Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Anti-aircraft gun

Did you see the picture of the pretty young lady recently arrested in Mexico with the arsenal? The Mexican police are engaged in fighting drug cartels and found a young lady along with an arsenal of weapons used by the cartels. Of course, they seized everything, including the young lady. Good for them.

However, the strident trumpeting of the media in trying to describe the arsenal is over the top in volume and absolutely wrong in description.

Here's the picture so you can see it.



The article describes the gun:
Officers recovered a vast cache of weapons including an anti-aircraft gun capable of firing 800 shots per minute, five rifles, a grenade and part of a grenade launcher.
I'm no expert, but I'm fairly sure that the machine gun pictured is a Browning Model 1919. It fires the .30 caliber round so familiar to millions of American shooters. On that mount (properly called a pintle), it wouldn't serve as an anti-aircraft weapon because it's impossible to get enough elevation on the weapon. It's a good infantry machine gun for a number of purposes, but in that configuration, anti-aircraft duties ain't one of them. The article goes further:
The anti-aircraft gun, capable of penetrating armour from more than 5,000ft away and found attached to the top of a SUV, was the first of its type to be seized by Mexican police.
I don't know what sort of armor the gun would penetrate at nearly a mile range, but I'd wager that it would not penetrate the light armor found on most HMMWVs today.

This is just another example of the over-the-top reporting done by most news agencies who have no clue about firearms in general and military firearms in particular. It seems to me that most news agencies would do well to consult with knowledgeable experts before pontificating on weapons.

They found an old machine gun, five rifles, a grenade, and part of a grenade launcher. Oh, yeah, that's a large arsenal. Yeah, right.

Pretty girl, though.

Hat tip to The Smallest Minority, and Instapundit.

3 comments:

RobC said...

If this was not published on the Mail's website I would of thought it was meant to be satire!
Reporters have stopped writing facts long ago... now they voice the opinions of morons.

Windy Wilson said...

That's not a particularly large arsenal, but I am glad that it isn't still in the hands of the drug cartels.

I hope it still isn't in their hands -- if someone got paid off. . .

ASM826 said...

And I want one. Just because. It would be lots of fun to take to Knob Creek. I mean, all these guns came from Texas gun stores, right? So a quick road trip ought to procure me one. And an M-16 with an M203, a crate of blooper rounds, a pallet of full auto AK-47s....
Whazzat? You say that I can't buy those things in Texas? Then how did the cartels get them? Oh, from their own army and police? Really, but CNN said...and the speakers for the current administration said...Lying, you say? Well, I am disappointed.