Accident?

This is coolbert:

Thanks here to the Chicago Tribune:

"French army chief quits after shootings"

"Paris - - France's army chief resigned Tuesday following a weekend military show in which 16 people were shot and wounded when real bullets were used instead of blanks"

"The soldier who fired the bullets was handed preliminary charges for involuntary injury . . . The 28-year-old had been taken into custody soon after Sunday's display of hostage-freeing techniques at the Laperrine military barracks in southern France."

This does not sound like an accidental shooting to me. Far from it. Was deliberate and planned with malice well in advance.

"Soldier to be prosecuted after shooting live rounds into crowd"

"the sergeant, a veteran of an elite regiment who had an unblemished record, had mistakenly inserted a magazine of live rounds in his standard assault weapon after emptying a first magazine of blanks in the exercise"

"Hervé Morin, the Defence Minister, said that he could not understand how an experienced soldier could confuse blanks and real rounds because the two munitions had different appearances and were packed into different-coloured magazines."

I first thought that a GROUP of soldiers had been issued live ammo and fired accidentally as a GROUP. But this is not so! ONE troop among the demonstrators had "saved" and hoarded live ammo from previous live fire exercises and was to blame for the wounding of the many civilians in the audience.

This can only be construed as a deliberate and malicious act of attempted murder on a mass scale!!

[anytime a firearm is used in a crime the intent to KILL has been established, regardless of the mental motivation of the pepetrator!!]

Anyone with even the slightest amount of military firearm experience will smell something fishy here. Blank rounds have a distinctive appearance that even the most casual of observers can readily tell apart from traditional military "ball" ammo. I am not sure about the French assault rifle, but in addition, American military rifles firing blank ammo NEED a blank adaptor placed on the muzzle as well.

This particular French Marine paratrooper was a long-term serving military veteran and could not have made such a mistake unless pre-meditation was involved??!!

That is what I fear!!

coolbert.