nomix
True Viking
- Joined
- May 26, 2005
- Messages
- 7,293
- Location
- Norway
- Car(s)
- Tend do walk the 40 meters from my bed to lecture.
I don't think it's implausible that they were shot with paintballs, though. I don't know, but I don't find it implausible. Would explain why parts of the video hasn't been released.You can just barely see the markers (their hoppers, specifically) in one of the videos jetsetter posted. But I wouldn't be surprised if some people thought they were guns. A paintball marker can look/sound rather like a silenced gun. I seriously doubt sleeping people were shot, as well.
In this case, the IDF is admitting to the shootings, and explaining how people were hit by live rounds. I'll believe that, as there's no reason to lie about that. The video footage so far does indicate that there's paintball weapons in use (unless the IDF glued bottles on the top of their SMG's, of course), and as people rarely get killed by paintball weapons, and if they do, it's freak incidents, and 9 freak incidents doesn't sound likely, I believe their claim the soldiers were armed with sidearms with live rounds.I'll give as much weight to what the IDF claims as I would give to what the activists said. And former US Ambassador Edward Peck has said the alleged paintball guns were attached to automatic weapons, and others on the ships have also made similar claims. There were several ships, so maybe some soldiers just had paintball guns and others carried other weapons. I don't think it really matters what they were packing...it's the dead of night and soldiers are dropping onto your ship.....who is really paying attention to what kind of guns they have?
If there was only some way to prove it like, I dunno, a video?
I do however believe the paintball guns could, and probably were, mistaken by the people on the boat as SMG's with live rounds.