“American Legend” Chris Kyle went on four tours defending his country from terrorists in the Middle East, yet he gets accused of being a racist who enjoyed killing Muslims when that wasn’t the case.

After the release of  American Sniper, Muslims felt targeted. Sophomore Nina Raneses says “ I think that there’s no way a film like this could not cause people to feel this way about the ‘enemy’ but it causes more blind hate towards Muslims as a whole, and encourages civilian casualty.”

The film mainly focuses on the life of Kyle and how he came to the decision of fighting in the armed forces. The movie begins with a shot of a tank and a group of men walking through the streets of Iraq. A small Iraqi boy starts walking towards the men with a grenade. He is a suicide bomber sent by his mother. Kyle, being the overhead sniper, saw this and he had a decision: to shoot the young boy and protect his men. Kyle shot the boy after he attempted to throw the grenade.

Many people say that Kyle enjoyed this; killing innocent people. This wasn’t the case. He wasn’t killing innocent people. He was killing terrorists that were trying to kill U.S. men. He never shot an innocent person; he only shot if he knew they were trying to harm U.S. men.

News got around that Kyle had made a lot of kills on his tours. He had a record of 160 confirmed kills, and none of them were innocent. When asked, how many people he had killed, Kyle had always replied, “Does this answer make me more or less of a man?”

The controversy started from three claims that Kyle had made, none of which are in the movie. Kyle claimed that he shot looters during Hurricane Katrina from the roof of the Super Dome in New Orleans. He also claimed that he punched Jesse Ventura for insulting the SEALs. Lastly, Kyle said that he shot and killed two men who tried to carjack him at a gas station. I feel that he didn’t do anything wrong because he was defending himself and his country.

Personally, I can see why people think that Kyle loved killing people. But they think that he did it for enjoyment. He didn’t enjoy ending people’s lives for the fun of it. He killed them to stop them from doing harm to any U.S. men.

When he went home between tours, Kyle was in shock. He couldn’t stop thinking about the war and everything that had happened or that was going to happen in Iraq. I disagree with those saying that Kyle was a racist. I mean sure he killed people of another race, but that was part of his job, and the people he killed deserved it.

Kyle’s wife Taya threatened to leave him if he didn’t return home for good. She said this because every time that he returned home, he wasn’t himself. He was always thinking about the war, and what was going on over there. He wasn’t focusing on the family that him and his wife had just started. During his fourth tour, Taya almost took the kids and left, but she waited for Chris.

After that Kyle never went back to war, him and his family moved to Texas to settle down. Taya Kyle really enjoyed the film, she says “ I walked away in awe. The spirit and the heart, Bradley cooper captured all of that… Chris’s life was inspiring and I think that the movie is one more way for him to serve.”