Evil Assault Weapons Ban, Part 9999898...

CBS's 60 minutes is once again supplying a platform for the California gun control community. In a piece aired this week, they present the Barrett Light Fifty rifle as a terrorists wet dream. Used by the military as an "Anti-material" weapon, by police to remotely detonate suspected bombs, and by target shooters for extreme long-range shooting, the Barrett is arguably the largest caliber weapon available to civilians. The feds banned anything larger than .50 caliber for civilian use in 1934. California banned the .50 this year, though someone could probably still come out with a .499 for them. Tom Diaz, a California gun control advocate, and a key player in the California campaign to ban the gun is quoted on how the Barrett is everything a terrorist could want. He overlooks a few minor issues, such as:

1. The weapon is nearly five feet long, which makes it about as covert as a bus.
2. It weighs nearly 30 pounds unloaded. Over three times the weight of a "regular" evil-assault-rifle.
   
3. The ammunition weighs nearly 1.5 pounds per round. No one is going to carry much of this without a truck.
4. The ammo costs $3.00 - $4.00 per round. Governments don't care, but everyone else does.
5. The rifle is semi-automatic, and uses a ten round magazine. If you want to spray a crowd, you would need an army M2.
6. Explosive ammunition exists, but it is already illegal to sell to civilians. How banned can you get?
7. The recoil is brutal. No one (besides Arnold Schwarzenegger) is going to fire this from the hip as shown in the photo.

Terrorists take the path of least resistance. They use airplanes as weapons not because they can't get explosives, but because it was easier to take over four commercial flights than to lug a couple of tons of material to the targets. When they have shot up airports and other locations in Europe and the Middle East, they have used automatic weapons that were light, easy to conceal, and easy to carry ammunition for. Someone might use a Barrett for a terrorist act, but there are lots of much more likely tools available.