PSX5Central
Non Gaming Discussions => Off-Topic => Topic started by: lionken07 on February 01, 2003, 10:14:49 PM
-
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/p...&partner=GOOGLE
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citing Danger to Planes, Group Seeks Ban on a Sniper Rifle
By MATTHEW L. WALD
ASHINGTON, Jan. 30 ?A gun-control group has begun a new campaign against large sniper rifles, asserting that the rifles together with armor-piercing ammunition that bursts into flames on impact pose a serious threat to airliners at airports.
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.
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."
The center produced a 32-page report that it is distributing this week on the potential threat to aircraft of the rifle, which has a range of more than a mile.
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, 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.
But a report to the Air Force in 1995 by the RAND Corporation identified .50-caliber rifles as a special hazard to "high value" planes at military airfields. 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.
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."
Investigators for the General Accounting Office called several arms dealers to inquire about ordering the guns and armor-piercing rounds. According to a transcript of a call to a dealer in Oregon, an agent asked, "If I theoretically wanted to use these rounds to take down an aircraft, say either a helicopter or something like that, I should be able to take a helicopter down, shouldn\'t I?"
The dealer answered, "Yeah, it\'ll go through any light stuff like that."
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."
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."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
so that means the .45 is "almost" a Canon too? lol:laughing:
-
Reminds me of Pulp Fiction...
A god damned hand-cannon!
-
actually it is like a cannon, the .50 cal. barret can easily puch a hole thru a 1 inch thick steel plate. and i believe that it should be banned too.
(https://psx5central.com/community/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.barrettrifles.com%2Fimages%2Fmodel82A1.jpg&hash=12255622834eeca337a54af7aec302693296bce3)
-
.50 cals are fun to plug holes the size of two door knockers into objects though :D
My friend bought a .50 DE a few months ago and boy is that gun fun to shoot. Hell of a kick too. We shot up and old chevy 350 and put holes in the block :D Not to mention his old 486 computer..poor thing.
-
Originally posted by lionken07
so that means the .45 is "almost" a Canon too? lol:laughing:
.45 pistol ammo is very different from .50 cal rifle ammo, as I\'m sure you know. :rolleyes:
No way in hell these weapons should be sold to civilians. It serves no reasonable purpose. It\'s not useful for personal defense or for hunting. It\'s a military weapon and it should be treated as such.
-
hell.. .50 is pretty different than .45 in a hand gun.
-
I gotta get one of those
-
they have one at my local gun store.... The Barrett .50 cal is a sight to behold. Nothing like a weapon that will fire a projectile the size of your pinky finger at around 4000 FPS. You don\'t even have to hit your target if you\'re sniping someone. The shockwave from the bullet will knock your head off if it passes within a foot of your head.
cost: $5,000.00
Ammo: cheap stuff @$1.50 per round.
-
Whoa....
Just think if someone were to actually shoot a plane with that... would it really do much?
-
Couldn\'t it maybe go through to where their was an air leak.
-
Originally posted by Tyrant
actually it is like a cannon, the .50 cal. barret can easily puch a hole thru a 1 inch thick steel plate. and i believe that it should be banned too.
(https://psx5central.com/community/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.barrettrifles.com%2Fimages%2Fmodel82A1.jpg&hash=12255622834eeca337a54af7aec302693296bce3)
anything with reasonable bullet can put a hole through 1 inch thick steel plate (+p? :p )
I don\'t really see the .50 as a ideal weapon of choice when wanting to take down an airplane. I heard that birds cause a lot more problems in the air than a .50 that don\'t really mean we should ban bird should we?
-
Not the greatest of analogys.
Birds are animals and if one flew into a plane and somehow managed to take it down (however small a chance that is), it\'s a freak of nature. You can\'t ban birds anyways.
A gun - that is used to take down a plane is different.
-
might not be the grestest comparsion but I was just trying to say that those "gun-control" people are running out of things to say. They\'re just trying to make up something that might never happen just so they can attack gun owners even more. Things like using a full auto on an aircraft is super unlikely.
I got this from a friend of mine (sorry can\'t give credit because he got it from somewhere else too), but this shows how strong a normal jet engine can be:
"Subject: "Chinese Airlines...What A Story!"
Gee; I wonder why they didn\'t just complete the planned flight schedule with the good engine. (;-))))))))))))))))))
Chinese Airlines. You will not believe the following story and photos but it actually happened.
It appears the only reason we really need to worry about the Chinese is because there are just so damn many of them. You might want to think twice the next time you fly on a Chinese Airline.
A pilot for a Chinese carrier requested permission and landed at FRA (Frankfurt, Germany) for an unscheduled refueling stop. The reason became soon apparent to the ground crew: The Number 3 engine had been shutdown previouoly because of excessive vibration, and because it didn\'t look too good.
The photos show the condition of the #3 engine when the Airliner arrived in Frankfurt with a load of Passengers. The engine had sometime previously encountered something hard, like rocks and instead of changing the engine the China Airlines decided to inmobilize the engine with lapbelts and send it off with three engines. Hey, superhuman pilots can do such things and if the pilots had refused they would probably wind up in a salt mine somewhere.
It had apparently been no problem for the tough guys back in China as they took some sturdy straps and wrapped them around two of the fan blades and the stationary stator blades behind, thus stopping any unwanted windmilling (engine spinning by itself due to airflow passing thru the blades during flight) and associated uncomfortable vibration caused by the severely out of balance fan blades. Note that the straps are seatbelts....how resourceful!
After making the "repairs", off they were sent into the wild blue yonder with another revenue-making flight on only three engines! Paris was the destination. With the increased fuel consumption, they got a bit low on fuel, and just set it down a few hundred miles from their destination for a quick refill.
That\'s when the problems started:
The Germans, who are kind of picky about this stuff, they inspected the malfunctioning engine and immediately grounded the aircraft. (Besides the seatbelts, notice the appalling condition of the fan blades.) The airline operator had to send a chunk of money to get the first engine replaced (took about 10 days). The repair contractor decided to do some impromptu inspection work on the other engines, none of which looked all that great either.
The result: a total of 3 engines were eventually changed on this plane before it was permitted to fly again."
(https://psx5central.com/community/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fflymeaway.net%2Fimages%2Fengine3.jpg&hash=7a24ede40a5b57a005d8b40c1ea90bddbd9a1e5c)
-
Originally posted by lionken07
anything with reasonable bullet can put a hole through 1 inch thick steel plate (+p? :p )
but not at a distance of 1000yards ;).
-
first off, a 50 cal with mercury rounds will blow the doors off a car, so it could do some damage to a plane.
Secondly, I can\'t emphasize how much I\'m wanting a 50 cal H&K. I just hope that if they get banned for citizens, I can still buy one as a law enforcment officer for personal use.
-
Originally posted by Tyrant
actually it is like a cannon, the .50 cal. barret can easily puch a hole thru a 1 inch thick steel plate. and i believe that it should be banned too.
(https://psx5central.com/community/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.barrettrifles.com%2Fimages%2Fmodel82A1.jpg&hash=12255622834eeca337a54af7aec302693296bce3)
That\'s the gun they modified for Robocop isn\'t it?
Edit: Forget I asked, just verified it here -
http://lavender.fortunecity.com/brett/213/rca/info/thegun.htm
-
If you could buy a 120mm cannon, or a torpedo, or an ICBM for a couple thousand dollars, would you want that too? You don\'t need it, and it doesn\'t serve any purpose. It reminds me of that scene in "Rollerball" where the party guests went outside to burn down trees with a flame pistol for the hell of it. I think you should save your money and do somthing constructive with it instead of blowing the doors off cars.
-
Ehhhh...they give out drivers licenses pretty freely. If just about anyone can have 3000 lbs at their disposal, I don\'t see why they can\'t own a .50 Barrett. I firmly believe that people who acquire firearms legally, are NOT the ones we have to be afraid of.
-
Coredweller, you could also save your money on video games and do something constructive with it also ;). Different people have different hobbies, as long as it doesn\'t hurt someone I see no problem with the recreational use of ANY TYPE of firearm.
-
Cars have a legitimate purpose for transporting people. If they are misused they can be deadly, it\'s true. Firearms like this one have no legitimate purpose in the civilian world. Their only legitimate purpose is on a battlefield, so I don\'t see why they should be sold to civilians.
-
Originally posted by theomen
Coredweller, you could also save your money on video games and do something constructive with it also ;).
I try to, believe me. But I also don\'t spend $5,000 plus for a video game, and $1.50 per round fired in that game. :p
-
and you call yourself a gamer, pfft! ;)