Federal 50 Cal ban
It looks as though this is the precursor for a ban on 50 caliber rifles:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is raising concerns that high-powered rifles could be used against Border Patrol agents near the U.S.-Mexico divide.
In a letter to Deborah Spero, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Feinstein asked the department to look into whether .50-caliber rifles pose a threat to officers.
The gun, which has been banned for sale in numerous U.S. cities, is a high-powered rifle that can fire accurately at targets up to a mile away and penetrate steel armor.
“The threat posed the easy availability of the .50-caliber sniper rifle could endanger our Border Patrol agents and hinder our ability to control our borders,” Feinstein wrote.
Border Patrol officials have testified about officers coming under sniper fire in Texas and other areas near the border.
The senator asked Spero to conduct an assessment of the threat posed the rifle and come up with ways to deal with their possible use along the border.
I’ve no doubt that they’re coming under fire. But it makes little difference if that fire is from a 50 cal or from a 30-06.
March 27th, 2006 at 10:28 am
can fire accurately at targets up to a mile away
I wanna see some Mexican gangbanger/smuggler take a shot at a moving target a mile away…oh yeah…and penetrate some steel while he is at it…
March 27th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
That doesn’t make any sense. Guns are illegal in Mexico, so how would they have any?
March 27th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Don’t want any U.S. citizens to get their hands on one, they might use it to defend themselves from smugglers with it. What’s this desire to make sure citizens are always outgunned?
March 27th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
.50 cal in the gun engine = one less car in border patrol fleet. At the least, until it’s repaired. Good nuisance tactic. Speaking of which, does Mexican army have any .50 cal rifles? I wouldn’t be surprised if this is where the smuggling gangs get their gear.
March 27th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Does DiFi only think about guns and abortion (which includes her “duties on the Judiciary Committee” and nothing else?
March 27th, 2006 at 5:17 pm
I’m sure the Mexican military could buy .50s if someone provided an, ahem, supplementary appropriation for the required money. But for most people, the difference between a .50 scoped rifle and a .308 scoped rifle is that you can’t run away very fast while carrying the .50.
March 27th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
I thought that the .50 cal could only penetrate armor at 300 yards (I’m not sure at what distance it can crack an engine block).
I heard the Soviets had some (roughly) .50 caliber sniper rifles of their own. I wonder how she plans to stop that? Hell, they could smuggle in mortars and artillery if they so chose.
March 27th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
Didn’t Barrett develop the .416 (or was it .496) to get around CA’s anti-.500 law?
I recall reading they said it was a necked-down .500 and had better trajectory than the .500….
March 27th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Barret did develop the .416, a necked down .50. There are also a couple of Euro cartridges hovering around the 1/2″ mark, plus the 12.7(?)mm Russian, that are Cali legal. Plus, it never affected the .500S&W or .50AE or .50 Beowulf, etc.
What I don’t get is how they think that Action A (banning .50’s in the US) will prevent Action B (smugglers/coyotes/renegade Mexican soldiers from firing illegal weapons illegally on the BP while engaged in illegal activities). Seems like someone skipped logic class and took a double serving of rhetoric instead.
March 28th, 2006 at 11:08 am
“Does DiFi only think about guns and abortion ”
Nah, she also takes time out of her busy schedule to put restrictions on cold medicine in supposedly anti-terrorist bills.
March 29th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
“I thought that the .50 cal could only penetrate armor at 300 yards”
That depends on what you mean by “armor”. You aren’t going to penetrate a main battle tank’s armor with .50’s. at least unless you wear a hole through it with several hundred rounds out of a gatling. On the other hand, armor that people wear is easily penetrated with far less than a .50. When they trained me on the M16, they told me that it would penetrate the metal helmets used back then twice (in and out) at 300 yards. (This was not particularly relevant, as the 50 rounds a year the Air Force alloted to training wasn’t going to have many of us able to hit a head-sized target at 300 yards…) That’s a .223 bullet, under half the diameter and probably around 1/8 the weight of the .50 bullet. If you’re carrying a center-fire rifle and the guy you are shooting at doesn’t spring a leak, 99% of the time it’s your shooting, not his armor.
April 2nd, 2006 at 2:45 pm
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