Here's the weapon used by the Dallas shooter

Gunboards.com ^ | 10 July 2016 | Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin

[COBOL2Java]

He looks good. That’s a shame.

[contrarian]

He looks good.. Now he can go back to passing out sunday school leaflets at the soup kitchen///SARC

[COBOL2Java]

His last thoughts: “What’s with the f#@$%@^ racist robot?”

[centurion316]

You start with an assumption that he was a trained sniper. I doubt that. Certainly, a trained sniper could have done the job, but many others could have done it as well. You do not need to be a trained sniper to accomplish this crime at the ranges involved and the time available. As an Engineer, he received Basic Rifle Marksmanship in Basic Training. He probably had additional training before he deployed to Afghanistan. That training may or may not have been sufficient, but we don’t know what additional practice/training he did.

Speculation like this will not lead to a conclusion that there were multiple shooters. Evidence will lead to that and according to the Governor, the Mayor, and the Police Chief, such evidence has not yet been found.

[Trod Upon]

Ever fire an AK74? The 5.45 round is very gentle in recoil and it is very easy to keep the rifle on target. They must shoot like a dream in full auto. I much prefer it to the 7.62 AK, and between the two it would absolutely be my choice for relatively rapid, moderate distance shooting. Put a good optic on it and anyone can be “accurate enough” with it. That’s the thing people miss when they get all wrapped up in the AR’s inherent accuracy advantage over the AK—the AK is plenty accurate for combat. Also, IIRC, many of the Dallas cops were returning fire with pistols, which would basically leave them as sitting ducks for someone with cover and a rifle. The guy was no sniper; he was basically plinking away at opponents who posed no real threat of effective return fire. Cops at a protest that had the potential to go bad should have been armed with carbines, not handguns, and they should have sought cover before attempting to engage the shooter. I rant and rave about militarized police, but an AR15 today is about the same as grandpa’s 30-30 70 years ago. It’s the everyman rifle. Hell, save some money and equip police with AK74s. They can ride around in squad cars forever and still run when needed.

[DJ Taylor]

IMHO, this wasn’t a sniper situation, it was simply an ambush.

[Jan_Sobieski]

Yes, fired both. Texas cops are well trained. I just find it hard to believe that the presumably untrained PFC was alone...

[7MMmag]

>>>> Hell, save some money and equip police with AK74s. They can ride around in squad cars forever and still run when needed. <<<<

That makes sense.

If a target (a bad guy, needing to be shot) is out of reasonable, 30-30 like range (say, a 100 yards?) then bring in the bull barrel Remington Model 700 in .308

[SE Mom]

Agree. It was also reported (no link, sorry) somewhere that he’d been doing further training at some black gym/gun/martial arts club.

I would be surprised if he could have pulled this off without additional practice after leaving the army. It’s been well over a year since he got out. His skills and focus seemed fresh.

[1FreeAmerican]

Why is there no debris on the weapon? No dust, drywall, ceiling material? Looks like someone just laid it on the floor.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Call the DPD and ask them.

[Steel Dragon]

35+ years in the martial arts has taught me a number of things. One of them is this truism: a patient man is a dangerous man. I’ve seen tht thought conveyed a number of different ways depending on who is saying it. Both Sun Tzu and Miyamato Mushashi say similar things, though perhaps more poetically than I have put it.

[familyop]

"Could a PFC Combat Engineer, kicked out of the military for sexual misconduct, become a trained sniper able to take out 11 Dallas cops?"

There are two general kinds of combat engineers--the combat kind and the construction kind. The murderer was one of the construction kind. His specialty was that of doing carpentry and masonry work.

The combat type does frequent combat drills, while the construction type does building tasks.

To answer your question, anyone can be trained to ambush others or train themselves to ambush others. Anyone can also acquire weapons with which to to do. But those who do so by way of strong emotions like hatred and vanity are generally not as effective.

Something even more important here. Criminal minds do not consider the consequences of their evil deeds. That's one characteristic that distinguishes the minds of criminals from the minds of moral people.

Dallas gunman Micah Johnson honed tactics at local combat school

The school was a civilian commercial business, by the way--civilian meaning not military.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Looks like an AK-74 5.45×39mm.

[familyop]

Here's another difference between combat "heavies" (actually construction engineers) and the lighter kind (combat engineers who mostly do infantry combat work). Combat engineers who specialize in combat are processed through an extensive, expensive background check and go through a rather brutal 13-week one-station unit initial training. They are more often trained around the clock for combat fatigue simulation. Many are weeded out early on through their own suicide attempts and stress fractures. Graduates of that initial training are far less likely to go crazy under stress than nearly anyone else in any kind of security duty, military or civilian.

Combat heavies (construction engineers, various MOSes including Johnson's MOS) train mostly to do construction-related jobs. Although they go through the fairly rigorous 8 weeks of basic training that most Army recruits attend, it's not nearly as mentally or physically difficult as the training for the MOS of combat engineer (combat type--sappers).

[Georgia Girl 2]

Bottom photo looks like my AK 74 with an Israeli front and rear. Top photo of supposed perp’s weapon looks like an AK 47.

[PLMerite]

Yeah, it looks like they erred on the side of BOOM!

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

“The suspect said” alot after robocop got him, didn’t he?

Is it too tin foily to say suspect said nothing after the big boom?

[Eagles6]

AK fires the same round as the SKS. 5.45x39 which he fired is closer to 5.56. Neither here nor there anyhow.

[PLMerite]

From the comments at the site:

#BlackLivesSplattered