Roy Exum: Our Official State Rifle

  • Saturday, September 24, 2016
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

There was a noticeable crowd of free-thinkers who ran around like so many “Chicken Littles” back in February when “the hicks” in the state legislature named a gun that is made only in Tennessee as the Official State Rifle. As we seem to always find out afterwards, the goofs who are quick to make such liberal racket have no earthy concept of reality or purpose.

In the tiny town of Christiana, Tn., which is 11 miles south of Murfreesboro via Shelbyville Pike, the world’s most lethal sniper rifle is made. The 30-pound rifle fires a 50-caliber bullet and I know a guy, really well, who was an Army Ranger and an eye-witness to a successful shot by a Canadian sniper. The guy hit his target within an inch of his aim from a mile and a half away with a Barrett.

Now another Barrett is in the news. Sometime last week, at a small village close to the town of Raqqa in northern Syria, a team of British SAS (that’s “Special Air Services” … think our Rangers or SEALs) was about a mile away as they watched one of the most-famous of all ISIS executioners get ready to do his wretched business with a flame-thrower.

That’s right, it’s a World War II German device that sprays a mixture of boiling tar and flaming gasoline on its victims. The ISIS executioner, who had been on several Special Forces’ kill-lists for a while due to his notorious and nauseating techniques, had 12 victims either in cages or staked to the ground. He was said to pride himself on how long he could torture somebody with the flame-thrower as the other victims were forced to watch. The SAS boys knew the jerk was on the kill list and it was good-to-go.

What no one knows is why the world’s Christian nations haven’t exterminated the entire Islamic State for moral, ethical, and humanitarian reasons alone. The Chicken Littles who laugh about our Official State Rifle seem to have an inkling. But when they seek peaceful recourse with hideous monsters who clamor for world-wide publicity for burning Christians alive, any answers they may offer proves mental dysfunction and woeful threats to our gene pool.

The ISIS torturer made some rambling talk over a megaphone to others forced at gunpoint to watch and, as he then strapped the flame thrower on his back, three assistant torturers got the film cameras ready for the ensuing propaganda materials. At that precise second the SAS pocket computer showed the target at 1,500 meters (nine-tenths of a mile.)

The projectile hit the back of the flame-thrower perfectly, making its wearer become an integral part of a huge fireball, and the ensuing mess just as promptly killed assistant evil No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3. Special forces teams from the United States and Britain immediately freed the eight men and four women, all who were unhurt, and escorted them not just to safety but back to life.

That is what a Barrett rifle does. It stops evil. Several weeks ago, also in Syria, another special-forces team got a tip that a car carrying a huge bomb was en route to an area where over 1,000 civilians would be killed by such a blast. So about a mile from where the car was speeding down a road, a sniper with a Barrett shot the driver through the brain and the bullet then went across the front seat, lodging very fatally in the neck of evil passenger No. 1.

Today every major nation in the world uses the Barrett sniper rifle except for California. The legislature banned the guns so Ronnie Barrett, the owner, immediately sent word to all law enforcement in California he was banning them from ordering any.

Ronnie is easily one of Tennessee’s most profound citizens and greatest modern-day heroes. When he graduated from Murfreesboro High School, he opened a photography studio at age 18. About 10 years later, he took a picture of a touring gun boat on Stone’s River up near Nashville and got intrigued by the .50-caliber guns mounted in the bow.

So he got some paper and sketched out a gun. I am serious. Not 30 years old, the rascal wandered around Murfreesboro hunting a machine shop and was told he was nuts, that if his idea would work people a lot smarter than a “high school picture-taker” would have done it. So he hooked up with Bob Mitchell, a tool and die maker and machinist from Smyrna, and the two started working at nights in a one-car garage. Harry Watson, a sheet-metal fabricator, soon joined and in just four months the first Barrett was built.

Soon they had a batch of 30 and ran an ad in the Shotgun News. The guns sold quickly. But when the Irish Republican Army got its mitts on some Barretts, that’s when the military experts perked up their ears. Said an IRA sniper, “What’s special about the Barrett is the huge kinetic energy … The bullet can just walk through a flak jacket. South Armagh was the prime place to use such a weapon because of the availability of Brits. They came to dread it … that was part of its effectiveness.”

In the first Gulf War, it was quickly learned one shot from a Barrett could disable an Iraqi armored personnel carrier from over a mile away and now over 50 of the top military organizations around the world are stocked with Barretts. In 2005 the U.S. Army declared the Barrett one of the Top Ten Inventions and today there are a number of different models and calibers being produced in tiny Christiana, Tn.

How about this? In the last 100 years the U.S. forces have used guns designed by just seven people and Ronnie Barrett, educated last at Murfreesboro High School who sketched free-hand what his gun should look like, is the only one of the group to create, manufacture, market and mass-produce his firearm for the United States government, all in Tennessee.

How can anyone not get a bang out of that, especially those 12 in Syria who saw that flame-thrower go up with the flamer? If you ever get the chance, ask any one of them about Tennessee hillbillies and their rifle. Not one will laugh.

* * *

YOU WANT A BARRETT? No problem, they are easily obtainable all over the Internet. Smaller bores start around $1,500 but the .50-caliber, really tweaked up, runs about $9,000 new. You’ll want a BORS system optic ($1,500) that snaps over a Leupold Mark 4 MR/T scope ($1,800). A box of 10 .50-caliber rounds goes for around $75. That’s all it takes to reach out and touch evil. A good-quality Russian AK-47, an antique still favored by today’s SEALs because they never jam in sand or water, goes for between $200-$250 these days and is a nice accompaniment for up-close-and-personal tasking.

royexum@aol.com

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