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I might possibly shed a bit of light here. The 50bmg was originally used in the M2 machine gun. This was designated originally as a AA weapon. the assumption could be made that AA arms could not be used as an anti-personel arm.
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No it doesn't! Design intent has nothing to do with law. Design intent may have NOTHING to do with application. My favorite example here is Viagra (blood pressure medicine by design, did not do well in that regard, now used for other purposes). There are LOTS of examples in the arms world of thing working well in arenas/problem areas for which they were not intended. The German 88s are a great example, used as AA originally, determined to be useful against tanks and as antipersonnel. PT motormen put LAND-BASED designed mortars, cannon, and other arms on PT boats and it worked quite well in many case.
BTW, M2s were mounted in the wings of several fighters (some still are) that were routinely used in various conflicts for striating combatants on the ground.
As for the notion of not using over 400 gr bullets, that doesn't apply. I don't know anything about rdavidsonjr's son's purported orders, but the issue certainly wasn't with bullet weight or caliber as snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan used Barrett, McMillans, and such against human targets as needed in the caliber of .50 BMG with bullets weighing much more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest...d_sniper_kills
None of the people here were prosecuted for any sort of war crimes pertaining to any supposed violations for use of these weapons in these kills and the countries were not brought before any sort of tribunals in regard to such accords.
Your son may have been given orders to or not to do certain things, but that does not mean that they were because of compliance with any sort of international laws/agreements/conventions/accords.