The Last Gun (15 page)

Dr. Sanders accepted no commissions from car seat manufacturers, and scrupulously avoided profiting from his activism.
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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that from 1975 through 2009, child restraints saved 9,310 lives.
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Dr. Robert Sanders's life stands as a model for selfless service devoted to public health and safety. Its antipode is that of another of Murfreesboro's widely-known sons, Ronnie Gene Barrett. In 1982, at about the same time that Trooper Jim Foster was trying unsuccessfully to save “biddy young 'uns” from child-restraint laws in Florida, Ronnie Barrett began work on an invention that would make him rich, powerful, and famous—at least among gun enthusiasts. It was an extremely accurate sniper rifle that fires a massive bullet with such force that it blasts through an inch of steel at a thousand yards.

A measure of the man—and of his self-estimation—may be found under the pontifical rubric “Meet the Maker” on the Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, Inc., website.

You can't share the history of Barrett without talking about Ronnie. It all started in 1982 when he created the
world's first shoulder-fired .50 caliber rifle. Thousands of rifles later, the company that bears his name has become a revered icon in the world of firearms manufacturing.
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A self-described dyslexic with attention deficit disorder,
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Barrett never went to college.
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He never served in military uniform, so far as has been publicly reported, although he does claim to have served for an unspecified period of time and place as a reserve deputy.
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A lifelong gun enthusiast and Second Amendment fundamentalist, now on the board of the NRA, he became a commercial photographer by trade, getting his start shooting weddings.
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According to the company's buttery hagiography, the idea for Barrett's deadly invention came to him in 1982 while he was taking pictures on a Tennessee river for another gun company. The photos were of a river patrol boat armed with two Browning 50 caliber machine guns. “Barrett was wowed by the amazing Browning Ma Deuce. He wondered to himself if the incredible .50-caliber cartridge could be fired from a rifle; maybe one operated from the shooter's shoulder. He decided to find out. With no manufacturing or engineering experience, Barrett drew a three-dimensional sketch of his idea for a .50-caliber, semiautomatic rifle to show how it should function.”
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The Browning 50 caliber heavy machine gun was developed by John Browning in 1918 at the end of World War I.
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After several modifications, the standard M2 machine gun became known as the Ma Deuce. Big, heavy, and usually mounted on a tripod, it is still relied on by the U.S. military and armed forces all over the world.
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“Employed as an anti-personnel and anti-aircraft weapon, it is highly effective against light armored vehicles, low flying aircraft, and small boats,” according to the U.S. Army.
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Barrett proposed to put the 50 caliber's massive firepower and unequalled range into a rifle that could be fired by one person from the shoulder.

Barrett's 1987 patent called his invention an anti-armor gun. He described the .50 BMG rifle in his patent claim as a
“shoulder-fireable, armor-penetrating gun.” Barrett related the genius of his invention as follows:

The recoil and weight of the Browning M-2 heavy-barrel machine gun (50 cal.), belt-fed, make it unsuitable for firing from the shoulder. The bolt-fed sniper rifle of smaller weight and caliber will not penetrate armored targets. The bolts of guns of a caliber that will penetrate armored targets are often broken by recoil because of excessive strain on the lock lugs. Thus, there is a need for a light-weight, shoulder-fireable, armor-penetrating gun that can stand up to heavy duty use. After extended investigation I have come up with just such a gun.
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Barrett calls his antiarmor rifle an “adult toy” when he talks to the news media. “It's a target rifle. It's a toy. It's a high-end adult recreational toy,” he said on the
60 Minutes
television program in 2005.
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“It's like, what does a 55-year-old man do with a Corvette?,” Barrett told the Associated Press in the same year. “You drive it around and enjoy it.” He also boasted in the same interview that his customers included doctors, lawyers, moviemakers, and actors. “I know all the current actors who are Barrett rifle shooters, some Academy Award-winning people. But they don't publicize it. They love to play with them and have fun. Shooting is very fun.”
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The 50 caliber antiarmor sniper rifle is not a toy at all, but a deadly serious weapon of war, the most powerful gun available to ordinary civilians in America. Quite unlike the car seats for children that Dr. Sanders promoted to save lives, Ronnie Barrett's sniper rifle has taken countless lives in war and criminal violence all over the world. Regulated by federal law only to the same extent as an ordinary hunting rifle, Barrett's 50 caliber antiarmor sniper rifle is the archetype of the gun industry's ruthless militarization of the civilian gun market. It has spawned dozens of imitators. But, according to the company, “Barrett dominates this
market and enjoys customer allegiance approaching a cult following.”
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With the exception of a few states, including California, these armor-piercing, long-range killing machines are legally and easily available throughout the entire country.

Its lethality cannot be exaggerated. “The .50 BMG is infinitely more powerful than any other shoulder-fired rifle on the planet,” enthuses a 2004 book aimed at civilian fans. “The point to be made here is that no matter how you measure energy and stopping power, the .50 BMG is well off the charts. It is far more powerful than any other rifle cartridge known according to any measuring system yet devised.”
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“A bullet of such size and weight traveling at well over Mach 2 can be called a missile in the modern context without a high-altitude flight of fancy,” the same book exclaims. The author notes the extraordinary range of the 50 caliber round in comparison to the 30–06, one of the 30 caliber rounds common in hunting rifles. “The trajectory of the two rounds is similar out to the limits of the 30–06's stability, but when the 30-caliber bullet is ready to call it a day and dive for the dirt, the .50 is still charging along with more than enough authority to cut a man in half and keep on going.”
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Another enthusiastic reviewer of the Barrett 50 caliber antiarmor sniper rifle's accuracy and power reported firing match-grade armor-piercing ammunition “against 1-inch-thick armor steel at 300 meters distance. Not only did the rounds penetrate with enough behind-armor effect to be lethal, but the three-round group we fired could be covered with the palm of the hand. Two rounds were actually touching.”
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According to the U.S. Army, the rifle's effective range is five times that 300-meter distance. A U.S. Army News Service article summarized the capabilities of the Barrett “.50-caliber long range sniper rifle”—called the M-107 in Army nomenclature—as follows:

The M-107 enables Army snipers to accurately engage personnel and material [
sic
] targets out to a distance of
1,500 to 2,000 meters respectively. . . . The weapon is designed to effectively engage and defeat materiel targets at extended ranges including parked aircraft, computers, intelligence sites, radar sites, ammunition, petroleum, oil and lubricant sites, various lightly armored targets and command, control and communications. In a counter-sniper role, the system offers longer stand-off ranges and increased terminal effects against snipers using smaller-caliber weapons.
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One need only consider the civilian equivalents of such military targets to understand the concern that many security experts have about the unrestricted sale of long-range antiarmor sniper rifles to civilians. The Violence Policy Center has published a number of monographs detailing the rifle's capabilities, its proponents' often specious claims, its use by criminals and terrorists, and the concerns of security experts going back at least as far as a classified report written for the U.S. Secret Service.
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In 1985, the deputy assistant director of the Office of Protective Operations, U.S. Secret Service, wrote a research paper for the faculty of the National War College of the National Defense University titled “Large Caliber Sniper Threat to U.S. National Command Authority Figures.” The “National Command Authority” refers to the president and the secretary of defense.
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After reviewing developments in the marketing of these antiarmor rifles and their use in earlier terror attacks and assassinations, the author concluded that such “large caliber long range weapons pose a significant threat for U.S. National Command Authority figures if used by terrorists or other assailants.”
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His report then summarized the specific threats that 50 caliber antiarmor rifles present to agencies charged with security, such as the Secret Service:

The weapons are capable of defeating light armor of the type used in limousines, aircraft, ballistic shields, etc.
When so used modern ammunition makes them highly effective.

  
The weapons are more accurate than shoulder fired antitank rockets and, if used against aircraft, immune to electronic counter measures. They are man portable and easily concealed.

  
Large caliber long range weapons can be employed effectively from places of concealment outside the scope of normal security measures against personnel, aircraft, lightly armored vehicles and buildings. They thus pose a threat in environments generally thought secure.
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Recent developments have made the domestic threat from anti-armor sniper rifles much more serious than those envisioned by the Secret Service in 1985. In a 2007 report prepared for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on terrorist use of conventional weapons, the RAND Corporation included sniper rifles and recently evolved technology supporting snipers among what it called “game changing weapons.” In the hands of terrorists, such weapons “would force the defender to dramatically alter its behavior.”
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The report noted that “in recent years, considerable advances have been made in sniper technology that have changed the requirements for effective use of sniper tactics.” These advances include small ballistic computers to correct for wind and temperature, platforms that allow a rifle to be fired by remote control, improved scopes and other optics, and night vision devices.
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This technology “has made it so that advanced rifle marksmanship skills are no longer necessary in sniping.”
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It has also extended the effective range of sniping rifles to a mile or more, and made the impact on the target more devastating.
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The result is that terrorists can now “carry out line-of-sight attacks or assassinations that would previously not have been possible, either because of their lack of skill and training or because the security perimeter around a very important person
(VIP) target would be on the lookout for attacks from a shorter range.”
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The report warns that “since such sniping systems are now widely available, it appears that the Secret Service will be forced to expand its secured perimeter to deny line of sight out to beyond 2 km.”
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It must also be noted that although the Secret Service can expand security perimeters, other potential targets—such as government officials at other levels, media and entertainment celebrities, noted figures in business and industry, and law enforcement officers—do not enjoy such protection. Nor are most of them protected in vehicles as heavily armored as presidential limousines and helicopters. The gun industry and its technology is thus making these other potential targets increasingly vulnerable to deadly attack from long range by 50 caliber antiarmor sniper rifles.

Ronnie Barrett has scoffed at this reality for two decades. “This is not something a drug lord or a bank robber is going to want to use,” he told the
New York Times
in 1992.
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On February 27, 1992, less than two months after Barrett's smug pronouncement to the newspaper, a Wells Fargo armored delivery truck was attacked in a “military-style operation” in Chamblee, Georgia, by several men using a smoke grenade and a Barrett 50 caliber antiarmor sniper rifle.
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Barrett's antiarmor sniper rifle has had a dark side almost from the moment it came into production. A sinister brigade of crackpots, terrorists, and violent criminals lust after it for the same reasons the world's armies do. And because the gun is virtually unregulated and freely sold on the U.S. civilian market, these evil forces easily obtain Barrett's antiarmor rifle in quantity. “You just have to have a credit card and clear record, and you can go buy as many as you want. No questions asked,” Florin Krasniqi, a gunrunner who smuggled Barrett sniper rifles to Kosovo, said in 2005. “Most of [
sic
] non-Americans [buying guns for him] were surprised at how easy it is to get a gun in heartland America. Most of the dealers in Montana and Wyoming don't even ask you a question. It's just like a grocery store.”
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Figure 9. Known Sales of 50 Caliber Antiarmor Sniper Rifles to Terrorists, Criminals, and Fringe Groups