McChrystal says ‘serious action’ needed on gun control

[fatbuckRTO]

Originally Posted by Homeslice

Any idea why the refusal on the .50 cal?

That's a common occurance across the theater. The general idea is that there will be too much "collateral damage" from the use of .50 cals, MK-19's (automatic grenade launchers), and other weapons that are very effective at eliminating enemy threats for the same reason: "collateral damage". A mud hut makes a decent cover from an M-16 / M-4, and often even a 240G, but a .50 cal would make short work of the hut and anyone hiding behind it shooting at Americans.

How that tracks, when the alternative method used was to drop a JDAM on them,* I have no clue. Command decisions, whatareyougonnado...

By the time we were pulling out of Iraq, I think the list of weapons that you couldn't use was longer than the list that you could.

Interesting side notes on collateral damage; at that COP we were paying the locals for damages caused by Taliban rocket strikes. Very often they would miss our base and hit the surrounding village, but it was our fault for being there and tempting them to attack us in the first place. At one point, some locals even came to claim a motorcycle that was seized by Special Forces because it was used during an attack on one of their patrols. They got the bike back.



* By the time air support got there, the attackers had dispersed and "disappeared."