Dallas gunman practiced 'shoot and move' tactics at self defense gym

A woman sits by a memorial for slain Dallas police officers

(Image credit: Laura Buckman/Getty Images)

last updated 11 July 2016

The sniper who killed five officers and injured several more in Dallas Thursday night before being killed by police had trained himself in advance of his deadly rampage. An Army veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan before being discharged under accusation of sexual harassment, Micah Xavier Johnson was seen performing military-style drills at his Texas home.

He also practiced "shoot and move" techniques — in which the attacker changes location after each round of gunfire — at a "self-defense and personal protection" gym in Fort Worth, Texas, which describes itself as a provider of "reality based training for today's urban environment." Johnson's movement patterns originally led to inaccurate reports of multiple snipers in Dallas instead of a lone gunman.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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