French military shoot civilians at hostage demonstration

[Pekka]

Space, yeah, and that goes without saying. I mean how did the other guys have blanks then? Maybe the color coding WAS just fine, because no one else fired live rounds. It was just this guy.

So you fill them up to a magazine with... different coding? How do you do that again? Or you take the wrong magazine when it's time to fire, and sort of miss the coding. Whatever you were doing with live ammo in a nice open air event anyway, with a show, when you KNOW you're going to fire blanks.

I just don't get it. This went without saying, also the fact that no one else got it wrong so it's this guy who screwed it up. And he went on to.. if he wounded 17 people, it means he emptied his magazine. He went on, most likely with automatic fire, just emptied it despite the fact that it feels considerably different then. Meaning he was either very excited. He's gotten to shoot blanks before and live rounds, it's nothing new to this guy, so I guess he was excited and sort of pumped up, and kind of just emptied the magazine, and noticed that ooops.

I don't see any other way. To me, this isn't... a normal accident. This is the sort of accident that reduces excuses, he had too many chances of stopping even when the accident already happened. He's too big of an idiot, it's not an excuse, I'd say it's one of them criminal accidents, where you note that he didn't do it on purpose, but then again, it's a crime regardless.

This douche should go to a prison for this, absolutely, almost as if he did it on purpose.

If he did few shots single fire, I'd say attempted murders then, because you will notice then, then you have the control. And what are you doing aiming a baby anyway? He shot a baby and their parents, you try to tell me they were running with a baby on a show, where it was like a chaos? No. He either aimed at them, or just went wild with it. My guess is he went wild with it. It just looks very bad for him, and for this to happen the way it did, I just don't see much excuses, throw him in the slammer.

[Dry]

Originally posted by Elok
He opened fire with an assault rifle and WOUNDED 17 people? Not a single fatality? Of course in this case that's a very good thing, but howzat work? Every single bullet happened to miss the brain or heart?

There are different things that do not compute in what is told.
Firing blank amo, and then live is impossible, because in order to fire blank amo with any automatic weapon you need a 'cork' at the end of your gun.
Firing blank without the cork will not push the next amo in position, so only the first blank amo will be shot.
Firing live with the cork, will destroy (explode?) the weapon.
So there is no way he could fire one after the other without willingly removing the cork.

But, let say he fired only live amo. No blank amo before.
You need f-ing drunk not to notice the difference in color and in weight between the live and blank. Then not to notice the cork is missing is also a big mistake.

On the other hand, the low number of casualties and no fatalities makes me think that he might well have applied the last safety rule when firing blank: never aim directly at people, but aim above, or on the ground, below their feet.

[CrONoS]

...

[Pekka]

Yeah, dry makes an excellent point with the cork as well. This is possible when idiots come to question, I myself have been supervising practice shootings, where blanks and live ammo were both used, and there were always people with the cork on, ready to shoot live rounds (bad idea), as well as no cork with blanks, which still is dangerous, because you're aiming at people with them sometimes. So anything is possible, but these were meatheads and certainly not those of equivalent to sergeant in professional army.

And even them, I couldn't see any of them firing live rounds into a crowd, the whole magazine. By accident. I just don't see it happening.

[Pekka]

Oh and Dry makes yet another good point, you shouldn't aim people even with blanks. And not the least because the cork might come off and that's nasty to get on your head. Plus, it's sort of a good practice not to aim people and shoot.

[Patroklos]

The reason you don't point a weapon at someone whether you think you have blanks or think your weapon is unloaded is so what happened in France just now isn't possible

I used to get nervous sometimes using sim rounds becuase it was just so odd to have someone not only point a weapon at me but then shoot me with it too.

[BeBMan]

Imagine this would happen with nukes

[Jon Miller]

Maybe he was colorblind?

JM

[Pekka]

I can see his laywer already forming a plan... lining up bullets of different colors:

"If he can't pick, you must acquit! (Dude, I think we won...*wink wink*)"

[Patroklos]

You guys are assuming that

1.) He loaded his own magazines, which is usually not the case.

2.) The entire magazine was live rounds. How big is a FAMAS magazine.

I still think that it is very possible the armory guys are going to eat this one.

[Pekka]

Even if he was handed the magazines and they were incorrectly coded, say that it did in fact have few blanks first, it still doesn't explain 17 wounded, if the cork was on, there wouldn't be 17 wounded, and if it wasn't on, it is still his fault. And still, 17 wounded, it wasn't a single magic bullet, or few. And he still fired it, even if it woudl have been blanks, without the cork and towards babies and stuff.

[Patroklos]

I have never seen these corks you guys speak of. Wouldn't it depend the particular gas recoil system a particular rifle uses? Sim/rubber rounds for the M16 seem to debunk this cork requirement

[Pekka]

They don't have m-16 but FAMAS, second of all, I doubt they were shooting rubber bullets either.

[Pekka]

but it is possible it doesn't require cork, however, it still doesn't effectively explain 17 wounded and that he isn't to blame 99%.

[Space05us]

I think Pekka is talking about the blank adapter when he says cork. Basically if you're meant to be shooting blanks but fire off a live round your rifle will explode in your face, harming only you.