Posted on 02/17/2005 5:30:25 PM PST by Edward Watson
And yet the terrorists of 9/11 had nary a gun on them, of any caliber at all.
(The Propellor)
To keep the pilot cool.
If it stops turning, you will see the pilot start sweating profusely.
"CNN just showed a report on how easy it is to obtain a 50 cal rifle through the internet together with armor piecing rounds, and how to bypass the federal restrictions by a private person-to-person cash sale.
Not only that, these idiots had the investigative reporter fire at an airplane door and discussed how easy it is for a terrorist to use these guns to shoot down commercial aircraft. "
They're just reaching out to their core market.
FEAR!!!They are trying to arouse the sheeple for gun control...By using fear...The same way they are using fear for more police and restriction of freedoms...Terrorism is a great play these days!
Horse manure. NOBODY is going to get extruded from a hole made by a bullet at 30000 feet - that is a myth. Put down the comics and do some research.
Think about it a minute OK. There are pumps that pressurize the atmosphere inside the plane. They might work hard to over come the loss in pressure due to the hole, and might slowly lose pressure. Plenty of time for the pilot to get the airplane down to 10000 feet.
Your typical .50 BMG round fired from the groung is going to come up a little short don't you think?
I gotta tell you about the toilet paper, the condoms and the gas lines we found to be active
in the old barracks sometime. We INVENTED fireworks, baby! ;-) shhhhh-BOOM!
An airplane skin is only about a tenth of an inch thick. A .22 cal rimfire rifle could easily pierce the skin. Unless the terrorists build their own rifle from scratch, I can guarantee you that there is no way to circumvent the law. You simply cannot buy the completed parts and pieces to build a gun without going through a FFL dealer for at least ONE criticle piece.
Their report was meant to scare people into supporting a ban on the .50 cal. It would be practically impossible to hit an airplane flying at 400 mph at 5000 feet. Also an Airplane is mostly just an empty tube. The chance of hitting a critical component and bringing down an aircraft with ONE SHOT is even more remote. The terrorists would much rather use a Russian or Chinese shoulder launched missile that they bought on the black market for $20,000 and fired from a boat 2 miles from the airport.
Fresh air is circulated in the cabin at altitude. There is always new air coming in and old air being bled out. A .30 caliber hole won't amount to a hill of beans as far as the pressurization is concerned. Now if they blow out a window that will cause a drop in cabin pressure and an increase in cabin altitude but the O2 masks will drop. The big danger is hitting some vital hydraulics, electrical, or control cables. But one round fired from the ground hitting something so vital as to cause loss of control seems to be extremely unlikely.
Well .. the actual terrorist may not be that bright .. but the guy leading them certainly is.
But .. leave it to CNN - who has a news person who says our military are targeting reporters .. and then they show films that terrorists may use to learn how kill us. Good grief.
Well, excluding the damage our fighter pilots did in WWII, that is. ;^)
Yessir! Wild west Guns makes a nice S&W 50 lever gun that I HAVE to have - and I guess I'd better get it soon before the CNN types declare them illegal.
LOL
Bullshit. Pure bullshit.
CNN's "demonstrations" of the power of the .50BMG could also have been easily accomplished with many other rounds. And have you ever tried to shoot down a commercial airliner, or any other moving target at a distance, with a rifle? Any rifle? Well I haven't either, but at least I'm smart enough to know it's only slightly more likely to work than just heaving bricks into the air.
CNN's contention that these rifles are "easily available to terrorists" because of the dreaded "person to person" sale completely ignores the plain and simple fact that these things are really damn expensive. We're talking many thousands of dollars. They are also really really big, as in tens of lbs and several feet long. They are not easily portable or completely un-concealable.
The only way to make it conceivably possible to take down an airliner with a .50 BMG round is to use an actual Browning Machine Gun, and they are even more expensive, a lot bigger, and are completely regulated and registered by the federal government, and all "person to person" sales of such are registered and regulated and have been so for decades.
If I were a terrorist with the many thousands of dollars needed for a .50BMG rifle, I'd be buying shoulder mount missiles instead. They're cheaper, easier to conceal, and actually stand a chance of actually bringing down an airliner. That or just buy some more $2 box knives, which is what worked so well for them last time.
Plain and simple, the .50BMG does not pose a threat to Americans any more than any other rifle, or thrown knife, or blunt instrument. The only Americans threatened by the .50BMG are politicians (read Hitlery) with aspirations of dictatorhood, and the corporate bigwigs (read Ted Turner) who want to put them there.
All CNN is trying to do is invent a bogus threat so they can strip away our rights piecemeal. The .50BMG is the "Assault Weapon" for the new millenium.
Ed, I believe very strongly in the right to report freely.
Terrorists aren't idiots. They do research. They did for Sept. 11 and took down the indestructable towers.
Journalists should refrain from doing some reports that would genuinely hurt national security.
This is not one of those cases.
It is just a good piece of investigative journalism.
From CNN, yes. But, still a good piece, at least based on your description.
Of course, they don't explain how a terrorist would get it on the plane, so the piece is limited in what it shows.
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