I just finished the book Trigger Men: Shadow Team, Spider-Man, the Magnificent Bastards, and the American Combat Sniper. It is a great book. I had no idea how important snipers were to the efforts in Iraq–especially the battle against IEDs. And in an urban environment too. In the mountains of Afghanistan, and the jungles of Vietnam, sure, but in the cities? I was wrong. They are doing 800 and 1000 meter shots in the cities. They would climb the walls of a families house while the family was sleeping and hide in their attic for a couple days and unless they did some shooting the family wouldn’t know they there until they said good-bye on the way out. Amazing stuff.

Bolt-actions guns, technology that has been around for 100 years, is more important than multi-million dollar weapons and vehicles in fighting the enemy. The sniper rifle is the ultimate precision “bomb”. It can kill one bad guy with an RPG in a crowd of women and children and not do anything worse than splatter the innocents with blood, brains, and bone.

I highly recommend this book to people of the long gun.