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[–] [deleted] 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

[Deleted]

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[–] HonestTrouth 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Can't you have both? Epic GoT style wall and the shooting of invaders?

I know I'd like both.

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[–] Chempergrill ago  (edited ago)

Your idea is much more expensive than it sounds, and more expensive than a wall over time. It requires a lot of people continuously manning it.

Suppose the total expense for a border sniper is $100k/year.

You'll need perhaps 3 of them per mile (in quiet sections), working in 3 shifts per day to continuously watch the border with overlapping coverage. So a total of 9 snipers employed per mile of border.

This gives an ongoing sniper expense of $900k/year per mile that must be continually trained and recruited. All these people require organizational overhead. I will make the WILDLY optimistic assumption of a very efficient bureaucracy and simply round up to $1Million per year per mile. This excludes electric fence construction and maintenance costs.

A border wall of the type being discussed costs around $10 Million per mile.

So compared to the sniper-fence scheme, the wall will pay for itself in 10 years and potentially stand for centuries.