I have lusted over a rifle firing the 50 BMG round for a long time. One of my fondest memories as a Coast Guard cadet was firing a 50 cal machinegun at floating targets, and I always wanted to try that same round on dry land. I am very recoil tolerant and that never scared me. I had kind of decided that that was going to be my next purchase. I was about to start scrimping to put together a purchase price when I learned the truth. The price of the ammo that was what drained the blood right from my face. Here is my tale of woe or maybe whoa.
I got e-mail from the friendly folks at MidwayUSA who were offering ammunition for the 50 BMG in 110 round cans for $399.99. That’s down from the normal price of 449.99. While a savings of 50 bucks a can is significant, that’s still over $3.60 a bang. Yeah that’s three dollars and sixty cents per pop. Match .308 is about a buck to a buck and quarter a round. Match rim fire is at the highest 14 cents a round. The ammo being offered was straight surplus, not match anything.
Sorry 50 BMG, you will live on without me, but I will never forget the time we shared.
Also, I note that you live in Maryland. Many dealers and suppliers will not ship to Maryland due to Maryland’s somewhat “gun-unfriendly” laws, and that pushes prices up as well.
D’oh! I didn’t look closely enough; I saw brassy colors in the picture and thought they were complete cartridges. Well, if you wanna get into reloading, there you go.
My second favorite weapon when I was in was the M2 .50 cal. Shooting it from the top of a Hummer was pure bliss only to be exceeded by my favorite weapon, the MK 19 Grenade Launcher.
My father was a gun dealer and we had machine guns when I was growing up. One was a 9mm Uzi shooting 9 rounds a second and the other was a Mach 10 shooting 19 .45 rounds a second. I had no particular affection for either one of them due to my shooting philosophy and they burned through money every time you pulled the trigger. The Uzi was doable but the Mach 10 was prohibitably expensive in full-auto mode. We bought huge volumes of old military surplus ammo but those tended to jam and misfire and that is no good in a machine gun. Everyone I knew wanted to shoot them but I only let my two closest friends do it and that was only one time in full auto mode. It simply cost too much even back in the 80’s.
Used to know a guy with a few Tommy’s that he’d let people shoot, if they brought the ammo. Most would show up with one 50rd box, that lasts about 2 seconds (I exaggerate, it’s probably closer to 4 seconds). He’d warn them that it ate ammo at a frightening rate but still they came with one box, two at the most.
They’d drive 20 miles on a weekday evening through rush hour traffic for 4 seconds of trigger-time. I got lucky my first time with it, I only bought two boxes but I have 250 rounds in my trunk most of the time (not that I’m paranoid, just too lazy to clean the car), so I got almost a full 30 seconds of shooting.
Sorry, I think I made that mistake before. I never really paid attention to the way it was written. I just shot the stupid thing a few times until I got disgusted with it.
The MAC-10 is a pretty pointless gun, but gained a lot of popularity for being featured in the John Wayne vehicle McQ and on Miami Vice. The full-sized Uzi, on the other hand, has rather good balance and is reasonably accurate for what it is; however, the open bolt design is prone to jamming or snagging, and better designs exist today. Fully automatic fire is basically useful only as suppressive fire. Two- or three-round burst can be useful for increasing hit potential.
I fired a Barrett .50 BMG about twelve years ago; impressive gun with high accuracy, but the cost even then was prohibitive. The owner was charging $5.00 a shot and claimed that it cost him upward of $2 per round with brass reused two to three times. I put it in the same category as Desert Eagle pistols; high powered novelties with little practical use.
