  effective > but a modern sniper can buy the finest rifles on the market, and can confine his activities to temperate areas where he does not need to freeze his tookis while waiting for a shot. he is opposed only by police and paramilitary organizations with little training or even familiarity with counter-sniper weapons and tactics. (it is not as if they have ever had to!) he can travel anywhere within the country and wait indefinitely for his next attack. the many historical examples of serial killers teach us this disturbing lesson: if he is controlled and patient, a man can kill indefinitely even while making close personal contact with the victim and killing in inefficient ways. (one running theme with serial killers is how effective simply picking random victims is at preventing capture or even identification of victims, eg. despite israel keyes providing a count & descriptions, 6+ murders remain unidentified and certainly would have never been solved). how much more so could a sniper picking random targets! > the beltway snipers offer an (incompetent) example: the nation was transfixed and horrified, the dc area gridlocked for weeks, and extraordinary measures were taken like the secretary of defense authorizing the deployment of army surveillance aircraft. another dubious example comes courtesy of the swedish shooter john ausonius who eluded capture for 6 months despite crippling his guns with pseudo-silencers, walking up to several of his 11 victims, and robbing banks on a bicycle. > it is not unreasonable to think that a terrorist-sniper could kill indefinitely, at a high tempo. if he shot one person a month, he will exceed bum-kon in just 5 years. if the 20 9/11 hijackers had instead become snipers, they would at that slow rate match simo in 2 years or so, and 9/11 in ~12 years. and they could keep on killing. its not like they have to retire after a decade or two.
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