> First of all, the .50 BMG is hardly "gigantic".
Then stand in front of one while I try to hit you with it. Then tell me if it is big enough.
Um. Hellloooo? We are talking about shooting down planes, not people. You arguement is sidetracking and specious, and just makes you look ignorant and petulant. More to the point, the power of the .50 BMG is irrelevant. I wouldn't stand in front of a .22 rimfire, or any other rifle for that matter.
> A lot of "people" might not have thought that, but a lot of engineers and architects knew otherwise.
So many that they all rushed to fix the problem...hmmm.
Again with the sidetracking ignorant spurious comments. But, just to humor you, how do you suggest they should have "fixed" the "problem"? The towers were not designed to withstand intense fire. They were, however, designed to collapse straight down in the event of such a fire, and not fall over and possibly bring down neighboring buildings. The airplane strikes did not bring down the twin towers, the fires did.
More to the point, the "solution" to the "problem" presented by the September 11 attacks is a political one, not an engineering one. It's also a simple solution. If a single law abiding american citizen on each of the four hijacked planes had had his Second Ammendment enumerated right to keep and bear arms respected, and had been thussly armed, the terrorists and their one inch box cutters wouldn't have stood a chance, and the September 11 attacks would not have happened. But, thanks to the unconstitutional anti-gun efforts of ignorant cowardly chicken littles like yourself, commercial aircraft have become the ultimate example of "successful gun control" where a very small number of homocidal thugs were able to kill three thousand innocents armed with nothing more than one inch box knives.
> You have no idea what you are talking about. You still have to hit a distant small critical target that's moving very fast and which you can't see through the skin of the aircraft.
How do you know that?
Because I know something about the design and speed of commercial aircraft. Because I have done a lot of shooting with a wide variety of firearms (including the .50 BMG you fear so much). Most importantly, I bothered to think about the problem of shooting down a commercial aircraft before just spouting off a baseless and knowledgeless opinion.
How many times has a U.S. commercial aircraft been hit by one?
Not once. Nor will they ever. That is my point. However, many other aircraft have been shot with the .50 BMG. Look at your history. The P51 Mustang was equipped with six fully automatic .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns. And yet, even with six guns blazing, this aircraft often failed to bring down german bombers even after giving them their full load of ammunition (that's where the phrase "the whole nine yards" comes from; a standard belt of .50 BMG ammunition is nine yards long). As early as the Korean war, the .50 caliber machine gun was swapped out of fighter aircraft in favor of larger and more destructive 20mm cannons.
As a better example, given the subject of shooting down a commercial airplane with a single shot .50 calibre rifle, consider the M51 anti aircraft trailer. This thing was equipped with four fully automatic .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns on a stabilized electrical power assisted turret, and yet, even it was only marginally effective at shooting down low flying aircraft, and mostly was used against ground targets (though this sometimes violated the rules of warfare at the time). It was so inadequate that by the Korean war, it was replaced by the 40mm Bofors Gun (which had proximity fused shells).
Now, consider the fact that the modern pressurized, jet engined commercial airliner is faster (with the possible exception of some freaky peroxide rocket planes the Germans had late in the war), stronger, more robust, and more redundant than any world war two era aircraft. If four fully automatic power assisted .50 caliber machine guns were inadequate for shooting down even low flying aircraft of the day, what chance does a human being have with a single shot from a .50 caliber rifle? None. That's how much.
But yet, for years many people thought that it was impossible for Oswald to have pulled it off.
So what? Your own posts make it abundantly clear that ignorant people can believe anything is possible or impossible. Reality does not depend on what ignorant people think it is. I and many many more people know it was more than possible to make that shot. I know I could have, and I also know I could not shoot down a commercial airline with a .50 caliber rifle.
I remember the assasination. Kennedy didn't die because people thought the shot Oswald made was impossible. Far from it; Kennedy was urged to ride with the car's top up by the Secret Servicemen around him. Kennedy died because he didn't think it was possible that someone would want to take the shot.
The point is, even though something may seem impossible, you don't really know if it is until someone tries it-often ending in tragedy.
And yet, I still think it's impossible to fly around the city throwing water balloons at people just by flapping my arms. Many other people think that seems impossible. Because it is. And if you actually have knowledge of a subject, instead of fearful ignorance, things don not seem impossible. You know they are impossible.
And "often ending in tragedy"? "Often"? Puhhhleeeze. The vast vast majority of times someone tries something as utterly and stupidly impossible as bringing down a commercial airplane with a .50 BMG rifle, they fail completely. This is only a "tragedy" for the nitwit who makes the attempt. The airplane passengers wouldn't so much as notice their failure.
More to the point, in a free society that is not ruled by cowardice, we do not create laws controlling or punishing people based on what seems possible or not. We only punish people based on what they do. And we do NOT punish people for crimes other people do (OK, we do do all these things, but only because we have strayed from the constitution and the free society it mandates).
> If it were so easy to hit a moving aerial target with a rifle, then why do duck and goose hunters all use shotguns?
Because a duck is less than 100th the mass and size of a commercial aircraft.
No. Wrong. You really don't know a damn thing about hunting, shooting, or firearms. It has absolutely nothing to do with the mass of the duck. A daisy BB gun is much less powerfull than even a .410 shotgun, yet it has enough power to kill a duck, but it has no chance of actually hitting it. Duck hunters use shotguns because the spreading pattern of the shot means they have that much more of a chance that one of the pellets will hit the fast target of the duck flying against the difficult to track background of the sky.
A plane is just a tiny bit more of a target. You must not fly much.
Helloooo. We are not talking about shooting at a "plane". We are talking about shooting at small critical components within the plane to cause the plane to crash. If you do not hit one of these small critical components (and, given the massive redundancy of commercial aircraft, you'd have to hit several), the plane does not crash. And most of these critical components are smaller than a duck. The terrorist wants to bring the plane down, not just give the ground crew a couple of holes to wonder about after the plane lands. And I've spent more hours in the air than you've had hot dinners. Guaranteed.
You just admitted that you have never fired on an aircraft; therefore, it is impossible for you to be dishing this nonsense about it being impossible to hit a plane with a .50 BMG when you have absolutely zero clue as to what would actually happen if a plane were hit by one or more rounds from it
I know the capabilities of the .50 BMG. I know about it's size, weight, and recoil. I know its range, muzzle velocity, and deflection. I know about the magnification and field of view of the scope (and why a scope is useless for shooting airborne targets). I know the size of the target. I know the speed of the target. I know the approach angle of the target. I know the history of the weapon and it use against similar slower and weaker targets. Therefore, I know the extreme difficully (not to mention the simple logistical impossibility) of pulling off such a shot. You know none of these things. You only have fears and ignorance. You have yet to post one single relevant fact, but limit yourself to hyperbole and cowardly speculation.
And as to the "one or more shots", you really don't know what you are talking about. The fully automatic M2 is a slow cycle action. The fastest of the civilian .50 BMG rifles in existence is the Barrett 82A1 has a cycle time of about a half second. You get ONE shot.
> I have fired an M2 at a moving ground target (that was a fun day). It's a lot harder to do than you realize. The fully automatic (not to mention fully regulated, licensed, and taxed) M2 did trash the truck, but only after about half a belt was fed into it.
Look son,
Can't you get anything right? Anything at all. "Son"? You should at least read my handle, even if you continue to be unable to read or understand my posts. Also, I'm older than you. Guaranteed.
let me educate you a little bit on the differences between a car and a large passenger aircraft. First, if a car is taken out, then only a few people are hurt or killed. If an aircraft is taken out, it crashes violently-probalby killing everyone (100s probably).
But that doesn't matter because the subject is the difficulty of taking down the plane, not the cost of the possible damage. Sure, a lot more people die if a plane crashes, but it is infinitely easier to hit a truck. Do the math. Say four people die if a truck crashes. You have a 5% chance of crashing the truck with a .50 BMG rifle. Say 400 people die if a Boeing 747 crashes. But you only have a 1x10-100% chance (which is being really generous) of bringing down the plane with a .50 BMG rifle. Therefore, for every 1 person killed by shooting a truck with a .50 BMG rifle, only 1x10-100 people are killed by shooting at a 747 with a .50 BMG rifle (that' might be as much as a single pulled hair). I don't know about you, but I'll keep flying the friendly skies.
Your fear of the envisioned consequences and ignorance of the actual impossibility of the success of such an attack are distorting your perceptions of the risk.
Secondly, a Boeing 747, 767, ect., is a much larger target than a car.
Once again, the airplane is NOT the target. The actual target is one of a small number of small, critical components necessary to keep the aircraft flying. Shooting the plane will not bring it down unless you have the extreme luck to take out more than one of these redundant systems in your shot. It's simply not going to happen. Aircraft get hit by lightning all the time (which leave holes about the same size as a .50 caliber bullet) which has a much higher chance of damaging critical electrical systems thasn a simple metal slug, and yet the still manage to stay airborne.
Thirdly, it is more vulnerable upon takeoff and landing than you think, it's not like it's exactly moving a Mach speed.
So what? Who said anything about "mach speed"? It's still going a hell of a lot faster than any duck, truck, or anything else you might ever shoot at. And you do not understand what is meant by "vulnerable". Vulnerable to wind conditions: yes. Vulnerable to pilot error: yes. Vulnerable to shoddy maintenance: yes. Vulnerable to a terrorist with any size of rifle: No. Take a look at the statistics for aircraft which have lost whole control surfaces on takeoff (which is much more than any .50 BMG bullet could do) and yet still managed to cycle down and return to the tarmac.
Also, on takeoff an landing, an airplane is flying low so you need to slew your rifle very quickly to aquire your target (which, remember, is a small critical component concealed behind the skin of the airplane). To hit an airborne target, you need to "lead" it. Put simply, you need to shoot at where the target is going to be when the bullet gets there (which is why every few rounds on a standard machine gun belt is a "tracer" round so you can see where your bullets are actually going relative to the target; but remember, that's for a licensed, regulated, taxed, numbered, and controlled machine gun). Even with an extremely low altitude of 200 yards (below which, any damage inflicted by the rifle is extremely unlikely to cause a catastrophic descent), given the 747 minimum takeoff speed of 155 miles per hour, and the .50 BMG's muzzle velocity of 2900 feet per second (which is the fastest it will go) and assuming the bullet does not slow down (which it does, a lot), in order to hit a critical target on the 747, you will need to aim at a patch of empty air about 47 feet in front of it. And through a scope, one patch of air looks just like every other. This shot simply cannot be done in the real world.
And considering that a 767, etc., isn't built like a flying fortress,
Actually, it has a pressurized cabin, so it has to have greater fuselage integrity. It has a much greater load weight, so it has much stronger load members in the wings and control surfaces. It's flight systems are redundant by at least a factor of four (unless it made by Airbus - do not fly on anything made by Airbus). Moreover, they are also much more compact. It's controls are managed by multiple onboard computers which maintain stability faster than any human pilot. It has vastly more powerfull and robust engines, and much greater engine redundancy; a 747 can take off or land with half its engines turned off while even B29 could only lose one. Their landing gear are composed of banks of multiple load sharing tires instead of just a single wheel each, and are equipped with load sensing shocks and cooled antilock brakes. So you are actually right on one thing: a 767 is not built like a world war two flying fortress. It's much more robust.
then it's not likely to be able to take a tremendous amount of fire.
"Tremendous amount of fire"? Your get ONE shot. That is not a "tremendous amount" of anything.
Lastly, even if only 10% of the people on a 747 are hurt or killed, then that's several times the damage that a typical car crash causes.
If you do managed to hit the plane, and if you do manage to hit the fuselage, and if the bullet isn't stopped by the bomb proof cargo containers that are standard issue on all domestic 747's these days, the best luck you could hope for would be to hit one of the passengers or crew. That single person would die. However, hitting and taking out enough of the small critical systems on the plane to cause it to crash and kill more people is simply not going to happen in the life time of this universe. Except for that one very unlucky passenger, everyone else would be just fine. You, on the other hand, would be the subject of a massive manhunt, you would be found, and then you would have to explain all about your terrorist buddies and their addresses to some very unsympathetic men at Gitmo. There are much easier, cheaper, less risky, and simpler ways for terrorists to kill a single person, and they know it.
like talking to a rock.
It's like your ripples of ignorance and fear splashing against the solid stone of my actual knowledge of the subject.
I consider myself to a pretty rational and open-minded person. Afterall, I have listened to your arguments, haven't I.
But you haven't bothered to think about a single thing I've said. And you haven't bothered to educate yourself on the matter. You still don't seem to understand that merely hitting a plane is not sufficient to bring it down, but that you have to hit something in the plane critical enought to keep it from flying. So, no matter what you think you have, you do not have an open mind.
Talk to anyone at the Fifty Calibre Shooters Association. I know a lot more about shooting and the .50 BMG than you do. Guaranteed. And most of those guys know a heck of a lot more about the .50 BMG than I do. Many of them shoot the .50 BMG every single day (lucky rich buggers). They know what it can and can't destroy. Ask them about the chances of a terrorist, or even a world class marksman, somehow managing to bring down an commercial airliner with even a Barrett 82A1. They'll tell you exactly what I have told you, and probably more.
Seriously. Send them an e-mail if you are really interested in learning the facts of the matter, instead of just swallowing the drek CNN spews out.
I'm no fan of CNN, but even I realize that another point to this story was that airport security is extremely lacking. If not a .50 BMG, then maybe something else.
It was a very small second point to the story. And the whole point I've been trying to make is that just about anything else is a whole lot more effective at attacking a plane than a .50 BMG. One inch long box knives have brought down more planes that the .50 BMG ever will.
> their intent is to have these weapons banned as an increment to the fascist liberal dream of total citizen disarmament
CNN didn't do such an evil thing by broadcasting this piece-
Ok, now we're getting back into la-la-land. CNN went out of their way to "prove" the "destructive capacity" of the .50 BMG. But they didn't actually report on any relevant facts or context. They did NOT compare the rifle to other, smaller cartridges. They did NOT give any credible scenario in which a .50 BMG could be used against an airplane; they just assured us it "could". They did NOT mention the actual price or waiting time involved in buying one of these rifles (apart from any other license fees and "governemtn waiting periods). They did NOT interview anyone from the FCSA or any other group familiar with the weapon who might introduce some reality into the story they're trying to create. They didn't even mention the difficulty of aiming such a heavy rifle, even after the "reporter" completely missed his first shot at only 100 yards (pathetic). They sure went out of their way to sho how "powerfull" the weapon is, though (apparently "power to the people" doesn't apply to powerful armaments at CNN).
I other words, CNN obviously had no desire to report the truth about the .50 BMG in this hit piece. If their intent was not to make ignorant people afraid, than I have a real hard time understanding just what it could be.
if it were really anti-gun, then it sucked at it's message.
I don't know about that. It managed to get you to believe a completely impossible scenario is plausible. It's message was "be afraid of the gun". They didn't even bother to apply a cloak of impartiality on this one.
If they really wanted to wage a "ban gun" campaign, then they could have done a lot more than this little story.
Just wait. They will. If they came out and called for an outright ban, then they'd be revealing their hand too soon, and confirming their fascist agenda to even to the average CNN viewer (who is usually a fascist nitwit). Instead, they used fear inducing gun grabber code phrases like "unregulated" (they are not unregulated - 20,000 laws, more in some states, say otherwise) and "anyone off the street" (who happens to have many many thousands of spare dollars and six months to a year to wat for delivery) to plant a seed of fear and doubt in otherwise pro-gun but ignorant viewers.
The .50 caliber and so called "sniper" rifles, are the "assault weapon" of the new millenium. It does not get used in crimes, and it is no threat to the average citizen, but it does represent a threat to the ambitions of currupt individuals and the corporate despots who support them. It's expensive, and it's owned by a small enough percentage of Americans that they think they can marginalize and demonize them further so that gun owners without .50 BMG's will tolerate this increment to a total citizen disarmament (which is their stated ultimate goal). The question is, "This time around, are the American People gullible enough to fall for it again?"
The insulation of the building was sprayed on. When the planes hit, the insulation was blown away. They could have placed and secured it instead-thereby, reducing the heat. They might still be standing if they had. That humourous enough?
Um. Hellloooo? We are talking about shooting down planes, not people.
I was trying to demonstrate that any high caliber weapon is not a toy-something to be relegated to speculation and "impossibilities."
ignorant and petulant
Working on those SAT vocabulary builders huh?
The towers were not designed to withstand intense fire.
They could have been, that's the point. Furthermore, the building could have been retrofitted to better withstand a large fire-they just never thought of it. The same way people never think about people with large weapons firing at commercial planes at airports.
If a single law abiding American citizen on each of the four hijacked planes had had his Second Ammendment enumerated right to keep and bear arms respected, and had been thussly armed, the terrorists and their one inch box cutters wouldn't have stood a chance,
First of all, that is totally irrelevant to the argument. Secondly, I think you confuse my position on guns with airport security. Thirdly, what if the terrorists had used the same right-after becoming citizens-to bring even larger weapons on board? Some old lady with a pea shooter won't stop 5 well armed terrorists.
. But, thanks to the unconstitutional anti-gun efforts of ignorant cowardly chicken littles like yourself,
I'll refer you back to the part were I tell you not to "confuse by position (which I haven't said) on guns with my position on airport security. If you want to continue debating a great person like myself (trying to humor you), stay on point.
And yet, even with six guns blazing, this aircraft often failed to bring down German bombers even after giving them their full load of ammunition.
They were bombers, not commercial aircraft.
things don not seem impossible. You know they are impossible.
"Men will never fly faster than sound," "the atom will never yield useful energy." People used to know a lot of stuff was impossible, humph.
More to the point, in a free society that is not ruled by cowardice
What would you know about cowardice or bravery? Probably nothing. Talk is cheap, serve in a war-or some parts of america-if you know so much about it.
Helloooo. We are not talking about shooting at a "plane".
Really! Could have fooled me.
Duck hunters use shotguns because the spreading pattern of the shot means they have that much more of a chance that one of the pellets will hit the fast target of the duck flying against the difficult to track background of the sky.
The plane is larger than the duck, therefore easier to hit, nuff said.
I know the size of the target. I know the speed of the target. I know the approach angle of the target. I know the history of the weapon and it use against similar slower and weaker targets.
Your name isn't Muhammad, is it?
And as to the "one or more shots", you really don't know what you are talking about.
One or more shots, means one or more people-think.
but limit yourself to hyperbole and cowardly speculation.
Look son, I really don't think you know the definition of cowardly-you spineless litte turd.
<>Also, I'm older than you. Guaranteed.
You should put that guarantee of yours on a box. It's sooooo believable that I'm sure it will sell well.
Once again, the airplane is NOT the target.
Okay your majesty-whatever you say.
Who said anything about "mach speed"?
Usually when people say things like that, they are trying to make a point. "It's raining cats and dogs" means that it is raining hard, etc.
You're one of those militia guys/gals right? Mirror glasses, dark shirt, cameo pants and cap, A.K. 47. Nice to meet a non-cowardly person like yourself.
Do the math. Say 400 people die if a Boeing 747 crashes. But you only have a 1x10-100% chance
You're assuming I agree with your math, which I don't. Besides just shooting down a plane, part of a terrorist's job is to "terrorize." Shooting at a plane with a powerful weapon would accomplish that(that's part of what CNN was saying)- and don't say they would be caught. Have they arrested the anthrax mailer yet?
I know a lot more about shooting and the .50 BMG than you do. Guaranteed. And most of those guys know a heck of a lot more about the .50 BMG than I do. Many of them shoot the .50 BMG every single day (lucky rich buggers). They know what it can and can't destroy. Ask them about the chances of a terrorist, or even a world class marksman, somehow managing to bring down an commercial airliner with even a Barrett 82A1. They'll tell you exactly what I have told you, and probably more.
Alright then, if it will make you happy, I will totally do that. And if it will make you even more happy, I will completely agree with you that shooting down a plane with a .50 BMG is tremendously difficult.
Another point to the story is that it could be used in an attempted assassination of the president-or other people. You're getting caught up in one aspect of the story. I don't see how reporting on the dangers of that is anti-gun.