Taking the Plunge
Inimitable firearms luminary John Moses Browning originally created the .50 BMG (Browning machine gun) round to counter the barrage of balloons, aircraft and primitive armored vehicles on the battlefields of World War I. The original specifications came from General John “Black Jack” Pershing himself. The cartridge is simply a scaled up .30-06.
This massive round and the peerless Ma Deuce heavy machinegun firing it were apparently perfect. Despite several attempts we cannot seem to make anything better, even now in the Information Age. The same M2 Heavy Barrel still fights atop armored HUMVEEs and MRAP vehicles even today, more than a century after its inception.
I freely admit I drank the Kool-Aid. I scraped up my pennies for what seemed half a lifetime until I finally landed a Barrett M82A1 anti-materiel rifle of my own. I could imagine myself exploding engine blocks half a mile distant behind the same gun gracing such action flicks as The Accountant and Robocop.
I found a good deal on the gun on Gunbroker.
However, getting a good deal on a Lamborghini is still a crazy lot of money — once I actually bought this beast of a gun, I had to feed it.
Cheap ammo made from pulled GI components was $3 a round and grouped in a coffee can lid at 100 meters. What had I done? This insanely expensive rifle would clearly never perform a grid square away if it couldn’t print cloverleaves at a football field.
Then I ponied up for some match ammo and found the Barrett was indeed one tack-driving howitzer. The only problem was .50 BMG match ammo costs (no kidding!) $6 per round. It looked like my expensive new pile driver would be a wall hanger and little else — until RCBS saved the day.