Exactly. It’s Red Dawn LARPing where they can show the weapon off to their friends and say “when TSHTF I’ll be the awesome sniper shooting out the engine blocks of NWO troop transports and black helicopters”. It’s as pathetic and childish as the guy who collects firearms so he can fondle them and say “pew-pew, lookame, I’m [insert name of macho gun-toting pulp hero here]!”
In this case, he might have benefited from wearing protective plates, mainly to protect him from his own negligence.
Many of us ask the same question. But @ficuswhisperer gives the best answer there is. And it still sucks.
Because that’s not really what that means.
The bit about the barrel is the feds considering the rifles .50 caliber in class, based on how they measure the bore of the barrel itself. Which is how they do that shit, and is what makes it federally legal.
The states in question have simply banned the .50bmg caliber. Under different laws, probably with different justifications.
No one sat down and designed a barrel to accommodate a bullet .01 inches above the standard. The caliber was developed in 1911, and as far as I know has just stayed legal.
These remain restricted in the states where they’re restricted. Nothing about the particular gun from the video, or any of the others available would “skirt” those bans. You could not buy this in California, you could not register or possess it in DC.
Whatever else the manufacturer might be up to, and the reference some one posted above to this gun being advertised as “designed with a famous youtuber” certainly doesn’t inspire confidence.
The only thing this particular rifle seems to be meant to do, is proliferate this kind of rifle by being very cheap. Which might be pretty sketchy given what you say about his motivations generally. It probably has something to do with it exploding.
When you quantify that “unless you’re XYZ” you have no legitimate use, you are. In this case “very narrow and controlled class of competitive marksmen”.
ETA:
What the hell is “tacticool” about shooting a firearm not used by any military, on plastic folding table, wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and hat? He doesn’t even have the high end MSA ear protection.
Like I said - huge broad brush. Most people who own “these rifles” or any rifles like the AR-15 do so because it is fun to shoot and some use them in competitions, formal and informal. Certainly you can find people living up to the “tacticool” stereotype in plate carriers and helmets, etc. But most people just show up in jeans/cargo pants/shorts, tshirt, and a hat, just like this guy.
I’d encourage people to expand their horizons.
Bolded for your convenience:
Washington, D.C. disallows registration of .50 BMG rifles
California prohibits the private purchase of a rifle capable of firing the .50 BMG
Connecticut specifically bans the Barrett 82A1 .50 BMG rifle
Maryland imposes additional regulations on the sale and transfer of .50 BMG rifles
Rifle != caliber. A rifle is designed to fire cartridges of a certain caliber, and its barrel is given an appropriate diameter. Some of the states above use federal regulations on limits to that diameter as a classification guideline for a given rifle.
Again from the Wiki:
The specified maximum diameter of an unfired .50 BMG bullet is 0.510-inch (13.0 mm); while this appears to be over the .50 inch (12.7 mm) maximum allowed for non-sporting Title I firearms under the U.S. National Firearms Act, the barrel of a .50 BMG rifle is only .50 inch (12.7 mm) across the rifling lands and slightly larger in the grooves. The oversized bullet is formed to the bore size upon firing, forming a tight seal and engaging the rifling, a mechanism which in firearm terms is known as swaging.
Put another way, the barrel is designed to just hit the federal maximum for civilian sale even though the bullet itself is slightly over the maximum but not so far that it can’t engage the barrel rifling in a very tight fit (increasing the possibility of explody situations).
California and DC go one step further by banning any weapon that’s capable of firing the cartridge, even if the barrel itself hits the federal maximum. In other jurisdictions there’s more “wiggle room”, as it were, and Sebru is taking advantage of that.
Bans of the ammo itself are a separate but related issue. As you noted earlier, despite that there’s a lot of dodgy old stuff for sale out there on the secondary market, and this clown may have picked up a bad batch.
That also fits into Sebru’s political statement, a good fit with the larger ideology of right-wing sado-populism which, by its nature, is anti-elitist (though not in a healthy way).
A few years ago I went to a rental range with a buddy just to spend too much money on ammo and have some fun.
We rented an MP40, and an Uzi (hell of a contrast in quality lol). We go through a couple hundred rounds and head back into the store section. One of the guys at the rental counter overheard me tell my friend that I’d not shot a revolver, and I was very interested in it.
Well the salesman calls me back to the rental counter “Hey we just got this in, you wanna try it?” it was a Smith and Wesson X frame revolver chambered in S&W .500 Magnum. It was very noticably bigger and chunkier than all the other revolvers.
“No man, do you have a .38 special? I just want to try out a revolver and see the action up close.”
“are you chicken?”
And of course me being the fool I am, I rented that goddamn .50 cal revolver, bought a box of ammo and proceeded to have an incredibly unpleasant shooting experience.
I’m very glad they made me load just one round at a time, because it was genuiny like getting hit in the hands with a baseball bat. I’d shot semiauto handguns before, but this was crazy I had no idea.
Long story short, I suspect even people who are genuinely all aboutthe biggest and loudest have their limits. And I also suspect only a few true diehards use their .50 cals very often. It’s really expensive, both to buy the guns and the ammo. And then using them is straightup unpleasant most of the time if you wanna shoot more than a few rounds.
You’re really getting into semantics there. Yes they’re banning rifles (or probably just firearms, though I don’t want to see what a pistol firing this would do it’d be a dumb thing to leave out). Because we regulate firearms not ammunition.
The thing is the standardized dimensions of this caliber, as in the dimensions of both the bullet and the barrels and chambers that safely fit it. Were designed and set before that was the federal maximum. And without regard to it. The barrels did not become .50 across the top of the rifling to qualify, it qualified as is. I don’t think there is any difference in how that is measured for these vs anything else.
It was not designed with any regard to a federal standard, or defeating it. It was designed, and when the federal standard came along it qualified. And there it stays.
It is very common for a bullet to be very slightly wider in diameter than the barrel it goes into. Specifically for it to engage the rifling properly.
You’ve got it backwards. The bullet is not able to fit in the barrel despite being larger, it has to be larger to fit the barrel. And people do not pursue these because they are bigger than the regulation allows by a quarter millimeter.
People pursue them because they are the biggest thing allowed. They were not created to be the biggest thing allowed.
Reclassifying them federally on the basis of that .01" difference is something people have proposed for restricting these without the difficulty of legislation. And broadly changing the way we measure bore, or looking at the ammo or chamber instead of the barrel has been as well. States are using that standard in part as the basis for their bans, and that is to some extent useful to prevent people from making a near identical round with a different name.
But crossing that line does not neccisarily ban it federally. It simply makes it something you need a federal fire arms license and tax stamp for, those are open to civilians. It is more restricted, but such things are still available and legal on the federal level.
Frankly that hasn’t really be a particularly fruitful avenue for restricting things, and that .01" isn’t going to result in a round that’s any less powerful. The danger here isn’t exactly how wide that bullet is, but the Jesus god look at that dude’s face level of powder behind it. The specific bans some states have adopted are better, they can’t simply be rolled back by a shift in administration. But there probably needs to be some other, broader metric here beyond that. Like powder charge, bullet weight. An overall lower cap in diameter.
Similar to how we hear about the complications around which bit of a gun is legally the controlled part. And how a shift in that within regulatory agencies could change things without pushing a law through. It might tweak some stuff on certain edge cases. But what works a hell of a lot better in other countries is controlling, serializing, and restricting/registering more parts of the gun.
The problem here is the regulatory framework that allowed this. Not that some one found an end round on something effective.
I never tried to imply otherwise. I mean, I get it. Firearms are fun, shooting things is fun, it can be a neat hobby. But the kind of people who the NRA appeals to and whom many of these kind of videos are targeted aren’t hobbyists or enthusiasts, they are fetishists.
In my experience they show up. Put a couple rounds through. Then spend about 2 hours talking about 1. how evil the gubmint is 2. how fucking butch their very big gun is.
I only shoot occasionally with my uncle, who runs a private gun club with a private range where these sorts of thing are thankfully not allowed. They cap the size of what you can shoot for safety and sanity’s sake.
But before that was the case I once ended up parked next to a guy with I forget what insane revolver. He literally stopped for a full 10 minutes between each shot to brag about his gun to me. Though lord knows why, since we were all wearing big ear protection. He left after 5 shots, the others I was with told me he’d show up once or twice a week.
I can not imagine there are too many people who actually enjoy shooting this shit. It’s unpleasant, expensive and pisses everyone around you off. There’s very little practical about any of it, aside from enthusiasm for big shit. They do seem to really like all the “I just have big hands” humble brags and “no woman could shoot this” bull though. Even the 2nd amendment nuts I occasionally run into complain about it.
I do not believe the the RN-50 that fires the .50BMG is Legal in CA or DC, nor circumvents any other law that would ban say a Barrett M82 or M97.
I believe the federal law is written to include .50cal BMG to be legal, while banning anything larger. The RN-50 or any other modern .50cal rifle wasn’t built around the law, it was built up to the law. The law pre-dates the creation of those rifles. There are several old, obsolete rifle from around WWI and even a few registered M2s that would have been legal and considered the “maximum allowed” under the NFA act of 1934. I bet the law makers in 1934 didn’t even know the actual diameter of a .50BMG, vs the labeled diameter.
OK - I think I figured out your point. This rifle was released around the same time as the CA .50cal ban, and I did see it is offered in .50DTC or .510 DTC EUROP which is a new to me bullet, made by a French designer in 2000 to work within European laws. So is that what you are talking about?
I mean, I guess it worked around the CA ban some,but literally any rifle capable of firing .50BMG can be re-barreled to .50 DTC. It also is literally what anyone who wanted a .50cal would do - go down to the next legal size. If not .50BMG or .50 DTC, then .460 Steyr, .416 Barrett, or .408 CheyTac.
You found one pic of him wearing a vest? That’s it? The rest with him in tshirts and a hat? Come on, man.
With a T-Rex costume on it. Oooo super tactical. Couldn’t possibly be a goofy inside joke or something?
This is just a guy out on his private range making videos.
I hate people like that. Big thumpy revolvers can be fun, but you work up to it. Just like your first car shouldn’t be a NASCAR with incredibly loud exhaust.
I shot a .50 AE once for 2 shots, and did not enjoy it at the time. It rattled me so much that I somehow completely missed the paper the 2nd time. I might try it again. with the 15 years of experience since then.
I think again you would be surprised of the overlap and the Venn diagram of people who find any specific video interesting. Not only people who are “fetishists” like to shoot any specific kind of firearm.
He should have brought some .44 special, which is quite pleasant to shoot, especially in a heavy, recoil soaking full sized revolver.
The IRA used to love using the Barrett for random mayhem
Using an anti-materiel rifle on humans is just the kind of dick move you’d expect from the IRA. I’m sure the ammosexual LARPers longing for a civil war in the U.S. wouldn’t limit their targets with these weapons to engine blocks, either.
Is that like the complement of Sturgeon’s law’s 90% of everything being crap?
I see we’re coming from completely different starting points. Clearly, for you clothing based on military aesthetics has become so normalised that you don’t think an olive green shirt and a camo cap with a monochrome American flag are anything but normal leisure wear. They are clearly inspired by what the military wear, I don’t know how you can even deny that.
He wears that stuff because he wants to be or to be perceived as a soldier. Just like millions of other Americans like him do. And yes, of course his “tactical” shirt is a joke but, again, that isn’t the point. The point is that he is part of a culture where such things are normal. Where even the joke t-shirts are signalling military fetishism.
I was getting ready to write a treatise on threading and case hardening and wondering where the heck I last saw my copy of Machinery’s Handbook, when I read your excellent post. You have saved me a bunch of time and trouble this morning. May you be touched by Their Noodly Appendage and your luffs never flap.
Kentucky Ballistics? Oh yeah, them.
If there’s a industry for faking/cloning ancient chips, then there might be an industry for faking hard-to-find novelty ammo.
I was addressing it more generally. You, in particular, seem to take firearms more seriously than this ammosexual clown or those who tie themselves in knots making excuses for him with their mantra of the “responsible gun owner”.
I can’t find it at the moment, but a couple of years ago artist did a great comic-book breakdown of the various right-wing militia style and fashion statements and the dark currents that inspire them. It’s been posted here before and would be really illustrative to this discussion.
ETA: found it!
It’s not neccisarily what the military in general wear.
There’s a particular aesthetic drawn from Special Forces and supposed black ops “operators” that has become a thing. Especially influenced by prominent former military who present themselves as such (true or not), Chris Kyle being the big celebrity of that sort.
It involves longer hair, beards, and non-standard military dress. Typically T-shirts and baseball hats, cargo pants. It’s a casually militarized looked, rooted in the looser standards of military and intelligence staff acting as advisors in places we’re not full on deployed to. Or (supposedly) off the books stuff in ultra manly places.
It’s had some pull among actual military members when off duty or after they leave. But the far right and antigovernment sets have adopted it heavily, and are absolutely obsessed with the swirling sea of macho bull around it.
I mean hell that camo cap with it’s thick raised American Flag is a direct pull from military caps, where there is a big ole Velcro patch on the front to accommodate various patches. Often filled with a flag patch from their fatigues.
We probably have stacks of them in the basement from my brother. Who stopped wearing them a bit before he took a medical retirement from the Army last year. Apparently they’d caused a couple of people to assume he was in a militia.
