
Originally Posted by
mcantar18c
You'd be shocked at what he ISN'T willing to do.
I'm not talking about punching holes in paper or mannequins or even performance in training exercises. I'm talking about killing another human being... something which we as a species have a strong resistance to, even greater than that of self-preservation in some cases. The resistance to killing one's own species can be seen in every life form throughout the animal kingdom, including ours, and doing so generally puts great emotional stress on the killer.
This "safety catch" that prevents us from killing our own species without being conditioned to do so is a large part of why the camel-f*ckers can't shoot worth a crap. They probably don't shoot much worse than an American would in the same position when practicing on their ranges, but as seen with soldiers in WWII, at the last second they almost subconsciously shoot high or sometimes don't shoot at all. On the other side of this, our soldiers can kill more easily because they have been conditioned to be able to.
In WWII, WWI, the Civil War, the battles of Napoleon, etc., examination and study by many different people and groups has consistently shown disproportionally low casualty rates compared to the effectiveness of the weaponry and troops. In fact, in all of these wars, the risk of becoming a psychiatric casualty from extended exposure to combat or falling ill from disease was greater than being killed by the enemy, and most of the casualties inflicted on the opposing force were done by artillery and other long range weaponry that allowed the killer to create a psychological and mechanical barrier between himself and his victim.
Based on hit rates in training, a 200 man regiment in the Civil War should have been able to hit 120 enemy soldiers at 75 yards in the first volley of fire, which would equal 480 hits per minute (assuming a ROF of 4 RPM). Yet, even at the average range of contact of 30 yards, a regiment only killed 1-2 enemies per minute.
The only way to overcome this resistance that exists in all but 1-2% of the population is through training in such a way that's more like conditioning, in which you desensitize the trainee to the act of killing, justify it to them, and dehumanize their targets. This Pavlovian-like conditioning of soldiers raised the firing rate from 15-20% in WWII to 50-55% in Korea and even to 90-95% in Vietnam (which is why you start seeing a huge increase in the number of PTSD cases coming from 'Nam compared to previous wars, as more soldiers were killing and thus experiencing the common psychological repercussions of doing so).
More on this tomorrow (today) after I get some sleep.