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The Barrett M82, also known as the Barret .50 Cal, is a fine example of an anti-materiel rifle. Note that US troops are well known to use these weapons against infantry, so either we just don't give a f**k anymore or we're exploiting some massive loophole.

Also of note are recoilless rifles. Not as useful as rocket launchers in my opinion - the FGM-148 Javelin, for example, is a wonderful anti-tank weapon (it hits helicopters too!) - but certainly an amusing curiosity. Evidently (so Wikipedia tells me) the National Park Service uses recoilless rifles to control avalanches. WSDOT too. Pretty rad stuff.

the problem is that anti-mat weaponry is really good against hard stuff, but just kinda goes through soft stuff. So it'll blow up a tank, but it'll just make a big, painful, possibly non-lethal, mutilating wound that even if it is lethal might take hours or days to kill (assuming the lack of proper medical care that is commonplace on the battlefield). Where if you get shot anywhere in the general middle area by an anti-personnel weapon, you're probably going to die within the hour. This all is inline with the fact that no armed force in the world trains it's GI army to be extremely accurate, they instead train soldiers to be accurate enough to use a rifle like a long range shotgun.

Throw in that mildly effective personal protective equipment, the like of flak jackets, reduces the likelihood of headshots and lung/heart shots, and you've got a situation where at best the most probable wound is not going to be immediately lethal anyways.

In that situation it's more Humane to use ammunition that's designed to make people dead quickly, rather than leave a gaping wound. This of course, does not apply to skilled infantry like snipers who are trained extensively to make the immediately lethal shots every time.

as far as the UN is concerned it's not a matter of stopping, that's pretty simple. Anti-personnel rounds don't go through people, they take advantage of the fact that people are squishy and use that to splay, fragment, and swoop about inside the target, causing massive trauma. A .50 cal round is designed to penetrate, and the fastest path through any armor is a straight line. It may have hydrostatic shock on it's side because it's a massive high velocity shell, but that equates to ruptured cells and vessels, death by bruising. The force of a shell that big going through you will put you on the ground, and the pain of having a hole in you will keep you there, but hydrostatic shock will take a long time to put you out of your misery, where a 5.56 NATO round will lacerate your internal organs and kill you in minutes, if it doesn't hit your heart or lungs and kill you in less than a minute. The trick there is that an anti-personnel round doesn't necessarily travel through a person in a straight line, the NATO I believe does flips, and spins around, so the bullet might enter at your liver and flop about through both lungs.

As I was discussing with Jikail in IM earlier, Incendiary and Explosive rounds aren't guaranteed to function properly against soft targets which may not put up the proper resistance to detonate them, even if it hits a bone since they tend to powderize when confronted with high velocity impact force. Protip, if you ever fall off a skyscraper, try not to land on your feet, your legs will explode and you'll just get a tenth of a second of intense pain before your brain splatters.

Now, as I've gotten my room under 80F and it's now safe to turn my brain on without a liquid cooling system attached, I have writing to do!

I don't think it would be difficult to construe a raider settlement, like Woodmount only less civilized, that would force captured people and pokemon to duke it out in an old stadium. Only I can't imagine it being anywhere in the diamond of the four cities, so you'd have to figure out a reason for us to go past that. Maybe they hunt in the diamond?

~It is to be WELL noted that the abomination calling itself Mewtwo is in no way holy.~

More placidly, we apologize for the lack of updates yesterday; upon attempting them the internet opted to rise against us, interrupting a Skype date, AIM conversations, and most importantly, the imparting wisdom and story line to you Cinders. This will be rectified post-haste.

@Ω: I have attempted several times now to PM you regarding your Trouble; have those reached you? Gaia foiled me at least twice that I am aware of.

Magneto is my villain-hero, regardless of what anyone says.

iD has a point: Mewtwo is an abomination that is likely incomparable to anything of holy virtue whatsoever. It... it dares plagiarize the name of the Insouciant and the Innocent, the Blissful and the Blameless, the Omniscient and the Opalescent, mew, which is a blasphemy that is unforgivable even in the light of his undeniable physical attractiveness, especially in the brighter light of how much more attractive lucarios are, and they're not even "legendary"! How one so impious as Mewtwo is classified with the mew is beyond my considerable comprehension, though. I feel for him, I do, and to an extent I understand him, having had both the horror and the honor of speaking with him in the past, but... he is... ~The Unscrupulous Profanity~ without a doubt.

@lily: Also, Mewtwo is not limited by needing metals or a silly hat. He would toss Magneto about like a rag doll.

Should we be worrying about the rise of another cult in the name of Mewtwo or any/all lucarios?