Another reason I wanted to bring this topic up was to highlight a VERY interesting new weblog I’ve discovered by Russell Whitaker called Survival Arts which, although it has an emphasis on guns and survival weaponry, also shares a deep curiosity about science and technology with SciScoop as well as the spirit that lies behind science facts and figures. Plus, Russell was nice enough to recommend SciScoop to his varied readers, and I thought I’d return the compliment – so check Survival Arts out! I came across his blog because of a review he wrote of Firefly, which he instantly recognized as a story that portrays “libertarian bias toward freedom and all it entails” – including guns, of course, and so much more.
Russell is the proud owner of a Toy That’s Not For Christmas that I have always had a strange, personal facination with – the Armalite AR-50 extremely-long range sniper rifle. Hunting deer is a major sporting pastime in the South. Many of my relatives and in fact even some of my office mates, after a long hard day of rocket science plotting out missile trajectories over the Pacific, will pull on the camouflage and go out to blast Bambi. I myself could care less about deer hunting and never go. I’d rather just go for a nature walk and observe wildlife, including deer, which I do frequently on the nearby undeveloped sewer-line right-of-ways around the perimeter of off-limits Redstone Arsenal.
Despite my disdain for firing a .30-06 deer rifle (which I have, at targets), however, I’d jump at the chance to shoot a .50 caliber rifle like the Armalite AR-50 at maximum distance on a qualified firing range. I see no need to kill deer (well, OK, they’re growing out of control and need herd management). But as a pragmatist who acknowledges the ultimate need for war, I do unfortunately see the need to kill humans upon occasion – preferably a selected few key enemies instead of massive indiscriminate “shock and awe.” An Armalite AR-50 is the best tool out there as far as I’m concerned for accomplishing this grisly task, and if this fearsome rifle is going to exist, I want to be in the group of people who have access to this technology instead of belonging to the group that doesn’t.
To a science buff, sniper guns are facinating applied physics laboratory. To a human being, they are an intoxicatingly empowering tool that puts the ultimate power of life and death in your hand, which strikes some very deep, primal psychological urge that we deny the existence of only at our peril. These weapons exist to kill not deer but people, and the armored vehicles they ride in, at distances where you as a shooter are relatively safe. There is extreme pressure for these types of guns to be outlawed in the United States precisely for their potential as an assassination weapon of choice.
I would hate to see that happen. The American Constitution’s Second Amendment, which is interpreted to allow American citizens to own guns, is a hornet’s nest of interpretations. For example, automatic weapons in the hands of American citizens is definitely ruled out by law – though other countries in the world have shown this is not necessarily a thing to fear. If America goes further and establishes the precedent of banning a gun just because it is Big even if it is semi-automatic, then we’re on a slippery slope: how Big is Too Big? .44? .38? .22? BBs? Paintballs? Let me say again, I want to be in the group of people who have access to guns instead of belonging to the group that doesn’t – and as an American I do, even if I don’t personally own one today.
I’m running out of things to say and I find I don’t have a nice, neat point to sum things up and end on. This is just a messy subject that I’ve come across provocative and facinating references to over the past few days.
To summarize my babblings here, wars are unfortunately going to be a hi-tech part of our SciScoop tomorrows, and as such I think we need to explore the subject of war, at least thinking about it personally and talk about it amongst ourselves at best. I’m not at all convinced that “shock and awe” represents the desirable future of warfare, and certainly alternative “surgical, sniper-type special operations” seem to be all the vogue today as a desirable alternative. Are they really? Are guns themselves really so bad? Am I even able to judge, as a gun-besotted Southern American male who is basically fairly rational and intelligent and thoughtful but has the courage to admit to a fantasy of wanting to stroke the trigger of an Armalite AR-50 anyway? Drog as a Canadian will obviously have a few interesting things to say on THAT, particularly after expressing his surprise that more guns = less violence as the quack idea with very high support in a recent SciSCoop poll. Somebody who is Swiss with a government-issued militia machine gun in his closet will certainly have a viewpoint that is neither American or Canadian – let’s hear it! And Russell, here’s YOUR chance to cut and paste the essence of what your site is about to a few thousand new readers. Just what IS at the root of our anthropological and psychological fascination with violence in general and firearms in particular? Does our current progress in science and technology offer a way to divest ourselves of this in the 21st Century? In a way that is Good? Should we want to?
On this topic, gotta end with a link on Bowling for Columbine, of course. Bye, bye, Christmas. Back to reality.
Thanks for writing this excellent editorial. Only recently, after seeing Michael Moore’s statistics in Bowling for Columbine, particularly those comparing US/Canada # of firearms vs. deaths by firearms, did I realize that a gun != death by firearm.
Of course, this is obvious, but for a person who grew up in the suburbs where firearms aren’t often encountered, the reactionary media’s ‘guns==deaths by firearm’ equation becomes more and more believable. It is more believable in inner cities where many guns are purchased simply to shoot- at/protect-yourself-from other people. It is this use of guns which politicians and worrisome-types jump to prohibit. Not being hunters themselves, they have little regard for the people who ‘shoot Bambi’ as a hobby and willingly allow the hunters/enthusiasts to fall as casualties of the proposed laws.
I think the best argument against gun control is simply that we should preserve our freedom of choice at all costs; even if this means that some people will choose violence. Unfortunately our media overwhelms us with instances of people choosing violence when the vast majority choose otherwise. Things will look much better when taking away rights is not looked at as a valid approach to solving a problem (now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have a cigarette :).
no extreme is ever good.
having grown up in rural areas where hunting was second nature i’m confortable with firearms.
i also understand that those from more urban areas are not.
i must admitt being less concerned with those people that were going to go out and blast bambi, than those who have no interest in hunting, but seem drawn to fire arms that have no practicle use in a civilian world.
perhaps this is why, when living out in the country, i think nothing of hearing a 30-06 or 30-30 off in the distance, but everyone(including myself) jump at the sound of a gun going off in the mall parking lot.
there is a place for everything.
be careful with that AR-50, i’d hate to have to read about it on someone elses site.
I agree, everybody should take a long hard look at the internal motivations of people that are not into hunting yet are facinated by extreme-range sniper rifles. Such suspicions are a first-line of defense from hearing that crack of gunfire in a mall parking lot. That’s really how the break came in the Washington DC-area sniper case, with neighbors calling in reports and the FBI digging up a backyard tree stump of a tree on the other side of the continent in Washington State where John Allen Muhammad had target practiced.
I’m mainly interested in an AR-50 because it represents the limits of that particular technology, and I’d be interested in flooring it with practical examples representing the limits of any technology. In my back yard, there’s only my wife’s goldfish pond and rose bushes. Come on over for a visit anytime.
i understand the idea about being into the tech.
i have many friends that are into things like NASCAR that i truely could care less about. then one friend who works in a pit crew started talking about the engineering that goes in one of the professional cars. i’m still not into the racing, but have a new found respect for the tech that goes into the cars. it’s cool.
Ricky,
I’ve been working desperately to catch up with all my commitments, including catching up with email, since coming back from my recent trip to Portland. Here however is a short bit of commentary on this thread that you started.
Cheers,
Russell Whitaker, who signs with his own name.
Ask any shooter, especially those who started shooting with .22 rifles as a kid, what you do to make shooting more fun and challenging after you’ve learned to easily hit those cans from whatever distance. (The porch to the tree stump, for instance) The two answers I came up with were "Do it faster" and "Do it from farther away". After a while, you reach the practical limits of the gun and its sights.
So, you put a telescope on top of it and try to compensate for the arc of the bullet. That’s fun for a while, but then you reach the actual limit of the guns range and have to get a bigger gun and a better telescope. Suddenly, things like the breeze, mirage effect, and whether the target is uphill or down begin to affect the results. At that point, you start figuring out how much wind (even light wind) affects the travel of the bullet and begin keeping careful records.
You go online to find out more and learn that temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure affect bullet travel and begin to take that into account. You download or buy ballistic calculator software that can perform some of the dizzying math which needs to be done to adjust for these factors. You become passionate about accurate calculation of ballistic coefficient.
At some point along this continuum, you realize that the ammunition made my most manufacturers differs too greatly from round to round to be reliable, so you invest in reloading equipment, calipers, extremely accurate scales and more in an effort to produce ammunition that shoots exactly the same way twice, thrice and ten times in a row.
Ultimately, you’re attempting to apply scientific repeatability to an endeavor which relies on human sensory input (or a small weather station) to determine nearly all of the factors, none of which are necessarily constant from shot to shot. (or from muzzle to target, for that matter) This is to say nothing of the skill of the shooter, which has to improve alongside the equipment which can get the bullet to a target farther and farther away and where being half a millimeter off in aim will cause a miss at 400 meters, provided all your estimates about wind direction and speed were right in the first place.
In reviewing all this, it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. But, like the sound of a golf ball draining into the hole after travelling 20 feet on the green, there are few sounds that warm a long-range shooters heart more than the muted CLANK of a round hitting a steel target that’s a long way off…
Dirk Koenig
Minneapolis, MN