Do you think you could pull the trigger and shoot somebody on the battlefield?

lizard

lizard

Well-known member
Well, do ya PUNK!!??!??!?

An article in today's Chron about training soldiers how to not be pussies and actually pull the trigger and shoot the bad guy in the battlefield.

Some excerpts for your enjoyment:


"In World War II, when U.S. soldiers got a clear shot at the enemy, only about 1 in 5 actually fired.......at the moment of truth, they just couldn't kill.

.....

'Civil War Collector's Encyclopedia' citation about recovered muskets after the Battle of Gettysburg: Almost 90 percent were loaded, half of those multiple times. ........soldiers in battle were faking it -- all the while looking busy so that their comrades would never know the difference.

.....

The FBI discovered a similar problem among law enforcement officers through the early 1960s: a startling number were refusing to fire at suspects even when other lives were endangered.

Even those who fired their weapons were not necessarily trying to kill -- it is hard for an observer to detect soldiers or cops who fire high to intentionally miss.

....

The Pentagon improved firing rates. Research suggests that 55 percent of U.S. soldiers fired on the enemy in the Korean War. By Vietnam that rate had climbed to more than 90 percent. Police studies document similar changes in recent decades.

....

But most apprentice killers have had years of moral training reinforcing the commandment "thou shalt not kill." Suppressing that is the greatest challenge of killology."


So.... if you were in combat, could you kill?
 
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hoax

hoax

Smoke me a kipper.
My first reaction would be hell yeah I could shoot someone.

But on further thought I guess a lot would depend on how I felt about the people I had to shoot. I would have a hard time fighting in a war against any of the Commonweatlh countries or Japan.
 
Silence

Silence

Has bad taste
Through a scope, it'd be a hard pill to swallow. Too intimate. Too much detail.

But at range while under fire, probably.
 
Ogier le Danois

Ogier le Danois

Well-known member
I have hunted since I was a little kid. I have killed living beings with a gun before. If it was kill orbe killed I bet I would shoot.
 
T

theAmazingKickstand

Well-known member
i could shoot a missle or out of tank for sure but i dont know about seeing and aiming at someone and shooting.....
I have the same problem when im "winning" in boxing and see a clear finishing shot. But i have no problem when theyre attacking, only when theyre tired and pretty much done and their dumbass trainer hasnt stopped the fight.
 
Honey Badger

Honey Badger

...iz a girl
Well, I've never been in a life and death situation, but I do believe I could if needed. I've hunted and never had any hesitation about shooting said animal, and I've used simunitions (in officer training situations, where I got to play a bad guy), and had no problem shooting someone, although staring down the barrel of a gun pointed at me was a hard pill to swallow!

The only time I've really ever hesitated with a shot (while hunting) was when I wasn't sure that it would be a clean kill - I don't believe in wounding or allowing the animal to suffer a long death....some random person trying to kill me? Suffer!!!! I doubt I would care that much!
 
Shotline

Shotline

Well-known member
I like to think I would.

This is one of the reasons that in a war, the enemy is often dehuminized. Nips, Krauts, VC, these are all terms used to dehuminze the enemy a soldier is expected to kill. I get so upset with people who chastize our soldiers because they treat the enemy badly (not talking violent torture), i.e. Abu Griaeb. This dehuminization of the enemy must take place in the soldiers mind in order for them to do their job.
 
mercurial

mercurial

Well-known member
being able to selectively dehumanize people in an intense battlefield scenario is substantially different than dehumanizing a person that is your captive prisoner and can do you no harm.

apples and oranges, shotline.
 
plumber

plumber

Banned
Who knows .......I hope I don't need to find out.

My pop was in WW2. He never disclosed everything but one night they were in New Guinea. A Japanese patrol got close to his position. He had the whole patrol in his 50 cal. sights. He said he didn't fire because it would have given up his position to the Japanese forces. I never questioned his courage. He was awarded the Silver Star later on in the campaign.

He told me something else. He said there was a lot of macho fuckers in basic and before the first battle. He saw a lot of macho fuckers crying in the foxholes after the metal started flying. It didn't matter what rank you were. He saw officers curled up in the fetal position.

Internet talk is cheap.....
 
Janna

Janna

Bring more rat-free wine!
I believe that any answer to this question is meaningless. Nobody knows for sure until and unless they've been in the real situation.
 
Climber

Climber

Well-known member
Unless you've experienced something similar in nature I'm not sure that many people could know for sure how they would react... there's plenty of arm-chair quarterbacks out there who talk up a storm but can't deliver when the chips are down.

I believe that I could, but I hope that I never need to find out.
 
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