The War on Ugly Guns
The War on Ugly Guns - According to the Times, the "Violence Policy Center", in response to the wave of terrorists using large-caliber precision sniping rifles against passenger aircraft, is drawing a bead (heh heh) on .50 caliber "sniper" rifles.
The guns, .50-caliber rifles, sell for thousands of dollars and are primarily purchased by military and law enforcement personnel, but hundreds are bought by civilians every year. Some manufacturers' marketing material emphasizes that the rifles can destroy aircraft and armored personnel carriers.
Neither the times nor the manufacturers mention the other factors involved in such shooting. We'll get to that in a bit, here:
Tom Diaz, a senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, the gun-control group that has long campaigned for bans on the .50-caliber rifles, said: "This is not just a gun control issue. It's a national security issue."
They could have been campaigning for a long time - it's certainly a big part of
today's VPC presentation - because .50 caliber "sniping" rifles have been available since the early 1850's. The first, in fact - the .52 caliber Sharps rifle - lent its' name to the word we use today to describe an expert marksman, "Sharpshooter".
That, of course, predates manned flight by 50 years. No civilian planes have been shot down by such weapons (as distinguished from .50 caliber machine guns, which took a horrendous toll on US helicopters and aircraft in Vietnam).
The Times gives the truth a chance:
The Transportation Security Administration, however, does not see the rifles as a major threat. Robert Johnson, the agency's chief spokesman, said: "We are aware of it. We have considered it as part of a number of potential threats. We just don't feel it is high on the list of potential dangers."
Manufacturers and many gun enthusiasts say the rifles' critics are overzealous gun opponents who falsely raise fears about terrorism.
Ronnie G. Barrett, a manufacturer [of the Barret Light .50, a weapon of choice among Delta Force, SEAL, SAS and Special Forces snipers], said the idea of shooting down a moving plane with the rifle was "big time ridiculous" because a gunman would have to aim above the plane, to take account of gravity's effect on the bullet as it traveled, and then the plane would not be visible in the scope.
Other rifles could also be used against planes on the ground, Mr. Barrett said.
Mr. Barrett is both correct, and too modest. Any rifle can be used against planes on the ground - and with about the same effect as the .50 caliber weapons.
Alan J. Vick, one of the two authors of the study, said that the possibility of using .50-caliber rifles against parked aircraft was worrisome.
"These weapons are heavy, and as a sniper weapon, using a bipod, laying down, shooting at some terrestrial target, they can be very accurate," Mr. Vick said. "I can understand why people would be worried about them as a terrorism weapon."
He and other experts, while sometimes skeptical that the gun could be used successfully against a plane in the air, said it could damage and possibly ignite a plane on the ground.
Indeed. So, let's walk through this scenario, shall we?
- A group of terrorists spends thousands of dollars on a .50 rifle, rather than on five to ten smaller weapons of adequate capability.
- The terrorists bring the weapon to a location from which they can shoot at aircraft. Let's assume the terrorists have access to snipers as well-trained as the Delta Force, SAS or SEALS - they'd need to get within 2,000 yards of the airport's runways, apron or hangers. That's an intimidating shot if you're not a world-class expert (Delta, SAS or SEAL), but what the heck.
And if you want to shoot them while flying, you'll need to get down under the glide path (or take a VERY difficult high-deflection shot at a target moving 120-200 mph). Remember, last summer's "Shoulder Fired Surface to Air Missile" scare caused glide paths and airport environs to be more heavily-observed than before.
So the scenario would be...what? A small group of men, one of whom is carrying a six-foot-long rifle, is to sneak into the generally-populated around a major airport, or under the now-guarded glide paths of the same airport? Unobtrusively?
And precisely why would they do that, to deliver a small bullet that'd be only dubiously likely to actually shoot down an airliner, when for the same load and risk, they could bring a surface to air missile (banned for the average American - relax, VPC - but easily available to real terrorists, and vastly more likely to do damage or destroy the target?
The VPC shows its ignorance, incidentally, comparing the task to "bird hunting". Birds don't move at 200 mph. And while shooting a bird with a shotgun at 20-50 yards is simple, try hitting one with a single shot from, say, a deer rifle with a scope. More daunting, to be sure.
The Times quotes an expert:
John Plaster, a retired Special Forces officer who has tutored police snipers, pointed out that such rifles were awkward to maneuver, weighing about 35 pounds.
"It's very unrealistic," Mr. Plaster said. "I have never heard of a commercial plane anywhere in the world that was seriously damaged while in flight by a .50-caliber rifle, ever. It's not by any means a choice weapon."
Sales literature from Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, says of one model, "The compressor section of jet engines or the transmissions of helicopters are likely targets for the weapon, making it capable of destroying multimillion dollar aircraft with a single hit delivered to a vital area."
A competitor, E.D.M. Arms, advertises on the Web that its Windrunner .50-caliber can be used to "attack various materiel targets such as parked aircraft, radar sites, ammunition, petroleum and various thinned-skinned materiel targets."
The essential qualifier - "
in the hands of an expert marksman" - went unstated.
I love this - the obligatory scare quote:
Caliber refers to the diameter of the barrel, and .50 caliber is half an inch. At the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Curt Bartlett, chief of the Firearms Technical Branch, said of the .50 caliber, "anything bigger than that would be getting into the range of cannons."
"Omigosh, Muffy! Terrorists can buy something that's almost as big as a cannon!"
Yep. In the world of ordnance, any bullet bigger than .8 inches in diameter is a "cannon shell". In the same way that any car over a certain size is a "truck". The whole line exists to frighten the ignorant.
Inevitably, we end with this:
Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said he would soon introduce legislation to regulate the weapons. Mr. Waxman said he had observed a demonstration at which marines used the rifles to shoot through a three-and-a-half-inch manhole cover, a 600-pound safe and "everything imaginable."
Expert Marksmen, ideal conditions, etc, etc.
It's a crisis in search of a problem.
I'll be following this.
Posted by Mitch at
January 31, 2003 04:07 PM
