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Piracy and arming crews
The skipper of the not-hijacked Maersk Alabama testifies before the Senate, and agrees with Blue Dog Demo Sen. Jim Webb that crews should be armed against pirates. The chairman of his line loses control of his bladder while worrying that pirates might escalate, and a comment from a Navy vet suggests that four .50 M-2s would do a very nice job. I suspect four .50 Barretts would be adequate. A few API rounds and the average speedboat would either be sinking, aflame, or running to get out of range. Which would mean a lot of running. The only downside would be that the battle might last for multiple seconds, whereas with the Mah-deuce it'd be over in the first second.
Newsbusters notes that it's strange the NY Times refused to cover the story.
As to the pirates having the intellect to upgrade their equipment... they just attacked a French naval frigate, thinking it was a merchantman. Clue: a ship that has a gun turret fore and a helicopter aft is probably not a merchantman, and will probably get REALLY annoyed if you attack it with AKs, in small boats.
Hat tip to reader Don Hamrick...
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It seems the policy for dealing with pirates should be the 3 S's: Shoot, sink, shut up.
Piracy is one of the outlaw conditions that doesn't deserve legal protection: Thats why it's OUTLAW.
So Senator Kerry believes that we should be arming merchant vessels but disarming the American people on our own soil.
It will be interesting to see if the Obama administration is eager to make decisions based on scientific evidence WRT gun control/arming merchant ships...
Once it was clear they were the intended target of the attack, the French legally could have opened up with their 100mm deck gun for some easy target practice. Then again, they're French...
Frankly, a .50 BMG more than you need for effective defense against these guys, unless you feel like also having fun playing can opener at the waterline on the pirates' mother ship. Heck, two guys with some basic marksmanship training and semi-auto .308 M1As (or even 60-year old M1 Garands) would be more than adequate to dissuade pirates from attacking before they ever got inside the effective range of their 7.62x39 AKs (especially since none of these clowns have any marksmanship training and are bobbing around on a very unstable platform).
I suspect it wouldn't take more than a couple of successful armed defense incidents for the piracy problem to abate. The pirates are businessmen, not Jihadists who are eager to die for the glory of Allah. They just need the right extenal incentives to find a new line of work.
I am totally amazed that the French frigate didn't strike its colors and surrender. Must have been an immigrant crew on board the frigate to have acted so unFrench.
It would be far more cost effective to move a carrier group into the area and flatten the villages these guys come from. Call me callous, but it will work.
The west is going to a lot of expense to counter a bunch of third world thugs out to make a quick buck.
Cap them, their friends and their families, and soon they will stop coming.
Too bad we can't bomb them back into the Stone Age.
They're already there, Jim.
But they have a say in the UN....
Stupid criminals are one of the constants in the world, it seems. I would hope they feel lucky that they aren't fish food...