[lit-ideas] Re: Great Lakes machine guns raise ire in Canada
- From: John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:40:43 -0500
JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx wrote:
Ursula sent a link to an article -- the first paragraph is:
<<The United States Coast Guard has started to patrol the Great Lakes
with machine guns mounted on their vessels and is conducting
live-ammunition training drills on the U.S. side to prepare officers
to combat terrorists flooding across the border from Canada by boat. >>
Sheer insanity. And can one of you military types explain to me what
"live-ammunition training drills" really means? I mean, obviously
they are practicing being prepared what they think they might
have/want to with live ammo -- but why use live ammo? And what kind
of safety boundaries are set so that no one gets live-ammoed to death
by accident? And what do they aim at?
I expect that boats there are armed with .50 caliber machine guns, but
nothing heavier. A .50 caliber round can go a couple of miles if you
fire it upward a bit, but if you see what you're aiming at, the rounds
mostly go into the water. So if I were the king of the coast guard,
organizing live-ammunition drills, I'd set a buoy adrift about 3 miles
out into the lake, set about 4 boats around it so civilians didn't come
too close, post look-outs with radios so everybody knew the coast was
clear, then take turns blasting the buoy to smithereens with the .50
cal, with M-16 rifle fire, and with M-60 machine gun fire. As a
civilian, I really think that __IF__ the Coast Guard boats are going to
carry live ammunition, I want the people on board to be used to firing
it FROM the boats at targets in the water. Practice on dry land would
NOT make me feel safe; I want to know that the people on the triggers
have had some experience firing on the water.
--
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"Never attribute to malice that which can be
explained by incompetence and ignorance."
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John Wager john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx
Lisle, IL, USA
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