Ravenwood - 05/03/05 07:15 AM
"...a sniper atop the Washington Monument (with a .50-caliber rifle) could target anybody or anything within a four-mile radius, including the White House, the Capitol, every building on or around the Mall, and aircraft flying in and out of Reagan National Airport." -- Dianne "gun in her purse" Feinstein.
Nevermind that 4 miles is more than two and a half times the world record of 1.5 miles made by a specially trained marksman. Nevermind that it is practically impossible to shoot down an aircraft moving several hundred miles an hour from several miles away with a projectile a half an inch in diameter. Nevermind that the White House (and most likely the Capitol building) is heavily armored. Why don't we just ban guns from the Washington Monument? Oh wait, we already did that.
Category: Cold Dead Hands
Comments (7) top link me
Imagine what a single person with an antimatter bomb atop the Washington Monument could do!
Or a black hole device.
Perhaps we should ban them too.
Posted by: Brian J. at May 3, 2005 6:28 AMI thought that the inside of the Washington Monument was completely enclosed. Just how would someone fire anything from atop the Washington Monument?
Posted by: Bob at May 3, 2005 9:04 AMForget how they would fire it from inside there, how the hell would they get that big of a gun up into there? Take the elevator perhaps???
Posted by: countertop at May 3, 2005 9:54 AMCan't you just imagine someone lugging one of them around in public? Take a hell of a big trenchcoat to hide it under...
Posted by: Robert Garrard at May 3, 2005 10:53 AMAn M1A2 Abrams tank, with a 120mm cannon, laser rangefinder, and computer fire control, firing a APFSDSDU round, and with a stellar gunner doing the gunning, might be able to hit something the size of a tank at 4 miles (6400m). And that target would almost have to be stationary.
You can't see a person 4 miles away without some riduculous, Hubble-telescope class optics.
Posted by: Heartless Libertarian at May 3, 2005 11:13 AMAs for the "shooting down airplanes" bit, I'd suggest locking Feinstein into a room with some WWII film clips of people actually trying to shoot down airplanes with machine guns, not bolt actions. And keep her locked in there until she's watched every one, three times, then marched around the room 100 laps carrying a .50. (Or better yet, just keep her there forever.)
If you can hit an airplane in the right spot, a .30 will bring it down. A .22LR might even do the job (it could penetrate the skin and kill the pilot, puncture control lines, knock out wires, or it might be enough to break a compressor blade, which leads to the jet engine self-destructing in a chain reaction.) But the only way to hit an airplane in flight is to fire a whole lot of bullets way out in front of it, and hope it flies into them. And the last thing you would want for that job would be a 5 foot long, 28 pound, shoulder-fired weapon - something even people incapable of comprehending "not a machine gun" should notice if they tried to pick up the rifle.
Posted by: markm at May 3, 2005 11:52 AMI agree, markm; hitting an aircraft would be sort of like trying to hit a flying hummingbird at fifty yards, shooting from the hip with a single shot pellet gun, during a gale.
Posted by: Robert Garrard at May 3, 2005 1:06 PM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
