Or at least shoot through the chain that links the cuffs together? As Sarsgaard’s character did in Flightplan, and countless other heroes and countless other villains did in countless other movies.
It seems like steel chain links would be way to strong for such a thing.
Not exactly the same, but along the same lines.
:dubious:
The guy doesn’t seem to have put much thought into that experiment. If you look at a movie, when they put the gun up to the lock, they’re firing down onto the top of the mechanism to force it down, or pointing it at the arm itself in the hope of snapping it. Hitting it from the side on the body just doesn’t seem very pointful unless you really want to warp the innards into unmovability.
Most handcuffs these days aren’t the chain between bracelets kind of yore, but the single hinge between bracelets. Could you? If we’re talking sheer balistics then certainly, put a Smith and Wesson .500 to it and pull the trigger a few times. The real question becomes what kind of hands or forearms do you expect to walk away from this with? Better to pick the lock or cut the cuffs somehow than to blast away with sufficent firepower and risk blowing your hands off in the process.
Well, in his notes he said he was worried about risking injury if he shot the locks from too close. Mythbusters did a more comprehensive experiment, involving blast shields so they could shoot from zero range. I believe the result was that you might get lucky with a large handgun, but probably not, and you might get hit by ricochet besides. Shotguns and rifles can shoot the locks off though.
Man, there is some powerful stupid in that story.
I was thinking more that he could have leaned the locks rather than having them lying straight down. Probably best would be to attach them to a board like he did, but then lie the board on its back so the locks are resting like they’re on a plate with the mechanism facing away from where you’re shooting from, then tilt the back side of the board up so you have a slightly larger surface area.
I liked the comment at the bottom: “Auto repair Dick Cheney style.” 