Police shoot an "armed" middle school student
- Thread starter Kenbo Slice
- Start date
Which is technically wrong.Raesvelg said:
Have you ever been shot with 5.56? I haven't, but I knew someone who had. He caught one in his elbow, he said it was like he got hammered by a huge mass. He spun twice and hit the ground with the sheer force of the impact. And it wasn't 5.56, it was .223 so it had somewhat lower operating pressures.
You can disregard the type of bullet. Soft point, polymer tip, FMJ, doesn't matter because a hit on the elbow does not leave much room for expansion.
5.56 has plenty of stopping power. Most of the complaints about 5.56 were actually during extremity shots or shots taken beyond it's effective range. 5.56 was designed as assault rifle ammo. It will have stopping power up to 300/400m after starting to lose effectiveness from a 20" barrel.
Handguns are "poor" man stoppers. Period. Most of the handgun ammo is under the 1500 fps range.
However, they are easy to conceal and use in your house, and unlike rifle ammo it has less chances of ricochets or wall penetration killing someone by accident. That can still happen, of course, but not like rifle ammo. That's why they have such a big user base, it's not because it can replace rifles.
Both are deadly enough. And criminals can hide their handguns easily. But rifles are much more menacing.
That distance is probably only for safety reasons. Objects obstructing a barrel will be forced out like a bullet with a very poor performance, but enough to injure.Pebblig said:
Blanks "fire" burning powder. There is a device on the muzzle that allows the gas to be trapped and cycle the weapon. If it was firing a real bullet, the bullet would seal the barrel and the gas would travel normally, but a unobstructed barrel would not let the weapon cycle with gas alone.
Those devices also block the barrel and I think some kinds of devices can stop 1 or 2 bullets if someone loads real ammo by accident.
Burning powder isn't usually deadly, it leaves small circular "scorched" marks on the skin at point blank. Even if it was very dangerous, it would still not incapacitate a criminal fast enough.
However, this applies to rifles.
A recoil operated weapon requires that the Newton laws have to apply. Unless it is spitting out a bullet, the gasses cannot propel the slide back alone.
A blowback operated pistol would require the barrel to be blocked, so that the gas expansion could force the casing and the slide back. Since there is no bullet blocking the barrel, the gases just travel forward.
That means that the police officer would have to rack the slide to chamber a new round. That takes time.
An interesting side note is that they were actually carrying Tasers and the shooting happened outside viable Taser range, according to the Police Chief.Fishyash said:
In a 'perfect' world, there would be no need for police period. So let's keep our arguments based in reality. You fancy hindsight, how about some foresight then? In what scenario would a police officer carry blanks as part of standard equipment? I can think of two possible scenarios.Shifty Tortoise said:
1. They automatically put a blank round in the chamber on top of a clip of regular nines. This posses a problem because it means your first shot is useless (if you need it) or you're fiddling with the action (at a time where fractions of seconds count). If who shoots first determines who goes home, that would be automatically condemning officers to death.
2. They carry a clip of blanks which they need to change out for real rounds or vice-versa. In both instances, they are fumbling for ammunition and wasting precious time (oh, and they'd best remember to pop the one in the chamber).
Face facts: as tragic as the kid's death was, no one is to blame but him. He CHOSE to modify his weapon to make it appear real, he CHOSE to bring it to school, he CHOSE to assault another student, he CHOSE to make death threats with his modified weapon, he CHOSE to ignore police warnings, and he CHOSE to point the weapon at police.
The police had to assume that he was armed and would make good on his threats. The kid's fate is sad, but it's of his own CHOOSING. No different than stepping in front of a train or off a ledge.
I would not be afraid of bows so much. You see a pipe lying on the street you don't think gun but you see someone hiding a crossbow and well you notice it. So I take it zip guns are a problem in UK too? I was just wondering if they are more or less prevalent when you can more easily buy factory made firearms.ccggenius12 said:
You're also not supposed to point an empty weapon at your head. This is less because the slide or hammer is still lethal, but in case there's a bullet in it.Pebblig said:
Similarly, the "hot gas" is not the issue in firing blanks. Debris in the barrel can function just like a bullet for these purposes.
In short, it's not because you can hurt someone with gas at 50m. It's because "accidents can happen."
Honestly, I wish cops didn't have the right to use lethal force, we have technology now that can subdue ANYONE in a matter of seconds. There's no reason that the people who are supposed to protect us should be able to kill us it's counter-intuitive.
Yeah. sorry but you know what, if you draw a gun, even a pellet gun, and ignore repeated warnings to drop the weapon, then youre going to get shot.
A pellet gun, is still a gun to a cop. They're trained to protect their own lives just as much as the public, and if that means a suspect, no matter what age, is holding a gun, and refuses to listen to put it down, then they'll shoot to stop.
I have a friend, whose older brother was pulled over by the police, and when he reached for his paperwork, a pellet gun fell out of the glovebox. The officer drew his gun and made the decision to shoot if he had reached for it.
A pellet gun, is still a gun to a cop. They're trained to protect their own lives just as much as the public, and if that means a suspect, no matter what age, is holding a gun, and refuses to listen to put it down, then they'll shoot to stop.
I have a friend, whose older brother was pulled over by the police, and when he reached for his paperwork, a pellet gun fell out of the glovebox. The officer drew his gun and made the decision to shoot if he had reached for it.
I'm not the one taking his ball and going home. Nor am I calling names.Shifty Tortoise said:
Chin up, I presented you with an argument superior to yours and you recognized it. You just don't want to admit it to save face, I understand. Better luck next time.
From my very Spartan amount of knowledge on the situation (yes, I kicked the knowledge down a large hole so as to give it more momentum), I'd say it sounds like the boy wanted to be shot.
It's a shame he couldn't have been tranq'd, tasered or any other non-leathal option that might exist.
It's a shame he couldn't have been tranq'd, tasered or any other non-leathal option that might exist.
Yes, the majority of complaints come from the longer ranges of the 5.56, which does not alter the fact that, as a small bullet moving very quickly, FMJ rounds in that cartridge tend to lack stopping power. It has everything to do with the round; a bullet that does not deform bleeds energy vastly more slowly than one which does, and a small, fast round that does not yaw or deform will tend to cause minimal damage.
There are a surprising number of places on the body where you can poke a quarter-inch hole clean through and not cause lethal or even incapacitating damage. Mostly around the limbs, of course, but even through the torso in some cases. Hence the complaints.
The ideal, frankly, would be something along the lines of one of the new blended metal rounds, which functionally disintegrate inside a soft target. The test footage is... disturbing. Which is why frangible rounds in general are banned from military use.
The fact remains, however, that a FMJ round, particularly if it's been given time to slow down somewhat (which is a significant problem with the shorter-barreled M4, speaking of 5.56x45), runs a much higher chance of passing through the target with minimal damage compared to a hollow point or other frangible round which will dump its energy into the target rapidly and probably catastrophically.
No offense to your friend, but if the round spun him twice and knocked him down, that was less a matter of the power of the bullet and more a matter of him being unprepared for the hit. By the physical laws of the universe, the hit he took contained less energy than the one sustained by the man firing the weapon. Depending on the range, quite possibly considerably less. It is, however, theoretically compressed in time; rather than building over the length of the barrel, it is delivered over the depth of the wound.
And, as you mentioned, getting hit in the elbow doesn't leave a lot of room for expansion; one assumes he must have been struck in the bone in order to get that kind of energy transfer. Couple that with the fact that the arm itself serves as an energy absorption mechanism in this instance, and I seriously doubt that the impact threw him around like a ragdoll, even if the .223 round in question was using a hunting load that would break up on impact.
I also don't dispute that rifles, in general, are more lethal than handguns, in general, particularly when range is taken into account, as most handguns, due to a combination of factors, are not especially dangerous at ranges over a couple hundred feet at best.
It's important to note, however, that not all rounds are created equal, and that a heavier round, moving more slowly, can have more energy than a smaller round, moving faster. A 300 grain or so .44 Magnum round will actually hit harder than the 70 or so grain bullet from a .223 Remington cartridge, even though the .223 has a muzzle velocity around twice that of the .44.
There are a surprising number of places on the body where you can poke a quarter-inch hole clean through and not cause lethal or even incapacitating damage. Mostly around the limbs, of course, but even through the torso in some cases. Hence the complaints.
The ideal, frankly, would be something along the lines of one of the new blended metal rounds, which functionally disintegrate inside a soft target. The test footage is... disturbing. Which is why frangible rounds in general are banned from military use.
The fact remains, however, that a FMJ round, particularly if it's been given time to slow down somewhat (which is a significant problem with the shorter-barreled M4, speaking of 5.56x45), runs a much higher chance of passing through the target with minimal damage compared to a hollow point or other frangible round which will dump its energy into the target rapidly and probably catastrophically.
No offense to your friend, but if the round spun him twice and knocked him down, that was less a matter of the power of the bullet and more a matter of him being unprepared for the hit. By the physical laws of the universe, the hit he took contained less energy than the one sustained by the man firing the weapon. Depending on the range, quite possibly considerably less. It is, however, theoretically compressed in time; rather than building over the length of the barrel, it is delivered over the depth of the wound.
And, as you mentioned, getting hit in the elbow doesn't leave a lot of room for expansion; one assumes he must have been struck in the bone in order to get that kind of energy transfer. Couple that with the fact that the arm itself serves as an energy absorption mechanism in this instance, and I seriously doubt that the impact threw him around like a ragdoll, even if the .223 round in question was using a hunting load that would break up on impact.
I also don't dispute that rifles, in general, are more lethal than handguns, in general, particularly when range is taken into account, as most handguns, due to a combination of factors, are not especially dangerous at ranges over a couple hundred feet at best.
It's important to note, however, that not all rounds are created equal, and that a heavier round, moving more slowly, can have more energy than a smaller round, moving faster. A 300 grain or so .44 Magnum round will actually hit harder than the 70 or so grain bullet from a .223 Remington cartridge, even though the .223 has a muzzle velocity around twice that of the .44.
