What's next--a .499 caliber ban?

[The Straight Story]

What's next--a .499 caliber ban?

February 16, 3:32 AM
by Kurt Hofmann, St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner

After so-called "assault weapons," the second most popular target of the gun prohibitionists would probably be .50 caliber rifles. The ostensible "logic" (being generous here) is that such rifles are "too powerful" to be entrusted to private citizens. Nightmare scenarios of airliners being shot down, or tanks of dangerous chemicals being breached, are breathlessly trotted out in efforts to frighten the public. One thing never mentioned in discussions of these potential disasters is an account of anything like that ever happening, anywhere in the world. The very simple reason for that is that nothing like that ever has happened.

Come to think of it, that seems a little odd. After all, Ronnie Barrett started marketing his .50 caliber rifles to civilians more than 25 years ago, and the cartridge such rifles fire (originally designed as a machine gun round, hence the round's .50 BMG nomenclature, which means .50 caliber Browning Machine Gun) has been in service for almost 75 years. One would think that if terrorists or other evil sorts had designs on using such a rifle to shoot down an airliner or puncture a chemical tank, they would have gotten around to it by now. Could it be that they have determined that such a plan, though dastardly, isn't really workable?

In fact, the rabidly, virulently anti-gun Violence Policy Center, in pushing for a ban, can only document a few cases of actual criminal use of .50 caliber rifles in the U.S., but pad those statistics by including a couple dozen cases of them being recovered from crime scenes in which they were not fired. As for killings in the U.S. committed with such rifles? Zero, zilch, nada.

That shouldn't come as much of a surprise. At a length of 4 or 5 feet, a weight of 20 to 40 pounds, and a cost of thousands of dollars, they're a very unlikely choice for most criminals.

http://www.examiner.com/x-2581-St-Louis-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m2d16-Whats-nexta-499-caliber-ban

[remoulade]

1. I've encountered a few people who hate the government but think only they should be allowed

to have guns.

[Occam Bandage]

2. I don't understand the utility of a .50-caliber rifle.

I'm not advancing this as a reason to ban it, of course, but what is the public benefit? Is it especially useful for hunting deer in moderately armored vehicles? Is it useful for self-defense from burglars 1000 meters away?

That said, It is certainly true that terrorists have not used .50-cal rifles to blow holes in chemical refineries, gas tankers, or 747 engines, much as it is true that terrorists have not used explosives to blow up any American buildings in over a decade. Incidences of terrorism in America are exceptional events; the threat of terrorism is the threat of the unlikely and the unanticipated. No American nuclear power plants or water processing plants have ever been attacked by terrorists, yet that is not cause to claim there is no threat posed by failure to guard those. Again, this is not reason sufficient to ban the .50-cal rifle, but it does not serve as much of a counterargument to claims of its danger to society.

Not that the claim needs much counterarguing, of course. There are any number of ways terrorists might choose to attack a society, and it is impossible to defend against all or even most of them. The .50-cal rifle would be especially difficult to defend against, as the terrorist could strike dozens of times without being caught, but that may be filed alongside any number of nightmare scenarios an enterprising and well-funded terrorist could choose to enact.

Since I can't see any particular utility for the rifle, nor can I see any particular threat, it seems this is a case decided purely on marginal benefit and marginal risk.

[old mark]

4. People buy them to shoot at targets a long way away. They are sporting guns for

the somewhat rich. The rifle istelf is over $5000, and a round of .50 cal ammunition - a single cartridge, one shot, is between %6 and $8 depending on what it is loaded with.

your argument -you can't see a use for it, therefor noone else shoulkd be able to own one-it a little ridiculous.

mark

[Occam Bandage]

5. Given that the first line of my post is, "I'm not advancing this as a reason to ban it, of course,"

why do you say that my argument is "therefor noone else shoulkd be able to own one?"

[wtmusic]

7. It's called a "knee jerk"

the post, not the author

[tburnsten]

14. What's the public benefit to a Corvette or Mercedes-Benz?

There is none. It is a benefit to the owner of the property.

[Occam Bandage]

17. Status symbol, and a more comfortable environment for the hours many people spend driving.

The public benefit is that individuals are able to enjoy that particular benefit. Are those the benefits of the .50 cal? Do people parade their .50-cal rifles up and down the street for others to admire? Do they make hunting and home defense more enjoyable?

[tburnsten]

18. Those are benefits to the owner

not the public. Private property does not need to have any qualities that benefit the public to be legitimate. Public property, however, certainly does.

[Occam Bandage]

20. Those are the benefits that an individual piece of private property provides, yes.

However, in the context of the sentence on which you have decided to make a strange and distracting stand on semantics, I was not meaning the public benefit of a particular .50-caliber rifle, but rather the public benefit of the general availability of .50-caliber rifles.

[tburnsten]

26. They aren't particularly available. Most builders have a waiting list

One company, BOHICA Arms, which makes a single shot .50 BMG upper for AR-15 rifles (can't very well fit a cartridge the length of the .50 BMG in the mag well of a 5.56), had customers on a waiting list for over a year. Going that route is the cheapest way to own a .50 BMG, but it still costs you a complete AR lower or a complete AR, the cost of the upper, which I think runs about $2K for the stock model, cost of optics, gonna spend a lot on optics for the potential range of the .50 BMG, and then $6 or more for every single shot of .50 BMG.


I was saying that private property is not the place to look for public benefit. You don't buy private property to better your community, not normally anyway. Why hold .50 BMG rifles to a standard that no other private property is ever or will ever be held to?

[X_Digger]

19. Take a .50 to a range

Yes, it's just as much a status symbol as a mercedes.

[Occam Bandage]

21. So the benefit is, indeed, marginal. As is the risk.

I still feel quite comfortable saying that this is an argument to be won or lost on the margins.

[Howzit]

23. Answer: tax revenue n/t

[tburnsten]

15. Also using explosives to attack a building is actually a reasonable approach

Using a very large rifle to shoot a half-inch hole in a building is not.

[krispos42]

22. Here's the issue

The .50 BMG is not an abberation. There are a wide variety of calibers of bullets, and each bullet has a pretty wide available range of cartridges and thus power levels.

For example, on the .30-caliber level you have towards the bottom of the power scale cartridges like the .30-30 and the 7.62mm Soviet, about 1,600 foot-pounds of energy. Then you get in the mid-range power of about 2,800 ft-lbs, your .30-06 Springfield and .308 Winchester. After that you have the high-powered .30's, the .300 Winchester Magnum (3,500 ft-lbs) and the .300 Remington Ultra Magnum (4,200 ft-lbs).

And moving up in bullet diameter you get similar variations in power levels.


So where's the cutoff?


The 1934 Firearms Control Act set the cutoff at .50 caliber unless they have substantial sporting purposes. I believe they did so because that is the point where the projectiles become large enough to contain explosive. That is, they become artillery.

Most shotguns are larger than .50" but because they have substantial sporting purpose they are not restricted. However their bore is large enough to carry a small fragmentation projectile instead of buckshot.


This cutoff seems reasonable enough to me. The alternative would be to set up some kind of penetration standard and ban rifle cartridges that can beat it. That's kind of arbitrary though. Even an ordinary hunting rifle will shoot clean through most parts of a car, for example. I've personally seen a .270 Winchester soft-nosed hunting bullet shoot clean through the side of the bed of a pickup truck. The bullet ripped through at least three closely-spaced layers of sheet steel and tore a jagged exit hole out the far side.







The real purpose of .50 BMG bans are publicity and the creep of gun restrictions. They're trying to manufacture outrage and gin up their fundraising efforts. They're trying to stay relevent and alive. After all, when's the last time a powerful and well-funded lobbying group said "Mission accomplished; we're dissolving next week"?

[slackmaster]

28. They're fun to shoot

And useful if what you like to do is shoot at targets a long, long distance away.

[rrneck]

3. That's one of the reasons

I stopped reading Buzzflash. They kept harping on "airplane killing rifles".

You would need to be highly trained to even begin to exploit its potential. A good sniper rifle is useless without a good sniper.

[SIMPLYB1980]

6. I don't see why anyone outside of the military would need a .50 caliber.

You can't hunt with it because their wouldn't be much of anything left to eat. It's useless for home defense, and it's so powerful if you want to target shoot, even if you live out in the country, you would really need to go to a shooting range to just get some practice with it. That being said I see no reason to outlaw it. Just make the purchase of it highly regulated for security proposes.

[X_Digger]

8. Err.. why regulate it if no reason to ban?

It's an expensive toy used for long distance target shooting. It's not used in many crimes. We usually don't regulate based on utility, rather on demonstrated danger to society.

[SIMPLYB1980]

9. Because you need to do a proper background check on a person

buying a weapon that can shoot through a armored vehicle. This is a highly deadly weapon on par with Machine guns and Artillery.

[X_Digger]

11. Artillery?!?

Machineguns come in many calibers, so I wouldn't compare the two (apple to orange-ish).

Artillery, though? In what way do they compare? Do you really know what that term means?

"Armored vehicles" come in different levels (at least in the civilian market.) They're usually rated by the kind of round they'll stop. The most common will stop handgun rounds. They won't stop a bullet from an AR-15, much less your average hunting rifle in .308 or .30-06.

(for more info on what levels of armor will stop what rounds, check http://www.alpineco.com/ballisticchart/)

What was 'armored vehicles' on the battlefield has changed over time. Today's military transport vehicles (like the most popular M113) can take fire from a .50 cal mg.

[TheWraith]

24. A background check is required for ANY new gun purchase, ANYWHERE.

I had to pass a full background check when I picked up the 12 gauge shotgun I won from a raffle at the county fair.

[Occam Bandage]

10. We don't regulate on utility, no. We regulate when the decrease in danger from

such a regulation exceeds the decrease in utility. Given the nearly nonexistent utility, any marginal danger to society is cause to regulate. A weapon capable of tearing through sheets of metal at a great distance presents enough of a danger to society that a full background check is warranted, I believe, while not presenting such a danger that it ought be banned outright.

[X_Digger]

12. You do realize...

That a background check is required for any firearms purchase from a dealer, right?

Reminds me, though, of 'cop-killer' bullets, capable of ripping through body armor. What folks fail to mention however is that grandpa's hunting rifle can rip through a vest like tissue paper, too.

Even a high velocity 22lr can travel over a mile, and your grandpa's .30-06 can go through a couple of car doors stacked in front of each other.

[bossy22]

13. 30-06 can do much more than that

it has been known to puncture concrete walls and can penetrate some armored vehicles

And i don't think there is any personal body armor that could protect you against a 30-06 (maybe dragon skin)

[tburnsten]

16. You should be going to a range anyway, or build a safe backstop no matter where you are

Why make them any more regulated than anything else? "security purposes"? Didn't we finally get out of eight years of that exact line of thinking on many other civil liberties? I'll keep what we've got while we fight for what we've lost thank you very much.

[S_B_Jackson]

25. Actually, yes you can hunt with a .50 caliber rifle....

in fact my grandfather used to do so. He had a model 1874 Sharps rifle manufactured in 1883 (i.e. a rifle similar to that in Quigley Down Under) which his used preferentially for hunting mule deer (at range), elk, moose, & caribou. His preference was based upon the range which it provided - he routinely would shoot from 500 to 750 yards - and the power that it delivered assured that if the animal wasn't immediately killed, the animal was always knocked down, and in shock, for the brief time before it expired. There was no especial mangling of the carcas, no shortage of edible meat. Although granted, it would be overkill for a white-tail or antelope (for which he'd use a Savage model 99F in .308 caliber.

[tburnsten]

27. .50-110?

[S_B_Jackson]

30. No. .50-90

[slackmaster]

29. I don't see what your assessment of someone else's needs has anything to do with anything

Please explain.