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Students of history with gunspertise will enjoy this one: TrackingPoint’s video imagining how the battle for the Alamo would’ve gone if the Texans had been equipped with a brace of their “fire and forget” semi-automatics. (OFWGs will remember the Saturday Night Live sketch where Napoleon rode along with Dan Akroyd in a B-52 bomber.) The thing about it is, technological advantages never last long on the battlefield. The enemy either finds an effective counter-measure or, as is the case with ISIS and native Americans, eventually gets its hands on the superior weapon(s) for itself. So the question is, what would have happened after Santa Anna’s troops had been decimated by the TrackingPoint rifles? Well, for the spoilsports amongst us.

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42 COMMENTS

  3. The problem with the Alamo defense was that they were outnumbered 10:1. If they needed an innovation in firearms it would have been a belt-fed machinegun, not some fancy tracking point.

    • Forget overuse – how about retiring this crap-baiting all caps crap altogether? To abuse another anachronistic term: “Newsflash:” Everything on the internet is BREAKING, all the time, forever, again, still. Amirite?

      • Or to put it in the words of TTAG’s Facebook post, “BREAKING: Again. Still.”

        The only thing breaking about this article is the laughter when they watch that video.

  7. I just went to Tracking Point’s website. It’s a pretty heavy duty POS. If they’re trying to sell $10,000 rifles, they might want to at least make sure their first page links work. I still can’t figure out exactly what these rifles supposedly do other than empty your pockets.

  9. Check out a novel by Harry Turtledove called Guns Of The South. It’s about a group of South African white supremacists who invent time travel, and return to the Confederacy with tons of AK-47s. Fun read, as are all of his “alternative history” stories.

    • There is a similar book I read a long time ago called Remember the Alamo by Kevin Randle and Robert Cornett where a group of modern mercenaries go back in time to defend the Alamo. Pretty good book

    • Custer could have taken Gatling guns with him on his march, but decided to leave them behind. Whether it would have made a difference in the outcome is debatable. Certainly the Sioux would have taken far more casualties.

  12. With Bowie and Crockett there, as well as many other frontiersmen, they didn’t need trackpoints. What they needed was semi-automatic rifles [they were too great craftsmen of marksmanship to use a select fire] and sufficient ammunition.

    • Yep, $20,000 would have bought a hell of a lot of plain jane ARs. I’m thinking 25 or so of those would have been a lot more effective than 2.

  16. I feel dumber for having watched that. At a price tag of 10k a rifle they could have paid for a better commercial.

    • You are of course assuming that anyone’s plunked down $10K for one yet.

      All kidding aside, Thefirearmblog had a good writeup on these last week. They really are all they are cracked up to be. Had one inexperienced person nailing moving targets at 850 yards. Once the production line winds up and the cost drops to something closer to $5K – $7.5K, these things are going to revolutionize military sniper work.

      The down side is that an optical scope with no battery required is always going to be more reliable in the long term. One thing I have not heard is whether you can still fire the gun if the batteries die or the tracking point scope takes a hit.

  17. The modern rifle would have outranged the Mexican”s artillery. The Mexicans would have had to move their troops so far back to get out of range that they could not have effectively laid siege to the Alamo. The Texians would have been free to come and go as they saw fit. If the Mexican troops had concentrated they would have taken unacceptable losses.

    The big question in the alternate history uverse is would the leadership in the Alamo have been capable of exploiting their advantage? Judging by the mistakes they made at the real Alamo I would say, no.

  18. So TrackingPoint is so stupid as to think it’d be more sensible to outfit 2 guys with their weapons vice 30 guys with AR15s.

    I realize it’s tongue in cheek, but geez at least do it well. Feels like watching a bad skit from the blue collar comedy tour.

  20. I don’t know what I’m laughing at more – “Merry Christmas Santa Ana” or the guy doin a helmet mag check without a helmet.

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