Glad to read the French police managed to successfully storm the hostage locations with minimal loss of non-terrorist life. One starts to worry when one sees pictures like this:
I’m really hoping that’s just how the camera angle looks and that cop isn’t actually pointing his rifle at the head of the other cop keying his mic. Either way, nice shooting on the part of the French Police.
UPDATE: Ooops… I thought these were Gendarmes, but the decal on the hood says “Police Nationale,” who are the other French national police.
Not to mention that looks like a mini-14 full auto version with the bayonet lug. Hope they didn’t rely on the iron sights for pin point shooting at anything past arms length.
geese… an m1 carbine? not what i call a sniper rifle!…. pointing at the head.. looks like his neighbor is irritated!… and four hostages dead isnt really minimal… ‘specially if i know them….
4 hostages dead is actually pretty minimal in situations like this. Yes, any loss of innocent life is a tragedy, but looking at other hostage rescue attempts in history, only 4 dead is a very small number. It wasn’t long ago that the Russian Special Forces killed all the hostages during a raid there, 59 were killed in the mall shootings in Kenya (most were shot before the rescue attempt, but more than 4 were killed during the rescue.)
Gen McRaven’s book Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare states than speed, surprise, and a clear mission are required for a successful mission in situations like this. While speed is fairly easy to achieve and the main objective of “free hostages with minimal loss of life or injury” is easy to understand, surprise is often hard to achieve, especially when hostages are held in shops with entire walls of glass which show the movement of rescuers. Additionally, when hostages and terrorists cannot be positively seen and identified prior to entryl “clear mission” can become fairly foggy with unknown subjects who may be innocents or terrorists and who’s numbers and locations are unknown.
All that so say this: War is hell and bad things happen in hell. 4 deaths is sad, but it could have been much worse.
Not an M1 carbine – it’s really a Ruger Mini-14 or Mini-30.
Merle
yep, mag to wide.. mini 14
The gun in question is a Mousqueton A.M.D. Basically, it is a Ruger Mini-14 with French markings. Since it was built under contract by Ruger for the French authorities, all visible markings are French government markings; the actual Ruger markings are hidden by the wooden stock.
If you look at their body positions, you can tell that the rifle is pointed away from the one with the mic qued. They are close enough such that if either took a step to the other, they would bump into each other.
The video of the actual assault on the market is something to watch. French SWAT in armor rushing the door, then halting and standing in the doorway just soaking up rounds while wildly spraying fire back.
That entry I was on TV was horrible. They shot from the doorway instead of moving. Surprised a bunch of cops didn’t catch lead.
I have been a professional photographer for over 15 years. I imagine the image was made with a long lens in the 300mm range. 300mm lenses are pretty common for a news photog; they are ‘reasonably” affordable and light enough to carry for moderate distances. Tele lenses will compress the apparent distance between objects making a small group look larger or closer packed than they really are. Think of the tricks our opponents do with small crowds.
My best guess is the officer in question is 3-5 feet in front of the van and the officer keying his mike a another couple of feet in front of him. It really depends on camera to subject distance as well as lens size.
Sam
Their have been fingers lingering on bang switches, guns negligently pointed at fellow officers or passer-bys.
Most police officers and gendarmes train very little (20-50 rounds including ‘qualifier’). And with emotions running high you can’t expect much better. Sadly.
The GIGN burns approximately 60% of all Gendarmerie ammunition. There’s not much left for the regular guys & gals. Isn’t much better at the Police Nationale.
But I’m not sure the average not-a-gun-owner LEO would fare much better in the US.
*sigh*