SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI
New member
Found this on the Cal-NRA website. It speaks for itself.:
Sniper rifles: Legal, lethal weapons of war
They're less regulated than handguns - an 18-year-old can buy one
By TOM DIAZ
Knight Ridder/Tribune
Have you heard about the booming sale of .50-caliber sniper rifles on the civilian market? Consider what one writer had to say about these guns, capable of slicing through an inch of armor plate as if it were so much butter:
"How can anyone exaggerate .50-caliber performance? Here's a bullet that even at 1 1/2 miles crashes into a target with more energy than Dirty Harry's famous .44(-caliber) Magnum at point-blank. But tremendous energy can hardly be surprising for a cartridge that's five times larger than a .30-06 - indeed, its 750-grain projectile is almost twice that of many elephant gun cartridges.
"Overpenetration concerns? Dave Bush, an Indiana City, Mich., loader of custom .50-caliber match rounds, reports he test-fired his bullets at simulated wooden frame houses and found they blew completely through six houses - not six walls, six houses!"
Six houses? Oh, come on. But, wait a minute. This quote isn't the ranting of some gun control advocate in full hysteria. This is matter-of-fact descriptive prose, straight from "The Ultimate Sniper," a book by Major John J. Plaster, widely acknowledged as an expert within the burgeoning sniper community.
He is right. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the lethality of these weapons of war. Barrett Manufacturing, a pioneer maker of the big sniper rifles, calls them "heavy firepower for light infantry." It brags that its rifles "allow sophisticated targets to be destroyed or disabled by a single soldier. Armored personnel carriers, radar dishes, communications vehicles, aircraft are all vulnerable to the quick strike capability of the Barrett 82A1."
Translate that into civilian terms and you have the perfect weapon for assassination and terrorism, for taking out armored limousines, shooting down helicopters and destroying physical infrastructure. And yet, .50-caliber sniper rifles sold by Barrett and other companies are less regulated than handguns. A youth of 18 can legally buy a .50-caliber sniper rifle. But only an adult of 21 can buy a handgun.
Most ordinary, normal Americans - even gun owners - are shocked to learn these weapons of war are the hottest new item in the American civilian gun market. They are selling like hot cakes, all over America, and the price is dropping precipitously. If you can't find one in your local gun shop, you can find one in five minutes over the Internet. Or buy a video that demonstrates how to make one at home.
What is going on here?
Simply a new verse of an old song. The gun industry is the last consumer product industry completely free of health and safety regulation. Toy teddy bears are subject to more product design regulation than any gun sold in America. As a result, the gun industry is free to design and sell almost anything it wants to boost its profits.
The .50-caliber rifle is the unthinkably dangerous extreme at the "bigger is better" end of the gun marketing spectrum. The so-called "pocket rocket" is the reckless extreme at the opposite end, the region of the mindless "more guns make us all safer" mantra. Pocket rockets are tiny, high-powered, very concealable handguns. (The term was coined by the Austrian company Glock, a major importer of handguns into the United States.) They are specifically designed to be carried on the person and to have maximum killing power for their size. A pocket rocket is a homicide waiting to happen.
The gun industry in America is like a shark. There is nothing personal about what a shark does to survive. It just does what is in its nature to do. The gun industry is the same way. It is full of otherwise nice people who will nevertheless keep on designing, making and selling more and more deadly killing machines until we bring the industry under control.
The best way to bring the gun industry under control is to treat it like every other consumer product industry. Firearms should be subject to the same basic standards for health and safety that we impose on every other consumer product from pesticides to baby cribs to cars.
We need an independent federal agency - preferably in the Treasury Department, which already has gun expertise - with authority to apply those standards and balance the public health and safety risks that specific models of guns impose on the public against the benefits they offer.
Guns would not disappear under such a system, just as pesticides haven't disappeared under the same kind of regulation. There would be plenty of guns for recreation, hunting and home defense. But Second Amendment pornography like .50-caliber sniper rifles and pocket rockets would be kept under the rocks where it belongs, and out of the civilian market place.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Diaz, author of "Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America," is senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, 1140 19th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036.
This kind of sensationalist crap makes me want to go out and buy one just to spite them. Unfortunately even the cheapest one is something over $2000. A little steep for me.
Sniper rifles: Legal, lethal weapons of war
They're less regulated than handguns - an 18-year-old can buy one
By TOM DIAZ
Knight Ridder/Tribune
Have you heard about the booming sale of .50-caliber sniper rifles on the civilian market? Consider what one writer had to say about these guns, capable of slicing through an inch of armor plate as if it were so much butter:
"How can anyone exaggerate .50-caliber performance? Here's a bullet that even at 1 1/2 miles crashes into a target with more energy than Dirty Harry's famous .44(-caliber) Magnum at point-blank. But tremendous energy can hardly be surprising for a cartridge that's five times larger than a .30-06 - indeed, its 750-grain projectile is almost twice that of many elephant gun cartridges.
"Overpenetration concerns? Dave Bush, an Indiana City, Mich., loader of custom .50-caliber match rounds, reports he test-fired his bullets at simulated wooden frame houses and found they blew completely through six houses - not six walls, six houses!"
Six houses? Oh, come on. But, wait a minute. This quote isn't the ranting of some gun control advocate in full hysteria. This is matter-of-fact descriptive prose, straight from "The Ultimate Sniper," a book by Major John J. Plaster, widely acknowledged as an expert within the burgeoning sniper community.
He is right. It is almost impossible to exaggerate the lethality of these weapons of war. Barrett Manufacturing, a pioneer maker of the big sniper rifles, calls them "heavy firepower for light infantry." It brags that its rifles "allow sophisticated targets to be destroyed or disabled by a single soldier. Armored personnel carriers, radar dishes, communications vehicles, aircraft are all vulnerable to the quick strike capability of the Barrett 82A1."
Translate that into civilian terms and you have the perfect weapon for assassination and terrorism, for taking out armored limousines, shooting down helicopters and destroying physical infrastructure. And yet, .50-caliber sniper rifles sold by Barrett and other companies are less regulated than handguns. A youth of 18 can legally buy a .50-caliber sniper rifle. But only an adult of 21 can buy a handgun.
Most ordinary, normal Americans - even gun owners - are shocked to learn these weapons of war are the hottest new item in the American civilian gun market. They are selling like hot cakes, all over America, and the price is dropping precipitously. If you can't find one in your local gun shop, you can find one in five minutes over the Internet. Or buy a video that demonstrates how to make one at home.
What is going on here?
Simply a new verse of an old song. The gun industry is the last consumer product industry completely free of health and safety regulation. Toy teddy bears are subject to more product design regulation than any gun sold in America. As a result, the gun industry is free to design and sell almost anything it wants to boost its profits.
The .50-caliber rifle is the unthinkably dangerous extreme at the "bigger is better" end of the gun marketing spectrum. The so-called "pocket rocket" is the reckless extreme at the opposite end, the region of the mindless "more guns make us all safer" mantra. Pocket rockets are tiny, high-powered, very concealable handguns. (The term was coined by the Austrian company Glock, a major importer of handguns into the United States.) They are specifically designed to be carried on the person and to have maximum killing power for their size. A pocket rocket is a homicide waiting to happen.
The gun industry in America is like a shark. There is nothing personal about what a shark does to survive. It just does what is in its nature to do. The gun industry is the same way. It is full of otherwise nice people who will nevertheless keep on designing, making and selling more and more deadly killing machines until we bring the industry under control.
The best way to bring the gun industry under control is to treat it like every other consumer product industry. Firearms should be subject to the same basic standards for health and safety that we impose on every other consumer product from pesticides to baby cribs to cars.
We need an independent federal agency - preferably in the Treasury Department, which already has gun expertise - with authority to apply those standards and balance the public health and safety risks that specific models of guns impose on the public against the benefits they offer.
Guns would not disappear under such a system, just as pesticides haven't disappeared under the same kind of regulation. There would be plenty of guns for recreation, hunting and home defense. But Second Amendment pornography like .50-caliber sniper rifles and pocket rockets would be kept under the rocks where it belongs, and out of the civilian market place.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Diaz, author of "Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America," is senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, 1140 19th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036.
This kind of sensationalist crap makes me want to go out and buy one just to spite them. Unfortunately even the cheapest one is something over $2000. A little steep for me.
