Firearm Experts: Hollywood fact or fiction?

[TylerDurden]

The part about the .50 Cal being anti material is hooey and sounds like a gun control lobby.

Actually, according to the discovery channel, one of the main selling points of the .50 cal.

round is its potential for cost effective anti-material use. Why use a $700,000 precision

guided missle to destroy a SAM when you can use a single bullet. The .50 round could be

used to disable SAMs, radar, vehicles (Especially the "technicals" which are common in the

middle east and somalia. For those who don't know, the word "technical" refers to the pickup

trucks and cars mounted with machine guns or other armaments), etc. The main problem

with the barret .50 is its weight. It is pretty heavy for a field issue sniper rifle. Thats why

the .50 is being used more as a specialty weapon. They are working on trimming down the

weight, but the .50 AP is certainly a very potent anti-material round.

[drg]

He's not talking about that kind of zooming in, but about one moment looking at the whole figure of the target and a split second later looking at just his face...with NO movement by the shooter. This usually happens with FIXED power scopes on the big screen.

Well if it's not a literal zooming of the sight, what's the issue? It's just a stylistic device to highlight the character's point of attention, like any other zoom or pan. Yes it may be overdramatic, but certainly not unrealistic.

The writer did say "scopes are static" which implies that no scopes can zoom, rendering the entire zoom concept impossible. In fact in situations like in most movies, where the sniping is occurring at relatively short range, a variable-power scope has a greater chance of being employed.