5 ms·

Those youtubers are just jerking off. A .50 caliber rifle is just a big expensive dangerous toy. No one is going to commit a shooting spree with one. It's not p

by gnu8 10y ago

Those youtubers are just jerking off. A .50 caliber rifle is just a big expensive dangerous toy. No one is going to commit a shooting spree with one. It's not practical. Regulating them only impacts people who like loud bangs and will never hurt anyone.

xorgar831 10y ago
That's the point, that same impractical rational gets applied everywhere. Even in cases where people get hurt.
Scramblejams 10y ago
My congresscritter a while back put out a statement supporting the 50 BMG ban in California, because she wanted "these dangerous weapons off our streets." I emailed her, asking how many of these weapons, exactly, she'd happened to find on our streets! I figure, they're so rare and expensive, if I could walk outside and trip over one, I might as well go out and pick one up that'd been left in the nearby hedges! She didn't respond. :-( Tangent: It made me wonder what the longest distance criminal shot in American history is. Anybody got any ideas?
- rdl 10y ago
  Do you mean "criminal shot by police/civilians", or shooting-by-criminals? Pure negligent shootings which happen to damage property or injure/kill people happen at range all the time, and the shooter is by definition a criminal. Celebratory fire, particularly at a 30-45 degree angle, is going to have serious range, even if inaccurate, and is guaranteed to hit something. Most of the fear of .50 was anti-armor, not so much pure range. The "DC Beltway sniper" fucktards (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks) were under 200m shots, but that's still solidly rifle distance. Famously, Charles Whitman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman) had many shots resulting in injury or murder at 400-500m. He was firing from a tower, and high angle shooting rewards flat trajectory even more than the distance itself would indicate. JFK was 81m, also well outside handgun range. I suspect there are a reasonably large number of 50-200m range shootings with rifles (there are very few shootings with rifles overall, but when they do happen); that's easily house-to-driveway-end in a lot of places.

by gnu8 10y ago

xorgar831 10y ago

That's the point, that same impractical rational gets applied everywhere. Even in cases where people get hurt.

Scramblejams 10y ago

My congresscritter a while back put out a statement supporting the 50 BMG ban in California, because she wanted "these dangerous weapons off our streets." I emailed her, asking how many of these weapons, exactly, she'd happened to find on our streets! I figure, they're so rare and expensive, if I could walk outside and trip over one, I might as well go out and pick one up that'd been left in the nearby hedges! She didn't respond. :-( Tangent: It made me wonder what the longest distance criminal shot in American history is. Anybody got any ideas?

rdl 10y ago
Do you mean "criminal shot by police/civilians", or shooting-by-criminals? Pure negligent shootings which happen to damage property or injure/kill people happen at range all the time, and the shooter is by definition a criminal. Celebratory fire, particularly at a 30-45 degree angle, is going to have serious range, even if inaccurate, and is guaranteed to hit something. Most of the fear of .50 was anti-armor, not so much pure range. The "DC Beltway sniper" fucktards (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks) were under 200m shots, but that's still solidly rifle distance. Famously, Charles Whitman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman) had many shots resulting in injury or murder at 400-500m. He was firing from a tower, and high angle shooting rewards flat trajectory even more than the distance itself would indicate. JFK was 81m, also well outside handgun range. I suspect there are a reasonably large number of 50-200m range shootings with rifles (there are very few shootings with rifles overall, but when they do happen); that's easily house-to-driveway-end in a lot of places.