What's next--a .499 caliber ban?

February 16, 3:32 AMSt. Louis Gun Rights ExaminerKurt Hofmann

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After so-called "assault weapons," the second most popular target of the gun prohibitionists would probably be .50 caliber rifles. The ostensible "logic" (being generous here) is that such rifles are "too powerful" to be entrusted to private citizens. Nightmare scenarios of airliners being shot down, or tanks of dangerous chemicals being breached, are breathlessly trotted out in efforts to frighten the public. One thing never mentioned in discussions of these potential disasters is an account of anything like that ever happening, anywhere in the world. The very simple reason for that is that nothing like that ever has happened.

Come to think of it, that seems a little odd. After all, Ronnie Barrett started marketing his .50 caliber rifles to civilians more than 25 years ago, and the cartridge such rifles fire (originally designed as a machine gun round, hence the round's .50 BMG nomenclature, which means .50 caliber Browning Machine Gun) has been in service for almost 75 years. One would think that if terrorists or other evil sorts had designs on using such a rifle to shoot down an airliner or puncture a chemical tank, they would have gotten around to it by now. Could it be that they have determined that such a plan, though dastardly, isn't really workable?

In fact, the rabidly, virulently anti-gun Violence Policy Center, in pushing for a ban, can only document a few cases of actual criminal use of .50 caliber rifles in the U.S., but pad those statistics by including a couple dozen cases of them being recovered from crime scenes in which they were not fired. As for killings in the U.S. committed with such rifles? Zero, zilch, nada.

That shouldn't come as much of a surprise. At a length of 4 or 5 feet, a weight of 20 to 40 pounds, and a cost of thousands of dollars, they're a very unlikely choice for most criminals.

Gun prohibitionists aren't of the sort to allow themselves to be made slaves to . . . rationality, though, so they've been busy. The rifles are banned in California, and threatened in New York, New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Hawaii. The feds can't let themselves be left out of the forcible citizen disarmament fun, and we should soon expect a reprise of Senator Feinstein's S. 1331 from last session.

Let's say such a ban is passed--say, at the federal level. What is to stop someone from marketing a rifle and cartridge in .499 caliber--with at least as much case capacity, and thus very similar power (or even more)? Sure, they could ban that, too, but that would do nothing about the ".498 caliber menace." You can probably see where I'm heading here. Everything they ban can be replaced by something essentially and functionally the same (and that doesn't even take into consideration the ridiculous fallacy of thinking that making something illegal makes it unobtainable).

In fact, something similar to the process I described above has already begun. In California, where the .50 BMG cartridge is banned (along with the rifles that fire it), the very similar .510 DTC is perfectly legal. Inspired by .50 caliber bans, Barrett Rifles has introduced the .416 Barrett, which promises to be superior in some ways to the .50 BMG for long range shooting (or "sniping," as the forcible citizen disarmament advocates insist on calling it).

The bottom line is that no matter how many bans the gun prohibitionists manage to get passed into law, they can do nothing to reduce any "menace" posed by civilian access to such firearms, and I seriously doubt they're unaware of that. What motivates them, I believe, is that they view these rifles as low-hanging fruit. Their power makes them easy to demonize in overheated press releases about what a "threat" they are, and their cost means that few people own them, and thus few gun owners will fight hard for their continued legality. .50 caliber rifles, then, are seen as the next step in spilling some oil on the slippery slope of citizen disarmament, and jacking up the incline by a few degrees.