Una has a very good point about refineries not blowing up when you poke a little hole in something. In fact, I wish we could get terrorists to focus their efforts in taking pot shots at tank batteries. Something relatively harmless to keep them busy.
But seriously, what does the politician hope to gain from the ban? Surely, he’s smart enough to realize that the 50 cal isn’t really a problem and that any terrorist hell bent on shooting something with an anti-material rifle probably would be willing to get one in PA and drive across the border.
Is this an ill conceived political gimmick to look tough on terror and crime without pissing off mainstream hunters?
Video demonstrating the recoil Airman Doors aluded to. Note also that the gun in the video is a single shot, not a repeater, pretty normal for a .50 BMG. AD is pretty much on the money: A bad actor would have a long list of guns above one of these.
You were expecting rationality and logic from gun control fanatics?? This sort of reminds me of the anti-Iraq invasion crowd: “So, we got attacked by terrorists in Afghanistan and invaded Iraq?!?”
You have to understand something here Airman…most of the gun control loons have never actually SHOT a gun (let alone bothered to learn range safety, maintenence, or even owned one) before and are terrified by them. So a bigger (or more scary looking) gun is going to draw an even more knee jerk response. I think some of these folks just wait around in the wood work for something to come out in the news and then they just play what is basically a tape recorded ban line. “Hey, Jeeves! Some bunch of terrorist wack jobs were planning on killing a bunch of those evil army types at a base somewhere in the US. Roll out the ‘lets ban the .50 Cal rifle’ legislation we were talking about last week. The poor, stupid proles will never know the diff anyway. Besides, have you seen how big and scary it is?”
I was informed by one of the Captains of the Goodyear Blimp that finding a stray bullet hole was not uncommon. Of course, it had very little effect, and hitting a huge and slow blimp is hwaaaaaay different than hitting an airliner.
I’m not familiar with the weapon in question, but I know enough to know that a Desert Eagle .50 is an insane gun to shoot, much less carry, much less conceal. I’m gonna take a guess that the gun in question is quite a bit bigger.
We can make all the gun laws we want to, heck, we can make all the laws we want to, we’ll just keep making more idiots. I feel bad for any people that are actually fooled by that legislation into thinking it does a damn thing.
Please note: I live in a state where the bill to require our representatives to tell the truth was struck down. Seems the felon and the embezzler weren’t on board for it.
I’d think a T-Rex would hardly notice a .50 in single-shot mode (the Ma Deuce might get his attention, though). What you want for home defense against marauding dinosaurs is this.
While I’ve never handled or fired one of Barrett’s man-portable shoulder cannons, I have made parts for them, and met (briefly) Ronnie Barrett. The man does not fuck around. He agressively works to make sure that his guns do not fall into the wrong hands, and if you publicly misrepresent his guns by name, he’ll not have anything to do with you, as a California police force found out to their chagrin. They’d helped push for the ban, by claiming that the weapons had been used in the course of a crime. They’d also sent some of their rifles to Barrett to have some work done on them, because of their false claims, Barrett pointed out the fine print in the contract they’d signed with him and promptly confiscated the weapons per the contract.
Of course, if the terrorists really want to use firearms to kill people, the web offers all kinds of build your own plans from submachine guns to gatling guns, to my personal favorite: the howitzer. Mind you, while the plans show guns that are plenty lethal as is, it’s not really too difficult to increase their lethality. Any halfway decent machinist could do it.
No, there’s not. But why do you feel compelled to make that point? You know, it’s not that persuasive a tactic to stop in the middle of your argument every so often to assure everyone that you’re not deranged, when you haven’t been asked. Oh, well, at least you seem to have remembered where the “circumvent the law” idea came from.
There seems to be a unique utility associated with these weapons that presents a particular threat to the only jurisdictions that have moved to restrict them. They’re apparently uncommon weapons of little interest to gun enthusiasts. Which makes the OP even more of a Chicken Little with respect to his second amendment rights than Mr. Gusciora is about New Jersey’s refineries. And the former is probably defended by a lot more manpower than the latter.
People like me don’t like guns much, but we’re actually mostly on the pro-gun side, if only because we don’t want to see the bill of rights take any more damage. It’s a lot easier posture to maintain when we’re not being called upon to back up the right to bear light ordnance in the service of what everyone agrees is a hobby.
I suppose it’s my turn to parse your words, although I will refrain from insulting you.
I’m finding it hard to find anything true in that paragraph. Airport perimeters are regularly patrolled, the purpose of such a weapon is to hit targets at long range, not to avoid being caught for a crime that has yet to be committed by anybody, there is a list in at least one state, and by saying that it should make “sane people pause” it implies that people who protest the banning of a weapon that has never been used for that purpose are not sane because it doesn’t give us pause.
They are of major interest to gun enthusiasts, but they are cost-prohibitive for most of us. Besides, just as abortion rights people object to any chip in that particular wall, I object to the banning of something because of perceived apathy. For that matter, if there is so much apathy, why would you ban something that nobody cares about? That’s not a particularly compelling point for you to make.
This strikes me a bit like saying it’s not a big deal if certain kinds of speech are banned, because there aren’t many people interested in saying that.
I think legislators are way too “ban happy” even when they aren’t very knowledgeble about what it is they are banning.
A recent example from my state was a bill to ban Salvia Divinorum. The legislator who introduced the bill compared Salvia to Marijuana and LSD (which automatically proves he’s a fucking idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about).
I personally don’t care for guns (or salvia) but it really fucking pisses me off when lawmakers try to justify their own existence by tripping over each other to ban things year after year. Lawn darts, marijuana, “Assault Rifles”. Whatever happens to be a convenient political target and can gather even a bare majority to outlaw it. You know, If they just ended the legislative session by NOT banning something, I’d have a lot more respect for them than the converse.
So, the point here is that there is a massive, unweildy, extraordinarily expensive gun that has relatively little use, but dammit we still need to be able to shoot it if we wants to?