I've been thinking of this for a while now. It seems everywhere you turn, some guy on TV or a movie is claiming his military background was a sniper. The character Booth on the TV show bones, the head FBI guy in the TV show profiler, the head investigator of NCIS, hell, there was some made for TV movie about a guy who was using his lawn tractor to travel cross country to see his dying brother. In WW2 he was, you guessed it, a sniper.
And those are just off the top of my head.
It was at one time almost looked down upon if you were a sniper as you 'fought unfairly' 'shot em in the back' 'like shooting fish in a barrel', yet now snipers are 'cool'. Part if it is also that hollywood doesn't know jack about military, Sniper probably being the only other occupation besides infantryman they can think of.
So we see a lot of ex snipers in these shows, yet why aren't any of them riflemen?
Now, part of this is hollywood misunderstanding. To them snipers apparently gain the ability to shoot pistols with great ease, making headshots, or shooting guns out of the badguys hands 'because they were a sniper they can make that shot!'...whatever.
It seems to me someone who was a sniper in the marines or army (or even the airforce ravens I suppose) is going to know their way around all guns in general, but a rifle especially. Why are these guys grabbing MP-5s (or worse yet, handguns) when trouble is brewing, rather than a boltgun, or a scoped M14 (or civvy M1), getting someplace where they can see into the room with the hostage, not kicking the door down. Or simply having a rifle much more at reach, a case next to the desk or something.
Take for example the character Booth in an episode of Bones. A minor character's boyfriend is killed and sister is missing, so the ex sniper takes a few days off from the FBI and accompanies the scientist down to see what is going on. Hello, out in the wide open, rifle seems to be a great thing to bring along, even a standard deer rifle winchester 70. Nope, nothing.
It has occured to me that partly a rifleman is kinda boring, at least for how TV and movies are able to portray things. You just cannot show what kind of distances rifles work at very well. Now, in Quigly Down Under, they had the nice bucketshot scene, and some nice long range shooting, but for TV, you'd have to re-do those scenes all the time for tne audiences who hadn't seen it 3 episodes ago (unless of course you include something of it in the opening scene). Shooting a smilie face on a target (from lethal weapon 1)is probably easier to do than set up a long range shoot that john q ordinary is going to be able to understand as 'very difficult'. Repeatedly having to make a long special shot on a TV show would get pretty reduntant.
Still, there are other high tech crafts that are exciting to do or read about, but boring to watch that have been dramatized for TV effect. Medical proceedures is one. You don't see organs being thrown around, people jumping on gurneys to give CPR while the patient is wheeled around, or any of the stuff you seen on ER. Hell, on lots of those shows the surgery all looks the same, it is just fast paced chatter, verbal indicators someone is having difficulty or is stumped, then success and happy outcome.
Alternatively, when said ex sniper is a minor character or part of an ensemble cast, having the occasional show with the stereotypical sniper roll or sniper shot or just having said guy grab a rifle not an MP5 or glock 17 seems to me to be entirely do-able
And those are just off the top of my head.
It was at one time almost looked down upon if you were a sniper as you 'fought unfairly' 'shot em in the back' 'like shooting fish in a barrel', yet now snipers are 'cool'. Part if it is also that hollywood doesn't know jack about military, Sniper probably being the only other occupation besides infantryman they can think of.
So we see a lot of ex snipers in these shows, yet why aren't any of them riflemen?
Now, part of this is hollywood misunderstanding. To them snipers apparently gain the ability to shoot pistols with great ease, making headshots, or shooting guns out of the badguys hands 'because they were a sniper they can make that shot!'...whatever.
It seems to me someone who was a sniper in the marines or army (or even the airforce ravens I suppose) is going to know their way around all guns in general, but a rifle especially. Why are these guys grabbing MP-5s (or worse yet, handguns) when trouble is brewing, rather than a boltgun, or a scoped M14 (or civvy M1), getting someplace where they can see into the room with the hostage, not kicking the door down. Or simply having a rifle much more at reach, a case next to the desk or something.
Take for example the character Booth in an episode of Bones. A minor character's boyfriend is killed and sister is missing, so the ex sniper takes a few days off from the FBI and accompanies the scientist down to see what is going on. Hello, out in the wide open, rifle seems to be a great thing to bring along, even a standard deer rifle winchester 70. Nope, nothing.
It has occured to me that partly a rifleman is kinda boring, at least for how TV and movies are able to portray things. You just cannot show what kind of distances rifles work at very well. Now, in Quigly Down Under, they had the nice bucketshot scene, and some nice long range shooting, but for TV, you'd have to re-do those scenes all the time for tne audiences who hadn't seen it 3 episodes ago (unless of course you include something of it in the opening scene). Shooting a smilie face on a target (from lethal weapon 1)is probably easier to do than set up a long range shoot that john q ordinary is going to be able to understand as 'very difficult'. Repeatedly having to make a long special shot on a TV show would get pretty reduntant.
Still, there are other high tech crafts that are exciting to do or read about, but boring to watch that have been dramatized for TV effect. Medical proceedures is one. You don't see organs being thrown around, people jumping on gurneys to give CPR while the patient is wheeled around, or any of the stuff you seen on ER. Hell, on lots of those shows the surgery all looks the same, it is just fast paced chatter, verbal indicators someone is having difficulty or is stumped, then success and happy outcome.
Alternatively, when said ex sniper is a minor character or part of an ensemble cast, having the occasional show with the stereotypical sniper roll or sniper shot or just having said guy grab a rifle not an MP5 or glock 17 seems to me to be entirely do-able