{"id":66743,"date":"2016-07-09T09:40:11","date_gmt":"2016-07-09T13:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=66743"},"modified":"2016-07-09T19:30:50","modified_gmt":"2016-07-09T23:30:50","slug":"that-decorated-veteran-with-an-assault-rifle-in-dallas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=66743","title":{"rendered":"That “decorated” veteran with an “assault rifle” in Dallas"},"content":{"rendered":"

We read yesterday about the gunman in the tragic killing of police officers in Dallas. The New York Daily News<\/a> describes him as a “highly decorated” and “well-trained” Army veteran;<\/p>\n

Trained by the best to use weapons of war, a bloodthirsty killer who once served in Afghanistan brought guns, ammo and body armor to ambush cops in downtown Dallas.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Some who served with the former Army reservist said he was odd and a bit of a pervert \u2014 but none could fathom that the highly decorated military man was a domestic killing machine.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

In the killer\u2019s home, investigators found a massive cache of weapons \u2014 bomb-making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and a personal journal of combat tactics, authorities said.<\/p>\n

XXXXX was well trained. He served as an Army reservist for six years until 2015 and was deployed to Afghanistan between November 2013 and July 2014.<\/p>\n

He was a carpentry and masonry specialist, with a rank of private first class, and was awarded the Army Achievement Medal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They talk about his “assault rifle”;<\/p>\n

XXX XXXXX, 25, was toting an SKS semi-automatic assault rifle and a handgun Thursday night when he shot a dozen cops, killing five of them. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A carpenter\/mason wouldn’t be all that highly trained in what the gunman did the other day. While he had marksmanship training as a soldier with an AR-style rifle, he wouldn’t have the same amount of training that someone in another profession might have – millions of whom didn’t shoot anyone this week. You would be hard pressed to find any soldier without an Army Achievement Medal – it’s pretty common. I have three.<\/p>\n

An SKS is not an “assault rifle” – not by the definition of the people who call those weapons “assault rifles”;<\/p>\n

\"SKS\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

First off, it doesn’t have a detachable box magazine, there is no pistol grip, most don’t have a bayonet lug, there is no flash suppressor, no barrel shroud. The magazine only holds ten rounds. There’s no “thing in the back that goes up”. It’s not even scary black. It’s legal in most states, including those that have “assault rifle bans” like California. In fact, it’s a World War II-era rifle – designed in 1943 and first issued to Soviet troops in 1945. It was out of service in the Soviet Union by the 1950s, replaced by the AK-47.<\/p>\n

The gunman may have been well-trained, but not by the Army. It’s doubtful that a carpenter ever would have even seen an SKS during his service, and he certainly wasn’t trained to fire or operate it while he was in uniform.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We read yesterday about the gunman in the tragic killing of police officers in Dallas. The … That “decorated” veteran with an “assault rifle” in Dallas<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=66743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/66744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=66743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=66743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=66743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}