Carlos Hathcock is rolling in his grave. Skiprr, you just spared me a bunch of trouble. I'm not going to bother even watching one episode. The Bob Lee Swagger books (Point of Impact is "book #1") are great reading, and you're right.....Stephen Hunter does get a LOT of things right in the technical details of long range shooting. But, where even the movie "Shooter" got it wrong is that Bob Lee Swagger is a Vietnam vet - a contemporary of Carlos Hathcock's and Chuck Mawhinney's. His son, Ray Cruz, is the Afghanistan War veteran and also a sniper, and Hunter has written at least three books I can think of in which Ray Cruz is the central character. Cruz is very much in the Swagger mold, with a little bit of exotic ethnic background, and a whole lot of USMC Scout Sniper ethos in him. Those books are just as good a read as the Swagger books. I think I might have read all of them. I've even read the ones concerning Bob Lee's father Earl Swagger as an Arkansas law man. - "Hot Springs" and "Pale Horse Coming". There's even a really good read of Hunter's called "Dirty White Boys", which is sort of a prequel to the Swagger books.Skiprr wrote:If I had the time necessary (because there seem to be bizarre gun errors every few minutes, it would take a while) and could stomach watching it again, I'd DVR the pilot episode of the new TV series Shooter, based on the movie of the same name. Which in turn was based on a Stephen Hunter novel...and Hunter is either fuming mad, or shrugging in resignation as he takes his check to the bank. Hunter has admitted he's less a handgun guy, but the knowledge and research shown in his books about rifles is solid.
Not so with this TV series (produced, BTW, by Mark Wahlberg). Now, I can forego some gaffs sometime if it doesn't glaringly break the fictive suspension of disbelief, but if it's a show or movie or book where firearms are so prominent as to be almost a principle character? Mistakes there and the writer, producer, and director should be, well...avoided.
This one starts with Bob Lee Swagger out in the woods with a tranquilizer gun rather than his rifle--a sure sign from the get-go that this was going to PC retelling of the book, if it paralleled the book at all--when he comes across two "hunters" that Bloomberg would consider prototypical: chugging beer, ready to shoot at anything, and completely ignorant about their firearms.
But then, this version of Bob Lee Swagger ain't much more informed than the hunters. He says, "What you got there?" then grabs what looks to be a scoped Remington 700 with cammo furniture away from hunter #1. He asks the guy, "Are you a dentist?" "Orthodontist," he responds. How, or especially why, Swagger seems to be psychic is left unanswered.
Swagger opens the bolt, ejects the round, and catches it in the air. "Two-two-three Remington," he says, holding the round in front of the hunters' noses, a round that dose not look like a .223, either that or the actor is only about 5'3". "55 grain," he says (again, some at-a-glance psychic capability is at least inferred because he doesn't even look at the bullet). "You guys have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? The kid at Wal-Mart who sold you this should have told you. This bullet isn't powerful enough to take anything bigger than a squirrel."
Ignoring that bullets have no power factor at all, just weight, mass, composition, and shape, it will come as a distinct surprise to millions of military veterans and civilian shooters alike that a .223 is useful only against game or threats weighing less than 1.5 pounds. That was my first audible groan when I watched this show. There were many, many others.
Oh, and hunter #2, again with Bloomberg stereotypicality, responds to Swagger's misinformed ballistics lesson by holding up a chrome Beretta 92FS and waggles the 9mm pistol at him. "How about this one? Think it has enough stopping power for ya?" Swagger removes the bolt from the Remington 700 before handing it back to hunter #1. The next, of course, comes the obligatory how-bad-am-I hand-to-hand where Swagger disarms the hunters...then pops them both with a round from the tranq gun and walks away, leaving them sedated and alone in a forest populated with wolves.
After leaving the orthodontist and his buddy for wolf chow, Swagger returns to a loving family scene with his wife and daughter at what has to be a pricey piece of property on a hill next to Puget Sound. He goes to a standalone structure below the main house, his work- and reloading-room and gun "safe." Plain wooden door with a deadbolt, windows overlooking at least two sides--including by the door--with no curtains or blinds. High-end rifles are openly on display, just hanging on the walls. He does have lockers for some weapons, including multiple handguns; these lockers are open-grate-front, cabinet affairs.
Rule #1: The best way to secure your dozens of firearms and accessories is to place them where they are easily visible through a window and secured by nothing that one smack of a framing hammer can't get through.
Rule #2: If you live right by an open body of salt water, never ever try to keep your guns in any kind of sealed container. Constant high humidity and salt air are the best friends your firearms can have. Keep them exposed to those conditions and they'll last you several lifetimes.
Then the setup recruitment briefing by the fed. A tablet PC goes onto the reloading bench and photos are displayed. "Shot by a sniper. We found the hide. Fourteen-hundred yards away."
Swagger's eyebrows rise. "Dang; 1,400 yards." He scrolls through photos to a close-up. "That doesn't look like a 50-cal."
"Three thirty-eight based on the slug." [Note to self: evidently a tiny shotgun slug, smaller than a .410, can serve as a sniper round from long distances. Who knew?"]
Swagger thinks out loud. "Okay. So, 3/4 mile shot through the woods... Boy's a shooter. Only a handful of shooters in the world can take a headshot from 3/4 of a mile away."
In a flashback to Afghanistan, we see Chechen sniper Salatov kill Swagger's spotter with a round through the chest. "He was dead before he fell," says Swagger. Which, of course, contradicts the show's little opening scene which talks about three ways to die from a gunshot, that a headshot is the only "killshot." But never mind. By now we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Swagger has no clue about his supposed area of expertise.
The sniper, Slatov, uses a .338 Lapua Magnum. The feds provide Swagger with what they believe is an exact duplicate of Salatov's "highly customized SABER-FORSST." Swagger is visibly impressed by such a top-end, exotic firearm.
The problem? The SABER-FORSST is a modular stock; it isn't a firearm at all.
Swagger receives the rifle completely assembled and scope mounted (suitable background music ensues). The first thing he does after pulling it from the case is shoulder it with his finger on the trigger.
The second thing he does is put it a mount/vise and take a Tru-Value crescent wrench to the bolts anchoring the rings to the Picatinny rail. It's obvious he is fine-tuning this precision optic because he looks through the scope multiple times, inserts a laser boresighter, and goes back to cranking on the Picatinny attachment bolts with his crescent wrench, supposedly getting the scope honed in before the first live fire.
Now I know what I've been doing wrong. Thanks to this font of knowledge, I'm giving away my scope-ring lapping rods and precision torque wrenches and Wheeler leveling set. I'm buying a cheap crescent wrench and randomly and alternately tightening and loosening the Picatinny rail attachment bolts--undoubtedly scratching the receiver, barrel, and body of the scope along the way--until I get a precise, super-sniper zero.
Best-of-the-best sniper Bob Lee Swagger then goes into his local gun store. "I'm trying out a new rifle, Henry. You got any three thirty-eight Lapua Magnum?"
"Sure we do."
"I need some powder and some three thirty-eight bullets, too."
So take whatever commercial rounds your local gun store has in stock. It matters not what they are. And here's the big lesson to all you reloaders. You have been completely wrong, this whole time, to worry about bullet weight and composition and shape. Just buy the right caliber bullet. And it doesn't make any difference what kind of powder you use, either: gunpowder is gunpowder. Silly people.
Last tidbit, then I can't take it any more. And, no: I never watched another episode of Shooter.
Bob Lee takes his new, highly modified SABER-FORSST complete with screwed-up Picatinny mounts and crescent wrench scratches all over it to a river to sight it in live-fire.
I now really, really want a .338 Lapua Magnum. I've always known they had impressive ballistics. But, wow; add to that they have absolutely zero recoil? I mean, not on a sled or in a vise, just on a rest, and you can balance a shot-glass full of water on the barrel and never spill a drop. Less recoil than a rubber-band gun. Just, wow! (And we're barely halfway through the first episode at this point.)
Oh, and if you want to take one-mile shots, all you need is what seems to be a very basic Bushnell reticle in mils. You don't need no fancy reticles with superfine holdover markings. And you guys thought you had to spend more than $250 on a scope. Pshaw. After all, if it isn't necessary, why would you want a $3,000 scope if, to get it truly right, you were going to scratch it up with your $3 crescent wrench, anyway?
There's another novel called "The Second Saladin" - a prescient novel written in 1986 about an Afghan terrorist infiltrating into the United States - which is also a good read.
I'm a huge fan of Stephen Hunter's novels, because he gets it right. Here's a list of Hunter's works, which I would recommend to anybody looking for a good read:
Novels
- Bob Lee Swagger Series
- Point of Impact (1993) - I've read it
Black Light (1996) - I've read it
Time to Hunt (1998) - I've read it
The 47th Samurai (2007) - I've read it
Night of Thunder (2008)
I, Sniper (2009) - I've read it
Dead Zero (2010) - I've read it
The Third Bullet (2013)
Sniper's Honor (May 2014) - I've read it
- Earl Swagger Series
- Hot Springs (2000) - I've read it
Pale Horse Coming (2001) - I've read it
Havana (2003) - I've read it
- Ray Cruz
- Dead Zero (2010) - I've read it
Soft Target (2011) - I've read it
- Other novels
- The Master Sniper (1980) - I've read it
The Second Saladin (1982) - I've read it
Target (film novelization) (1985)
The Spanish Gambit (reissued as Tapestry of Spies) (1985) - I've read it
The Day Before Midnight (1989)
Dirty White Boys (1994) (prequel to events in Black Light, Bob Lee Swagger series) - I've read it
I, Ripper (2015)
- Short stories
- "Casey at the Bat" (2010) (in Agents of Treachery, edited by Otto Penzler)
- Non-fiction
- Violent Screen: A Critic's 13 Years on the Front Lines of Movie Mayhem (1996)
Now Playing at the Valencia: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Essays on Movies (2005)
American Gunfight: The Plot to Kill Harry Truman and the Shoot-out that Stopped It (2005) with John Bainbridge, Jr., ISBN 0743281950 - I've read it
