Please, Mr Sniper

Everywhere, worldwide

Please, Mr Sniper, or Mrs as you may be, listen to me for a moment as I write. When you lie on your stomach, telescopic sight to your eye, as you adjust for veer and drift, allow for yaw, and as all your training takes hold, let me remind you of what you are just about to do.

You are aiming at someone you have been told is an enemy, although on occasion you could have aimed at me. As you settle the crosshairs on your target, you will allow a tiny breath of air to escape from your lungs, the breath that steadies your aim, you will relax and then you will slowly squeeze, not pull, your trigger. At that moment, that millisecond in time, a tiny particle of man-made misery will head towards its target at supersonic speed. You are well trained, just as I was in my Army. I could hit most things dead centre at least 300 metres away. You have been told to aim below the knee and most likely you know something of anatomy. Most likely, too, you will have practised with simulation. I pray they have told you the damage you can create.

Please, Mr Sniper, think before you take that shot

Your target is running, you have allowed for that, and you watch as something is thrown in your direction. You cannot make out precisely what it is. It may be a stone, launched from a sling shot, it may be a burning rubber tyre. But you are safe as you lie prone on the ground well behind the frontier fence. Anyway, you have a high velocity weapon, which can inflict untold harm. This is a duck shoot, not a real conflict. You can pick off as many as you desire. It is likely your target, male or female, is shouting in a language you do not understand, is unarmed, wears no protection, and is probably the same age as you. Your target has a family - mother, father, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and others - just as you. Your victim, for victim it is, has ambitions, desires, listens to music, enjoys time with friends, uses social media, plays with their or others’ children, and would so love to have a future. You have a future, your target may not, so as you squeeze that trigger please remember, you are aiming at a human, a human just like you, not an item, or someone without identity. Your target has passions and senses as do you. In another life, another world, the two of you might even laugh and joke. Everything you feel, your target can feel also.

You see, I am a surgeon. I am at the other end of your shot. Once you have done what they tell you and have returned to your camp to relax, it is to me, and others like me, that your target will be brought. Your work has finished, my work has just begun, and the target’s work will continue for the rest of life.

When that bullet has left your weapon, it cracks through the air invisibly. It enters the target’s leg through the tiniest of holes, before the shot is heard. Just under the skin is the bone we call the tibia but most call the shin. As your piece of manmade anguish hits this bone, both skeleton and bullet burst into tiny pieces, sometimes a few, often many dozens, on occasion even hundreds. It is like a mini-explosion, although this time it takes place within the human frame.

Everything, and I do mean everything, is destroyed. There may be a tiny entrance but the exit, if there is one, is massive. From that moment, whatever magic I might offer, and despite many years of surgery, I cannot return that leg to normal. Always, always, always there will be disability. Always, always, always, a livelihood, and a family, and a future, and passions, will be destroyed. Repeated operations are guaranteed, infection is likely, a limp highly probable and a life in tatters is assured. That millisecond to you is a lifetime to your target. So, think twice before squeezing your trigger, whatever they have ordered you to do.

With the injured you have sent me, and I have by now lost count of how many, one thing is abundantly clear. You have shot them in a portion of their body assured to do maximum damage, and will leave a young person, just like you, disabled for the rest of their life. Yet when I see them so soon after your cruelty, when they are wheeled into my emergency room bleeding, kept alive by some rescuer who has pressed hard on a major artery that your bullet has destroyed, few, if any, show pain. Your victim comes from a strong people, a proud society, bonded closer than glue. The way they control their pain so soon after wounding defies logic and ignores the rules of medicine. Certainly, it is not thanks to morphine, as supplies of that most effective painkiller ran out some weeks ago.

You have inflicted a terrible injury, you have destroyed a young life even without killing, and yet somehow, when I see them, each of your victims has appeared determined and strangely relaxed. That I cannot explain, other than your target is proud of their life, just as you are proud of yours.

So please Mr Sniper, or Mrs as you may be, think twice before squeezing your trigger, whatever your orders have been. The damage you will inflict is unimaginable. That young person in your crosshairs is a young person just like you. In moments you can destroy them forever.