Just what is a 'sniper rifle?'

[Certaindeaf]

Please find for me the word 'sniper' in contemporary documentation, and I'll go away.

Point of order - at the time that you are talking about there was no 'United States of America'.

tac

That's why I said "military". Are you trying to get uppity?

 

[Certaindeaf]

And a berserker can only eat onions. wtf

 

[Member 3687]

I understand the definition of what a sniper and a sniper rifle is by today's standards but guess what back in the day before the US even had a military they where the folks that had learned tactics (some from the Indians) and how to shoot very well on their own to hunt for food and they were known as sharp shooters. Most of the equipment and tactics used by today's sniper is based on equipment and tactics once used by hunters in the past. The Ghillie suit was used by game keepers long before the military and before sniper schools the designated marksman was usually the kid in the group that had hunted most of his life and knew his way around a firearm and the woods. I mean no disrespect to those who have been trained with the modern skill set and put it to use but many of the skills you where trained where learned from others long ago then improved upon.

The key thing is to remember the Anti folks do not care about your definition in any way shape or form just like they do not care about the definition of an assault rifle because it does not fit their needs plain and simple.

So we as gun owners can banter back and forth and then post the definition according to Wikipedia or any other source and it does not matter what we think it's what can be sold to the sheeple masses that matters because they are the ones who vote and push to ban things they know nothing about.

So the new thing will be anybody that shoots more than one person from more than 10 feet with a rifle will be a sniper who set up an ambush. Then the weapon will be said to have features not needed to hunt with and therefore should be banned.

Just like the so called assault rifle.

 

[bsa1917hunter]

I understand the definition of what a sniper and a sniper rifle is by today's standards but guess what back in the day before the US even had a military they where the folks that had learned tactics (some from the Indians) and how to shoot very well on their own to hunt for food and they were known as sharp shooters. Most of the equipment and tactics used by today's sniper is based on equipment and tactics once used by hunters in the past. The Ghillie suit was used by game keepers long before the military and before sniper schools the designated marksman was usually the kid in the group that had hunted most of his life and knew his way around a firearm and the woods. I mean no disrespect to those who have been trained with the modern skill set and put it to use but many of the skills you where trained where learned from others long ago then improved upon.

The key thing is to remember the Anti folks do not care about your definition in any way shape or form just like they do not care about the definition of an assault rifle because it does not fit their needs plain and simple.

So we as gun owners can banter back and forth and then post the definition according to Wikipedia or any other source and it does not matter what we think it's what can be sold to the sheeple masses that matters because they are the ones who vote and push to ban things they know nothing about.

So the new thing will be anybody that shoots more than one person from more than 10 feet with a rifle will be a sniper who set up an ambush. Then the weapon will be said to have features not needed to hunt with and therefore should be banned.

Just like the so called assault rifle.

I like the way you put things into perspective.

 

[Goosebrown]

Please find for me the word 'sniper' in contemporary documentation, and I'll go away.

Point of order - at the time that you are talking about there was no 'United States of America'.

tac

Not fighting here, but I love origins of words.

Seems snipe came from you guys in the 1770's in India.


The verb "to snipe" originated in the 1770s among soldiers in British India in reference to shooting snipe, which was considered a challenging target for marksmen. The agent noun "sniper" appears by the 1820s.[2] The term sniper was first attested in 1824 in the sense of the word "sharpshooter".[2]

A somewhat older term is "sharp shooter", a calque of 18th-century German Scharfschütze, in use in British newspapers as early as 1801.[3]

Just for fun of course. I think that sharpshooter was a more common term till mid last century.

 

[Goosebrown]

We have a St*rbucks AND a Costa in our local town - never been in either of 'em, me. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too poor, y'see, for that kind of expenditure on hot brown water.

I tell ya, there are some seriously rich folks in this town, and you can see them sat on their little chairs outside these public self-agrandisement locations, laffing, spitting and flicking snot-balls at the beggars, lepers, the lame and sundry other cripples that line the streets here.

All I know about England I learned from Monty Python

WOMAN: King of the who?
ARTHUR: The Britons.
WOMAN: Who are the Britons?
ARTHUR: Well, we all are. we're all Britons and I am your king.
WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous
collective.
DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship.
A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
WOMAN: Oh there you go, bringing class into it again.
DENNIS: That's what it's all about if only people would--
ARTHUR: Please, please good people. I am in haste. Who lives
in that castle?
WOMAN: No one live there.
ARTHUR: Then who is your lord?
WOMAN: We don't have a lord.
ARTHUR: What?
DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarchosyndicalist commune. We take
it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.
ARTHUR: Yes.
DENNIS: But all the decision of that officer have to be ratified
at a special biweekly meeting.
ARTHUR: Yes, I see.
DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--
ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!
WOMAN: Order, eh -- who does he think he is?
ARTHUR: I am your king!
WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.
ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings.
WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then?
ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake,
[angels sing]
her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur
from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I,
Arthur was to carry Excalibur.
[singing stops]
That is why I am your king!
DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords
is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives
from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
ARTHUR: Be quiet!
DENNIS: Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power
just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just
because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!
ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!
DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.
ARTHUR: Shut up!
DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!
ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!
DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you here that, did you here that,
eh? That's what I'm on about -- did you see him repressing me, you saw
it didn't you?

 

[Goosebrown]

A "sniper rifle" is any rifle that any average American lays hands to.
True story.

On the morning of April 19th, 1775, 77 men and boys stood in front of 700 British soldiers and said that they were not going to move. They moved, disbanding and starting to leave when the British opened fire and then charged with fixed bayonets. By that evening when the British straggled back to Boston with 73 killed and 174 wounded, there were 4000 American snipers on the battlefield firing at them from every rock and tree and fence.

 

[Andy54Hawken]

Not trying to argue.
Just wondering how we "know" the English fired first on the 19th of April 1775?
From what i understand from reading first person accounts it is unclear who shot first.
if Jonathan Parker wasn't sure , then I wonder.
I wasn't there , I'm not that old ...
Also the America forces in action there just kinda fell into battle. The whole "sniper behind every tree and fence "is a part of American mythology.
It just turned out that way in this battle , not by choice.
The American forces ( militia included ) wanted to fight in lines just like European armies of the time. ( That's why we were happy to get Von Steuben )

Yes it is true that SOME American units did fight Ranger / Indian style at various times before and during the American Revolution , but not all and mostly depending on where the units were or were raised.

Also I highly doubt that there were any rifles at Lexington or Concord in 1775.
Quasi- Military Muskets , fowlers and muskets were more the order of the day for that area.
Rifles were more common in Virginia , Maryland , the Carolina's and Pennsylvania.
Not to say there weren't rifles , rifle companies or regiments used elsewhere later , just not at this battle.
So no matter what you call someone who could shoot well from a hidden fixed position at individual targets , I would say that there were no "sniper rifles" at Lexington or Concord.
Again not trying to argue , just pointing some things out.
Andy

 

[Diamondback]

Not fighting here, but I love origins of words.

Seems snipe came from you guys in the 1770's in India.


The verb "to snipe" originated in the 1770s among soldiers in British India in reference to shooting snipe, which was considered a challenging target for marksmen. The agent noun "sniper" appears by the 1820s.[2] The term sniper was first attested in 1824 in the sense of the word "sharpshooter".[2]

A somewhat older term is "sharp shooter", a calque of 18th-century German Scharfschütze, in use in British newspapers as early as 1801.[3]

Just for fun of course. I think that sharpshooter was a more common term till mid last century.

If memory serves, Horatio Nelson (d. 1805, Trafalgar) referred to them with particular despise--appropriately, as one of them ended up being the source of his own Tag 'n' Bag. (See, @tac , not all of us "ungrateful colonials" are completely historically illiterate... Then again, it does help that one of a client's roadmap goals for their miniatures catalog is every ship from both lines at Trafalgar... so Business Necessity I guess. lol)

 

[Goosebrown]

Not trying to argue.
Just wondering how we "know" the English fired first on the 19th of April 1775?
From what i understand from reading first person accounts it is unclear who shot first.
if Jonathan Parker wasn't sure , then I wonder.
I wasn't there , I'm not that old ...
Also the America forces in action there just kinda fell into battle. The whole "sniper behind every tree and fence "is a part of American mythology.
It just turned out that way in this battle , not by choice.
The American forces ( militia included ) wanted to fight in lines just like European armies of the time. ( That's why we were happy to get Von Steuben )

Yes it is true that SOME American units did fight Ranger / Indian style at various times before and during the American Revolution , but not all and mostly depending on where the units were or were raised.

Also I highly doubt that there were any rifles at Lexington or Concord in 1775.
Quasi- Military Muskets , fowlers and muskets were more the order of the day for that area.
Rifles were more common in Virginia , Maryland , the Carolina's and Pennsylvania.
Not to say there weren't rifles , rifle companies or regiments used elsewhere later , just not at this battle.
So no matter what you call someone who could shoot well from a hidden fixed position at individual targets , I would say that there were no "sniper rifles" at Lexington or Concord.
Again not trying to argue , just pointing some things out.
Andy

You can snipe with a musket. At Lexington/Concord they were not fighting in lines because they were irregulars. Not by choice but in practice. Once they later started to fight in unit formations they did line up as you note. Not so much on the first day.

We are pretty sure there were no military muskets on tha American side so most would have been fowlers but I would bet there was a mix of rifles there. I would defer to KimberCustom on that

 

[ma96782]

To a LIBERAL.....

Sniper rifle = any rifle with a scope

Aloha, Mark

 

[Andy54Hawken]

You can snipe with a musket. At Lexington/Concord they were not fighting in lines because they were irregulars. Not by choice but in practice. Once they later started to fight in unit formations they did line up as you note. Not so much on the first day.

We are pretty sure there were no military muskets on tha American side so most would have been fowlers but I would bet there was a mix of rifles there. I would defer to KimberCustom on that

Sorry Goosebrown.
I'm going to have to stand by my post and just disagree.
From what I've read and researched no rifles were there.
And irregulars or not most units wanted* to fight in line , just like everyone else.
( * wanted or trained to fight in line )
Parker's stand at Lexington comes to mind.
As for no Muskets in American hands , well one of the reasons for Parker's stand at Lexington was to prevent the English from taking Cannon , powder and Muskets that the Patriots had stored.

BTW I have won some matches and done some fantastic shooting with my original 1795 model 1808 dated Springfield Flintlock musket.
So yes you are correct one could "Snipe" with a musket. I never said one could not.
I just said and stand by my statement of no sniper rifles or rifles of any kind were at that battle.
Thanks for replying.
Andy

 

[PaulB47]

And irregulars or not most units wanted to fight in line , just like everyone else.

That is very doubtful. Most hidebound commanders might have wanted his men to line up and go toe-to-toe with the Brits, but I seriously doubt that the men were that crazy about the idea. Indian style just clearly makes a lot more sense.

 

[Andy54Hawken]

More sense or not the Ranger / Indian style of fighting just wasn't done on a regular basis.
Maybe trained to fight in line would be a better statement.
Having been in combat and also gone to Ranger school I wasn't crazy about fighting anyone. But then its not like they had a choice of how they fought as a general rule.
Andy

 

[tac]

That's why I said "military". Are you trying to get uppity?

If you are serious with your comment about trying to get 'uppity', Sir, I'm gone.

tac

 

[Diamondback]

Gents, let's all take a breather. Bloomer's ilk would cream their frilly pink panties to see us at each other's throats...

 

[Andy54Hawken]

I have no intention to be at someone's throat.
( Hazards of electric communication LOL)
Sorry if I came across that way.
I simply disagree with some members postings.
As for myself I do not feel slighted by what anyone here has said in regard to me or any of my postings.
I hope the others involved feel the same ...
Andy

 

[Diamondback]

Wasn't trying to single *anyone* out, Andy, just trying to hit the Reset Button for all of us.

There might also be some minor cultural differences in play too, as former British military @tac might have been educated with a somewhat different worldview than many of us. Doesn't necessarily mean "better or worse," just that he might be looking at things from a different angle.

Again, not trying to take sides, just wanted to try to tap the brakes a little before things get ugly enough for the Mods to get involved, 'cuz when they ain't happy ain't NOBODY happy.

 

[Andy54Hawken]

Thanks Diamondback.
What is funny however , is that I agree with Tac ... LOL.
At the end of the day though , it is nothing to get worked up about.
I have enjoyed every conversation I have had here , agreement or not.
Andy

 

[Diamondback]

Quite agreed, one of the better points about this place. You'll probably find your blood pressure spiked at least once a day, but you WILL walk away having learned something new from it.