Yes, that book is almost entirely garbage, fake statistics, and utter bullshit.

You know what the most common problem is for people who are in shoot-no-shoot scenarios when they don't have training?

They shoot way too fucking early. Most of training is about making sure you don't shoot someone unnecessarily. That's been my experience with everyone I trained, and everyone I trained with. Almost no one has ever been afraid to shoot unless they were literally afraid of the gun itself. Outside of that, a scared civilian will smoke you like they are the fucking Punisher. Most people will shoot each other over nothing. Parking spots, refunds, trespassing, being late, insults, getting in other people's way, being drunk, yelling too much, and much, much, less.

Grossman's nonsense about manshapped targets as desensitization is garbage. You want people to shoot at a sillohette because that's mostly all you're going to see. That doesn't make people think killing people is now double-plus good.

His idiotic statements about soldiers intentionally missing people in World War 2 is also complete trash. Soldiers didn't intentionally miss people, they were using suppressing fire. And at the time, the military was happy to over-supply ammunition. Even now, the US Marines have the most efficient ammo-to-kill ration of any branch at 64,000 rounds expended per enemy killed.

Since all armies experienced those kind of ammo-to-kill ratios, am I supposed to believe the soldiers that killed tons of innocent people in the Eastern Front were also just to scared to shoot Russians when they burned Ukrainian civilians alive? Should I believe the soldiers who raped Berlin and Nankin got queasy when pulling the trigger on their husbands? Or should the SS and Red Army troops had a ammo-to-kill ratio of 100:1?

Throw that book away, along with his book "On Combat". He's a total fraud.

Otherwise, let me check your steam account. If I find too many hours on shooters, I can guarantee that according to Grossman, you are a highly trained killer, incapable of human empathy. You could easily be more skilled and cold-blooded than any professional sniper because your video games literally re-molded your brain into psychopathy. That's his argument.