January 13, 2006: A U.S. Army sniper set a new distance record (1250 meters) for a kill with a 7.62mm sniper rifle. Staff Sergeant Jim Gilliland made the shot on September 27, 2005, during fighting in Ramadi. The Leupold sight Gilliland used is only accurate out to a thousand meters, so the chest shot was partially guesswork, and luck. Gilliland aimed 12 feet high, to adjust for the drop the bullet would make over that distance. Gilliland later found out that the Iraqi he dropped had just killed a friend of his, Staff Sergeant Jason Benford,.

Gilliland leads a ten man squad of snipers (the "Shadows"), that have been averaging ten kills a month in support of the infantry battalion they belong to. Some members of the team are averaging over ten kills a month. The snipers are particularly effective at night, when they often catch Iraqis trying to set up IEDs. In one case, his snipers killed ten members of an IED team. Ramadi is a Sunni Arab town, and full of Iraqis who really, really want to go back to the old days when Sunni Arabs ran the country, and a Sunni Arab dictator was in charge.