Livermore:Lab Gatling guns frighten some;others feel safe Weapons-protect facility from terrorists

Word that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will install a battery of machine guns capable of spitting out 66 rounds a second with a range of nearly a mile was met by relief by some who think the weapons will deter terrorists but fear by others who worry they'll be caught in the line of fire.

The guns, which the lab unveiled to much ado Thursday but has not yet installed, are meant to protect the laboratory's cache of radioactive plutonium, which terrorists might try to steal or destroy, sending a plume over much of the Livermore Valley. The weapons, called Gatling guns because they are multibarreled like their 19th century counterparts, fire up to 4,000 rounds a minute from six barrels.

The Gatling guns are far more powerful than anything the local police have in their arsenal, and Livermore police Capt. Mark Weiss said the lab has fully briefed the department on the weapons. Police Chief Steve Krull and other city officials work closely with the lab and support the new weaponry, said Livermore Vice Mayor Marj Leider, herself a retired nuclear chemist at the lab.

They must have had some serious threats to think of putting these in. They seem like a rather specific counter-terror item the arrived at in plotting out responses to specific senerios that showed up in some AQ laptop. Maybe a truck bomb attack, followed by a platoon sized assault.

Mini-guns would probably ruin their whole day, and thus take their plans off the draft table.

Well, I stand corrected, then. But I think it was a mistake, because it gives our homegrown enemies a chance to try and stop this. Put the guns up first, talk about them later.

I agree. However, I don't think this will be a problem. From the context of the article, it sounds like the local law enforcement types are in agreement with them (they even state that they train together with the Lab's security force). In addition, since this is a Federal government site, the local left-wing wacko's would have a much more difficult time getting it shut down, as the the State probably doesn't have as much say in what happens at there. In addition in addition, since this is about protecting a nuclear weapons site, I think that if push came to shove, the Federal government would simply step in and tell the local lefties to "sit down and shut up".

At the end of the day, the 300-strong security force at the Lab used their Press Conference to communicate a VERY strong message to any terrorists out there with nuclear ambitions. Check out the article that was published in the SF Chronicle a couple of days ago one this same topic (it was also posted here on Free Republic), if you haven't seen it yet. It goes into more detail about what happens at the lab, and the security already in place there. I was astonished. I didn't know they had all that out there. From what I can tell from those articles, you would NOT want to mess with the security people protecting that place!!

Is that at the gun and knife show? ;-)

Sure, why not? Of course you have to pay the Unconstitutional Tax, and fill all those Unconstitutional BATFE "Tax" forms, but there's no (Federal) law against owning such a beast, other than the 1986 FOPA ban, which means your Gatling must have been produced before then. YMMV by state of course, but us Texans can own 'em. Need lots of $$$ for ammo though. :)

OTOH, you can own a hand cranked "classic" Gatling without all that paper work, because they aren't considered machine guns.

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