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You happen to notice the ranges at which these two worked from? A little more than the average handgun is required, but very reasonable countersniper fire could have been returned by a handgun-equipped shooter. That might or might not have tagged the sniper de jour but likely would have seriously interfered with thewir accuracy, and would have given police a well-marked vehicle to search for instead of Chief Moose's fictional white van.
Mike
That might or might not have tagged the sniper de jour
Very likely ... shooting a large four-door automobile at 100 yards is a rather easier task than shooting a man.
but likely would have seriously interfered with their accuracy,
Highly unlikely ... these terrorists exercised superb fire discipline: one shot per target, regardless of effect. Any return fire by armed citizens (Virginia is a shall issue state, Maryland is a may fuggedaboudit issue state) would by definition come after the first and only shot from the terrorists. Even in Virginia, no armed citizen spotted the blue impala and fired on it.
Of course, we were all looking at white vans per the "info" from that asshole Moose.
In one of the interrogation transcripts (located at the same Fairfax County web site as the pictures, above), Malvo claims the Home Depot shooting in Falls Church was from "132 yards." The Manassas shooting was also from across the street, in that case a 4-lane state highway, probably 100 yards or so. Both shootings were at night.
Given those distances, I don't think anyone would have known where to return fire.
The Home Depot is nearby, and I've checked that site. There is no way on earth that any person with a handgun - especially in the HD parking lot - could have returned fire on Malvo's position. It was far away, it was dark, and he was well-concealed.
BTW, is was pretty clear from the get-go that they had shot from the school parking lot across Route 50 (there was a big thread about this for a few days after the shooting). And it was completely bizarre that the police didn't clear that area of the dozens of reporters and TV broadcast trucks milling around. They were tromping and driving all over the crime scene for nearly 48 hours (I vividly recall the live Fox and CNN video taken from that very parking lot). It was a full two days before the police began to search that specific area.
In the end, all of those "witnesses" who saw the shooter in the HD parking lot were either lying or completely wrong.
And I wonder whether Malvo himself was a "witness" for the police, since he claims he spent substantial time at the crime scene after the shooting, and he seemed to have no problem talking to police, as he describes in the Manassas events.