« New pro-gun blog | Main | Machine gun captured by Sgt. York may be destroyed »
Unusual result at a "gun buy-back"
These can generate enough problems (stolen guns, NFA guns, etc. turned in), but have the benefit of letting shooters get $50-100 for all the broken klunkers in their closets. But one program in Florida was surprised when a guy turned in a ground-to-air missile launcher.
(It's not clear from the story whether it was live, with missile, or not, but the statement that he'd tried to ditch it at dumps and was turned down suggests that maybe it was. In accord with the announcement that no questions would be asked, he got his sneakers and left).
9 Comments | Leave a comment
Looked like an ammo tube to me, in which case some chuckling guy just made $47 off some gullible cops.
It is a TOW missle container. It is military surplus.
TOW missiles are not launched from the shoulder (you might be thinking Javelin). Tube launched, Optically Guided, Wire Commanded missiles require an operator to visually direct the missile. You couldn't launch it, put down the tube, then steer it.
I worked on TOW systems on Cobra helicopters (AH-1W) when I was in the Marines.
And no, the guy didn't make $47 off a gullible cop, he made off with $47 worth of my tax money.
It's not a ground-to-air-missile launcher. It's not a ground-to-air missile. It's not any sort of missile launcher. It's not any sort of missile.
What it is, is the transportation cannister for a TOW missile. In other words, it's an empty metal tube.
The cops just bought an empty metal tube with fifty tax dollars.
P.S. Your 'questionable content' filter just blocked my post, and informed me that "Your comment was denied for questionable content. Comment spams blocked at last count totally 103,000, and we have set filters to block (a) comments to older posts or (b) comments with too many urls. If you are a real commenter and not a robot, just"
Yes, that's right. It just stopped abrubtly instead of saying anything after "just..." You might want to fix that.
No controls, not optics, etc. was a transport tube.. but hey some reporters and police had an orgasm over it, so I guess it worth nearly 50 bucks if you're into that sort of thing.
It appears to be an anti-tank tube casing that the TOW missile is loaded into the launcher. Once fired you throw away the tube. When I saw a picture of it, well you know the media wouldn't know squat about military stuff. They call semi-autos . . . automatic. . . nuff said.
Dang! $47! Why don't they have these buy-back things where I live?
Its just a part of the whole tax-and-spend liberal syndrome. I don't want these kind of favors. I just want to opt out of the whole swindle and keep my own money in my own family, thank you very much!
From what I've been able to tell, it looked like a surface to surface launcher. But then again, I read today that one gun buyback program netted handguns in both 32mm and 22mm (And I thought the Smith and Wesson 500 was impressive!).
Journalists use words that sound better but tend to have no bearing on the reality of the situation. That's why I have a hard time believing Penny's is having a sale if I read it in the paper.