Seems like uniformed, jack booted thugs with guard dogs from dept. of Homeland Insecurity should have arrested you as a spy from Canada! What did the Kinks say '...paranoia will destroy ya...'

Well the Coast Guard does have a little more on its plate these days than just rescuing leisure boaters in distress. Drug interdiction, vessel inspection, that sort of thing...

50mm machine gun? That would be a small cannon...

I *do* see a 7.62mm machine gun, however...

8^)

OK, smarty pants Mr. know-it-guy: I thought from my Hemingway that the 50 mm was this sort of "rat patrol" gun in the way that a transport truck was an "18 wheeler". <p>Is the "mm" being measured across the width of the bullet or the length? If the former, a 50 mm would be 5 centimeter or two inches across and 7.62 mm would be 7.62/10th of a centimetre or about 1/3 of an inch. That makes sense - so why did I think a WWII era front of small boat gun was a 50 mm?

So much for relying on dimly recollected <i>Rat Patrol</i> episodes or Hemingway's <i>Islands In The Stream</i> read over twenty hears ago: I should have said 50 cal. - which would still be wrong but is what I was really referencing.

Yep, the old Ma Deuce, SGT B's favorite toy - and one of mine.

I knew that you were after the .50 cal... but you've been tossing firecrackers in my living room of late - it seemed apropos to return the favor, with paintballs!

And caliber is measured as the diameter of the bore - from land to land, not groove to groove. Length of the round, as a function of diameter, *is* important in ballistics, just as it is in hull and airframe design.

Which is why different nations with different caliber rounds *still* tend to group in clusters - but that would be a whole, militant-reading post in this den of gentle leftwingery!

Hey - we are big fans of Nick Fury around here and, as you know comrade, there is a lot to be made of left-wing military stuff, of honouring in their sacrifices, and otherwise triggering day dreams of a past enemy of a past youth.