It can take it once, but not on the regular. Not to mention the National Guard units have a significant track budget.

@Steaming Pile, I couldn’t agree more. With SLED keeping plenty of resources less than 20 miles away, it seems like a complete waste of tax payer money. In the event of something APC worthy happening they could easily be called in. If that isn’t enough there is always the National Guard.

Then again who knows. Perhaps the Cloverfield Monster is planning its assault from Lake Murray and Lott has the inside.

A McMillan Tac-50 .50 BMG sniper rifle was used by Canadian Corporal Rob Furlong to bring off the longest-range confirmed sniper kill in history, when he shot a Taliban insurgent at 2,430 meters (2,657 yards/7,972 feet/1.509 miles) during the 2002 campaign in Afghanistan

The same Wikipedia article also mentions that the .50 cal machine gun is employed by the Coast Guard for drug interdiction and by the NYPD because, well, hey, it’s New York.

I’ve been on the freeway next to a tank doing 80. That’s 80 miles per hour.

It would take a lot to burn it. Why not pump glue or concrete into it? Not a suggestion.

Still, is it going to sneak up on you? Therein lies the wit of my joke, such as it was.

Like there could be an unreleased sequel. Aren’t we up to Starship Troopers LXVIII: Dust Bunnies of Klendathu?

I’m not talking overkill here, I’m wondering what sort of situation would someone look at and realistically think “Wow, I’m really glad we have an APC, it’s exactly what we need to deal with _______” (factoring in its much higher total cost of ownership and various physical limitations like the treads possibly trashing streets etc…)”

In my humble opinion, there are only a few ‘reasonable’ uses for an M113 in a civilian environment, from a police perspective – they are:

1. Intimidation (useful in any stressful confrontation, especially where the police are the 3rd or 4th party to a potential conflict – and they need to visually demonstrate the ante for a clash)

2. Low-velocity missile risk (think riots and thrown rocks) – the police lose in terms of community-support (think early Northern Ireland), but they at least gain a tactical advantage in relatively safe transport through a hostile area.

3. Outright riot, and the need to produce an instant defensible space or armored egress. Of course, public endangerment in such driving is increased. Useful against most civilian firearms. That value is diminished by hostile preparation (e.g. IED, molotov’s, etc.). Unfortunately, this means “shock raid” is the natural/logical conclusion for this technology.

4. If you aren’t particularly moral about this technology, these can function as convenient mobile assassination tools. After all, Diem was killed in one of those.

Hey, here are some other things civilian law enforcement shouldn’t have:

RPGs
Wire Guided Missiles
Flame Throwers
Fuel-Air Bombs
Vulcan Machine Guns
Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Yes, civilians can own .50BMG weapons, INCLUDING machine guns; many people own .50BMG target rifles, and no few own machine guns. The machine guns are heavily restricted and somewhat-heavily taxed. In the 1930′s when the transfer tax was imposed via the National Firearms Act, it was a _very_ heavy tax – these days, $250 is a drop in the bucket compared to the $5000 and up a full-auto weapon of any type is going to cost you.

Personally, I don’t think the cops need fifties, it being considerable overkill for anything they’ll ever have to do legitimately – and I’m totally envious that these guys have one and I don’t. On the practical side, though, neither these cops nor I can afford to shoot one. .50BMG runs a minimum of $2/round, you go through a lot of rounds very quickly in a machine gun, and I’ll bet there’s not much, if anything, in their budget for the ammo. On the other hand, if the DHS staked them to a grant for the APC, they may be able to get another grant for some ammo…DHS hasn’t so far shown itself to be the sharpest tool in the toolbox, and they might be dumb enough to do this.

Strictly speaking the replacement of Marine One is not one helicopter, but 28 helicopters at a cost of $11.2 billion. For perspective, this is almost double the annual budget of the National Science Foundation.

This purchase reminds me of the APCs guarding the airports in the weeks after 9/11. Just in case Al Qaeda decides to attack with an infantry charge. It is just more security theater.

Presumably, however, this “law enforcement” agency can foresee a situation where they would do both.

I failed to mention the tracked M113 would be useful where an armored car or typical police patrolcar couldn’t manage…such as pushing through improvised barricades, or off-road capabilities.

Oh, I suppose the M113 would have been useful for the LAPD in that awful shootout they experienced a decade ago. But that sort of thing would either already need numbers and advanced deployment, or be a whole lot faster, to be useful in that sort of event.

Yes, plenty of civilians have firearms in that caliber, and the military does use the .50 cal BMG round in some sniper rifles. There is a rather important distinction to be made, however. The firearms that the civilians have and the army uses as a sniper rifle are either bolt action, or semi-automatic. While the semiautomatic can fire rather rapidly, it does not approach the rate of fire that the machine gun can, nor does it have anywhere near the ammunition capacity. The civilian rifles and sniper rifles are designed and used to engage targets at distances in the thousands of yards, in some cases over a mile away. The machinegun mounted on that APC has a rate of fire between 400 and 600 rounds per minute and it’s not set up for any sort of precision/sniping work.

The rounds themselves are incredibly powerful. The full metal jacketed, lead cored standard rounds would have no problems penetrating steel well over a quarter inch thick, or punching clear through a cinder-block wall with more than enough energy to kill left over. Armor piercing rounds will go through roughly a half inch of solid steel plate with no problem. The round has proved itself capable of being effective against humans and lightly armored targets over a mile away. And, unlike the 12ga shotgun, or the 40mm grenade launcher, there are no less than lethal rounds for the .50 cal.

Combine the power of those rounds with the rate of fire (600 rounds per minute) and general inaccuracy in the way a machine gun is used, and put that in any domestic law enforcement situation. Sure, maybe you’ll have another guy build himself an armored bulldozer, like the guy in Colorado did, but you’re not going to hit it with every round out of that gun. You’re also not going to move every innocent bystander within a mile plus radius out of harm’s way. The potential for killing somebody is way too high. If they absolutely positively must have the penetrating power of a .50 BMG round, then by all means, give the department a Barrett, for instance. But I can’t think of a single police situation where the use of a .50 cal machine gun will save more lives than it will risk (baring the inevitable zombie apocalypse).

Well Canuck, there are still some around those parts who sign their return address with “Occupied Confederated States of America”. Not many, but enough.

That could be. I only know of the one trip they made, to some sort of recruiting drive or something. Then again, there was the lunatic that stole a tank from the same armory and drove it along city streets and freeways, crushing a few cars along the way for good measure. Ended up throwing a tread and getting shot in the head. You may have seen it on TV, but I wasn’t lucky enough to see it in person. ; )

Recently while walking around my fields, I found a tree stand hidden away in a mass of trees, facing my house, about a half a mile away. Should I be worried?

If a guy from Ohio gets sniped while grilling hotdogs in his backyard, well, you read it here first.