Weapon of Mass Destruction

I still remember the day I met Sarah. I recall the very moment my eyes first captured a glimpse of her. Having no way of knowing how much she would come to mean to me or how she would change my life, it wasn’t long before I affectionately referred to her as “The Mrs.” or “the Old Ball and Chain.” Every day I woke up with a smile, eager to show her off to my friends who’d undoubtedly never seen her rival. Amongst their flurry of questions, though never the first, always one would emerge. They wanted to know why I named my gun Sarah. I’d always smile in reply and answer, “Because nobody doesn’t like Sarah Lee.”

The truth however is not so simple. As with any lady of immense reputation, Sarah has become an object of desire and jealousy, excitement and fear, love and loathing. She’s not your average firearm. She’s no ordinary weapon. She’s big. To be more precise, she’s chambered in the fifty BMG (Browning Machine Gun) caliber and as a Barrett 82A1, to many she defines combat-proven sniping capability. Legendary fails as a word to describe both the amazing capacity of the BMG and the myths that have formed around it.

Uniqueness surrounds the BMG more so than the flocks of admirers at the firing range. Sarah’s beauty is enticing, but she is so much more. Recreational shooters love the BMG not just for the extended range and wind resistance. There’s something indescribably awesome about it. Rounds of ammunition aren’t merely fired off; they’re detonated. A visible concussion wave radiates from the rifle’s muzzle and, in my experience, forces a smile onto all of the faces within the blast radius. Though poets’ song and artists’ brush may strive to tell of bliss, one need only pull the trigger to know how close he is.

The BMG reigns as the king of cartridges. In the decades following its development, several “ballistically superior” rounds have been created and used. A bullet is said to be better for having a greater ability to preserve its own kinetic energy over long distances. The four sixteen is faster. The four o eight possesses less recoil and a flatter trajectory. Snipers’ appreciations for these rounds threaten to dethrone the king, but neither will ever have the sheer stopping power provided by the BMG. It was developed primarily as an anti-material weapon, purpose built for puncturing tanks, stopping trucks, and destroying targets on the opposite side of barricades. No other bullet has been mass-manufactured with an equally large variety of tactical options including: armor-piercing, incendiary, tracer, and even explosive rounds. Long live the king.

The fifty caliber’s power gave rise to the notion that a near miss could still kill its target. Some claim the resulting shockwave from the bullet can tear an ear off. Other people even imagined it taking an arm. The myth is entirely ridiculous, but the fact that people haven’t only believed it, but spread it, proves how much respect it has. The only reasonable origin for the lore comes from Vietnam. Given the scarcity of BMG ammo for the machine guns, commanders told their soldiers not to engage soft targets with the fifty calibers. People assume a lot of things and dying from a gut-wrenching shockwave is an inhumane manner to conduct war. Despite all of the unjustified hype surrounding the giant cartridge, from time to time I’ve taken to saying it’s a hard cartridge to underestimate.

            Just a number of months ago, I walked into a friend’s house and was immediately asked, “How was the range?”

            I replied, “It was awesome! I started a fire!” Of course I regarded the statements to be as separate as they were true. I’d only shot three tracer rounds that day, but I guess it was enough. The unexplained and fascinating part was the fire’s location. It was significantly to the right of my target and behind the berm I was shooting into, unable to be seen when it started. Luckily it could be seen from a road in the distance. A couple individuals charged up the firing range in a truck to combat the flames and scold the fool who made them.

            Not two years earlier, Sarah’s first real target, her first victim was a tree in Washington’s Tahuya State Forest. Before I fired that first bullet, I wasn’t certain if I would be able to see where it impacted. I was throwing out armor-piercing incendiary, tracers because they were the cheapest things I could find. I’d only recently placed a scope on the rifle and I couldn’t even know where the bullet was destined to land. The tree stood only a hundred yards away and at sixteen inches in diameter, it couldn’t have known what was to come next. Not only did every impact appear perfectly visible, many hits resulted in chunks of wood flying out the other side. The tree didn’t stand a chance. As I heard it start to crack and buckle under its own weight, I lost my composure and forgot my military reserve. I shouted excitedly and threw my hands up, watching more than forty feet of tree come crashing down. I approached the tree afterward for the first time and stood atop it, victoriously.

Only weeks before my lumberjacking career, I fired Sarah for the first time. She didn’t even have a scope, but I couldn’t wait. I’d anticipated the moment for longer than I could remember, seeing images of her brothers and sisters in old war movies from my childhood. I carefully assembled the gun. I filled the magazine with each of the five dollar rounds I owned. Flipping up the iron sights, I looked down the barrel intently for the first time at a target. My hands trembled slightly, but I tried to hide it from my two friends who were equally eager. Slowly I exhaled and pulled the trigger…

The safety was still on. I flicked it up and took aim again. I focused on my breathing and tried to keep recoil out of my mind. Just as I’d always been taught I slowly squeezed the trigger.

Click. I forgot to chamber a round. I reached up and pulled back on the charging handle and then I pushed it forward again. Embarrassed, I only glanced at my friends, less able to cover my second mistake. Once more I lined up the shot, steadied my nerves, and tensed my finger. I fought my instinct to close my eyes and concentrated on the target.

Click. “Oh, come on!” Evidently the charging handle hadn’t gone all the way forward. The daylight was dying. I couldn’t forgive myself three times. I found the problem, fixed it, sat down, stopped caring about the target, pointed down range, checked the safety, shouldered the gun, and hurriedly pulled the trigger.

Boom! Then and there I realized a lifelong dream. I felt the wave of power that could never hope to be mimicked. In that instant, I’d become a very dangerous man. Although I took a slightly greater degree of caution in my aiming, I quickly discovered I sucked with iron sights. After a few more awesome pulls of the trigger, it occurred to me how dangerous I was. I’d heard ricochets before, but not like that. The sound itself was as loud as it seemed comical, like a sound effect in the old cartoons I watched. Nonetheless, I didn’t find it funny. My heart and breath stopped. I stared out into the darkening field, but I wasn’t looking at anything I was listening and hoping to God the next sound wouldn’t be a scream.

            After a few seconds of complete silence, I managed to let my breath go. My heart started in turn. I took a moment to look around, not moving nearly as fast as I had before. Sarah had given her one and only warning. As always she spoke in tones louder than words. It almost always surprised people that to buy and own such a powerful gun there weren’t any special restrictions. I was twenty-one, three years older than the minimum age required by law. For the first time I stopped to wonder if maybe I was still too young, too inexperienced.