8 Feb 2015

Sniping - History, Legality and Entertainment Value

From Sunday Morning, 11:08 am on 8 February 2015

Jason Cayless
Former New Zealand soldier and budding filmmaker Jason Cayless.

American Sniper is breaking box office records in the United States and around the world. And it has divided the public and critics alike between those who see the biopic's central character Chris Kyle – the most lethal sniper in US history – as a hero and those who argue he was a brutal killer.

Sunday producer Jeremy Rose speaks to historian, professor Glyn Harper about attitudes to snipers during the First World War; and Wallace Chapman interviews Tim Wood, a former military lawyer with the Royal Air Force and now a senior lecturer at Massey University's Centre for Defence and Security Studies; and former New Zealand soldier and budding filmmaker Jason Cayless – whose first short film was about a sniper fighting terrorists.