Basic Gun Questions

Factual Questions
41

I’m an atheist and motor cycle rider too. Best send the children to the hills.

Like you It also bugs me if I can’t get something running. I bought a couple of boxes worth of 1978 Yamaha XS650 a few years ago. It took some time but I put it back together and got it running. It is now behind my shed under plastic.

Well and good. And this enipla would be a sir. Though it would be a bit funny if anyone called me madam in real life. I’m 6’4”, male and I don’t own a brothel.

I do believe you caught my point.

My Wife is not a shooter. But is safe and comfortable with guns. She has even asked me about a gun for herself that she could use for self protection. Not a CCW. But something in the house that would work.

OK. I did keep a .357 loaded and close for a while, but with two big dogs, I felt it may be more of a liability than protection. I have a few guns because we are pretty much in the middle of nowhere. (oh, and I like to target shoot. It’s fun really. Try it sometime). Actually, I have never purchased a gun. But I own 8. Rifles, shotguns, a revolver and a pistol. :shrug:

So we shot. .22s and .38s mostly. I thought that a .38 would be nice sized gun for my wife if she would practice with it. Straight forward revolver. Pull the trigger and it fires. My Wife did not think that she could put in the time and practice to be proficient and safe with a fire arm. Sadly, I agree. Just following her lead there. It’s her choice.

If she ever changes her mind, that would be fine. No big deal. Though, I suspect that she would be buying a firearm if I ever got rid of mine (well, they’re ours). Marriage is a kind of 50-50% or 100- 100% proposal.

Happy in the mountains of Colorado

Enipla.

42

[rant]
Sorry, I can’t let this go by without comment. You are doing well in asking for information here. Congrats. But if a firearm is used, it is used to kill. Period. Never point a firearm at anything you aren’t willing and prepared to destroy. You never “shoot to wound,” or any bullshit like that. If the gun is there in your hand, then you are ready and willing to take a human life, for whatever reason. If that doesn’t fit your moral compass, then don’t ever get a gun for self-defense.

[rant off]
To address another question you asked: studies have shown that the most effective pistol round (ie one-shot stops) is a 125 grain JHP(jacketed hollow point) fired out of a 6 inch .357. This is actual shootings, not extrapolating from ballistic gelatin and that crap.

43

I will say one thing about that.

My brother took us shooting at his gun club, and my 67 year old father had to ask how to hold a pistol (really, you never pretend-shot one?). My ex-US Army Captain brother told him to just get a comfortable grip. When no one was looking, he decided that putting his free hand OVER his gripping hand was most comfortable, and when the slide rocked back forward, it gave him a hellacious cut on the webbing of his thumb, causing him to grunt and sort of wave around a loaded, cocked, fired HK .45.

He was yelled at and immediately pointed it downrange, but the point of the story is GET PRACTICE. Ask someone who really knows, and fire enough rounds that you won’t be wondering what to do if you really have to fire the thing in 2 seconds.

44

I have to second the comments about only shooting to kill. My cop friend emphasized the point that if you draw a gun, you must mean that you are willing to use it in the next second, and if you fire a gun, you must mean that you are willing to kill, because that’s what’s likely to happen. In that case, don’t pussy foot around and try to “shoot to wound” or shoot the gun out of his hand like some Roy Rogers baloney. That’s Hollywood. If you’re Annie Oakley with the reflexes of a Kung Fu master, maybe, just maybe you have a chance at that. Shoot for the center of mass, because that’s the part of the body you can’t fake with. For men, that’s about the middle of the chest. Conveniently, that’s also the biggest target.

There seriously are stories of drugged out assailants continuing after taking a round to the chest or abdomen, depending on the bullet, and wreaking havoc for a couple minutes afterward. If you want a self defense round, consider hollow points, because they do a great job of transferring energy to the target, and they don’t tend to punch through the house walls and kill someone down the street.

Or in that regard, just get a shotgun. It sounds super scary when you rack it, and it’s hard to miss. You also almost can’t injure your neighbors through your walls.

45

SDMB server went down, and I was looking for my ballistics book….

Yeah, I’m going to nit pic. A bit.

heh… now I’m a poet…

The .357 and the 9mm can come close to balistic performance on the high end of the 9 and the low end of the .357. From there its a walk away. In two different directions.

The .357 puts out the same diameter (I’ll be nit picked on that I’m sure) round as the 9mm only it runs about 300fps -500fps faster. Say 30%. And can put out a heavier (longer) bullet.

I tried to find similar built types and weight. Make things fare.

Muzzel velocity and energy –

.357 148 gr JHP 1500fps 720ft/lbs

9mm 147 gr JHP 1010fps 333ft/lbs

While I like 9mm for its capacity, the 9 will not ever come close to the .357. The .357 is a rifle in a handgun.

The .38sp is very similar to 9mm in overall ballistics.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Sorry couldn’t help my self. :smiley:

I’d love to get a Browning Hi-Power. And will hang on to my GP 100

46

I suppose I phrased that badly. What I meant was that I simply don’t care whether the attacker dies or not, only that he would no longer be a threat. If killing him (or shooting to kill) is the only safe way to achieve this, I’d have no problem with it. My only priority would be negating the threat. If I can’t reliably do that without shooting to kill, well, so be it. I’d take the advice of the qualified gun instructor I would certainly hire before presuming to carry such a weapon.

The basic idea is that I am willing to take life in self-defence, but I’d rather not. However, if doing so is the only practical strategy, then I value my own life, and those of my family, much more than I value the life of a random stranger who means me harm.

I don’t know what “grain” is in this context.

47

Well, note my comments above re. shooting to kill/injure.

The shotgun thing puzzles me, though. In the UK it is (relatively) easy to own a shotgun, yet it strikes me that those things are pretty dangerous in the wrong hands. I suppose their size makes them harder to conceal, but is there any other reason why they should be less restricted than guns that fire bullets?

48

That’s an interesting point. Is there any way I, as a complete novice, can judge who is qualified to give me instruction? Like a “Gun Teachers Society” or some such thing? How do I know that my instructor is suitably qualified, and not just some loon who likes waving guns around?

49

NRA Certified Instructors

Regardless of how you feel about the NRA, if you want to be sure that you’re being taught by a competent person and not some random person with a gun, this is the way to go.

50

Long guns have traditionally been less restricted partly just because they’re harder to conceal, and therefore harder to transport to the liquor store for a robbery.

I think one of the other reasons for shotguns to be less restricted is that farmers often want them to shoot birds and such. I don’t know why they shouldn’t have to wait like the rest of us, but I think this might be tradition coming in.

Actually, I don’t know what you mean by “easy to own” in Britain. In the USA, owning a gun is usually just a matter of not being a felon and waiting for 15 days or fewer. What kind of regulations are you speaking of? In America, the sporting goods stores, even Walmart, carry rifles, and AFAIK, there’s no waiting period. It freaks out some Euros, but they’re obeying the same gun regulations as every other store that sells them. Apparently it’s the proximity of guns to household goods that speaks of commonplace death and violence…

51

A grain is a unit of mass equal to 0.06479891 gram. The most common weight bullets for a .357 are 125 and 158 grains. The lighter one has a better stopping percentage.

52

An interesting (and never-ending) discussion is whether this is true or not. You have the Sanow/Marshall fans that go by whatever is at the top of the table, and you have everybody else.

It is true that lighter bullets have higher muzzle velocities (less to push out) and it is also true that they have more energy (E=MC^2), but there is another aspect to consider: overpenetration. From a purely objective standpoint the smaller bullet is better, but the numbers don’t account for what may be behind the target.

I’ll give up a few percentage points of “stopping power” to make sure that the bullet doesn’t pass through and hit someone behind the target. That’s why i use 158-grain Hydra-Shok JHPs in my .357 SP101 Revolver.

As a practical matter, if you hit all but the biggest animal center mass with a .357 Magnum, it’s going down. Shot placement is more important than numbers on a table.

53

I use Glasers, backed up by Hydra-Shoks in mine (Model 28 Smith & Wesson Highway Patrolman, target sights and Pachmayer grips). :smiley:

54

Thank you sir. If I ever decide to get a gun, that’s where I will look for training. I mean, I’m not a huge NRA fan, but I guess they would know about firearms.

55

Thanks for the information - I guess that “concealability” is a major concern.

As to gun rules in the UK, it is virtually impossible to own a handgun. In the few cases where it is permitted, the gun must be stored in a locked metal cabinet which is fixed to the floor or a wall. This cabinet must not contain the ammunition.

Not sure about rifles, but it’s relatively easy to get a permit to own a shotgun. I stress “relatively”. Back in the UK, I don’t know anyone who owns a gun, but IIRC, permits to use shotguns are generally issued to folks who aren’t known criminals. That’s not the case with rifles or handguns.

56

PaulParkhead, I note that your location says KMDT. If that’s an airport code I’ll be glad to take you out handgunning, as I live half an hour away from there and I have to go there at least once a week.

57

KMDT is indeed an airport code - Harrisburg, PA, but I should have updated it. These days, KMMU would be a better code as I live in Northern New Jersey at the moment. KMMU = Morristown, New Jersey.

It would be nice to have a handgun guide, though. Only problem is that I’ll be leaving the USA soon. But well, I could get back to Hbg, and I would really like to try shooting a gun with a qualified person to give me advice. And make sure I don’t shoot my own foot…

I leave the USA on June 5th.

58

Thank you! I have been wondering why the Texas concealed carry permit is restricted to revolvers if you qualify with a revolver, but covers either type if you qualify with a semi-auto pistol. That must be it–a revolver won’t take your thumb off if you hold it wrong; a semi-auto might.

Thanks for watching over me! :smack: I suppose the attraction of 9mm autoloaders is the ability to unload a whole lot of merely assertive bullets in a hurry, rather than count on five or six bad-ass bullets doing the whole job. The autoloader also seems to be a bit easier to conceal. (Two equatorial bulges in close proximity can be conspicuous.)

59

I believe it had more to do with the general trend away from large-calibre (.45/.455) calibre handguns after WWI.

In the late 19th century, the British (and American) militaries were engaged in many Colonial wars against determined, physically strong (and often religiously motivated) native warriors, and found that unloading a .36 calibre Navy Colt revolver into them did little to stop them before they could put an assegai through the Colour Sergeant.

As such, the trend was towards larger, “Man-stopping” calibres, such as .450 Adams, .45 Long Colt, .455 Webley, and .45 ACP- which were all capable of stopping charging opponents in one hit, or at least slowing them down long enough to get out of the way.

Large calibre handguns require a lot of training to use effectively, and the British in particular found that most of the people who were trained to use the .455 Webley revolvers had been killed in WWI, and so after the way they looked at the trends in the rest of the world and decided to go with a smaller calibre (.38/200, a development of the .38 S&W cartridge) that would- in theory- provide similar stopping power to the .455 but be easier to handle and train people with.

This seems like a silly idea- trading a man-stopping round for a less effective one- but the 9mm Parabellum round made an impressive battlefield debut in WWI and the 7.62x25mm Mauser cartridge was well-known from the Boer War days. In short, it was known that a smaller cartridge would be effective at stopping enemies, and that the large calibre handguns were starting to become regarded as “overkill” in use against “Civilised” (ie European) enemies.

America retained the .45 ACP cartridge after WWI because it performed well, did the job, and they had plenty of use for a large-calibre centrefire military handgun. WWII rolled around, the US re-armed, and since the standard side-arm was the M1911A1, for the most part (along with the same-calibre M1917 revolver and the S&W Victory revolver in .38 Special), they saw a lot of use in WWII, especially in the Pacific Theatre, and by the time the shooting had stopped there were so many .45 ACP arms floating around out there (especially the M1911A1 and the Thompson SMG) that many of the Colt M1911A1 pistols were sold as War Surplus, ending up on the civillian market at affordable prices- as well as all the “bringbacks” from soldiers who kept their handguns after the war.

The M1911A1 stayed in service as a standard-issue sidearm until the 1980s, so it has a long history as “America’s Pistol”, which, IMHO, is at least partially responsible for much of the collective fanboyism surrounding the M1911 family of handguns- but that’s probably a topic for another thread.

60

I’m sure it has a lot to do with range. Even the lowly .22 can travel up to a mile (according to the warnings on the box). Shotgun pellets tend to drop off pretty quickly, relatively speaking.