Here's the honest-to-god headline from the New York Daily News:
Sarah Palin honored by NRA
with special Alaska-themed assault rifle
The NRA plans to present Palin with the moose hunter at a banquet on May 14.
The all-white "Alaskan Hunter" - fashionable until Labor Day - is the civilian version of a modified M-4 rifle carried by U.S. troops overseas . . .
It's engraved with Palin's name and adorned with a map of the state on the collapsible stock - made legal after the expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004. The Big Dipper from the state flag is etched on the magazine well behind a vented barrel guard . . .
Templar gun designer Bob Reynolds told the NRA's magazine that Palin had stood up for Second Amendment gun rights and "I just wanted to do something to give back."
Realizing that the piddling .22-caliber ammo used in the military M4 was hardly the stuff of which Maverickitude is made, the Alaskan Hunter packs a .50-caliber punch - the same caliber as the highly lethal Barrett M107 rifles used by U.S. military snipers in the mountains of Afghanistan and, one presumes, equally useful whether sighting off the rolling fantail of a Navy destroyer, or from a wolf-pursuing helicopter.
Putin's head has been warned.
Update [2009-5-5 2:44:1 by occams hatchet]: I have been duly taken to task in the comments by several astute Kossacks, many of whom I admire greatly, for what they read as my implication of an equivalency between the .50-caliber round fired by Sarah's Alaskan Hunter and the .50-caliber round fired by the Browning M107 sniper rifle. To be clear: the two rounds are nowhere near equivalent. The sniper round - the classic ".50-caliber" round that most people (if they have any conception at all of such things) picture is much more substantial than the .50-caliber "Beowulf" round that Sarah's Alaskan Hunter will fire. Here's a shot showing the .50-caliber "Beowulf" round, compared to the standard .223-caliber round used in the M4 (the Beowulf is on the far right; the .223 is on the far left):
The .50 caliber represents the diameter of the projectile that comes out of the barrel of the gun; ".50 caliber" means the projectile is .50 inch in diameter. It has nothing to do with the overall size of the bullet assembly in total, which includes the propellant (powder) and the casing that houses the whole shebang. Different rounds with the same caliber can have very different characteristics, primarily due to the amount of propellant (which affects the velocity at which the projectile leaves the barrel) and the total mass of the projectile (a slug that is, for instance, twice as long as another will have about twice the mass of that other, and hence more "punch").
So, all that being said - below is a photo showing, among others, a standard .223 round - same one from the above photo (4th from left below), and a Browning Machine Gun .50 caliber round (laying in the foreground):
The difference is obvious.
After all that, a reminder: This diary was intended as a gentle chiding of Sarah Palin in particular and certain gun nuts in general. The fact that the .50-caliber round fired by Sarah Palin's special-issue assault rifle is not the same as the .50-caliber round fired by the Barrett M107 is pretty much beside the point - but it is still a .50-caliber round.
And - and I mean this sincerely - thanks for the well-informed feedback.