Semi-Auto rifles can blow up railroads and shoot down planes

[steve-o]

Not to defend Jackson's comments, but having crap like this on tv all of the time doesn't help either.

Everything the shoot explodes

 

[M. Sage]

Not to defend Jackson's comments, but having crap like this on tv all of the time doesn't help either.

Everything the shoot explodes

LOL, bullets travel more or less flat, or even slightly upward at 1000 yards? At half a mile, he could have just lobbed the bullets over the car to hit the target, no reason (or way, really) to go through it.

TV sucks.

 

[Pinlifter]

Let's see just how stupid it is to say you can take down a plane with an AR. I'm gonna figure take off cause that would be the best opportunity.

Shooting an engine is a No GO because a plane can make a safe landing on a single engine. The only way to do it would be to go for the pilot, of course there is a 3" thick windshield in the way.

An airliner will be moving between 150 and 200 MPH on take off. Thats around 220-290 FPS.

Probably won't be able to get any closer than at least 300 yrds of the runway and the plane will be lifting off a couple hundred yards before the runway ends so lets say 500 yrd shot.

Lets make it easy and so this is taking place with the plane flying directly towards you so we can take out the 75 yrd lead that would need to be taken to account for the planes speed at 500 yrds.

So what does all this mean. If the shot were taken 1 second early it would hit about 40" low, 1 second late 20" high. Say somehow someone was able to pull the shot out of their ass, the combined speed of the plane and bullet velocity would mean it would hit 3" of glass with a whopping 350 lbs of energy(approx). It would also be striking at and angle so I doubt it would do more than crack the windshield.

Even if they were able to get through the windshield and somehow hit the pilot there is another pilot and to make two shots like that in that short amount of time would be damned near impossible.

It's complete and total BS fabricated to scare the sheep of this country.

Now I probably wont be able to get on a plane again after the google searches I've done to figure this out.

Similar to the railroad scenario...


I haul some nasty stuff, but people take pot shots at trains all the time. Never had anything blow up on my train due to that.


Even taking the engineer out (if you could) wouldn't do it... It wouldn't become a runaway... If the controls aren't manipulated in some way once every 90 seconds, the crew alerter starts going off... after about 20 seconds of inaction by the crew, a penalty brake application is made.

Not to mention, the cab of a modern engine is armored, hardened, and has bullet resistant glazing on the windows as required by the Federal Railroad Administration:

If they managed to shoot an air hose between the cars, it would vent all of the air from the air brake system... this is also known as an "emergency application" and the train will come to a screeching halt.


If you wanted to blow up a railroad, an AR-15 would not be my weapon of choice.

 

[Younggun]

I never would have expected glass that tough on a train. I was wondering if there was anything special about the glass on an airliner but didn't want to dig too deep in to the subject with current Internet and keyword monitoring.