Shooter (starring mark wahlberg) question
 

i was just looking at the list of guns used in the movie Shooter, starring mark Wahlberg and i noticed that the list is incomplete, you have listed every gun used in the movie, except the gun the whole movie is based around... the gun used to kill the arch bishop, and start the whole confrontation in the first place. it is shown as a remote controlled turret type weapon, Nick Memphis looks it up in a chat room then finds a website demonstrating the gun in the middle of the movie, but all i can catch is that the guy in the chat room calls it an "M-3" when i search that online, it brings me to results for regular rifles, not a tripod based remote control turrets, any ideas guys?
Also, a funny, off topic comment. "as the net begins to tighten nation wide, there is still no sign of Bob Lee Swagger" heh thought that news comment in the movie is hilarious, how can the net tighten with no signs of the suspect? (not an actual question, just something that makes me snicker every time i watch the movie. :-P )

The talk page says that it's a TRAP!

Yeah, the "M3" is the tripod that the rifle was attached to.

Well, that makes more sense, since they made that deduction based on a measurement of the tripod's foot spacing.
I assumed M3 referred to the aircraft version of the Browning M2.
(That version being remotely triggered. Like the kind of gun one might use to make a robosniper.)

Of course everyone else probably noticed this already, but the assassination shot was a .408 caliber bullet out of a .50 caliber rifle? Was the paper patch .046" thick?
Google: "The average sheet of 20lb copier paper is 0.0038 inches thick"

In the (superior, but also set in the early 90s) book, Swagger uses a Remington 700 .308 and the assassin used a Model 70 Bull Gun that's been rebarelled to .318 with a .10" paper patch. It makes alot more sense in that context. Incidentally in the book it's also heavily implied the same assassin used the same method to shoot Kennedy with .268 Carcano bullets patched to (I think) a .280 bore)

I supposed for the sake of argument in the movie they could have used a high pressure plastic sabot like a Savage 10ML muzzle loader (.452 pistol bullet in a .50 barrel propelled by smokeless shotgun powder) and had it make more sense, plus use some 2010s technology.

The problem with the whole patch idea though is that if the bullet was recovered and ballistics were done on it, it would be immediately apparent that it was inside a patch or sabot due to the nature of the markings left by the inside of the barrel, rendering the whole point of using the same bullet as the person you are trying to frame pointless.

Unless the Ram-Dyne guys also had an inside man in the New Orleans PD crime lab. Highly plausible given the fact that they had a SAC on the payroll in the novel.

If they had, then why bother firing the correct caliber bullet at all if you are just going to fake the ballistics report anyway.

Plausible deniability I suppose. And makes the case against Gunny Swagger that much more airtight.

If you had someone in the lab to game the results, you would just shoot them with a regular .308 and lie abut the ballistics though, there would be no need for the patching bollocks. In this situation using a patched bullet gains you nothing. The only possible reason you might do it would to be to create inconclusive ballistics that would not match any gun, but like I say you would be able to tell the bullet had been wrapped in a patch so hence not from the suspects gun.

I haven't read the book so I might be missing the point, what was the actual stated reason he did the patching, to make the bullet untraceable or what? A much better way of framing someone would be to use a highly expanding or frangible round so that no ballistics could be done on the bullet itself, and simply leave some shot brass from the person you want to frame's rifle. Ballistics examiners would be very lucky to get an individual match on a gun from the bullet anyway (normally they can only get it down to the make and model if that), but the markings on the used brass are much more likely to give a definite match, so this is where the "framing" should focus.