You cannot shoot down a plane with rhetoric

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly must be hoping antigun rhetoric is an effective deterrent against terrorism.  According to the NY Post, “Kelly: NYPD can blow planes out of sky“:

“… Kelly — answering questions about the department’s state-of-the-art anti-terrorism system on CBS’s “60 Minutes’’ — admitted that the city is packing an arsenal on par with some militaries. “Do you mean to say that the NYPD has the means to take down an aircraft?” interviewer Scott Pelley pressed Kelly. “Yes. I prefer not to get into details, but obviously, this would be in a very extreme situation,” Kelly replied. Police sources told The Post that the weapon that Kelly was referring to involves a Barrett .50 caliber rifle, which can be mounted on almost any police chopper …”

First off, the only appropriate response coming out of Kelly’s mouth as to what sort of anti-terrorism contingency plans the NYPD has prepared should have been “No comment.”  Why on earth did Kelly go on television to talk about this subject?

Second, Kelly must think that terrorists are stupid enough to actually believe the outright lies coming out of the Violence Policy Center on .50s because they are not capable of “[blowing] a rogue aircraft out of the sky.”  All one has to do to disprove that theory is watch any of the old WWII programs on the History Channel with planes soaking up .50 hits like a sponge and not going down.  I remember several incidents where commercial airliners have had doors and/or large chunks of fuselage come off in mid-flight and that still didn’t take the plane down.

2 thoughts on “You cannot shoot down a plane with rhetoric

  1. Something isn’t right with that. Can you envision a police chopper chasing a commercial airliner trying to shoot it down with anything, let alone a .50 cal. You’d need something at least as fast as the plane and your right, a .50 cal rifle will not bring down a commerical jet.

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