Roger, I know that those incidents are interpreted as confiscatory raids, but the point I was trying to make is that the officials who made the decisions did so not because of the weapons alone but because the weapon owners had drawn the attention of authorities (ATF, FBI, police) because their political or religious activities, combined with their arsenals, was interpreted as being threatening to the community. I believe all three agencies were guilty of murder in the assaults--but I don't think that the events mean that the black helicopters are coming after gun owners in general, particularly those whose guns are registered.

And Don, thanks for the description of the .50 caliber rifle (is it the same ammo as used by .50 caliber machine guns? --as I recall, .50 caliber machine gun rounds look like .30 caliber (.30-'06) rounds on steroids: the shell has a powder chamber about twice the diameter of the slug. And if someone were to use such a weapon in home defense, the bullet could blast its way through a couple of dozen wood frame houses and the people in them, and the recoil could break the arms of the user who fired it from waist level.)

caliber is a measure of the barrel--and bullet--diameter, right? And is a percentage of an inch? I'm just making an informed guess, here. A .45 caliber bullet is just under half an inch in diameter, a .50 would be a half inch. The guess is informed because I've handled all the shells except the .50--which I have seen close-up, qualified on M-1, scored Sharpshooter the first and only time I fired the .45 for qualification; fired a .30 caliber machine gun in a combat simulation--all this was when I was in the California National Guard from 1949 to 1952.

But as I've said, my idea of home protection is a couple of very territorial Labradors. I don't want a gun in the house, I don't want to hunt, but I could enjoy target shooting (I enjoyed it with my son--as did my brother-in-law from Japan, where they are tightly controlled). --seed