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.