This may come as a surprise, but Kyle was not a fan of .50 cals … at least not most of them. He said, “The fifty is huge, extremely heavy, and I just don’t like it. I never used on in Iraq. There’s a certain amount of hype and even romance for these weapons, which shoot a 12.7x99mm round. There are a few different specific rifles and variations in service with the US military and other armies around the world. You’ve probably heard of the Barrett M-82 or the M-107, developed by Barrett Firearms Manufacturing. They have enormous ranges and in the right application are certainly good weapons. I just didn’t like them all that much.”
He goes on to say, “Everyone says that the .50 is a perfect anti-vehicle gun. But the truth is that if you shoot the .50 through a vehicle’s engine block, you’re not actually going to stop the vehicle. Not right away. The fluids will leak out and eventually it will stop moving. But it’s not instant by any means. A .338 or even a .300 will do the same thing. No, the best way to stop a vehicle is to shoot the driver. And that you can do with a number of weapons.”
But, Kyle did explicitly make one exception to his comments about the .50 cal rifles, saying “The one .50 I do like is the Accuracy International model, which has a more compact, collapsible stock and a little more accuracy; it wasn’t available to us at the time.”