Obama’s energy chairman paints rifles a ‘terrorist threat’ for Bloomberg group

Rifles, even .22 caliber models many young people receive as their first gun, are “among the greatest threats to the reliability of the nation’s power system,” U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff claimed at a Tuesday Bloomberg Government Breakfast, Bloomberg News reported yesterday.

Citing “inadequately protected” transformers as easy targets, Wellinghoff told the group that terrorists in “coordinated” actions committed to destroying them “could get 200 yards away with a .22 rifle and take the whole thing out.”

His proposed solution, a “couple hundred bucks” of “metal sheeting to block the view of transformers” hardly seems comprehensive, realistic, or even sober or sane when his further assertion that it will keep people from seeing through fences presupposes the entire perimeter must be covered. That would seem to be a very expensive proposition, especially when multiplied by the thousands of utility substations throughout the U.S. And it’s not like ladders aren’t plentiful enough.

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