Insert facepalm here -

Xavi6

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7480483.stm

French shooting show injures 16

A military shooting demonstration in south east France has left 16 people wounded, after real bullets were used instead of blanks.

Four of the wounded are in a critical condition, including a young child.

A Defence Ministry official said the incident occurred during a demonstration of hostage-freeing techniques at a barracks in Aude.

The soldier who fired the shots has been detained. It is not clear why the wrong ammunition was used.

Reports from the scene say the hostage scenario had been acted out five times before a crowd at the Laperrine military barracks, near Carcassonne, when on the sixth take real bullets began flying through the air, and onlookers fell to the ground.

In a statement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his horror at the incident and said he was urgently waiting for the results of an official investigation.

A regional official, Bernard Lemaire, told France 3 radio that it is thought the incident was accidental but that foul play has not been ruled out.

"The question being asked is 'Did the soldier engage in a criminal act or not?'," Mr Lemaire said.

"For now, no-one can answer that, but the theory being worked on is one of error," he added.

The critically injured victims were taken to hospital in Toulouse.

How the fuck do you get that so wrong?!?!

I'm just surprised it didn't happen in Ireland.

smellslikeshoes

I'm not sure what to think about this one Sixteen wounded and not a single fatality definitely seems like it was all a horrible mistake and not the intention of the soldier with the gun in his hand because he is a trained soldier and would definitely have the skill to kill someone if he wanted to. Saying that also kinda would have thought that if people started dropping like flies that it would have been stopped before 16 people were injured. Definitely a strange situation altogether.
Glad there was nobody killed, imagine being the soldier if there was fatalities because someone gave you the wrong bullets.

portomar

Xavi6 wrote: »

How the fuck do you get that so wrong?!?!

I'm just surprised it didn't happen in Ireland.

lol, if you see posters for an irish shooting show, maybe stay in that day

education is the way forward:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuvS9Mq_3UU


youtube thing wont seem to embed on page for me?

r3nu4l

Xavi6 wrote: »

I'm just surprised it didn't happen in Ireland.

Why's that then?

Xavi6

r3nu4l wrote: »

Why's that then?

Well let's face it, a lot of stupid random things happen in Ireland.

dade

Xavi6 wrote: »

How the fuck do you get that so wrong?!?!

it's the French not like they have a glowing military history now is it

phantom_lord

lolz

kowloon

Sarkozy has offered an unconditional surrender to "The unseen enemy, whoever put in the live rounds".

Sherifu

I didn't know the French had real bullets. They should have used them in WW2.

Overheal

its hard to kill your victim when your bullets are made out of cheese and harsh words.

Steve_o

Sherifu wrote: »

I didn't know the French had real bullets. They should have used them in WW2.

Then they wouldn't have been such good hosts....

Dave!

Sherifu wrote: »

I didn't know the French had real bullets. They should have used them in WW2.

Steve_o wrote: »

Then they wouldn't have been such good hosts....

lololol

Gordon

Ah no biggie, they were just shooting the breeze.

enda1

Xavi6 wrote: »

...
In a statement, French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his horror at the incident and said he was urgently waiting for the results of an official investigation...

How do you do that??

MarkR

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

I'm not sure what to think about this one Sixteen wounded and not a single fatality definitely seems like it was all a horrible mistake and not the fault of the soldier with the gun in his hand because he is a trained soldier and would definitely have the skill to kill someone if he wanted to. Saying that also kinda would have thought that if people started dropping like flies that it would have been stopped before 16 people were injured. Definitely a strange situation altogether.
Glad there was nobody killed, imagine being the soldier if there was fatalities because someone gave you the wrong bullets.

Um, yeah it was. He loaded the weapon. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that cartridges with blanks in them have some defining feature on them to show that they're blanks. And live ammo will just be all black and cool or something.

Steve_o

MarkR wrote: »

Um, yeah it was. He loaded the weapon. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that cartridges with blanks in them have some defining feature on them to show that they're blanks. And live ammo will just be all black and cool or something.

If Die Hard 2 is to be believed, the blanks have blue tape, the live ammo has red tape on the mags...

seamus

It's also possible that the soldier didn't load his own weapon though. Or that a live magazine got mixed in with the blanks, and was marked as having blanks (I think they put tape or paint or something on it). It could very much have been intentional by someone else.

If they were using automatic weapons, they would easily get off 16 rounds before noticing something was wrong.

And for the record, it has happened in Ireland. During a training exercise in the Glen of Imaal a few years (about 5 or 6), a sentry guard was asked to leave his post and join in the exercise.

Of course, he forgot to remove the live ammo from his gun and shot a 15-year-old trainee in the stomach.

D'oh.

smellslikeshoes

MarkR wrote: »

Um, yeah it was. He loaded the weapon. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that cartridges with blanks in them have some defining feature on them to show that they're blanks. And live ammo will just be all black and cool or something.

Fault wasn't the word I should have used there, I actually ment intention. Thats what I get when I post at 5.52am

Kintarō Hattori

portomar wrote: »

lol, if you see posters for an irish shooting show, maybe stay in that day

education is the way forward:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuvS9Mq_3UU


youtube thing wont seem to embed on page for me?

You can't embed youtube video's in After Hours.

MarkR

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Fault wasn't the word I should have used there, I actually ment intention. Thats what I get when I post at 5.52am

You're also overlooking the theory that he may have been a deranged gunman with poor hand / eye coordination.

GhostInTheRuins

How did he get through 16 people before he realised he was shooting them? Surely there must have been blood and screams etc

Zzippy

Four of the wounded are in a critical condition, including a young child.

I thought the idea of these drills was to shoot the terrorists and miss the hostages. Even if he had blanks in the gun, that was pretty bad shooting! Or maybe he thought a young kid was one of the hostage takers... :rolleyes:

Kintarō Hattori

Zzippy wrote: »

I thought the idea of these drills was to shoot the terrorists and miss the hostages. Even if he had blanks in the gun, that was pretty bad shooting! Or maybe he thought a young kid was one of the hostage takers... :rolleyes:

In fairness none of us know the details at the moment so it's a little early to be drawing conclusions.

smellslikeshoes

MarkR wrote: »

You're also overlooking the theory that he may have been a deranged gunman with poor hand / eye coordination.

But surely if he was involved in a demonstration he must have had some amount of skill with a gun. I'm not overly sure one way or another, if he intended to shoot people or not its terribly lucky that even though 16 people were injured nobody has died as of yet.

ShoulderChip

not one face-palm?

Stercus Accidit

The 16 wounded may not have been 16 shots, assuming it was the french military rifle the "famas" it would have used 5.56 nato rounds, at close range against unarmored targets a bullet could have passed through a couple of people, I suppose.
I imagine also they weren't aimed at specifically, just in the background, if they survived it will be because they weren't hit in the chest.

Then again, when using blanks, isn't there a yoke mounted to the muzzle to prevent real bullets coming out, a blank fire device, its usually orange or some obvious colour so that you can be sure the rifle is safe, even if a real bullet was loaded.

Bloody crazy all the same, wait until the french government has to make the payouts for those claims

May also be a Sarkozy scare tactic,

"vote yes to lisbon Ireland, or we won't use le blanks again..."

seamus

Zzippy wrote: »

I thought the idea of these drills was to shoot the terrorists and miss the hostages. Even if he had blanks in the gun, that was pretty bad shooting! Or maybe he thought a young kid was one of the hostage takers... :rolleyes:

Bullets bounce.
In real situations it's not rare for bystanders/hostages to be hit by stray bullets.

Trained forces are trained to aim and take quick shots and not just spray the room with bullets like you see in the movies. If you walked into a small room with an uzi and just sprayed the room in an arc like the terminator, you'd probably end up shredding yourself with the bouncing bullets.

In these demos or in exercises, they may even be told to aim slightly away from the "terrorist", so in the event that something like this does happen, you don't shoot someone point-blank in the chest.

kowloon

Even with blanks you don't aim directly at anyone so it's unlikely he would be aiming at anyone who was part of the display itself.

WhiteWashMan

Xavi6 wrote: »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7480483.stm



How the fuck do you get that so wrong?!?!

I'm just surprised it didn't happen in Ireland.

that must be the first live ammunition used by the french army since the WWI

biko

GhostInTheRuins wrote: »

How did he get through 16 people before he realised he was shooting them? Surely there must have been blood and screams etc

It takes less than a second to fire 16 shots, depending on weapon.

Sherifu

Kintarō Hattori wrote: »

You can't embed youtube video's in After Hours.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuvS9Mq_3UU