Clyde Motel - How the hell was Clyde Barrow able to wield a sawn off BAR?

How the hell was Clyde Barrow able to wield a sawn off BAR?

Most average size men can't fire them accurately on automatic,how did he do it with a sawn off one? I saw the special and a few others.Boker's right,Clyde was a force to be reckoned with,not just a guy with a scary rep.Clyde wasn't particularily strong or big from what I remember though.

Public Comments

Accuracy isn't the intent; mayhem is. Clyde and his ilk simply put the weapon on rock and roll and used it like a fire hose at close range. You didn't want to be the poor slob on the other end of Clyde's shootin' iron!
Accuracy was not on his mind, it was sheer intimidation.
Bonnie shot one too, and she was 4'11" tall and only 98 pounds.I really don't see how either of them handled it, it was a heavy awkward gun, especially on full auto! Apparently Clyde could handle it tho, he was credited with the majority of all the murders, if memory serves me correct, Bonnie only shot one man, a motorcycle officer.
I suspect that since he was robbing banks that it was intended to be used only as a extremely short range weapon. The Browning Automatic Rifle was noted for being very difficult to control because of the recoil. Personally I would have opted for the Thompson .45 submachine gun.
Bonnie & Clyde, did very well with the B A R. you have to fire short burst, 3-5 rounds at a time. you can't just empty a clip on a single squeeze of the trigger & hope to hit anything with, at the most, more than a couple of bullets
The Browning BAR's were stolen in a National Guard Armory theft by Clyde Barrow and a few of his compatriots.. Clyde complained that the full size Automatic Rifle was too hard to put into action from inside a moving car. With a little practice, shooting short bursts were apparently not hard to do since the BAR's cyclic rate of fire was low enough. I agree with the others though that physical body size and weight had to be a factor in accurate shooting. I had the chance to empty a 20 round magazine thru one at the Fort Meade- Maryland range back in the late 60's and I'm not a small guy....I was "moved" literally...lol
I just saw a special on this exact subject it was indeed a sawed off barrel apparently it made it just short enough to be quite effective and never ceased to make the G-men duck their heads. Between the hella loud report the awesome muzzle flash it was very menacing to behold. I guess practice makes perfect as far as his ability to fire it accurately. Legend has it that it rarely left his side. It was a public TV special and they actually showed the rifle with a sawed off barrel. ( no way of telling if it was the actual gun or not). Update: Google "barrow weapons" and see some of the arsenal used by barrow gang (actual guns) some are reproductions but alot of good photographs.They refer to the BAR's as scatterguns and I till now thought that referred to shotguns but I guess when they started firing those sawed off Brownings people scattered hence the name scattergun or the rounds flew everywhere as if scattered. I can only go by what this article says but it make sense to me.
The weight of the BAR helps in controlling the weapon in the full-auto mode. Clyde's preferred weapon of choice were his bobbed and chopped Remington Model 11, 12 gauge semi-auto shotguns. I own two with 18 1/4 inch barrels and even though they are a one hundred year old design, they really are just the ticket for close quarter work.
I wouldn't want to shoot one. I would love to shoot a whippet tho, even tho stevi s is right about the remmy 12 gauges, not brownings.
From what I've seen about his BAR, the barrel was cut off, as was the stock, with a sling attached to each end so it would sit horizontal next to his hands. Short bursts, indeed, you're talking a .30-06 here, a lot of power in a smaller package! I think it was used more for intimidation that hit probability.
Not easily,having a large caliber sawn off weapon like that is for very close range.I'm 6'6 270 lbs and I wouldn't want to fire that.Harry I found some videos on you tube you might like.http://youtube.com/watch?v=eCYwyM-KVdU.Watch these videos and you will become fluent in assault weapons.
With great skill if tales are true. And I'd figure any guy who could handle a pair of BAR's would be pretty danged stout. He probably acquired his skill through extensive practice. Doc
I've seen the actual guns in the FBI museum. I believe the idea was to hold it tightly against your side and shoot from the hip in short bursts. A photograph of Bonnie Parker with one of these shows her holding it in this fashon, and she looks like she was familiar with utilizing it in just this way! Longer bursts empty it's 20 round magazine too quickly. If it's braced well enough against your hip, you can maxamize it's controllability....which still ain't gonna be great. However, the basketball sized muzzle flashes and huge, thunderous reports from the .30-06 being fired full-auto out of such a short barrel were very intimidating, and anyone downrange tended to flee this overwhelming display of firepower rather than wait around and consider how accurately and efficiently the weapon was being employed. Their plan was to strike fast, create as much havoc, chaos, and confusion as possible in as short a time as possible, grab the loot, and run like hell. Such weapons were great for creating havoc, chaos, and confusion.
If you watched the same special that I did, BONNIE loved them as well and she didn't even weigh 100 pounds! They took as much weight off of those as they could, front and back. I think thats why they both used them.
I wondered the same thing. I read that during WWII, some soldiers had to go through a little extra training to march into combat with a BAR. He probably had so much experience with all sorts of weapons and recoil from going on his killing sprees, it just was a habit of his to handle the recoil.