life and death situation? do you take the shot?

[tdarko]

hypothetical situation (well obviously):

a madman has a fully loaded weapon and has your wife/mother (loved one) held hostage and the gun pointed at her head. he seems very capable of pulling the trigger at any moment.

your weapon has the capability of making this shot (though not your weapon of choice). you have the capability of making this shot, you have sniper/assassin skills though you have never had to use them. you have one bullet, so far all of you that were going to answer, "eliminate the hostage like keanu did," think again. you do that, the madman eliminates you...then her.

what's your play? do you think you would have the courage to pull the trigger or resort to trying to negotiate with the madman?

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

I rule at this game in the arcade.

[STLantny]

If I had sniper skills, I wouldnt give two shits if I could talk him out of it, in that situation, his brains would be on the wall.

[Luzion]

Are you already aiming your gun at the madman? Wouldnt that encourage him to kill you and your wife right then and there?

Plus, what if the madman is always covering his head with your wife's head? Or if hes continously weaving and bobbing his head back and forth so you can't get a shot? Not an easy choice really.

[jakethebake]

Do you need this answered really, really quickly?

[Claunchy]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you need this answered really, really quickly?

[/ QUOTE ]
This made me laugh. I can just picture a guy running to his computer in a panic to see what OOT would do while a guy has a gun to his mother's head.

[benfranklin]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you need this answered really, really quickly?

[/ QUOTE ]

OOPS, too late. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[tdarko]

[ QUOTE ]
Are you already aiming your gun at the madman? Wouldnt that encourage him to kill you and your wife right then and there?


[/ QUOTE ]
typical hostage situation, he needs something from you...lets say money and a ton of it.

you have the gun pointed at him but the shot isn't completely clear or obviously you would take it, basically you aren't 100% on this shot but you know you can make it.
[ QUOTE ]
Plus, what if the madman is always covering his head with your wife's head? Or if hes continously weaving and bobbing his head back and forth so you can't get a shot? Not an easy choice really.

[/ QUOTE ]
no, not an easy choice. but you have sniper skills and you are waiting for your opening to take your shot and when you get it do you take it?

[RunDownHouse]

[ QUOTE ]
do you think you would have the courage to pull the trigger or resort to trying to negotiate with the madman?

[/ QUOTE ]
Isn't he beyond reason by definition?

[tdarko]

[ QUOTE ]
Isn't he beyond reason by definition?

[/ QUOTE ] absolutely. people would still negotiate with a madman instead of being responsible for thier death as well as their loved ones don't you think? just a thought.

good post RDH. this is where i was going with this.

[Luzion]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Are you already aiming your gun at the madman? Wouldnt that encourage him to kill you and your wife right then and there?


[/ QUOTE ]
typical hostage situation, he needs something from you...lets say money and a ton of it.

you have the gun pointed at him but the shot isn't completely clear or obviously you would take it, basically you aren't 100% on this shot but you know you can make it.
[ QUOTE ]
Plus, what if the madman is always covering his head with your wife's head? Or if hes continously weaving and bobbing his head back and forth so you can't get a shot? Not an easy choice really.

[/ QUOTE ]
no, not an easy choice. but you have sniper skills and you are waiting for your opening to take your shot and when you get it do you take it?

[/ QUOTE ]


Then if you really have to, the only way is to get him distracted in some way before you take the shot. Im pretty sure if he sees you raising your gun then your wife is dead for sure.

Btw, this post reminded me of a video I saw a long while back. Check it out.


http://media.putfile.com/Executions---SWAT-Vs-Stupid-Redneck

Its definitely NSFW, but there is no gore. A guy holds a baby hostage with a knife while cops are milling around. He gets distracted for a split second and a cop steps forward and shoots him in the face point blank.


Anyway, I think thats what you would have to do...

[Shajen]

1 bullet?

WTF? I hate this scenario.

I'm damned good with a rifle. I could and would take the shot as soon as I got it.

[M2d]

[ QUOTE ]
typical hostage situation, he needs something from you...lets say money and a ton of it.


[/ QUOTE ]
well, since you came to OOT for advice, I'd say stall him while you look for soliciters to pay you to take a gerbil up the butt. either that or you can go to the NVG and try to turn $1 into a "ton of money" on the internet. how much time do you have?

[RunDownHouse]

[ QUOTE ]
absolutely. people would still negotiate with a madman instead of being responsible for thier death as well as their loved ones don't you think? just a thought.

[/ QUOTE ]
If I knew 100% that he could never be reasoned with, then of course I would take the shot immediately. The problem is that this could never be known with 100% certainty, so I have to weight the chance I could talk him down against the chance that I'll shoot and miss. That's not easy to do sitting behind a computer, much less in such a high-pressure situation. There's pretty much no way I could estimate my decision-making ability in this scenario other than to say I would try and talk him down for some length of time. How long? No clue.

[tdarko]

[ QUOTE ]
If I knew 100% that he could never be reasoned with, then of course I would take the shot immediately. The problem is that this could never be known with 100% certainty, so I have to weight the chance I could talk him down against the chance that I'll shoot and miss. That's not easy to do sitting behind a computer, much less in such a high-pressure situation. There's pretty much no way I could estimate my decision-making ability in this scenario other than to say I would try and talk him down for some length of time. How long? No clue.

[/ QUOTE ]
this is basically how i came up with this scenario. for the about a month now i have been taking classes with an ex-marine in long-range shooting and he says that i am getting fairly decent (which means for the avg joe i have great hand-eye coordination but compared to him i am a b*tch) and i was thinkinking to myself that no matter how good i got w/o being in that situation i don't think you could really know how you would react.

[asofel]

ow

[ethan]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
If I knew 100% that he could never be reasoned with, then of course I would take the shot immediately. The problem is that this could never be known with 100% certainty, so I have to weight the chance I could talk him down against the chance that I'll shoot and miss. That's not easy to do sitting behind a computer, much less in such a high-pressure situation. There's pretty much no way I could estimate my decision-making ability in this scenario other than to say I would try and talk him down for some length of time. How long? No clue.

[/ QUOTE ]
this is basically how i came up with this scenario. for the about a month now i have been taking classes with an ex-marine in long-range shooting and he says that i am getting fairly decent (which means for the avg joe i have great hand-eye coordination but compared to him i am a b*tch) and i was thinkinking to myself that no matter how good i got w/o being in that situation i don't think you could really know how you would react.

[/ QUOTE ]

If I doubted my ability to kill him before he got off a shot, I'd try to talk. Given the skills I hypothetically have here, I'd just be hoping to distract him long enough to get off a good shot.

One of my physics professors had a good friend who did weapon-training for the SEALs, and after enough "full MP5 clip into a grapefruit from 25 yards while running" stories I'm sort of ok with being a relatively crappy shot. But I'd still like to improve. How are the classes working out for you?

I'd never shot until this summer. Not for any particular reason other than lack of opportunity. Then I found out the father of a friend of mine had a good 25-30 rifles and another dozen+ handguns and liked teaching neophytes to shoot. (My friend's grandfather was a gunsmith.) His family also has some land out in the middle of nowhere. And the father in question has been reloading ammo for 40 years, so I trust it and it's close to free. It's a good combination.

[tdarko]

[ QUOTE ]
How are the classes working out for you?


[/ QUOTE ]
i love it. there are different shots he has me do one of them is called a "quarter shot" where he puts a playing card on a post at a thousand yards away, you take three shots, and then he must be able to lay a quarter over ther three shots and cover them without any marks showing. i have yet to come remotely close. he said in the marines a quarter shot wasn't good enough, you had to make dime shots.

my father is a big game hunter and has traveled all over the world killing [censored] so this is how i got hooked up with him. my father is going to tajikistan in november to kill some rare mountain ram in the mountains that you can only get within 1500 feet of so he needed the proper training to be able to pull this shot off. he makes dime shots.

[ethan]

Jebus. I'm pretty sure I'm need some lessons before I take these lessons.

Seriously, though. How does one go from quarter to dime?

Shoot to kill

[tdarko]

i just went out there for fun with them, i was no where close. the gun does most a lot of the work. they are very talented and i would never be able to do what they do.