THE SNIPER RIFLE OF “THE AMERICAN”
Agent 2257 is having her big day off and is sitting in a upper class hotel lobby waiting for her husband to arrive. Their big plan for the day is to visit the sights of New York City and have a romantic dinner by the river. On the television set is the news that the King of Tsavana, the richest and most powerful country in Africa, is visiting to meet with foreign heads of state to discuss the recent civil war in the neighboring country of Zunbara. Agent 2257 could care less about the news story, but she does hear about the threats made by Zunbara’s so-called President, a man who seized power in a military coup, against the King for sticking his nose where it does not belong.
Not far away the door to the lobby opens, and three men dressed in construction clothing enter. They walk over to the front desk, and the one carrying a large backpack speaks to the man behind the counter. Agent 2257 looks over and immediately recognizes the man with the backpack.
It was The Ferret, a professional assassin wanted in half the nations of the world. The other half tend to be the countries that hire him.
The man at the desk tells the men that the rooms under reconstruction are on the tenth floor and points at the elevator down the hall and around a corner. As the three men walk toward the elevator, the one called The Ferret notices Agent 2257 get up and recognizes her from a failed attempt were she and other government agents chased him through an entire city. He whispers to the two hired thugs he had brought with him for backup as they turn a corner.
Agent 2257 manages to duck underneath, and the fist hits a wall. As the first thug backs away shouting in pain, the other thug emerges and tries to tackle her. She manages to dodge to the side, but accidently drops her phone, and it breaks on the floor. She backs away and prepares herself for the fight she is in for as the two thugs come at her.
Meanwhile, at the top of the hotel, The Ferret walks over to the ledge, pulls out a pair of binoculars and examines the back of another hotel. There he sees a group of men in black suits standing around waiting for something. This is how the king is going to leave the hotel for the United Nations. Quickly, The Ferret puts his backpack down and opens it. Slowly, he pulls out different gun parts. He starts to put the gun together. It is a strange sniper rifle that The Ferret had customized himself. He screws the barrel into the receiver and attaches the buttstock with two pins. He adds the armguard, the rifle scope and the silencer, then loads the rifle with a magazine. He then looks through the rifle scope toward the group of agents.
Slowly, a convoy of black SUVs pulls up to the back of the hotel, and the back door opens. Another group of agents emerge, leading the King of Tsavana, his wife and his two sons. The Ferret quickly places the crosshairs right on the King and switches the safety off.
That is when The Ferret hears the sound of someone running behind him. Quickly, he turns around and tries to shoot the person behind him. It is Agent 2257. She has managed to defeat the two thugs in the lobby and force one of them to tell her to which floor The Ferret had gone. She is only a few feet away when The Ferret turns around. Quickly, Agent 2257 drops down under the rifle just as it fired, then jumps up and delivered a solid punch to his face. This threw The Ferret backward, and he stumbles on the edge of the roof, dropping the rifle in the process. He falls over the side and descends down the side of the building, screaming all the way down. His screams end soon just as Agent 2257 steps close to the edge and looks down. The Ferret had hit a large truck when he reached the bottom.
Agent 2257 turns around and quickly spotted the binoculars on the ground. She picks them up and uses them to look at the hotel opposite her. She spots the convoy across the street and realize the target was someone in there. She then turned and looked at the gun on the floor, picked it up and studied it. She had always liked firearms and this one immediately appealed to her. She then picks up the backpack and walks toward the door leaving the roof, carrying the rifle under her arm and hoping that she can somehow still have a good day with her husband.
RUGER MINI-14
The “Takedown Rifle” he builds is interesting, and it ismovie magic from the sorcerers at Bapty, Ltd in London, England.
In this issue of SADJ, we have a takedown rifle called the Paratus. In the movie “The American,” George Clooney plays an international assassin and gunsmith who is hired to make a weapon for another assassin. He basically takes a Ruger Mini-14 and customizes it to shoot accurately, at further ranges. He also creates a suppressor for the gun, made out of car parts.
The Ruger Mini-14 was designed in 1973 by William B. Ruger and L. James Sullivan (from the AR15, Stoner 63 and Ultimax 100 fame). While it is nowhere near as good a firearm as the AK-47 or the M16, it is inexpensive, reliable and a popular rifle with private gun owners. There are many variants of the rifle, including the common Ranch Rifle, the Mini Thirty and the AC-556. Though it looks a little bit like the M14 Rifle, they are actually quite different.
George Clooney has few fans in the gun community because of his politics, but there doesn’t seem to be an anti-gun message in the movie itself. However, there are a few mistakes made in the movie when it comes to guns. One mistake is when he is talking about the gun’s muzzle velocity and he says it shoots 360 miles per hour. Anyone who knows anything about guns will know that the muzzle velocity is measured in feet per second. And if it did travel at that speed, it would be one slow bullet, traveling at only 528 feet per second. The actual muzzle velocity of the 5.56×45 mm round fired in the Ruger Mini 14 is 3240 feet per second. Something else they got wrong is the difference between silencers and suppressors. Basically, there is no real “Silencer,” just a difference in names. Silencers, suppressors, sound suppressor and even mufflers all mean the same object.
As for the movie “The American,” it is like a conversation with a stranger telling a story on a train that goes on forever. There are interesting parts, but in my opinion, it is mostly boring and goes on far too long. The trailers for this movie hinted that it was an action film, but it is far more art than anything else. I personally like movies that are fun and action packed, so I may be missing something. George Clooney does do a good job as the character he plays, and the scenery of the Italian town he was in is nice, but it doesn’t help the pace of the film, especially when some scenes go on far longer than they need to.
