Guns : A simple solution

[ElPatron]

Just to prevent misunderstandings, I love handguns and they certainly do their job - pack a punch in a concealable/"carry-able" fashion.

I am not trying to prove that handguns are useless, just that you should not try and force people to use what they don't like.

You can't tell from the video, but I think we both agree that it was a mix of bad aim and drugs.

1. First, no shot hit any innocent bystanders. That's good combat aim.
2. If drugs are a problem, maybe we should take into account they do exist and might be used by criminals.

However, you can't create "universal rules" based on exceptions. By that logic planes should be forbidden because of 9/11 and all politicians should be forbidden because everyone could become the next Stalin/Hitler/...
Here in Germany we say "Ausnahmen bestätigen die Regel.", which means "Exceptions prove the rule", as there are ALWAYS exceptions. I already heard of a guy that was shot in the head with a crossbow and survived.

What exception?

9mm Luger - Average number of rounds until incapacitation - 2.45

.40 S&W - Average number of rounds until incapacitation - 2.36

.45 ACP - Average number of rounds until incapacitation - 2.08

Shotgun (All, but 90% of results were 12 gauge) - Average number of rounds until incapacitation - 1.22

There are people not being incapacitated by handgun rounds all the time. And we know for starters that common handgun rounds require more than two shots to be effective.

And so won't shotguns...sometimes.

Because some people insist on shooting people with cheap target birdshot. Heck, even the name says it's for birds.

No, it's not. In which way is cancer comparable to dying because of self-defense? AIDS kills too, so should we sell condoms for self-defense or what?

Okay, is that a cultural thing? Because I have never met a German person that understands how analogies work.

Maybe it's your language and school system. But no, if you're killing people with AIDS you don't buy them condoms if you want to defend yourself. That defeats the purpose of using AIDS for self-defense.

I'll promise to explain my analogies better.

I was pointing out that "as closest to 100%" is not even remotely realistic. We're talking about 60, maybe 65% at best here. Your attacker will try to survive as hard as you.

1. 65% is closer to 100% than 60%. What the hell are you on about?
2. He won't try to survive. If an intruder decides to attack a guy with a shotgun, he is merely assisting his suicide attempt.

She can gain that strength. Nobody (including you) is strong from the beginning. You either become strong or stay weak. EVERYONE that does SOME kind of sport knows that. Nothing is granted. And because of the fact that there are women strong enough to handle high caliber weapons your point is invalid.

1. Uh, no it's not invalid. Men have their center of gravity higher and higher upper body strength. If you compare a man and a woman of the same mass (let's imagine both weight 50kg) the man is in advantage right of the bat.


2. There are men able of pulling cars with their beards. Does that mean I can too because I was born with a dick?

3. If a woman can gain strength, then whoever votes that women should be forced to use handguns should pay her gym fees from their own pockets.

you work to learn how to control a car, so why shouldn't you to handle a weapon?

Controlling a car is unrelated to strength, specially with power steering.

Driving a car involves actually knowing how to drive a car and respecting the code. And loads of people still die every year. So I think car analogies are irrelevant.

Besides that: Since when are guns the only means of self-defense? If you can't have a gun, there are alternatives.

Tasers: won't work on people on drugs. The shooty kind doesn't penetrate clothes, and the ones that require contact... require contact.

Pepper spray: sucks. Only pisses off the attacker and drives him into a raging fury. Plus, in many countries the content of the spray is restricted - I think I have the right to use BEAR SPRAY on humans because being repeatedly exposed to pepper spray actually gives you some degree of immunity.

Also, any of these methods won't work if there are more than one attacker.

Again, very sad that you think that guns are the only mean of self-defense.
Handicaps and old people *should* have the same right to use guns

Because an handicap or an old person will be able to beat down people with baseball bats.

Other methods of self-defense are sad. They work for rapists and for shoplifters at the mall. Not for people charging at you.

No. If a person cannot stay in control of a "small" car on the highway, they shouldn't get a 800hp muscle car.

Holy shit, 800hp.

Anyway, handguns are harder to control than weapons with a stock. They recoil harder because of their smaller mass, and they have a huge mass recoiling back right above the hand.

Handguns are the 800hp car.

Okay, I'll give you that one partially. However, as the legs contain the most muscles (which you also use every day), they're rarely "thin".
Besides that, those arteries continue in the upper body (if I remember correctly even in the "center of mass").

1. Not every criminal is a prison hardened 300lb guy. Many "gangsters" actually have thin legs and wear baggy pants. Good luck trying to guess a hit.

2. If you shoot for the chest you're looking for : incapacitation and higher surface area to prevent hitting innocents. If the attacker dies it was a justified shooting. If you aim for the legs and kill a person, you prove that you shot him just to hurt him. Which is mean and will land you in court.

Let me correct that statement: When you shoot someone, you use lethal force.
A gun provides a lethal force, because you have practically no means of damage-control. So if you defend yourself with a gun, the situation doesn't matter, because you're either using a lethal force or you don't defend yourself with it.

The situation matters. You can't use a gun in an unjustified manner. Shooting at the legs in unjustified.

A shot in the legs could also happen because of bad aim under stress, a fight,....just saying.
Here in Germany we have the most strict gun-laws (at least in Europe) btw.

But there is a difference between hitting anywhere in a 12" circle because of combat accuracy, and hitting 1m away from center mass. That only happens if the attacker is already grabbing you which is an excuse for missing.

Okay, with this statement you have disqualified yourself from any "self-defense mentality" discussion.
Learning how to stay calm is THE lesson. It's much more important than every technique. Same goes for soldiers.

Panic =/= scared. It's the sense of urgency. It's turning to DEFCON 1. Condition red.

Have you ever missed a blow during a fight that you wouldn't miss against a punching bag? Same situation. One thing is shooting at paper, another is having to assess the situation in less than a single second.

So you know every cop on the earth?

I know that stone cold sociopaths do not qualify in the psychological tests to enter the force. So yeah, I know that there is a very small percentage of cops which are neutral killing.

Most importantly, have you ever killed? Because if you're the one pretending that killing is easy we kinda need to know the truth.

The latter part is important: They're trained for it. Some better, some worse. Besides that you can't train for every situation, only prepare as good as possible.

You completely missed my point. Shooting people from 300m away is not the same thing as having someone run at you to stab you.

The military is not usually trained for self-defense pistol shooting.

Of course, I never denied that.
I was just saying that weapons like knifes are "better suited" for very close range fights (given that you can handle it).

My opinion about knives is that it's impossible to fight people with them without getting cut. That's why shooting them as soon as possible is important, so that they don't keep running and stabbing.

Okay this point of the discussion isn't going anywhere, as we have fundamentally different believes here.
Pain is temporary, death permanent.
Besides that I also create "unnecessary suffering" if I kill somebody.

1. Person either survives or dies, but loses consciousness fast.
2. Person either survives or dies, but will keep being in pain and attacking. More unnecessary suffering than quickly put a person down cold.

If you're shooting for pain, there is a high chance the person will die anyway. But do I really want an attacker to die 3 days later in the hospital? No. I want to survive and incapacitate him quickly.

Yeah, you can miss with every weapon. Like I said in my last post, your weapon doesn't matter if you fuck up.

1 inch to the side is not a fuck up. Specially with handguns.

People fuck up, but that's not an excuse to use .22LR for hunting.

You say "WRONG" and then prove me right. Thanks.
By "more forgiving" I didn't mean that they have a spread of one meter, but still cover a greater are than a pistol round.

That's not "forgiving". "Forgiving" is the idea that shotguns do not require aiming. When you hit, be your weapon a shotgun, a handgun or a rifle they are always non-forgiving in terms of tissue damage.

Higher hit probability =/= forgiving. It means a higher chance of hitting a vital.

Changes nothing. Guns are dangerous to begin with. No matter if a pistol or a shotgun. If you miss your target everything that just happens to stand behind it is in danger.

You misunderstood my point.

If you're using lead buckshot and compare it to a heavy pistol round, after both have gone trough human bodies the Jacketed Hollow Point has a higher chance of causing collateral damage, while the deformed lead loses quite a bit of energy.

If you use plated buckshot the lower deformation will mean that it will penetrate walls almost like pistol JHP.

Fun fact: watermelons are not human tissue.

Fun fact: A bullet damages a bigger area than it's radius, because of the incredible force. Which was kind of the point of the video.

Watermelons will exaggerate the expansion of a JHP.

Fun fact: FMJ bullets will actually damage tissue in a lower surface area than it's own diameter. Only the tip of the bullet crushes tissue, the rounded surfaces will just push tissue aside. Same applies to JHP, they leave large cavities but still not as big as their expanded diameter.

Fun fact 2: in terms of "force" (I think you mean energy) pistol calibers are usually piss-poor compared to rifles.

Revolver calibers? Revolvers are harder to use than semi-automatic pistols, and if you want to fire .44 Mag in a dark and silent night, you'll end up blinding and deafening yourself. Not to mention the poor recoil recovery of those calibers, and the higher bore-axis of a revolver (which causes more muzzle flip).

My older brother would disagree with you on that one. He learned to use weapons for work (security) and said the direct opposite. I believe you on the blinding and deafening yourself part though.

I would like to hear his reasons. It is widely accepted that revolvers have more muzzle flip due to their higher bore axis, that the grip is much harder (not even I have learnt it well) and double-action triggers are not everyone's cup of tea (the higher force required for a double-action pull can make a person miss).

So the father can't have the steak, because the child can't chew it? Everyone should only use what he can. If my brother is more proficient with a revolver he should use it, no matter what you say and vice-versa.

So you're arguing that everyone should learn how to use handguns, you use revolver calibers to prove the power of handguns, and now say that people should use what they want?

Then why not shotguns?

I was just saying that it's much easier to train with a pistol. Besides, automatics have higher ammo capacities.

There is no firearms instructor in the world that will tell you "don't get a shotgun" unless you specifically tell him that you have any kind of disability to use them.

You can't say that as you:
1. don't know everyone.
2. believe in what yours told you.

Yeah, but martial arts for self defense aren't designed to kill...unlike weapons. Accidents happen and I'd like to minimize the chance to kill somebody (which is why I prefer martial-arts over weapons for self-defense - also because I love sports and I love them most).

What does purpose have to do with anything? Deaths can and will happen. It has nothing to do with purpose.

>implying that shooting is not a sport

The Olympics athletes called...

Hear that everybody? You disagree with the almighty ElPatron and you're asking for incapacitation.

Yeah, Ad Hominem, "shoot the messenger", etc. Pun definitely intended.

And? Some meet nice ones, some bad ones.

Have you met them?

My point was that SOME of them have a mentality that I PERSONALLY find frightening.

Personal opinions are not facts.

Yeah, but not everyone tries to rape you when breaking into your house. Of course, I'm not saying that it doesn't happen, but I don't always thing of the worst possible thing that can happen

I do. That's why I have lived this long, lol.

Anyway, I know what is a threat and what isn't. I don't need to wait for someone to die or be raped. I just need the psychological "line" to be crossed.

That's true. However shooting at the legs doesn't stop you because of pain, but because of the muscles getting highly damaged. If your brain ignores the pain and still sends the messages to the legs, it won't help if the muscles don't work properly anymore.

1. A gunshot might not destroy enough muscle to impair movement.

2. Some times people are close enough and don't even need to be standing. Just a blade or a gun on their hand.

So if you're not shooting to incapacitate, it's like hunting and aiming for the butt of the animal - it's inhumane as the only thing it causes is unnecessary pain.

So killing is not inhumane? As stated earlier, we have fundamentally different views on that one.

Human ancestors have killed as soon as they figured out how to do it. Homo Sapiens were born in a world where their ancestors were already able of making weapons and hunting.

We have killed since we got on this planet. There are inhumane and humane ways of killing/dying.

You mentioned the death penalty. There are methods like lethal injection and electrocution. We don't shove people legs first into a wood chipper.

Okay, I have clearly much less knowledge on guns than you. However, not on self-defense in general.

I have from the American point of view. Before you disregard that view, not every martial art has the same views, and martial arts are not the only methods of self-defense either.

So fundamentally there is no right or wrong. Just what's legal and what is dodgy in court.

 

[ElPatron]

Not true, NATO members do not use fragmenting bullets in their militaries because it's prohibited by the 1899 Hague convention. Yes, you can get 5.56 NATO rounds that fragment for police or civilian use, though.

Both M193 and M855 are designed to fragment.

What kinds of ammunition are the Europeans buying, then? Because I know my country uses M193.

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

While not believing in guns and thinking that the invention of guns was possibly the worst thing that could ever happen to the planet.. I think that banning guns would at the very most do more harm than good... But most likely wouldn't do anything..

If people aren't able to do crime with guns, they'll do it with knives.

If people are intent on doing a crime with a gun, they'll be able to get one.

so... increase the peoples's ability to defend themselves.... within measure?

I mean you're not gonna see a guy hold up a store with a rocket launcher.

Where would he get the damned money? xD

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

While not believing in guns and thinking that the invention of guns was possibly the worst thing that could ever happen to the planet.. I think that banning guns would at the very most do more harm than good... But most likely wouldn't do anything..

If people aren't able to do crime with guns, they'll do it with knives.

If people are intent on doing a crime with a gun, they'll be able to get one.

so... increase the peoples's ability to defend themselves.... within measure?

I mean you're not gonna see a guy hold up a store with a rocket launcher.

Where would he get the damned money? xD

I don't think changing anything would make anything any better.. banning guns would reduce gun crime, but it wouldn't really have much impact on crime. I could commit the exact same crimes as people using guns by using a crossbow, the only thing different is that someone will be too stupid to recognize what i'm holding and will end up dead a lot sooner than they would if I were using a gun.

So you mean to say change to anything has never brought us any good?