The issue here is not how public you are in the lives saved, but how many lives you save, regardless of if anyone sees you or doesn't. Minus the obligatory insult about shooting people in the back, and the fact that the enemy goes out of its way to try and hunt down a sniper, where as a house doesn't target firemen to kill, one sniper can save hundreds, if not thousands of lives. That defacto makes him a hero, just as much, if not more, than any fireman.
It's a little like the firearms argument, that the left frequently tries to ignore, where despite what "evil" a gun does in taking a a life, in this country a gun saves far more, than taken. Not my stats either....nor the NRA's. That'd be referred to as the FBI's stats
Speaking of which, I happen to recall a certain professor opining a while back, how school shootings were supposedly increasing in frequency, in this gun crazy culture of ours.....once a month, I heard in fact. Boy, are those gun nuts not getting the memo??