Apparently in a French military demonstration, sixteen adults and children were wounded when someone mixed up blanks with live ammunition. I wonder what kind of demo would involve shooting blanks at someone? A firing squad demo?
9 thoughts on “What Were They Doing?”
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See Steven Den Beste’s questions about this over at Chizumatic. I can’t answer them, but maybe someone here can.
Snark #1: What the hell was a French soldier doing with live rounds?
Snark #2: French troops, not content to merely surrender anymore, are now shooting their own.
Sorry, that was just MEAN, wasn’t it? :)
Unless it was a standard gun salute and there were high-rises down range.
Who can’t tell the difference between a live round and a blank?
Its like that Stupid POS anti-gun film “Crash” a whole story arc the entails that eduacated people don’t know what a blank looks like….
Generally blanks require the use of a blank firing adaptor, so why did no one notice the end of the barrel being blown off?
One of the things I had to instruct recruits in when I was in the army (UK) was how to identify blanks vs live ammunition. I observed occasions in training where live ammunition was mistakenly issued instead of blanks (the packaging was often pretty much identical). People who are not interested in firearms and have little knowledge of them do not find it easy to distinguish the two types, even when they have a passable ability to handle a firearm on a shooting range. Sometimes it was difficult to get people to remember which way round the pointy end went in the magazine, let alone figure out what was a blank and what was live.
Anyone who cannot tell a blank from a live cartridge has no business handling a firearm.
It was a “hostage-freeing techniques at the Laperrine military barracks in southeast France” & one soldier somehow ended up with live rounds.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080630/ap_on_re_eu/france_shooting
It was stupidity and negligence on part of the soldier and the people who put the whole thing together.
My reasoning in more detail here.
For every foolproof invention there is a new and improved fool.
Just watch people driving. If adults were routinely disqualified from operating tools and machinery by reason of stupidity and negligence society in general simply would not function.
There are such things as bulleted blanks (which were in use in the army in my time). Try explaining that to someone who doesn’t know anything about firearms and doesn’t much care either.