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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 19, 2024

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No, you're going to need a lot more people. Because our sniper might be able to successfully pick off one of the faceless bureaucrats… but his odds of getting away alive and free to try again with another are very, very small. So you're going to need someone else to pick up where he left off… and then another to follow after him… and then another…

And like @RobertLiguori noted above, only "the barest fraction" are even going to do anything other than meekly submit. And after the first dozen snipers all end up arrested or dead, while the bureaucrats they picked off are replaced, with no real change in the mechanisms of tyranny (beyond further crackdowns and tightening security), how many are really going to want to follow suit?

Because our sniper might be able to successfully pick off one of the faceless bureaucrats… but his odds of getting away alive and free to try again with another are very, very small.

Recent events seem to indicate that for the set of bureaucrats not protected by countersnipers the odds might be better than you think?

AIUI the countersnipers were slower to respond to the Trump shooter because they were busy doing overwatch at the ranges that a sane sniper who was concerned with getting away with it might have set up -- 4-500 yards.

Take away the overwatch, substitute a competent assassin, and it would absolutely be possible for a bad dude to crank off a few shots COM and hop in a van to escape. (on second thought let's make it a dirtbike considering that this is a Kulak fantasy were in)

substitute a competent assassin

Random citizens are not "competent assassins." And for that matter, I'm not sure how much "competent assassin" is even a thing. I don't remember where I read it (as usual), but I recall reading about how on the one hand, it's not easy for a protection detail to stop a determined assassin with no concern for his own survival, but, on the other hand, any assassin who makes plans to try to get away alive is pretty much guaranteed to fail at hitting their target.

Now, the fact that the bureaucrats (at least initially) won't have a protection detail will change this a bit. But still, the odds of getaway remain very slim.

Random citizens are not "competent assassins."

Well picking citizens from a hat your odds would suck, sure -- but go over to Rokslide.com (hunting forum with a focus on long range elk & such) and there are 10,000 dudes who could hit a man at 500 yards every single time. 500 yards is a long ways -- much easier getaway than robbing a bank, and people do that all the time.

That's before you even get into people with military experience -- I'm not saying it's likely, but it's not impossible. And even if it fails most of the time, assassination attempts would put quite a damper on the activities of the bureaucrats, and might make many reconsider their path in life?

A sane terrorist would use bombs, damn the collateral damage. That’s what terrorists elsewhere in the world mostly do.