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I'm trying to think of a circumstance which would justify the Presidents Secret Service opening fire with a Gatling gun from a moving vehicle and frankly, I'm not coming up with anything.
[ July 27, 2009, 04:07 AM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
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posted
A group of vehicles manages to close up on the President's convoy on the highway and people start firing from them. Or, a helicopter manages to get into the airspace above the President and people start firing from it.
These are very obvious scenarios, and I'm sure the secret service not only can imagine more, but has seen more in specific plans by people attempting to assassinate the President. How is the gatling gun not justified?
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quote:A group of vehicles manages to close up on the President's convoy on the highway and people start firing from them.
Except that the highway is always closed for several miles before and behind the Presidential motorcade so that this can't happen. If we are concerned about an air assault, a grenade launcher or SAM would be a lot more effective than a gatling gun and less likely to take out innocent bystanders. I'm still not coming up with any scenario which would justify the SS opeing fire with Gatling gun from a moving vehicle.
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posted
That the highways is always closed for miles around the President is an assumption that is not always true. Furthermore, the SS's job is not to protect the President in all cases where their other precautions hold, but in all cases.
And if you think you're more qualified than the secret service to determine what armament will provide the secret service the most versatility in protecting the President from danger in plausible scenarios, I think you need to seriously re-evaluate your estimation of yourself.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I'm still not coming up with any scenario which would justify the SS opeing fire with Gatling gun from a moving vehicle.
You're obviously not trying very hard. And anyway, why would you suppose the secret service would refuse to do things based on their own lack of imagination- you plan for the worst, and the worst would be unexpected. We don't all have to be security experts here, but don't kid yourself about what you consider to be safe, and what the President may actually one day need.
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posted
The rounds in that thing are 20mm depleted uranium and fire at a rate of 3000 per minute. The Navy uses it to shoot down missiles on the R2D2 (slang) or Phalanx system. Maybe it's in the hope to shoot down an incoming RPG or to shred anyone who thinks they could get close in a tank or armored vehicle. Nothing will get past that (maybe the missile since manually controlled) but if you had a tank, no chance. In a foreign country, they could have a tank or rpg. It can be used on personnel, vehicles, aircraft and with it's rate of fire has a chance of taking out a missile. A sniper behind a brick wall is hamburger, the wall doesn't stand a chance. Good multipurpose defense system. One problem, overheats in less than a minute.
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I'm still not coming up with any scenario which would justify the SS opeing fire with Gatling gun from a moving vehicle.
You're obviously not trying very hard. And anyway, why would you suppose the secret service would refuse to do things based on their own lack of imagination- you plan for the worst, and the worst would be unexpected. We don't all have to be security experts here, but don't kid yourself about what you consider to be safe, and what the President may actually one day need.
By that logic, the president should have no less than a live nuclear warhead in the vehicle in case some alien race attempts to kidnap him/her.
OK OK I know you weren't actually saying that, it just felt alittle like you were saying better to have bigger weapons than you actually need than ones that are not up to the job. I think excessive force in some cases can be worse than not enough.
I think The Rabbit is merely trying to brainstorm a solid scenario where a Gatling gun is the absolute best tool to respond.
I think the helicopter scenario so far is the best one. A SAM launcher would be pretty good against a helicopter, but what if you faced a combination of helicopter and people in cars with guns. A Gatlin gun would be able to deal with both threats quite efficiently, whereas as a SAM could do nothing against a car filled with gunmen.
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posted
Since the invasion of Afghanistan the system has been adopted by the US Army and mounted on vehicles and installed in bases. The 50 cal rifle is man carried @ 12.7mm and you are suggesting that an armored vehicle cant handle a 20mm round? If a human can shoot 12.7mm, an up-armored suv mounted 20mm is not a problem. By the way, I have a 7.62mm and I can squeeze off hundreds of rounds against my shoulder without a problem.
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quote:By that logic, the president should have no less than a live nuclear warhead in the vehicle in case some alien race attempts to kidnap him/her.
He doesn't??? What the hell am I paying all these taxes for then?!?
Why do they have a Gatling gun? Because they CAN!
It's a hell of a visible deterrent. It's a big, scary, loud behemoth of a gun that fires about a hundred POUNDS of ammo in eight seconds. I remember seeing that exact gun in the Mythbusters "fish in a barrel" segment, where it essentially vaporized the barrel after about 5-10 seconds of sustained fire.
Grenades and SAM launchers are, believe it or not, a lot less accurate. The spray cone of a Gatling is huge I admit, but it doesn't compare to the arc/ballistic trajectory of grenades or the SAM's (in)ability to pick whatever target it feels like.
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Technically, according to the Geneva Conventions, a weapon of that size cannot be used on personnel. Loophole is, if the person happens to be in a vehicle, you can use it against a vehicle. Posts: 1495 | Registered: Mar 2009
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posted
Also, people attempting to assassinate the President are not protected by the Geneva Conventions.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Also, people attempting to assassinate the President are not protected by the Geneva Conventions.
Neither are terrorists.....funny. American left sure likes to site them on their behalf. Shut down Gitmo although it's better than US prisons or living in China....
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Also, people attempting to assassinate the President are not protected by the Geneva Conventions.
Neither are terrorists.....funny. American left sure likes to site them on their behalf. Shut down Gitmo although it's better than US prisons or living in China....
Funny, the article explicitly states that these men were never convicted and that the justice department decided that they are not "enemy combatants."
I'm not sure why my sympathy does not lie with the government who kidnapped them, locked them up, tortured them, and then whines about how hard it is to find homes for them.
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Blayne Bradley
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posted
Bullet proof vest at inauguration it seems.
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Also, people attempting to assassinate the President are not protected by the Geneva Conventions.
Neither are terrorists.....funny. American left sure likes to site them on their behalf.
If you don't understand the difference between Gitmo and Presidential security, then you're a little beyond reason. Besides, the geneva conventions have not been the key argument against Gitmo since it's been made clear that is a losing issue- the inhumanity of false imprisonment and torture (and I really don't care what you have to say in response to that, so don't bother) has been the argument, and it's one beyond any actual laws.
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quote:If you don't understand the difference between Gitmo and Presidential security, then you're a little beyond reason.
Well for one, anyone trying to assinate the President on US soil would be protected by the US constitution and US criminal law which guarantee rights considerably above and beyond those guaranteed under the Geneva convention. I presume that anyone attempting to assinate the US President on foreign soil would be protect by the constitution and criminal statutes of that country along with international agreements regarding extradition.
The Bush administration tried to argue that terrorists weren't protected by either the US constitution and laws or the Geneva convention. They tried to claim that terrorist fell into a loop hole and so weren't protected by any laws whatsoever. The courts disagreed.
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posted
Of course, the Geneva Conventions aren't just about rights, they're also about the ways it is acceptable to wage war. For instance, the prohibition on using machine guns of that caliber for the purpose of killing people.
They also make it explicitly clear that those directly and unequivocally breaking certain of the rules of war (such as by using assassination) are not protected by certain of the other provisions. Shooting with such a machine gun someone attempting to assassinate the President is, with complete certainty, not a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and doesn't really have anything to do with rights (just as that part of the Geneva Conventions isn't about rights).
Also, while the Bush administration reached too far, that isn't a correct characterization of its position. For instance, certain terrorists (those with US citizenship) were acknowledge to have some minimal due process rights by them before any courts intervened. The courts did give them rights beyond what the administration wanted to, but they didn't argue for the absence of rights. Heck, even with non-citizen terrorists the Bush administration held they had rights with regard to how they were imprisoned, just not rights to much in the way of due process.
Argue against the positions of the Bush administration that were unconscionable, sure, but argue honestly and in a way based on the facts.
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posted
I think what the anti-Gatling Gun gang is worried about, but haven't mentioned explicitly, is the temptation to use this weapon to disperse protesters--as in disperse their various atoms into different parts of the surrounding landscape.
While there may be Politicians who would do so, and Presidents who would consider it, and even a few trigger happy secret service agents willing to accept the order to fire, I don't fear it happening any time soon.
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They would be covered by law....the one that allows you to kill someone for doing it.
I hate that crap, and hated W, but I'd shoot someone aiming at any President (including W when in office) in a heartbeat.
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posted
Why is it unacceptable to, in a war, shred people with a large gatling gun? I mean, you're shooting people anyway. I'd much rather go up in a pink mist than be gut shot and left to die over a period of hours. And is it somehow more humane than blowing someone up with a bomb or even a grenade?
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: Why is it unacceptable to, in a war, shred people with a large gatling gun? I mean, you're shooting people anyway. I'd much rather go up in a pink mist than be gut shot and left to die over a period of hours. And is it somehow more humane than blowing someone up with a bomb or even a grenade?
I remember reading that one of the contenders for the first machine gun had round bullets and mini pyramidal bullets. Round for Christians, triangular for Moors. The round ones were considered more humane.
Seems the ethics of machine gun fire have been debated for centuries.
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quote:Seems the ethics of machine gun fire have been debated for centuries.
As have the ethics of war and weapon usage as a whole.
When the crossbow that could pierce steel armor was first introduced, many people said that it was such a horrifying weapon that it would certainly end war.
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Rabbit: While nukes haven't ended war, there hasn't been a nuclear war in 64 years. (uh... *knock on wood*)
And I can see how the nobles (pretty much the only ones who got the *good* armor) might be dissuaded from going to war when they could actually get hurt now. Too bad it didn't work.
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quote:While nukes haven't ended war, there hasn't been a nuclear war in 64 years. (uh... *knock on wood*)
Thank God, but its also worth noting that the US has been involved in armed conflict somewhere on the planet nearly every one of those 64 years.
quote:And I can see how the nobles (pretty much the only ones who got the *good* armor) might be dissuaded from going to war when they could actually get hurt now. Too bad it didn't work.
I don't think there is any doubt that weapons that reduced the effectiveness of armor, dissuaded nobles from going into combat. It just didn't dissuade them from sending other people in to combat while they directed the battle from the rear.
In response to new weapons systems, leaders change the rules of engagement but they have never yet stopped engaging in wars.
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