Posted December 21, 2001

It was only a matter of time before the gun ban lobby took advantage of Americans' fears of terrorist attacks to scare them into giving up more of their rights. Gun banners are now rushing to demonize the latest politically incorrect sporting gun — the fifty caliber target rifle. The Washington, DC-based Violence Policy Center (VPC) now equates fifty caliber hobbyists with gunrunners for the Taliban. The VPC has posted on its web site a frantic report aimed at fifty caliber shooters.

The VPC report makes much of its "evidence that Al Qaeda bought 25 Barrett 50 caliber sniper rifles" in the late 1980s. But not mentioned is the fact that time of the transfer, the United States was supported Afghanistan's mujahedeen against the Soviet puppet government. All the mujahedeen were America's allies then.

The VPC states "Nor do we know whether the guns were sold directly from the factory or through a dealer or dealers." In fact, these rifles were paid for and shipped by the U.S. government. Explains Ronnie Barrett, the president of Barrett Firearms (in Murfreesboro, Tennessee), "Barrett rifles were picked up by US government trucks, shipped to US government bases and shipped to those Afghan freedom fighters."

After the VPC report came out, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms visited Barrett's plant, and confirmed that the late-1980s sales were in full compliance with the law, as all of Barrett's sales have been.

Arguably, the VPC could plead ignorance for the content of its October 2001 report, which insinuated Barrett Firearms knowingly sent guns to al Qaeda. But now, the facts have come out showing beyond any doubt that Barrett's sale was to the U.S. government, and that it was the U.S. government which took the guns to Afghanistan. Yet the VPC has failed to correct its original report, and so the initial charges against Barrett remain on the VPC website.

Even in the context of the often-acrimonious gun control debate, the VPC's smear is astonishingly mean-spirited. It is as if, in 1951, during the height of the Korean War, a pressure group claimed, "The Jones Corporation sold rifles to the Soviet Communists!" — while omitting the fact that the sale was actually to the United States government, which then shipped the guns to the Soviet army in 1943, when the US and the USSR were allies against Hitler.

Such character assassination is deception is nothing new for the VPC, which takes much greater liberties with the truth than, for example, does the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

The VPC spread the blatantly false rumor that Professor John Lott's research was "in essence, funded by the firearms industry." Even the Washington Post reported that this charge was untrue.

A report by the General Accounting Office summarizes 18 cases in which a .50 caliber firearm has ever been connected to a criminal, such as an illegal alien accumulating firearms. (Report no. OSI-99-15R, revised Oct. 21, 2001.) The VPC presents these cases in the most lurid manner possible — although it would be possible to present similarly lurid stories for almost any other caliber of firearm, and there would be far more than 18 cases. Indeed, if the VPC hated swimmers as much as it hates gun-owners, the group could produce another report detailing each of the two dozen murders by drowning which take place every year; the VPC could then call for water possession to be licensed under the same standards applicable to machine gun possession.

The VPC has been trying to start a holy war against the fifty caliber shooting community since 1999. Their Congressional allies — Chicago's Rep. Rod Blagojevich and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein — have sponsored the "Military Sniper Weapon Regulation Act" and denounced fifty caliber target shooters as "terrorists, doomsday cultists, and criminals," in the words of Sen. Feinstein.

In reality the owners of these big guns are the exact opposite of the villains that Feinstein and Blagojevich want us to believe they are. Most are like John Burtt, a retired police officer with the demeanor of a Sunday school teacher.

As spokesman for the Fifty Caliber Shooters Policy Institute, Burtt has the task of undoing the hatchet job of folks like Feinstein, Blagojevich, and the VPC on the sport of fifty-caliber target shooting. In testimony before Congress, Burtt explained that typical participant of the sport of fifty caliber target shooting has the demographic profile of…a golfer.

The average fifty caliber enthusiast is a successful businessman with an annual income of $50,000 or more. Of the 3,200 members of the Fifty Caliber Shooters Association, at least 75 are physicians.

As civilian experts on fifty caliber technology, the Association freely shares its research findings with law enforcement and military authorities. Knowledge developed through the civilian sport of .50 caliber long-range target shooting has played an important role in the development of .50 caliber rifles for military use. This is part of the broader pattern of the historical development of American firearms, in which the civilians and military users of firearms have worked together constructively, with important benefits to both the military and to sport shooting.

The VPC, though, calls these patriotic citizens "men in states of arrested adolescence."

Are fifty caliber target rifles lethal weapons? Certainly. But so is .458 caliber rifle, and so is a .475 caliber rifle, both of which are very powerful hunting rounds. If gun prohibitionists want to argue that rifles which have barrels .50 inches in diameter are too big, but rifles which have barrels .475 inches in diameter are great sporting guns, let them make that argument. If they want to argue for banning .50 caliber guns as a first step towards banning .475 and .458 caliber, and any other calibers they can ban, let them make that argument too — but not with hysterical claims that .50 caliber weapons are somehow utterly different from other guns.

Mary Blek, President of the "Million" Mom March, asserts that the Founding Fathers would have had no use for a fifty caliber rifle. (Nov. 28, 2001, McKendree College debate.) Actually, the common guns of the early American republic were larger than .50 caliber. The Queen Anne Colonial Musket (manufactured around 1670-1700) was .812. That gun was supplanted by various versions of the English Brown Bess musket, which was .75 caliber. America's French allies supplied the Patriots with the .70 Charleville Musket. The Dutch muskets bought by the Americans were .65 caliber.

Domestic production of the French-pattern .70 caliber musket began in 1795, with the American Springfield Musket. The famous Kentucky Rifle (a name eventually given to most rifles made by German immigrants) was usually in .60 to .75 caliber before 1780, and in .50 caliber after that. American rifles and muskets in the period from the Revolution to the Civil War tended to run in the .54 or .69.

As for pistols, the standard British service pistol after 1760 — carried by cavalry and by officers — was .69 caliber. French pistols were standardized in 1777 at .67. Many American pistols manufactured for militia, self-defense, and other uses in the first decades of the 19th century ranged from .50 to .69 caliber. Deringer made very compact pistols in .52 and .54 — "pocket rockets" indeed.

In other words, a great many of the guns which were most commonly-owned and known in early America were at least .50 caliber.

Nor did large-caliber guns become uncommon later. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, classic American manufacturers such as Winchester, Remington, Sharps and Maynard produced many rifles in the .50 caliber size or larger, including the Winchester Spencer Carbine, the Remington Model 1871, and the Sharps Side-Hammer Rifle. Harold Williamson's book Winchester (1952) lists nineteen types of ammunition manufactured by Winchester, in calibers of .50 and above, between 1876 and 1939.

Teddy Roosevelt's memoir Hunting Trips of a Ranchman tells of discarding his "50-caliber, double-barreled English express" in favor of "a 50-115 6-shot Ballard express."

Like modern .50 caliber rifles, the nineteenth century models had long-range power. Marksmen used the .50-90 Sharps rifle to kill Indians a mile away. And these guns could be quite powerful, since some were designed for buffalo hunting. The Indians, of course, had .50 caliber firearms of their own; Geronimo's collection included a Springfield .50-70 M1868 and (possibly) a Spencer .56-46.

(For more on historic guns, see Harold Peterson, Arms and Armour in Colonial America; Charles Edward Chapel, Guns of the Old West; and Louis A. Garavaglia & Charles G. Worman, Firearms of the American West.)

Nineteenth century antique guns are, understandably, treasured by their owners, who tend to be loath to fire them. While such guns may well have been used in frontier crimes long ago, they are in very peaceful hands today. Yet Senator Feinstein's "Military Sniper Weapon Regulation Act" (S. 505) would impose severe restrictions on these fifty caliber collectors, under the claim that they pose "a serious and substantial threat to the national security." Targeted by the Feinstein bill would be the antiques such as Remington, Springfield, Spencer, and Sharps firearms dating back to the nineteenth century — since they are centerfire guns firing .50 caliber cartridges.

Some of the types of ammunition whose firearms would be treated like modern machine guns under the Feinstein bill include the:

• .50 Remington. Introduced 1867.
  
• .50 Maynard. Introduced 1865.
  
• .50 U.S. Carbine. Introduced 1870.
  
• .50-50 Maynard. Introduced 1882.
  
• .50-70 Maynard. Introduced 1873.
  
• .50-70 Musket. Introduced 1866.
  
• .50-90 Sharps, .50-100 Sharps, .50-110 Sharps. All introduced 1875.
  
• .50-95 Winchester Express. Introduced 1876.
  
• .50-100 Winchester, .50-105 Winchester, .50-110 Winchester. All introduced 1899.
  
• .50-115 Bullard. Introduced 1886.
  
• .50-140 Sharps. Introduced 1860.
  
• .50-140 Winchester. Introduced about 1860.

Ironically, in 1994, Senator Feinstein pushed into law her ban on so-called "assault weapons." Her law was titled the "Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act." The law contained a specific list of several hundred models of "recreational firearms." Included in her list of benign guns are the Barrett Model 90 Bolt Action Rifle — a fifty caliber target rifle. Yet Senator Feinstein's new bill claims that "these firearms are neither designed nor used in any significant number for legitimate sporting or hunting purposes and are clearly distinguishable from rifles intended for sporting and hunting use."

So the very same guns which Senator Feinstein lauded in her "Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act" in 1994 are now said to be "clearly distinguishable from rifles intended for sporting and hunting use." One suspects that firearms stay on her personal list of "good" guns only as long as there is no political opportunity to push for their prohibition.

Gun prohibition advocates are free to make the case for The Incredible Shrinking Second Amendment — to argue that that the Second Amendment today must not be allowed to protect guns which fire bullets in sizes which were ubiquitous when the Second Amendment is written, as well as in the century that followed.

But what gun prohibition groups should not do is make outrageous and vicious smears against the hobbyists who shoot .50 caliber rifles, or against the companies that supply these target guns. Such tactics are reprehensible anytime, but in wartime, false accusations of near-treason are as unacceptable as anthrax hoaxes.

Wheeler and Kopel have repeatedly told gun rights activists that it is their responsibility to rein in people who use improper tactics (such as telephoning pro-control politicians at home late at night). It is now time for the responsible elements in America's gun control community to insist that the gun control battle be fought with legitimate arguments — and not with character assassination of innocent Americans.