[Letter by Michael Marks, Executive Director of the Fifty Caliber Institute in reponse to San Jose Mercury News editorial calling for greater restrictions on .50 caliber rifles in California at: http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/6400612.htm ] To: ca-firearms From: "shooterx10" Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2003 18:44:08 -0000 Subject: [ca-firearms] Fiftycaliber.org's response to SJ Mercury's anti-50 article! Forward to other shooters and post wherever you can! To the Editor of the Mercury News, The editorial "Sniper weapons should be restricted" which appeared on July 28, 2003 is, from it's opening statement, fraught with demonstrable factual errors. While the sub-title claims that ".50caliber rifle is too powerful even for hunting" the simple fact is that both men and women frequently hunt with these rifles across the United States, a fact which has been documented in articles and photographs in numerous publications. The abilities attributed to the .50 caliber rifle in this article have been toned down dramatically from the wild assertions of Mr. Koretz, yet they remain firmly in the world of gross exaggeration. Given nearly a century of civilian ownership, .50 caliber rifles have never once used by any criminal in California. As such, one is left to guess upon what basis the author states that the rifle is "ill-suited for hunters and... ideal for assassins." All of the documented evidence stands in contradiction. The threat to aircraft is equally unfounded. No aircraft has ever been shot by a .50 caliber rifle, much less "taken down" by one. In airworthiness tests run since the 1970s, Boeing rated the risk to airworthiness from a bullet to be less than the risk posed by striking a pelican in flight. Neither the FBI, FAA, TSA or Department of Homeland Security have issued any type of warning regarding the threat of rifle fire to commercial aircraft. One would presume that, if a real threat, that at least one of these agencies might know about it. The simple truth is that they are well-versed on rifles and recognize the claims as pure hogwash. If these rifles had even half the power attributed to them, every soldier in our Army would carry one. There has never been a single instance of our most elite military snipers downing a jet aircraft. Not one of them train for that role. Why? Because it cannot be done. Lastly, military sniper rifles are already banned in California. AB-50 has nothing to do with military rifles, it is a ban focused on civilian target rifles. The bizarre claims that have been foisted upon legislators and the public are a shameful tirade of outright lies that have been refuted point by point by experts from the United States Armed Forces, the aircraft industry, and other scientific and engineering leaders. The failure of AB-50 so dramatically highlights the level of falsehood surrounding the campaign to villify target rifles. Neither Sen. Vasconcellos (D-San Jose) nor Sen. Bruce McPherson (R-Santa Cruz) are pro-gun. Sen. Vasconcellos in fact has supported a variety a gun control measures. Their opposition to AB-50 was based not on politics, but on a genuine recognition that AB-50 was a lie that Californians could not afford. They refused to be sidetracked from the budget crisis by a sky-is-falling claim that a target rifle, after a century-long record of perfect safety, will magically become a criminal superweapon worthy of the most diabolical James Bond villian. I will close in noting the testimony of a representative of the LAPD brought by Mr. Koretz himself to testify regarding AB-50. The officer reported that .50 caliber rifles have never been used in any crime in the history of California. This would not be true if they were the "ideal assassin weapon" or tank-killing, bunker-busting anti-aircraft weapon as claimed by a small but vocal group of alarmists. Now more than ever, the citizens of California deserve documented facts instead of hype and lies. Californians will die this year from a bankrupt state health care system, they will die because a broke prison system has to release violent offenders. But if a perfect record for the last hundred years has any validity, they have nothing to worry about from target rifles, regardless of the caliber. As a service to those citizens, I would hope that the Mercury News would insist on substantiation for claims made in its editorial section and give fair, factual coverage of this debate. Michael Marks Executive Director Fifty Caliber Institute Can also be found at http://www.fiftycal.org/mercurynewsrebut.html If you want to email the editor, you can try these to emails: jswartley@mercurynews.com-nospam (editor) letters@mercurynews.com-nospam