A head on shot at a 12' circular target coming straight at the shooter at under 2,000 yards would not be hard to accomplish.
I doubt this caused today's crash, but it could cause tomorrow's. My solution has nothing to do with gun control, but the moving of our NG troops from inside the terminals to the approaches.
In this case the target is moving at a high rate of speed, assume 100mph before rotation, that's 146.7 feet per second, or 48.9 yards per second. If the shooter miscalculates the range to target by as little as +/-5 yards (at the approx 2000 yard range) the shot would be +/-11.9 inches high or low. These numbers are based on a .50 AP M2 bullet traveling 2840fps. (BC=.84). A 5 yard error in range equates to an approximate 1/10 second time differential.
In other words, even if the shooter was directly on center line of the intake and there was no movement of the intake in any direction, the shooter would still need to know the exact range to target within < 5 yards the instant the shot was fired and be able to pull off the shot within 1/10th second.
Impossible shot in my book. But does the anti-gun lobby know this ? I doubt it, nor are they willing to believe it.
I'm not questioning your RKBA stance, my response was not a gun control issue. I read your posts in other discussion and believe we are eye to eye on 2A issues.
take care,
Jim