Posted on 07/07/2005 3:44:36 PM PDT by holymoly
"Missing: One M-60 assault rifle."
That's not a message Chief Deputy Hondo Wooten wants to give area residents, but due to the large number of active duty and retired military personnel in the area, Wooten said he has little choice. When stolen from a Joplin-area gun show on Sunday, June 21, the gun was broken and whoever stole it will be trying to obtain spare parts -- possibly trying to buy the parts from current or former military personnel rather than authorized dealers.
Wooten said the M-60 assault rifle would be very dangerous if it gets into the wrong hands.
"It's a weapon which is specifically designed for combat," Wooten said. "It does have the capacity for full automatic with a cyclical fire rate of 800 to 1,200 rounds per minute."
Anyone shooting the M-60 won't need to be very accurate to kill an opponent, Wooten said.
"You don't even need to point; just hold it in their general direction and pull the trigger," Wooten said.
According to Bert Guy from Gatling Guns in Arizona, the gun was stolen from a Class III dealer at the Oklahoma Full Auto machine gun shoot. Wooten said a Class III dealer has a legitimate right to stock and possess the items stolen, but other people may not be as scrupulous.
"Fortunately this gun had broken at the shoot on Saturday so the thieves will be looking for replacement parts," Guy wrote in an e-mail message to area law enforcement agencies.
"Spread the word and let's get this gun back to its rightful owner," Guy wrote. "Let's spread the word and bust these jerks."
Guy said at least two different rewards are available for the stolen gun and more may be offered later.
Items needed to make the gun operable include an extractor, extractor spring and roller bearings, but Wooten said people may try to purchase other M-60 parts as well.
"Although the weapon is supposed to be inoperable because of a broken part, anybody with a knowledge of gunsmithing could buy what they need to make it fully operational and fully automatic," Wooten said. "We don't necessarily believe the gun is in Pulaski County, but due to the potential risk posed by this weapon, we want to make sure all law enforcement know about it."
According to the Joplin Police Department staff member handling the case, those with information about people trying to buy M-60 parts should contact Detective David Lewis at the department's main number, (417) 623-3131. Wooten can be contacted at 774-6196.
Ah, but it can accept an ammunition feeding device of greater than ten rounds capacity, which was one of the features that the not so dearly departed assault weapons ban counted against a semi-automatice firearm. (Of course it's also not one of those either)
Whatever you do, don't call him a mon....
Run away! Run away! There is a gun unaccounted for somewhere in the USA! Quick, everybody hide under a bed.
We understand each other my friend.
The Turtle Moves!
The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
Support your right to bare arms!
It's also a Main Battle Tank, which is what I thought the article referred to at first. My first thought was, "How does a TANK turn up missing?!"
I've always wondered how ANYTHING "turns up missing". If it's missing, that means it DIDN'T turn up, right?
Sadistic squad leaders and a sleeping screwey looie (Ahem, I speak from LT experience). I always used my mooses for lugging the pig or our 90mm's. Last active outfit in the army to haul THEM around in the TO&E.
Still got the scars on my left thumb from attaching the bolt to the operating rod the first time. And on the top of my right hand knuckles from learning the correct way to pull the bolt to the rear....
I always got .50 knuckle from doing the head space and timing on the M2HB. DANG that was painful.
Le Monsieur "John Browning" il n'est pas un Belgique. Idaho, IIRC.
Browning had nothing to do with the M240 or M249. They're based off the German MG42, which was emphatically NOT a Browning design.
Browning designed the M1919/M2 and similar. His last squad-auto-use design was the Browning Automatic Rifle.
You wrote this:
Posted: “Hey, Darrell, it is a machine gun not an assault rifle. Your agenda is showing.”
Posted: “To be fair, this is not a quote from Chief Deputy Hondo, but a paraphrase in the words of the reporter, Darrell Todd Maurina. (Why am I thinking Darrell is a girl?)”
Posted: “Why isn't there one newspaper / tv reporter in the nation that knows anything at all about firearms? Idiots all!!!”
Guys... lay off a little! For some reason nobody in our entire newsroom, which includes a number of Vietnam-era vets, caught this egregious error but we took all kinds of grief once the paper hit the streets, and now apparently via the Internet.
I'm a reporter right outside a major Army installation in a community full of Vietnam vets, some of whom used the M-60, and before that was a reporter outside Cannon Air Force Base, and before that was a civilian working in Army Public Affairs. My dad was a sergeant in the pre-Vietnam, post-Korea era, and my mother was the gun aficionado in my family who could embarrass most guys with her marksmanship. (Part of why I never got interested in guns or hunting was my mother was too good.)
Obviously I blew it about the capabilities of an M-60, but I am far from a left-wing radical, and neither is our newspaper. Not all of us in the media are liberals, and I've got no beef with the 2nd Amendment. Anyone who wants to use the courts to pervert the 2nd Amendment to take away your guns is just as likely to pervert the 1st Amendment to take away my right to a free press.
So yell at us all you want about our error on the M-60's capabilities. That's legitimate... I blew it, and deserve to be yelled at. But don't assume I'm a liberal with an agenda to overturn the 2nd Amendment... I'm absolutely not.
Regards,
Darrell Todd Maurina
Waynesville Daily Guide
LOL. Welcome aboard.
That's been done already...
Its easier to find ammo for the MG-42/59.
Me!
Thanks.
I've looked up MGs previous on the web. What's "coaxial" mean in terms of weapons?
My first reaction. I have no idea what the definition of "assault rifle" is, apparently any weapon that looks scary to the panty waists over at the Boston Globe, but is it elastic enough to include a "crew serviced weapon."?
Means it is mounted to track with the main gun - in a tank, for instance, MG's are commonly mounted to track with the main tank gun. these are called coaxial MG's.
But at least it doesn't have a "high capacity clip!"
Mark
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