customers by active practice and omission of independent reports. Businesses that contribute gear for evaluation or pay money and/or supply equipment to be "sponsors" can seemingly be certain that their ineptitude and in some cases fraud will be overlooked or of no concern to either the Industry or the Website.
Of all vendor categories related to "Sniping", there is none of greater potential for rip-off than that of OPTICS. Rifle scopesights are particularly complex instruments. Contemporary sniper optics are especially complex as most are of variable magnification and complex reticle design. That many of these feature electrical systems for Illumination of Reticle means they have many potentials for failure and need of repair.
There are no objective standards for measurement of quality; the perception and vision of each individual being a matter of wide variety and capacity. The general perception, or climate of cult-like "knowledge" deliberately fostered at SnipersHide, the largest sniping forum, is that to do serious riflework at distance will require a Nightforce NXS or better scope. This effectively means SH promulgates "conventional wisdom" that to shoot well, shooter needs to spend $1500+ for a rifle scope; with the "really good" scopes from Schmidt & Bender, Premier Reticles, Leupold Mark 8, and Hensoldt costing upwards of $4000.
Schmidt & Bender became the Hide's darling with their Professional Marksman series of scopes which was entered and won the US Marines competition for Best Optic for their 8541 Scout Sniper corps. Prior to this, the website's darling was (and to some extent still remains) US Optics which is the company that the purchasers of John Unertl's firm morphed Unertl Optics into.
AO Bum Phillips, legendary coach of the now departed Houston Oilers, said of NFL coaches that there were 2 Kinds, "...Them that's been fired, and them that's gonna be fired". Bum's insight (from experience) also applies to scopesights. The more complex, the more likely they are to break and need repair.
Over the years, I have been banned several times from snipershide forum. The bans were for disclosing the ineptitude of vendors in comments to persons considering purchase of product. None of my postings were ever different in tone or exaggerated from what you will read here; just that the forum with 70,000 members who had been "conditioned" by the Old Salt Experts to revere the vendors they touted could not be informed of mistakes or frauds that might sway opinion and impact their business.
One optic firm which hide owner Frank Galli told me in personal message was "questionable" is IOR-Valdada. At the time, I had posted on the hide's Optics forum that IOR had given me "the third degree" when I sent a scope in for repair. The scope, a $900 10x sniper model, meant for tough-duty, had a broken screw in the turret dial assembly making adjustment for zero impossible. I called IOR and was told to send the scope in, that they would "try" to repair it.
I mailed the scope which I had bought used, and which had very slight tube crimps when acquired and IOR attempted to deny warranty service to me because the tube was crimped 3" back from the turret w/broken screw. When I pointed this out, the IOR employee acquiesced and said they'd try and fix it this once, but the crimped tube was evidence that the scope had been tightened too strongly in scope rings and voided the warranty. I got the scope back with a new screw. Originally, IOR's Scott, gave me the address in TX for a replacement metric screw and the size needed. I felt pretty lucky to get the scope repaired.
Within a couple weeks of the return of the 10x, I bought an IOR-Valdada 2-12x 36mm scope worth about $1400. When the scope was mounted, the amount of distortion at low and high-end magnification levels was akin to looking down a coke bottle or cheap fish-eye camera lens. Again I called and returned the new scope in box complete, expecting a replacement or repair. Didn't happen that way. IOR's owner replied in a letter that he had "looked through the scope and all seemed normal to him" so the scope came back having been in their receipt all of 2 days....
I related my experience on snipershide again and a hide vendor who promotes himself as "Scott of Liberty Optics" PM'ed me and called me at my home late on a Friday evening. The guy was seemingly mildly drunk, but friendly. As an IOR dealer, he told me my mistake was in not having bought from him, that he could make Val of IOR see reason, but that Owner Val was stubborn and being a 2 man company, could only replace scopes that were too badly out of adjustment or send them back to Romania where the manufacturer IOR-Bucuresti was located. Scott Berish did offer to buy the scope from me for half what it was worth; "to help me out", he said...
What I learned about IOR-Valdada of Colorado USA was that it was owned by 1 guy and he had 1 employee. Also learned they had no testing equipment, no technicians, no facility at all to do more than replace a broken screw in turret dial... Yet this firm and the Rumanian Wunder Products were being touted on Snipershide.com as "comparable to Zeiss" in terms of optic quality...
more soon
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