Originally posted by Skydancer
"I intend to offer at least one amendment, which would put dangerous and destructive .50 caliber military sniper rifles in the same category as weapons such as machine guns and sawed-off shotguns.
These extremely powerful sniper rifles are powerful enough to bring down airplanes and can fire a bullet a mile and penetrate a brick wall. They are for sale virtually anywhere, even at gun shows with no background checks. If this bill passes, these potential terrorist weapons would continue to be for sale with virtual blanket liability protection.”
Sounds pretty sensible to me! 
Yeah, she's right. You can go to any corner store or gun show and buy a rifle chambered in 50BMG from just about anyone, with no paperwork at all.
I go to a gun show at least every month. I've NEVER seen anything chambered in 50BMG for sale by ANYONE but a licensed dealer. They sell for at least $2K and up and ammo is $4-$5 a loaded round. Not once have I seen a private individual dragging a rifle chambered in 50BMG around a gun show trying to sell it.
The bill she speaks of when she says:
"If this bill passes, these potential terrorist weapons would continue to be for sale with virtual blanket liability protection", is a bill that makes it impossible to sue a
GUN MANUFACTURER for making or selling a gun that is eventually used by a criminal in the commission of a crime.
The bill makes PERFECT SENSE. Unless you think Mercedes should be sued for making the car that the woman in Texas used to run over her husband. Unless you think Louisville Slugger should be sued for making a baseball bat some thug used to beat his victim to death.
The 50BMG chambered rifle is a really poor choice for use by terrorists. The terrorists are looking to make large scale hits killing or wounding hundreds at a time. The average 50 BMG rifle is a single shot or at best a 3-4 shot semi auto. It is 4'-5' long and weighs at least 15#-20#. Many weigh 25# or more. It is a very impractical weapon for someone intending to kill large numbers of people in a single stroke.
It
COULD be used for assassination of individuals, but again, it is very impractical for that as well. When making those shots, the setup takes an expert marksman with incredible training and patience a great deal of time, and usually at least one spotter is involved. It would be pretty difficult to walk around in public with the rifle (even in a case) and also have a guy with you carrying a spotter's scope and tripod and whatever else you'd need. Then you'd have to know EXACTLY where your target would be. Just being inside a particular vehicle or structure is not "close enough". And even armor piercing 50BMG bullets are deflected by the armor in limos and armored glass. The bullet WILL deviate from its intended path when it hits protective armor of any type at anything less than a perfect 90 degree angle. When used against armored vehicles, the 50 BMG rifle is used to stop the vehicle, not kill the driver or occupants. You disable the vehicle. Try that with a vehicle transporting a head of state or other likely candidate for assassination and the area will be swarmed with military and law enforcement while your intended victim hides deep within the vehicle, which by the way will be immediately surrounded by a half dozen other vehicles, mostly at least lightly armored.
Oh, and by the way, I can purchase armor piercing bullets for my 30 caliber rifles and load my own ammo, all of which will be more powerful than the military 30 caliber machine gun round. My 300 Winchester Magnum is easily capable of shooting 4"-6" groups at 500 yards or more. I'm thinking about building a .308-.378, which is a 1K yard rifle. Just for the fun of shooting long range matches. I could just as easily load up armor piercing bullets in it and shoot them 1K yards as well.
Idiots like Fienstien worry WAY too much about firearms, when they should be worrying about real threats they could spend money dealing with. So far, there've been about a dozen or so attempts to use shoulder fired surface to air missles to bring down commercial airliners. And exactly how many terrorist acts have been attempted or committed with rifles chambered in 50BMG? Yeah, that's what I thought.
