Re: The joy of actual numbers, was Democracy

On Sat, 2 Nov 2024 11:46:57 +0100, D wrote:

What techniques are those? I only remember one thing I've read
somewhere, and that is that the US military stopped using regular round
targets for shooting practice, and switched to human shaped targes.
Apparently it did shift the kill-needle a little bit in a more
favourable direction.

I read Grossman's 'On Combat' about 10 years ago and dug it out and
thumbed through it. His style is very anecdotal which makes for easy
reading but isn't too good for finding specifics. He mentions force-on-
force paintball and video simulations in a couple of places.

I used to shoot USPSA and there were two flavors of targets:

https://www.challengetargets.com/category/USPSA_TARGETS.html

The club used the vaguely human silhouette variety although some preferred
the octagonal generic target as less human. One thing I learned from the
matches is some people could really get into the scenarios. I never could
and wasn't very good at it. Grossman is big on the sheep, wolves, and
sheepdogs metaphor and implies sheepdogs are born not made. 

I also read somewhere that 1% of the population has no natural barrier
to killing other people, and that those types of people are the ones
that the military is looking for to join special forces and snipers.

Lawrence made the point about higher crime rates among ex-military and I
believe it is valid. I believe it may have more to do with who joins the
military rather than the training itself.