From: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Cdn-Firearms Digest) To: cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Cdn-Firearms Digest V8 #230 Reply-To: cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Sender: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Errors-To: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Precedence: normal Cdn-Firearms Digest Monday, July 18 2005 Volume 08 : Number 230 In this issue: Re: Cdn-Firearms Digest V8 #229 Re: Gun owners take fight against Ottawa to UN: Firearm Who is Karen Selick? re: "...gun owners as new vanguards of civil liberties..." Re: Tyranny re: Dick Lamm's comments British Concentration Camps, Boer War Re: Cdn-Firearms Digest V8 #229 FAKE GUN USED TO ROB MAN GUN SHOTS FIRED AT PARKED CAR Man charged for firing gun outside bar Two charged in shooting PERSON HOSPITALIZED AFTER SHOOTING TEEN INJURED IN DRIVE-BY SHOOTING 'One shot, one kill': Snipers learn ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 16:49:13 -0600 (CST) From: Christopher di Armani Subject: Re: Cdn-Firearms Digest V8 #229 At 01:23 PM 2005.07.17, you wrote: >Subject: Re: Tyrants & Genocide > > > For most of us, it isn't about rights, freedoms, fair government, or > > anything else, no matter what we say. All it's about is that changes in > > public opinion finally got around to us. Until firearms laws caught up > > with us, we really didn't give a damn. > >I agree with this statement , well said >ed/ontario I think if we all look in the mirror, with few exceptions, this will be true. I know *I* never gave a damn until they started getting in *my* face with this crap. Sad but true. Yours in Liberty, Christopher di Armani christopher@diArmani.com Our poison-tipped pens are greater than the mightiest of swords - diArmani.com ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 16:50:48 -0600 (CST) From: 10x <10x@telus.net> Subject: Re: Gun owners take fight against Ottawa to UN: Firearm At 08:04 AM 7/11/05 -0600, you wrote: >NOTE: Versions of this article also appeared in the: Ottawa Citizen, Windsor >Star, Edmonton Journal > >PUBLICATION: National Post >DATE: 2005.07.11 >EDITION: All but Toronto >SECTION: World >PAGE: A7 >BYLINE: Steven Edwards >SOURCE: CanWest News Service >DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS >ILLUSTRATION: Black & White Photo: A rifle. > >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - >---- > >Gun owners take fight against Ottawa to UN: Firearm markings > >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - >---- > >UNITED NATIONS - A United Nations gun control conference opening today will >see Canadian sports-gun owners seek international backing against Ottawa's >newest gun control regulations, which they say will unnecessarily make >hunting and other gun sports in Canada increasingly unaffordable. > >The new measures require most imported guns to be marked from next April on >a part of the firearm the gun owners say will add up to $200 to the sales >cost. > >The owners believe rallying other countries to their position will make it >easier for them to put pressure on Ottawa to cancel or revise the >regulations, which specify the gun's receiver must identify Canada as the >country of importation, and also show the year of arrival. This so called universal marking system is a diversion. It is governments that supply small arms of a military nature to insurgents. These arms are either military or purchased by govnernments from military contractors. A marking system on firearms produced and used for sporting purposes has no bearing on the arms used in these conflicts. Will these folks also suggest marking machetes as that was the weapon of choice in the last genocide in Rwanda? The governments that promote instability have stockpiles of UNMARKED weapons sitting in warehouses. Do NOT believe for a minute, or even a second that these will be marked with the U.N. markings if they are ever sold or given to insurgents in a country to destabblize the country. Firearms collectors have seen far too many military arms with the factory or country of origin markings defaced or ground off to begin to belived that a system like this would work to track the firearms. There is no way that marking the manufacturer or country of origin on a firearm is going ot save even one life. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 16:51:36 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Subject: Who is Karen Selick? http://www.karenselick.com/AboutMe.html Weekdays: I am a lawyer with the firm Reynolds O'Brien LLP in Belleville, Ontario. My main areas of practice are matrimonial law, wills & estates and small business law. Recently, I have added collaborative family law to the mix and have founded the Quinte Collaborative Law Association. Weekends: I am also a writer. My columns appear monthly in Canadian Lawyer magazine and bi-weekly in The Western Standard. As well, I contribute irregularly to a variety of other newspapers and magazines including The National Post, The Globe and Mail, Fraser Forum and The Freeman. My subjects are items of current interest, including recent court decisions. The political philosophy expressed in my writing is called "libertarian" or "classical liberal". Odd scraps of time: I'm on the board of directors of Civitas ("a society where ideas meet"). As well, most years I also serve as a judge for the Felix Morley Writing Competition sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies. Personal: I live in a small village in eastern Ontario with my husband, cat and dog. This web site contains the full text of most of my past columns and articles, as well as transcripts of several speeches and presentations. New items are added as time permits. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 20:01:08 -0600 (CST) From: "Todd Birch" Subject: re: "...gun owners as new vanguards of civil liberties..." Correct me if I'm mistaken, but the image of a rifle bearing "patriot", "hero of the revolution", "freedom fighter", "la Passionara", "Che", etc. always comes to mind when the topic of civil liberties comes up. The one I'm thinking of at the moment is of the bare breasted, Tri-Colour waving "Liberty" heroine leading French revolutionaries who are storming the Bastille. The "mob" are wearing the cockade on their red caps and carrying flitlock muskets. Freedom is both won and lost through the barrel of a gun. Those that don't have them lose to those that do and it is only won back by acquiring them. Those that don't have them are victims both times. TB ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 20:01:32 -0600 (CST) From: wrpa Subject: Re: Tyranny >From: "Rick Lowe" >"For most of us, it isn't about rights, freedoms, fair government, or >anything else, no matter what we say. All it's about is that changes in >public opinion finally got around to us. Until firearms laws caught up >with us, we really didn't give a damn." Joe Gingrich wrote: >Perhaps the Firearms Act is the last straw for a new beginning. All >movements start with an opinion somewhere by someone who becomes irritated >enough to do something besides living with the situation or running away >from it. Someone willing to "stand up and be counted". Perhaps the Firearms >Act provides the impetus to start a return to freedom movement. Not likely Joe. Canadians have been brought up to be tolerant of all kind of abuses against them by their government. The individuals that might be willing to "stand up and be counted" are the youth of this country. The problem is that most of them are left leaning and would be the first to get rid of what access to firearms we have now. Rudy ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 22:01:15 -0600 (CST) From: "Todd Birch" Subject: re: Dick Lamm's comments This is the most 'right on' speech I've read in a very long time! It ought to be required reading for every US, British, French and Canadian citizen. He has it nailed down perfectly. TB ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 22:01:57 -0600 (CST) From: "Jim S." Subject: British Concentration Camps, Boer War Ed - > From: "Rick Lowe" > >> BTW, the British were the ones who invented the concentration camp, and >> Canadian soldiers helped to fill those camps. Tens of thousands of Boer >> women, children, and old people died in those camps. > > --This is something they never taught us in school? where can I get more > information on this subject ? > TIA > ed/ontario Rick is absolutely right on here. And it's not the sort of history one would teach one's children, is it? This information is well documented, and shows up in widely disparate fields of study. Here is one account, an excerpt from a book I finished reading this spring, by a Professor of Geology in Seattle, about an area north of Cape Town, (the Karoo), where he spent the 1990's doing research into the great Permian extinction, looking at the fossil beds in South Africa. His sensitive writing about the camp for their 1999 field expedition captures the essence of the tragedy which unfolded: Start Quote: In all if our time camping at Tweefontein, the old farmhouse remained a mystery, and its graveyard even more of one. I found myself gravitating there at sunset each night. As the sun dropped, the shadow of the low hills to the west of us would stride across the broad valley, and for a few minutes the black shadows of the three headstones walked up the side of Lootsberg in tandem, passing the Permian-extinction boundary like wraiths. They grew, stretched, and then were engulfed by a greater darkness. On our last afternoon there, fresh from the field, Hedi came out and joined me. I always felt comfortable in her company and asked her one evening to translate the headstones. We walked together to the iron-barred site, covered with weeds. The place had an aching of melancholy. The largest headstone marked the grave of husband and wife, Anna Catherine and Francouis Petrus. The inscription was in Africaans, of course, but Hedi, a native of Germany, knew enough Dutch to make out the inscription. It read: "Take free my dust of earth till dust covered again, one day I will rise again through God's almighty awakening." The headstone of their son Carel, dead in 1898 was next: "Man's tongue glorifies God." The last member of the family in the graveyard was son Jacobus, whose 1900 inscription stated: "God is the love of angels." The sun was dropping behind the hills now, and a great blackness rushed into the valley, but the western sky filled with red and orange, the violent light giving the last visions of this family's grave, and the far older grave it coincidentally stands on. We turned back to camp, and I looked at the inscription above the resting place of Jacobus Fouche once more. It rolled in the mind, a sweetness. "God is the love of angels." When that phrase was written on the grave of the newly dead youngest Fouche son, South Africa was in the midst of its Boer War, and the most unspeakable atrocities by both sides were being conducted around Lootsberg and elsewhere in the Karoo. What did the angels see in South Africa amid this slaughter, where tens of thousands of Boer women and children were rounded up, removed from their farms, and them allowed to die hideous deaths from starvation and disease in crowded concentration camps? Where Boers shot the surrendering British troops? Where the victorious government, at the end, stole all land from any native African and gave it to the white survivors? Is that what killed off this Fouche, a Boer true: Was Jacobus taken to the land of the extinct by a British bulled, or did he die a rotting death in a British prison camp? That scenario is the most likely one of all. End Quote. From: "Gorgon" - Peter D. Ward, 2004, P. 184 - 186. ISBN 0-670-03094-5 And to think that Canada had a hand in this. It's hard to feel proud of one's country, when they participate in the punative deaths of thousands of innocent women and children. THIS is why I am "anti-War", when the politicians start slinging jingoistic phrases about. If enemy tanks aren't rolling down mainstreet of some town in Canada, I ain't going to go looking for a fight. Jim Szpajcher St. Paul, AB ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:18:09 -0600 (CST) From: "Clive Edwards" Subject: Re: Cdn-Firearms Digest V8 #229 >General Hilliers seems to be a man of action, and one whom terrorists >would be ill-advised to mess with. As a Canadian, I am proud to have a >real soldier rather than a politically correct career boot kisser as the >man responsible for the safety of both his troops, and ultimately all >Canadians. I suspect there would be a lot more Rowandans alive today if Hilliers had been runing the show. After all, "Sometimes it is better to ask forgiveness than to seek permission". Clive Edwards ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:18:29 -0600 (CST) From: Breitkreuz@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca, Garry - Assistant 1 Subject: FAKE GUN USED TO ROB MAN PUBLICATION: The Toronto Sun DATE: 2005.07.17 EDITION: Final SECTION: News PAGE: BS6 BYLINE: MICHELE HENRY COLUMN: Crime Scene - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FAKE GUN USED TO ROB MAN - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PEEL REGIONAL police arrested four men last week for using a fake handgun to rob a Brampton man walking in the park with his girlfriend. Officers say the victim was walking near Dixie Road and Springtown Trail July 8 around 1 am when he was confronted by four men. One of the robbers held out what appeared to be a handgun and demanded money, officers say. The suspects took the cash and fled. Police caught the assailants, who range in age between 17 and 20-years-old, around 1:19 am shortly after the victim and his girlfriend told authorities what happened. One of the suspects was released. The other three, one from Toronto and two from Brampton, are charged with robbery and use of an imitation firearm. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:18:48 -0600 (CST) From: Breitkreuz@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca, Garry - Assistant 1 Subject: GUN SHOTS FIRED AT PARKED CAR PUBLICATION: The Toronto Sun DATE: 2005.07.17 EDITION: Final SECTION: News PAGE: BS6 BYLINE: MICHELE HENRY COLUMN: Crime Scene - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ GUN SHOTS FIRED AT PARKED CAR - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ RESIDENTS in a north end Brampton neighbourhood awoke to the sound of gunfire last Saturday morning. Peel Regional police say shots were fired at a parked car near Sandalwood Parkway and Kennedy Road around 3 am. No one was reported injured. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:19:07 -0600 (CST) From: Breitkreuz@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca, Garry - Assistant 1 Subject: Man charged for firing gun outside bar PUBLICATION: The Windsor Star DATE: 2005.07.18 EDITION: Final SECTION: News PAGE: A4 COLUMN: Area Briefs SOURCE: Windsor Star - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Man charged for firing gun outside bar - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A Toronto man well known to local police is facing weapons and resisting arrest charges after firing a handgun into the air outside the same Windsor bar where another man was gunned down in March 2003. Windsor police say the man was denied entry to the Box Office at 531 Pelissier around 3:15 a.m. Sunday. He returned approximately one hour later. Witnesses saw him fire a handgun into the air. No one was hurt. Police arrested him but no gun was located. The incident took place on the same stretch of pavement where 22-year-old Brian Bolyantu was slain in March 2003. Charged is 27-year-old Quenice Powell. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:19:24 -0600 (CST) From: Breitkreuz@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca, Garry - Assistant 1 Subject: Two charged in shooting PUBLICATION: The Leader-Post (Regina) DATE: 2005.07.18 EDITION: Final SECTION: City & Province PAGE: B2 SOURCE: The Leader-Post - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Two charged in shooting - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ RCMP have charged two males in the Thursday morning shooting of a woman in the Round Lake district. An 18-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy from the Broadview area, arrested Thursday, were each charged Friday with attempted murder in regards to the shooting. The victim, a woman in her 50s, remains in hospital in Regina with undetermined injuries. The suspects have been remanded in custody to appear in Melville Provincial Court today. Esterhazy RCMP had been called to the Round Lake-area farm shortly before 5 a.m. after the woman was shot by someone who came to the door of the family home. There were no other reports of injuries in connection with the incident. RCMP have not released the identity of the adult suspect. The youth cannot be identified. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:19:37 -0600 (CST) From: Breitkreuz@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca, Garry - Assistant 1 Subject: PERSON HOSPITALIZED AFTER SHOOTING PUBLICATION: The London Free Press DATE: 2005.07.18 EDITION: Final SECTION: City & Region PAGE: C3 BYLINE: FREE PRESS STAFF COLUMN: Police Digest - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PERSON HOSPITALIZED AFTER SHOOTING REPORTED - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Chatham-Kent police's Critical Incident Response Team was called to a shooting on Edgar Street early yesterday. Police were called to the neighbourhood at 4 a.m. and removed residents from homes near 19 Edgar St. A person was admitted to the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance hospital with severe facial and eye injuries and was transferred to London Health Sciences Centre. Police received a search warrant and entered the home at about 10:30 a.m. and removed evidence from the scene. The incident is still under investigation, police said ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:19:53 -0600 (CST) From: Breitkreuz@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca, Garry - Assistant 1 Subject: TEEN INJURED IN DRIVE-BY SHOOTING PUBLICATION: The Toronto Sun DATE: 2005.07.17 EDITION: Final SECTION: News PAGE: BS6 BYLINE: MICHELE HENRY COLUMN: Crime Scene - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TEEN INJURED IN DRIVE-BY SHOOTING - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ A 17-YEAR-OLD Brampton teen was injured on Canada Day in a drive-by-shooting. Peel Regional police say the youth and his brother were standing in their driveway on Spadina Rd. near Bovaird Dr. and Royal Orchard Dr. around 6:40 pm when a car drove by twice. The teen was shot in the leg and was taken to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:20:24 -0600 (CST) From: Breitkreuz@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca, Garry - Assistant 1 Subject: 'One shot, one kill': Snipers learn PUBLICATION: The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) DATE: 2005.07.16 EDITION: Final SECTION: Weekend Extra PAGE: E1 / Front BYLINE: Jamie Komarnicki SOURCE: of The StarPhoenix ILLUSTRATION: Colour Photo: Ryan Jackson, The StarPhoenix / A PrincessPatricia's Canadian Light Infantry sniper eyes a distant target at CFB Dundurn training camp.; Colour Photo: Ryan Jackson, The StarPhoenix / Snipers-in-training learn to determine precise distances over several hundred metres using only the scopes on their rifles and a spotting scope. They must consider barometric pressure, air temperature and ammo temperature, correcting for the slightest puff of wind, the smallest change in heat.; Colour Photo: Ryan Jackson, The StarPhoenix / Canadian Forces snipers practise on pop-up targets that can range up to 800 metres. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 'One shot, one kill': Snipers learn that pulling the trigger is only part of the job - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ It's a quiet summer morning on the prairies with the sun streaming down from a cloudless blue sky and the wind rustling through the brush and trees. "Sniper ready to fire." The voice is sudden, loud, clear. The speaker -- invisible. It takes more than a quick glance of the naked eye to realize this prairie panorama is actually a battlefield. A lump of grass that hadn't been there a moment before, a twig cracking in the trees, a slight movement that doesn't quite fit with the swaying breeze -- somewhere in the scrub a dozen of Canada's aspiring snipers are crawling on their bellies, carefully camouflaged, stalking their target. "Look at him turkey-necking," a course instructor standing off to the side says as a leafy head pops up from the foliage. "We got a mover to the right," he nods in that direction as a patch of grass slinks forward. A shot rings out. "The man doesn't pick the job. The job picks the man," course warrant of the basic sniper course and 1 Brigade master sniper Sgt. Bloggins (not his real name) had explained earlier, sipping coffee at his desk in a sparse office at the Canadian Forces Dundurn Detachment. "You take all the infantry skills and excel them tenfold, that's what it takes to be a sniper." It's week four of the highly intense sniper course run by the Canadian Forces' Western Area Training Centre (WATC). A select few soldiers from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Battalions of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) are learning advanced shooting, stalking, communicating, ballistics, tactical, observational and navigating skills at this Saskatchewan base. If they meet the soaring standards set out at the 10-week course, the 21 students will join the 150 professional snipers in the Canadian forces. "It's elite," Bloggins said of the course. "To a degree," he added after a short pause. "We try to preach the silent professional. It's not a badge-collecting, course-collecting type of deal for the resume. We try to look for longevity of the job." When each sniper graduates, he'll receive a single .308 cal. bullet worn on a simple chain around the neck, a striking reminder of his task: "one shot, one kill." Training for a job where precision may mean the difference between life and death is by nature gruelling; even for the nation's best marksmen, failure rates are high. So how do they do it? "Determination," said one sniper student, whose identity is protected to ensure operational security. "Motivation," another added, resting his rifle butt on the ground during a break from a morning training session. "I think the drive to do something like this is the fact that no one else is able to do it," one corporal said. "Just to be part of it, you know you're one of the few, you've got what it takes to be one of the best." The students have to keep in peak physical shape so they can endure long hours in harsh terrain loaded down with nearly 150 lbs. of equipment. The course is male-dominated; there are no female snipers in the Canadian Forces. Apart from physical training, the mental side of the job is just as intense. The students have already gone through a tough 500-question psychological screening and any emotional or stress-related problems are immediately red-flagged. "You're preparing yourself mentally to do the course, and you're preparing yourself mentally to do the job," Bloggins said. "We try to find the person that has that switch. They have to be able to have the switch and turn it on and turn it off, having little or no remorse with what they do in following directions. So be it if they have to take somebody out. And it's very personal if you do it as a sniper, because that person probably doesn't even know he's being engaged by a sniper or being looked at by a sniper." - - - - Bloggins' massive grey Dodge Ram 2500 roars along a bumpy trail, driving deep into the Dundurn base and coming to a stop where 12 snipers are taking their first shot at the conventional range. Bloggins hops out of the truck, standing hands on hips, sunglasses hiding his eyes as he surveys the group. The snipers lie in pairs on earth mounds, a spotter and a shooter, aiming at tiny specks in the distance. This is what it comes down to as a sniper -- surgical fire with little or no collateral damage. "Watch and shoot, watch and shoot," an instructor yells as the guns crack and puffs of smoke float skyward. "Number five, you didn't hit your last shot." Shooting is never as easy as pulling the trigger. From muzzle to target, snipers have to take into account the meteorological and environmental impact of their bullet's path. Barometric pressure, air temperature, ammo temperature -- there are calculations to correct for the slightest puff of wind, the smallest change in heat. The practice they're getting on the range is what will enable the snipers to shoot with the same precision whether their mission takes them to a desert, a jungle, or a mountaintop. "Over there (on missions) we're able to launch, get on the ground, and engage targets right away," Bloggins said. "This allows us the deployability and flexibility to go anywhere in the world and obtain first-round hits." Bloggins hefts the camouflage-painted .308 cal. Parker Hale C3A1 rifle typically used by the snipers. "It's robust," he said of the gun. "It has the capability to engage up to 800 metres, but with the right guy behind the butt, you can get a little further than that with the ammunition." Sniping is also far more than shooting. One 21-year-old private, who shot a gun for the first time when he joined the army, said that people often don't understand what a sniper really does. "They all think we go hide and shoot someone from really far away, which is part of it I guess, but there's a lot more. There's so much more to the job than shooting with one shot, and a ridiculous amount of calculations." Peering at targets hundreds of metres away, they can figure out precise distance using a combination of math, technology and the naked eye. According to Bloggins, observation is 90 per cent of the job. As part of the course, troops have to be able to identify and memorize several objects and their placements in different scenarios within a short period of time. "We're trying to enhance their memory skills for say, when they have to go on a patrol or a mission and there's not enough time to write stuff down. Their minds (are) already in the game of picking up small intricate details and logging them in their head. Changes in terrain, changes in enemy disposition, they're able to remember that," Bloggins said. "Pulling the trigger and actually doing that portion of the job, it's always there, but usually our priority is to go out and gather information, just because we can do it from a concealed environment." - - - - They can work on marksmanship, field craft, and navigation, but the ability to think outside the box -- paramount in a sniper's role -- is something the students must pick up on their own. By far, this comes down to the stalk, a realistic training exercise known as the back-breaker of any sniper course in which the accumulation of skills fuses with awareness and intuition. The snipers are briefed on vegetation and terrain within a limited boundary, then given three hours to get into position. According to Bloggins, an easy stalk includes a wood-line where the snipers can bury themselves and gain depth from the vegetation; a hard one, on the other hand, is what's known as a "pool table." "Basically from about 800 metres out they're on their hands and knees crawling. They have to really camouflage themselves so they blend in with the environment, and (know) their ability to use the ground," Bloggins said. Size, shape, silhouette, texture, movement, noise, shadow, spacing -- "When a guy tries to conceal himself or camouflage, he has to take those things into consideration," Bloggins said, "A lot of guys will just run towards the biggest bush. Well, you really don't want that because, me as an observer, that's going to attract my attention." For the students at Dundurn, the stalk is a painstaking creep across the plains, often through poison ivy and cacti, with sweat running streaks down their camouflage-painted faces. They must line up a shot within 150 and 300 metres of their target, an observation post manned by trained instructors eagle-eying every movement. Face down on the ground, trying to stay concealed and peering through heavy camouflage, it's easy to lose track of a target. They're each wearing gillie suits -- personalized full-body uniforms with extra elbow and knee padding, entangled with removable natural camouflage that can transform the stalker from a shrivelled bush to a gnarled log to a patch of golden prairie. And so the stillness of the Dundurn field on the sunny afternoon is unsettled as a hunk of grass that's actually one of 12 snipers students practising his first stalk, shimmies forward. "He must feel pretty comfortable in his position. He's got quite a bit of movement," comments a sergeant-major, standing with a group of army observers off to the side of the makeshift battlefield. Somewhere out there, the snipers are stealthily judging distance, silently clipping windows for their bullet paths, furtively changing and adding to their camouflage. And sitting, waiting patiently for the perfect shot. Seconds and minutes tick by with little visible action, one hour morphing into two. And finally, success. The marksmen who've crept their way undetected near enough to the target one by one call out they are ready to pull the trigger. All snipers are accounted for and the watchers manning the observation posts are replaced with kill-zone targets. The exercise turns live-fire. "One round, pass or fail. (This) will seal their stalk. If it hits where it's supposed to hit, then so be it. It was a successful stalk," the sergeant-major observes. "The split second it takes to hear the target," Bloggins explains in a low voice as a loud shot followed by a sharp zing cracks the stillness, "is the longest one out there." - - - - The course will wrap up with a three-day exercise, framed as a realistic mission with a few "twists" such as enemy helicopters and police K9 tracking dogs thrown in, Bloggins said with a wry smile. It may be only a matter of months before these students are peering through their scopes at a live target. According to Bloggins, even the most intense training doesn't ensure the ability to pull the trigger. "It's a very personal thing. You're thinking totally mission, you're thinking that's my target and that's what I have to interdict. Afterwards, that's when you decompress and realize what you did." But post traumatic stress disorder, is, if anything, lower among snipers, Bloggins said. "Things are going to happen, bad things, so you have to give full focus on what you've been given the authority to do, and that's where we have to have the person who's able to make the tough call." Deployed on missions, Bloggins said, there's always the thought that there are enemy snipers out there that possess the same skill set; snipers have to follow through with what they signed up to do. "If you don't, the ramifications to your comrades, the people you're trying to protect, could be deadly . . . That's the mindset you have to get into." Bloggins, an avid hunter, says the course often attracts those with an outdoors background, oriented towards hunting, fishing and navigation. Though he's quick to add, "There is a lore of snipers. You know, you have the guy who doesn't like to be around big groups. I think it's more of a wife's tale." But snipers are traditionally a modest, quiet bunch, perhaps because of the nature of their solitary, secretive operational role. "If they're coming up to you and telling you they're a sniper, 90 per cent of the time, they're not," said Bloggins, who's had his own name dropped from complete strangers claiming to have trained under him in the past. Their elite, tight-lipped missions set them apart from the rest of the military. "Because of OP-SEC (operational security), we're sort of isolated when we're overseas, we're isolated when the rest of our comrades are over there," Bloggins said, "We're given our missions and it's usually kept at a secret level, so identities aren't displayed and the forces we're going up against don't know what we're doing." But the reputation of Canadian snipers is becoming increasingly well-known. They've been deployed everywhere an infantry unit has been sent, including Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Croatia, Bosnia and Somalia. They recently received recognition for their work in Afghanistan. In 2002, a Canadian sniper in Afghanistan made a record-setting 2,430-metre kill using the McMillan Tac-50 long-range rifle. The lethal force of this under-exposed army unit is becoming highly valued. "You're in a battalion, and you're a good sniper cell, that's a lucky unit," as one sniper student put it. The old .308 weapons system is on the verge of being replaced by the new .338 Lapua with more distance capability. Where there used to be an eight-man sniper section embedded inside a reconnaissance platoon in each infantry battalion, the order has come down to increase the section to 18 men. Bloggins said he'd like one day to see a centrally operated sniper academy, and thinks that Dundurn, with it's diversity of terrain and relative isolation, could be the perfect location. "A full-fledged sniper school is what our suggestion is, to create a standard right across the Canadian Armed Forces within eastern Canada, central Canada and western Canada, but we'd have to get a heck of a lot of people on board to go ahead with that." Names and identities in this story have been protected to ensure the security of the soldiers and their families. ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V8 #230 ********************************** Submissions: mailto:cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Mailing List Commands: mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Moderator's e-mail address: mailto:akimoya@cogeco.ca List owner: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca FAQ list: http://www.magma.ca/~asd/cfd-faq1.html and http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Faq/cfd-faq1.html Web Site: http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/homepage.html FTP Site: ftp://teapot.usask.ca/pub/cdn-firearms/ CFDigest Archives: http://www.sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca/~ab133/ or put the next command in an e-mail message and mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca get cdn-firearms-digest v04.n192 end (192 is the digest issue number and 04 is the volume) To unsubscribe from _all_ the lists, put the next five lines in a message and mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca unsubscribe cdn-firearms-digest unsubscribe cdn-firearms-alert unsubscribe cdn-firearms-chat unsubscribe cdn-firearms end (To subscribe, use "subscribe" instead of "unsubscribe".) 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