If it’s so easy to fly a fuel-laden airplane into a skyscraper, how come nobody had ever done that in the decades before 9/11?
Can’t think of what civilian uses a gun like this would have. I can certainly think of how it might be used for para-military purposes in a civilian environment, though. And the people using it might not give a damn whether they were caught afterwards. Terrorists are often like that.
Actually, crashing a jet into a skyscraper would be far easier. Shooting planes with hand-weapons of any kind is darn near impossible. I’m not saying no one could ever do it in a million years, but suffice it to say that militaries don’t tell people to shoot down incoming jets with rifles.
In any case, these rifles are not more dangerous to people than any other good sport shooting rifle. In fact, many countries basically use modified sport rifles as sniper weapons. The .50 caliber is much less useful as an anti-personnel sniper weapon because it’s so large and bulky. It’s used as an anti-vehicle round, and that rarely.
Again, I am not part of the pro-gun contingent. I am pro-regulations and pro-waiting periods and I generally think the NRA has overstepped common decency multiple times over the last few decades, however, this is about legislature outlawing something for a false reason. Do we really need these idiots adding more and more laws to the books?
Jim
It has a legitimate sporting use. Long range target shooting using the gun requires a great deal of skill, as at that distance the round is extremely sensitive to wind and temperature conditions.
Given that the gun presents little to no crime risk, why should the people who engage in this hobby be penalized?
Find the person who is saying that it’s “so easy” to do that, and debate them. I don’t think it is, or was, “so easy” at all. And the practical differences between the two scenarios are innumerable. This isn’t a debate on 9/11 and I won’t get dragged into that, not sorry.
Somehow, I imagine those in opposition to these rifles would say the same about most guns. Simply because one can’t think of a “civilian use” does not mean there is not a legitimate use for people with too much money who are in a harmless but expensive one-upmanship for long-range target shooting.
Um…yeah. Pretty good…you got it on the first try! 
How about this one? ‘What exactly is the PURPOSE of banning it? Just because its big and scary? More people die a year from swallowing toothpicks…but damnit, it LOOKS really scary and since there aren’t many people that have one we can sneak it through. Then we can go on to the next thing!’
Right?
-XT
Why is everyone assuming the fear is these rifles could be used against aircraft in flight? I imagine the concern is these weapons could damage aircraft stationary or taxi-ing on runaways.
I expected a gun that big to do a hell of a lot more damage to a computer per shot. Have I watched too many movies?
Yes, you have. Many people, the legislators mentioned in the OP included, assume “big gun” = “uniquely destructive weapon.” But a .22 bullet to the head will kill you just as dead as getting hit with one of these jobbies. All this talk of shooting at planes and refineries is ludicrous, and totally out of touch with how terrorists are KNOWN to operate. It’s annoying to read about this shit, because it gives the impression that Al-Quaida/terrorists are uniquely crafty boogeymen with supernatural powers of destructiveness that would put The Punisher to shame. 9/11 seems to have made it okay for some people to act like CNN and HBO are interchangeable.
When has Al-Quaida ever sat around shooting at things from long range? In their two attacks on the World Trade Center (in 1993 and 2001) they used the biggest, most explosive destructive devices they could find, and not a single firearm. Osama bin-Laden is clearly not interested in plinking, he’s looking to blow shit up.
And the reasons behind that are pretty obvious to anyone who knows the difference between how hard it is to set off a bomb or ram a building with a plane and how hard it is to hit anything a half-mile away or more with a rifle. I’ve tried the latter; it ain’t easy at all.
The public outcomes of these two methods of attack also matter a lot. There’s a reason they attacked the WTC twice, along with the Pentagon: They were big, famous buildings in big cities. How much press would Al-Quaida get from shooting holes in a few planes or or some refineries in New Jersey versus ramming the WTC with airplanes? One makes a big, loud public statement, the other makes a few holes in some pipes.Don’t give me that crap that just because they haven’t done it doesn’t mean they won’t do it. Getting all panicky about far-fetched imaginary scenarios like this is exactly the goal of terrorism, and by treating something so unlikely as an equally realistic possiblity as other, easier methods of attack, we play right into their hands.
Are you kidding? Planes aren’t going tremendously fast when they land, and they’re very close to the ground and present big targets.
Come to Washington, D.C., and head out Suitland Parkway towards Andrews AFB. Look up through the gap the road makes between the treetops, and time the interval that one of those cargo planes is visible in that narrow gap as it approaches the runway. Consider the fraction of that gap the cargo plane fills up. Then explain again to me how it would take a miracle of accurate timing to hit that bird.
It’s an anti-vehicle weapon. My point exactly.
Seems a hell of a lot more sensible than our airport security shampoo regs.
I mean, we’re trying to guard against a lot of remotely likely but potentially catastrophic events these days. That’s just life in the post-9/11 world. But it’s weird how, in some areas, a remote risk verging on the absurd is immediately turned into new bans, and in other areas, more worrisome threats take years to get acted on, if ever.
Then you have quit the debate. Because we are in a post-9/11 world, and we are trying to guard against fairly unlikely but potentially catastrophic events. You can’t just say, “I’m not part of that world.”
Ah, target shooting. What can’t you do that with? ISTM that any weapon you try to hit a target with can have that application. See! Now it’s got a civilian use. I’m sure the military does artillery target practice. If civilians did too, that would be a civilian use for artillery. And it’s hi, hi, hee… 
Go skeet shooting with a shotgun that fires multiple projectiles in a dispersed pattern, and when you report back about how you missed badly tell me again how easy it would be to fire a single projectile at a fast moving target. It’s something out of Fantasyland. There’s a reason why anti-aircraft artillery fills the sky during an attack, and that’s because even under the best of circumstances with fully automatic, large caliber weapons (we’re talking 23mm AAA here) it’s still difficult to hit a plane and knock it out of the sky. Saying that you can do it with a bolt-action rifle is absurd.
I’ve lived next to a couple of airports, and sure enough they do patrol the perimeter, right inside the fence, vigilant as can be. A weapon that was effective from a mile or so outside the fence seems like an obvious countermeasure.
Actually, Airman, you should reread the sentence you quoted. It doesn’t say what you think it does. It says that the absence of security at airports and oil refineries should give sane people pause, not that people who object to regulating guns as a response are crazy. But the post as a whole was needlessly aggressive in tone, which made it susceptible to misinterpretation, so it’s my fault. I should apologize for the hostility, and I do.
The cycle of arguments that goes “it’s stupid to act against possible threats that haven’t happened yet” doesn’t strike me as useful, as it limits us pretty much to locking up empty barns. It is pretty stupid to try to protect ourselves by sitting down and evaluating every object, one by one, and saying “what might a homicidal MacGyver accomplish with one of these, 5” of dental floss, and some canola oil?" Even when you get around to considering actual weapons, the this-one-but not-that-one-and-here-but-not-there approach deserves the derision it’s getting.
But that, I think, is a mischaracterization of what’s happening in New Jersey. It may be foolish to try to name, evaluate and control all the potential tools of terrorism, but it isn’t dumb at all to begin by thinking seriously (if hypothetically) about potential targets. Oil refineries, chemical plants and airports aren’t far-out scenarios, and it’s perfectly legitimate, as the next step, to think about how best to protect them.
The debate in the New Jersey legislature will be about whether a certain weapon presents a unique and serious threat to particular targets in New Jersey, and whether the threat justifies a ban. The answer may be yes or no, but the question isn’t stupid at all.
And Miller, you deserve an answer, and I will answer you – but later. Right now it’s time to play with the kids.
OK, a mile per hour is about 1.5 feet per second.
How long is a cargo plane? How fast is it going as it prepares to land? And therefore, how long can it potentially be in the range of a gun aimed at a single point?
I don’t know shit about planes. But let’s say it’s going 120mph as it makes its final approach, and it’s 150 feet long. That would it’s a target for .83 seconds if your gun’s aimed at a fixed point that the aircraft moves through.
People who do know shit about planes can correct the figures, and we can make the appropriate adjustments. But
doesn’t seem to be a very accurate descriptor.
Look, I see airplanes landing all the time at Andrews that it looks like you could bounce a damned Frisbee off the bottom.
I know that’s not really the case; it just seems that way. But if it’s close enough and slow enough to create the credible illusion that one could do that, it’s hard for me to believe you couldn’t hit the lumbering bird with a gun.
And I’m guessing it’s because the aircraft are (a) much further away from the ground, and (b) they’re going a lot faster, than when the runway’s 300 feet away.
Just a WAG, though.
Jest not. That fat bastard Fabulous Creature would unleash a T-Rex upon you just to be a jerk (assuming he ever gets his dino-cloner up and running again.)
For the record, I don’t think AFD needs to post any affidavits regarding his sanity, I’m sure he’s well enough for this crowd. He’s not the guy that worries me, the guy who likes guns better than he likes titties, he worries me.
Well, then like Duke of Rat said, there is no rationale for disallowing any size weapon. I’m sure they’re all great fun to target shoot with, regardless of what their real utility might be.
And like gun advocates have said before, when something does happen with one of these weapons, it will simply be the price the rest of us have to pay for your liberty to own any weapon you like.
This isn’t the gun advocates best position. It seems rather more like an argument that children would make. “I want it because I want it! Boo hoo hoo”!
There’s nothing rational about starting from the position that every weapon is a fine weapon for civilians to have and working backwards. Why not start with the position that civilians have some real need of weapons and then argue what they might be?
Indeed. :dubious:
I sincerely doubt you would like that fallacious broad brush applied to one of your pet peeves, so to speak. As in, “let’s lock up more people in Cuba because we’re trying to guard against fairly unlikely but potentially catastrophic events. This is a post-9/11 world.” Or how about “we need more warrantless searches, random checkpoints, and more surveillance of those eeeeeeevil Muslims too - it’s a post 9/11 world, after all. Can’t be too careful.” Are you now announcing that you’re in support of the Bush Administration’s erosion of civil liberties and increased intrusion into our lives because we’re in the post-9/11 world?
Evidence has not been supplied that any of these guns (meaning, the civilian versions of these guns, as used by civilians) have ever been used to bring down an aircraft, or even damage or shoot at an aircraft. Evidence has not been supplied that these guns have been used in terroristic crimes in the US, period. It has also not been demonstrated that these weapons are disproportionately more dangerous to aircraft than other very high-powered rifles, such as a Weatherby .460 magnum, or say a .30-06 with steel rounds from someone parked at the end of a runway. It has not been demonstrated that these weapons are especially likely to do severe and catastrophic damage to chemical plants and facilities, nor that they have ever been used for such a task, or that any law enforcement agency has found a conspiracy to do just that.
We can talk endless possibilities all day long, and we can drag out the “M1 Abrams/nuclear strawman” again and hijack the argument there. But the logical conclusion is that real and true issue here is an “ugly gun ban” pushed by people with a clear anti-gun agenda who are using the same tactics that the Bush Administration has to create FUD among the public to support their causes in “teh War 'gainst teh Terror”.
Okay, I will admit that I am not an expert on military weapons, but to those who feel that it would be possable to use one of these things to bring down a plane, I ask.
How?
Okay, by some miracle, Mr. Al-Quaida manages to get a plane in his sights, corrects for movement, windspeed, etc.
This is a bolt action weapon we are talking about, with a great deal of recoil, which means he will get ONE shot off.
Despite what you see in the movies, a single round will not likely cause a massive explosion. If it goes through the fuselage, it makes a hole, a pain to patch later, but it isn't going to bring the plane down. If it hits a fuel tank, it makes ...well ...a hole. Hitting an engine would probably be your best bet, and now you are talking about a shot that even the best sniper would need luck and a healthy dose of miracle to make. Even so, the pilot might be able to land on the power of the remaing engines with a lot less luck than it took to make the shot in the first place.
Sorry, a bolt action rifle is not a great, or even moderatly intelegent, choice for an anti-aircraft weapon. If you wanted to bring down a plane, you would be better off releasing a flock of geese on the runway, and hoping one manged to get itself sucked into an engine.
Put me down in the "just another ugly gun ban" column.