Nonsense. Pure nonsense.
A strip of metal not much longer that the length of your hand brought down a Concorde aircraft several years ago. A .50 cal. weapon is extremely powerful, and if fired at a low flying aircraft, not only can it cause significant damage, but if it is equipped with a sight it has a good chance of hitting the plane.
Also, a .50 cal. weapon ain't no ordinary "rifle." If someone were to hit you with a bullet fired from it (even if you where body armour), then it will more than likely tear you to peices.
Only because it managed to hit a sensitive spot. A pigeon can also take a plane down if it hits the right spot. Take a look at goose strike statistics sometime.
Bad luck can take any plane down. But for a terrorist to hit an equally sensitive spot with a single shot from a rifle, he would have to be extremely lucky. I, myself, am no marksman, but neither am I a slouch with a rifle (My personal best is a 8 inch group at 400 yards; but that was a very good day), and I know I couldn't take down a commercial airliner with a single shot. Neither could anyone I know, and some of them are very good shots.
More to the point, if the terrorist misses a critical spot on the plane, he has a strong chance of getting caught and then being taken to Gitmo to "discuss" the identities of his terrorist buddies with some very unsympathetic people from the CIA. Terrorists do not go in for tactics that have such a high risk to themselves with almost no chance of reward. With a SAM, he'd have to be a lot less lucky. And at the ranges shown in the CNN "report", a cheap and inaccurate RPG would be a hell of a lot more effective (and also a hell of a lot cheaper than a .50).
A .50 cal. weapon is extremely powerful, and if fired at a low flying aircraft, not only can it cause significant damage,
It doesn't matter how powerful the .50 is. Commercial aircraft are very lightly built from materials like aluminum because every pound of non-passenger weight is money lost. My .300 Wetherby could punch straight through a commercial airliner just as easily as a .50BMG, and it is a hell of a lot less expensive. The CNN "news" team tried to put some significance to the .50 BMG by shooting it through a 1 inch steel plate, but that just makes them look ridiculous. How many commercial airlines are armored with 1 inch steel? Just think of the fuel expense.
Plain and simple, for a rifle, any rifle, to take down a commercial airliner, it would have to hit the thing in a critical spot. To do so intentionally would require shooting skills beyon human ability. That's why the BMG in .50 BMG stands for "Browning Machine Gun". To take down an airplane with a shot from a .50, you need to spray out a LOT of bullets.
but if it is equipped with a sight it has a good chance of hitting the plane.
Do you do much shooting? Any shooting? Somehow, I think not, and I think you have no clue what you are talking about.
All rifles are equipped with "some sort of sight". I think you are referring to a scope, which still doesn't make much sense. Remember, a plane in flight is a moving target. Aquiring a moving target at range with a scope with any sort of magnification is actually more difficult than using iron sights. I don't have time to explain it here, but it all comes down to magnification and field of view. Simply put, with a high mag scope, your heartbeat is enough to make the crosshairs wobble. Now add in the very high speed movement of the plane, and the tremors from its engine noise, and you have no chance of hitting your target.
Sure, you could hit the plane, but the plane is not your target. You want to hit an area of the plane that contains components whose damage could bring the plane down, and that is a much much smaller target than I think you realize. Couple that to the fact that you are not entirely positive where those components lie under the skin of the plane and also that in the scope one section of the plane's skin looks pretty much like every other, and you do not have a task that is humanly possible with a rifle of any power.
Sure, it is conceivable that it could happen, but it's also conceivable that a comet might strike the plane. Miracles (even anti-miracles) do happen rarely, but that doen't mean we should become chicken littles pushing for meaningless legistation that the terrorists would ignore regardless.
Check out the Fifty Caliber Shooters Association some time. Go to some of their shoots, and talk to people (which is something CNN specifically did NOT do). Some of those guys are the best shots in the world. Ask them if they think they could shoot down an airliner (even at a low altitude) with even a semi-auto Barett. Learn something about the rifle and its capabilities, instead of just repeating that it is big and powerfull.
For myself, whenever I fly I'd be a lot more concerned about terrorists with inexpensive RPGs than expensive boutique rifles. An RPG has a much greater chance of damaging an aircraft in a critical location by the very nature of the weapon (a .50 would punch straight through while an RPG would explode and fragment). More to the point, outside of the U.S., RPGs are a hell of a lot more available to terrorists than expensive high powered rifles marketed to wealthy U.S. marksmen. RPGs are banned for private ownership in the U.S., but terrorists, you may have noticed, would not obey that law more than any hypothetical .50 caliber ban.