matt87:
If you have to justify a 'need', it turns from a 'right' to a 'priviledge'. Why to you 'need' to own personal property when you can just use state-provided and owned clothes/tractors/etc.?
Yep. I like to call "permissionism" the idea that things people shouldn't have (or can be arbitrarily denied) things they don't "need." Usually applied only to aspects of life in which the permissionist does not have any stake, but (sadly enough) not always. There are plenty of gun owners out there who are pure hobbyists, rather than necessarily pro-freedom. (The kind who would read Bill Ruger's thoughts on the ammo needs of an "honest man" and be puzzled why anyone would disagree.)
Slight tangent: You know, one thing I found out as an exchange student 18 years ago is that in modern-day Germany, if you move to a new town you must register with the local authorities, saying basically "I've arrived." That rankled -- if you move in the U.S., while you will most likely (and practically) let people know that you have a new address etc, including agents of the government, you need not "check in" with anyone. Maybe a smaller difference than I make it out to be, but I was never very good at the "it's not better, it's not worse, it's just different" thing when it comes to certain aspects of life.
A .50BMG rifle is very good for long-range target shooting, and for hunting large game with the appropriate loads. Self-loading designs can help reduce felt recoil.
Like a lot of other things, though, people who aren't interested in doing this get the beached-fish look (the old "But why would anyone want to do
that?!" ) when you suggest that such an activity could be enjoyable, or that people uh, pursuing happiness is a good thing worth defending. Pleasure and happiness are not entirely interchangeable as words go, but they overlap far more than they differ.
And from a certain perspective, nearly anything even fairly large numbers of humans like to do can be defocused into absurdity. Take, for instance, the kind of dancing that happens in nightclubs, the kind that to me basically looks like aerobics in Hell. Imagine what *that* would look like to a observant, intelligent being from another planet unfamiliar with our Earth Ways. Or, for that matter, the kind of dancing that happens at staid weddings and country clubs, which is what happens in Hell when aerobics is cancelled. (YMMV
)
The controlled power of shooting a gun, esp. when it means meeting a challenge of some kind to your skill (improving groups, hitting the pingpong ball, etc), is something that many people just don't feel a rush from. On the other hand, I can understand that some folks want to ride horses every day, and get a similar psychic boost from it, whereas for me the occasional trail ride is perfectly pleasant and perfectly sufficient
Mauserguy:
"First, it won't shoot down an jetliner like the Brady Bunch claim. That's a stupid and ill-informed notion."
Maybe. I agree that it's not a good argument against any particular caliber of gun, but ... there are edge cases where if it were my goal to destroy an aircraft, I'd rather have a .50 than (say) a .223. It's also hard to *disprove* the notion that a .50 *could* be used to do this. A lucky shot as a plane takes off or lands, perhaps? Not to rely on "lucky" *too* much, though: if you were in a plane I was shooting at (or, even worse for you, someone with decent aim were shooting at), would you rather it be with a tiny .22LR pistol or a .50BMG rifle? (I know: you'd prefer it be a tiny .50BMG pistol
)
"Third, the rifles hit only one point. If you actually want to snipe at innocent people, what advantage does a single 50 caliber round have over a standard hunting round. I would suspect that smaller rounds, generating less recoil, could be fired more rapidly than the large rifle. Area fire, such as from machine guns, may be more evil, but a point weapon really doesn't need to be all that large."
Spot on! I would FAR prefer snipers (if they're not aiming at me specifically) to be firing .50BMG than nearly any other caliber, for just that reason. Heavy rounds, expensive, bulky, slow-to-point guns, no way to carry them conspicuously on the person ... maybe we could require that sniping with any smaller caliber require a permit, because it's more dangerous! If Charles Whitman had been firing a .50, fewer people would have died in Austin, I bet.
timothy
