By Kevin Wilson
Tennessee has recently announced the adoption of the M82 Barrett as its state firearm.
This is awesome. This is unbelievably awesome. The Barrett is synonymous with badass in the firearms world. It’s literally legendary. There are so many tall tales and “no shit, there I was” stories about the thing that it’s hard to separate the truth from the unicorn poop, but none of that matters because holy shit this thing is awesome. 
Unless, of course, you think firearms are the devil, in which case, it’s not awesome. The Violence Policy Center, an anti-fun gun organization that’s described as “a gun safety group” has released a no-shit 48 page document on why the Barrett is evil. No, seriously, you’ve gotta read this thing. It reads like a cross between a finance report and a Dan Brown novel, only with slightly less credibility.
To be fair, it spends as much time ranting about the dangers of the .50 BMG as it does the Barrett, but the message is simple: the Barrett and weapons like it are gonna murder everyone you ever loved, burn them to ash, salt the ashes, and spread the ashes to the four corners of the Shadow Realm where they’ll be used as currency by the Old Ones.
By the end of the report, I half expected it to devolve into Doctor Seuss style rhymes.
You can mount it on a truck
You can mount it on a duck
You can hide it in a tree
You can hide it in the sea
I do not like this .50 cal
I do not want it here or now
It’s really evil, can’t you see?
Why will nobody listen to me?
It’s almost sad the level of desperation. They source every panicked news article and crackpot “expert” they can find. No shit, there’s even a part where they refer to the .50 BMG as a “missile.” Jeb Bush wasn’t this desperate when he had to beg his audience for applause.
Of course, Tennessee gives not one single solitary fuck. The fucks they don’t give could singlehandedly save the pandas from extinction. They’ve got a statewide hard on for the Barrett, and they’re not the first.
They’re also not the first state to decide that they need a state firearm, either.
That trend started in 2011, when Utah chose the M1911 as their state firearm. Since then, several other states have followed suit. Arizona, for instance, went with the Colt Single Action Army, aka the gun that won the West, if you ignore the Model 1873 Winchester. Pennsylvania, unsurprisingly, adopted the Pennsylvania Long Rifle, the predecessor of the Kentucky Long Rifle, and one of the most important weapons in American history.
Given the current push by the media and certain sectors of the government to have any and all gun and gun related fun branded as dangerous and deviant (won’t someone think of the children?), it’s encouraging to see states embracing that part of their history. Like it or not, firearms have been an extremely important part of our nation’s history. 
When we wanted independence from Great Britain, we may have started with a strongly worded letter, but we backed that letter up with force of arms. Folks from other countries look at us funny for our love affair with firearms, but they’re literally ingrained into the fabric of our government. An armed and trained populace is the final line of defense against tyranny.
What Tennessee and six other states have done is embrace that part of their history. They’ve taken that history and made it into a state symbol. For Tennessee, the Barrett is not only iconic, it’s probably their greatest single contribution to American military history since Alvin York. Its use has enabled soldiers the world over to reach out and touch the bad guys before they even knew they were being shot at.
The fact that they’ve said to hell with the bullshit and the fear mongering is commendable. We live in a world that expects us to apologize for the things that make our nation great. Adopting the Barrett as the Tennessee state rifle is a giant middle finger to all those simpering nitwits who would have us believe that our history with firearms is evil, and I can’t think of anything more Unapologetically American.
The post Tennessee and .50 cal Rifles appeared first on Unapologetically American.