anti 50cal campaign?

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Sites like .50 cal terror actually serve to expose antis as the loons they really are. Obviously some antinut saw Marky Mark dust some dude in a truck going 45 mph with an 800 yard headshot and thought the movies are actually for real. The guy probably thinks Batman and Hellboy are real too.
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The .50 Caliber Terror site came out well before Shooter did.

As Neo-Luddite accurately points out, API and APIT are commonly available, usually for less money than ball ammo. While WWII applications involved full-auto grouped fire, their targets were also much smaller, flying at greater speed, and from unpredictable and steep attack angles.

The important fact is, .50s have been out on the market for decades, and there's yet to be a single murder attributed to one in this country. People are misled by Hollywood into thinking that criminals actually possess serious organization or capabilities, when in fact they possess neither. One of the greatest arguments against the necessity of the so-called War on Terrorism is the simple fact that no one's really ever gone out and done any of those straightforward attacks. If Al Qaeda really did have sleeper cells across the country, we would've seen it by now. Fact is, past a certain size it's damn near impossible to keep a plot from being infiltrated or detected. And your average criminal has nowhere vaguely near the money, knowledge, or capability to acquire, prepare, and utilize a .50 BMG rifle.
 
My uncle, the original OldCowHand, told me this story from the WWII era in New Mexico: because the countryside was so sparsely populated, there were large swathes that were used for air-to-air gunnery practice (my father, a Naval aviator in those days, describes the practice sessions as a windsock dragged behind a plane while the other aircraft made passes at the sock. Each pilot's ammo was dipped in a different color wax, so whoever had the highest number of colored rings in the windsock won the shooting contest that day). Occasionally a cow would be killed, the rancher would submit a form for reimbursement, he'd get a check. Up to that point, everything was fine.

However, some of the boys got a little rambunctious from time to time. Miles from anywhere, there was this one ranch house with a tall stone chimney, and the boys would take turns to see who could fly the closest to it without hitting it. The rancher got tired of that game pretty quickly, so one day he got out there on the porch, not with a 50-caliber, just a plain old 30-'06. As that big radial engine came almost straight at him, he put a round through it. The plane landed safely, but with a dead stick, several hundred yards into the back pasture. Then, of course, the pilot had to walk back to the house and ask the rancher to give him a lift to town ... :D ... to say nothing of the reception he got when he finally made it back to the base!
 
Might manage with an M2, but any kind of single shot or semi auto .50 cal would be considered woefully inadequate as an anti aircraft gun by any modern military.
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I am pretty confident I would be able to take out the Wright Brother's plane with it. Of course that had a top speed of about 30mph.
 
Light anti-aircraft missiles such as the Stinger and Grail have made machine guns near obsolete for short range anti-aircraft use. The 50 caliber machine gun is still used for air defense but only when slaved to a sophisticated siting system such as with the Avenger.

The big problem with most air defense weapons has always been, small bullet, big sky. Since it is really hard to hit something flying through the sky the number of rounds expended over the number of air craft shot down is ussually a really big whole number.

The size of the round itself is not nearly as important as hitting it enough to cause crtitical damage. With an explosive heat seeking missile war head this is much easier then with a machine gun.

All that said someone could still potentially shoot down even a very large aircraft with a semi-auto or even a bolt action .50 caliber rifle. The odds are well against it, probably in the order of tens of thousands to one but it still would be possible.
 
Here in California, we can buy a Barrett, but in .416 Rigby
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It is the ".416 Barrett", not .416 Rigby.

.416Rigby:
KF416Rigby.jpg
(ignore the puny .30-06 :D)

.416 Barrett:
97.jpg


.416 Barrett remains supersonic out to something like 2000 yards almost and .50BMG does not. Other than that fact, the .50BMG hits harder at closer ranges.
 
Well, the P-51D carried six (6) M2s and the P-47D carried a whopping eight (8)...

Why the need for such ridiculously overwhelming firepower if a single .50 BMG round is adequate to bring down or utterly disable a commercial jetliner? ;)

As for criminal use: even the people here seem to ignore or discount the fact that most (the vast majority of) criminals are just as interested in self-preservation as anybody else. Most of them do what they do because it's actually a way to survive or even prosper (materially speaking). A weapon is more an instrument of both coercion and defense (even for them) - note how the handgun is a popular implement in crime, because it is easily concealed and enables one to evade detection. Aggressively attacking a shopping mall or school with a so-called "assault weapon" or a .50 BMG rifle is merely going to get them killed or at best locked away for the rest of their lives. That's why the only "criminals" who do it are mentally ill or emotionally deranged. This known, why would your typical criminal have any interest in a .50 BMG rifle? What purpose does it serve?
 
There have been a few crimes committed with a .50, in all but a couple the .50 was actually used. They tried to glamorize the fact that the criminal "had" a .50 with him while committing a crime.

One of the biggest exploits that DiFi and VPC like to point out was the Branch Davidians using a .50 (M82) against the ATF. The strange thing was that when you look at the list of firearms recovered from the fire/carnage, not one M82 was listed.
 
Marvin Heymeyer of Colorado that built the Kumatsu "Kill Dozer" and went on a rampage was said to have had a .50 as one of his gunport guns.

Nobody was killed except him...

FFMedic
 
I can make a 2000 yard shot with a 50 cal easy. A sniper team from Fort Benning took a 1000 yard shot and it only took them a spotter, a small computer and about 20 minutes(history channel). But me, a 2000 yard shot on a moving target? I would eyeball it while puffing a cigarette, then toss the cig, take the shot and the plane would explode. Explode I tell you, burst into flames and everything.
 
I can make a 2000 yard shot with a 50 cal easy. A sniper team from Fort Benning took a 1000 yard shot and it only took them a spotter, a small computer and about 20 minutes(history channel). But me, a 2000 yard shot on a moving target? I would eyeball it while puffing a cigarette, then toss the cig, take the shot and the plane would explode. Explode I tell you, burst into flames and everything.
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offhand right?
 
All that said someone could still potentially shoot down even a very large aircraft with a semi-auto or even a bolt action .50 caliber rifle.
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As you could with just about any centerfire rifle. You'd pretty much have to do it while it's taking off (to actually shoot it "down") since you'd have to hit the pilots, but hitting something the size of a person going 100+mph at the range you'd have to be to avoid being swarmed with authorities before you did anything would probably make you one of the greatest shooters in the world. I know terrorists are world renowned for their stellar accuracy :p but come on. Worse case scenario both pilots die and the plane does a rough landing after getting a couple dozen feet of altitude (which, again, could be done with any centerfire rifle).
Oddly enough the only time terrorists blew up planes domestically was done with box cutters, not 6' long 30lb rifles that cost as much as a nice used car.
 
All that said someone could still potentially shoot down even a very large aircraft with a semi-auto or even a bolt action .50 caliber rifle.
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Yes, because planes fall from the sky and explode if they receive a .5 inch hole in fuselage.
 
Yes, because planes fall from the sky and explode if they receive a .5 inch hole in fuselage.
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Well, of course they do, silly! And a single hand grenade can flip a car over, gas tanks ALWAYS explode with much ferocity, RPG's leave thick white trails, and bullets of all calibers bounce off of darn near everything with a shower of sparks!

Don't you people know ANYTHING?

Sheesh...:D
 
From what I remember about Marvin was the fact that he did have a Barrett .50, just can't remember which model it was. There were photo's of the inside of the bulldozer after they killed him and cut it open.
 
aircraft wind screens are a little stronger than the average bank window. those things arent no joke. ive hit one full force with a ball peen hammer and it just leaves a small dent in it. a 50 cal might be able to pentrate one under 500 yards.
 
It says bin laden's group bought 25 in the 1980's
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They also bought american made stingers. They were afghanni (sp?) patriots at that point.

That site has been around forever, it's ridiculous.
 
My uncle, the original OldCowHand, told me this story from the WWII era in New Mexico
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Cool story.

My friend's dad tells a story of being shot down in Korea by a farmer with smaller (sub .50) bolt rifle. He was flying one of the prop/scout planes and took a shot in the engine which caused a premature landing into a tree. The guy is kind of crazy though, not sure if it is true, but he tells it all the time and it never changes..
 
My uncle, the original OldCowHand, told me this story from the WWII era... and the boys would take turns to see who could fly the closest to it without hitting it.
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My grandpa told me a story a lot like this except they were practicing dive bombing and the farmer of this house called to complain instead of shooting. My grandpa had to go apologize to the farmer and that is where he met the farmer's daughter, now my grandma. That is a "how did you meet?" story that is hard to beat.
 
The Killdozer had a forward-mounted M82A1, although Heemeyer apparently did not have the foresight to make a bolthole for the scope.

dozer-Gun1.jpg


They also bought american made stingers. They were afghanni (sp?) patriots at that point.
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I don't know the whole story, or what's the full details really were, but there are photos floating around the internet of an early M82A2 prototype in a pseudo-bullpup configuration, clearly intended to be used in an offhand, anti-aircraft role (photo shows shooter aiming up at a 45 degree angle, with the stock design similar to that of a rocket or grenade launcher). It doesn't seem like a tremendous leap to make that they may have been intended to be used against Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan.

m82a2_small.jpg
 
aircraft wind screens are a little stronger than the average bank window. those things arent no joke. ive hit one full force with a ball peen hammer and it just leaves a small dent in it. a 50 cal might be able to pentrate one under 500 yards.
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:scrutiny:

You give them too little credit sir. API rounds will tear that nonsense up!
 
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