By my count, the OP asks 19 specific questions and implies a great number of other ones.
Tossing the gun in the river was pretty much ruled out by the OP, however. But if Our Hero has as much time and equipment as some posters are assuming, he could just unload the weapon, pull the bullets, dump the powder and reseat the lead, then reload the weapon with functionless ammo. The Bad Guy couldn’t tell this was done until he pulled the trigger.
Here’s an easy one:
Smith & Wesson revolvers of recent manufacture have an integral lock. They come with a small key. When engaged, the lock prevents the trigger form being pulled.
(These locks are generally despised by the gun-owning community, for being at best an unnecessary cost, and at worst unintentionally preventing the gun from firing.)
As far as I know, all the keys are identical. It’s just a small hollow hex shape. I carry mine on my key ring with my car keys. I’m not a crime fighting hero, but I can disable any recently-made Smith & Wesson revolver in about five seconds. Of course, if the bad guy is also carrying his key…
I wonder that too, since the OP never says that it *has *to be undetectable.
So why didn’t you read the OP?
Sure, but come on, removing the cylinder isn’t merely “not undectectable”, it’s immediately apparent that someone has tampered with it. Under what scenarios that the OP posited would that at all be helpful?
I already explained that at length.
So apparently not only have you not read the Op, you haven’t read the thread
Come on, Blake. You’ve given excellent and useful information in this thread, as you usually do. There’s no need for this fussing and feuding in here.
Perhaps you can explain to me a bit what the mainspring is in a revolver? I only have one revolver so I’m not that familiar with taking them apart, and I’m not certain what you mean by the mainspring (it’s a Ruger Super Redhawk, if that makes a difference).
It’s the spring that is compressed when the gun is cocked. It provides the necessary impetus for the hammer to drop, striking the firing pin (sometimes the firing pin is integral to the hammer) which results in the loud noise and projectile displacement through the barrel.
It’s callout #50 in this schematic.
Holy crap there are a lot of miscellaneous parts in my gun. I mean, I’ve had it for more than 20 years, and I’ve never thought about how many tiny parts make it up. I’ve seen that spring now that your linked photo has refreshed my memory…hmm, not sure how easy it is to remove.
With a screwdriver or two and a little bit of time, not hard at all. If you have those tools, you can also really trash any number of other parts of the trigger assembly. But swiping the mainspring does have a touch of panache.
Actually, I’ve never tried it on the Ruger Super Blackhawk, but I bet you could do it by taking off the grip (tool required: screwdriver) and then manually cocking the hammer. This compresses the spring. Take a paperclip (toll required: paperclip) and put it in the hole at the end of the spring. Uncock the hammer and lift out the spring. Put the grips back on (tool required: same screwdriver). Radiate panache.
You do realise I posted a video above of someone removing the mainspring of a revolver?
You don’t need a paperclip. most revolvers come with the necessary pin attacked.
No, I missed that entirely because I originally read the post at work, where YouTube is blocked (more than blocked, it generates a “bad dog!” alert), and I forgot to revisit the post after I got home.
The slang term for this is jarking. I know of an M60 machine gun’s firing pin that was jarked
by a professional armourer with a file. It didn’t work and took off someones head with a twenty
round burst. I’ve got to agree with everyone else who said don’t depend on a disabled weapon
not to work.
Hello to all.
Thanks for the many answers. Sorry I couldn’t answer earlier, though I did skim the thread in the meantime.
**Lare, Chessic Sense, Blake, **
thanks for your detailed answers. That was what had I hoped for, but since I don’t know anything about guns beyond that they go boom, I wasn’t sure. (The nearest ex-military I asked, former Air Force, remembered taking his rifle lock apart, but had no idea whether it could still be re-assembled with a small important part missing. Well, it was over 40 years ago for him.)
Screwdrivers are quite believable to carry around - the ubiqutious Swiss Army Knife (that MacGuyver always had) has two, and many people carry a Leatherman on their belt.
Follow-up question: how would the revolver with the firing pin removed feel like to the person picking it up to try and shoot? Would the trigger have no resistance, would it be blocked and not move, or would the trigger move normally and just not fire?
Tellyworth, now that you mention it, I saw that Mythbusters ep. some time ago. They wanted to recreate the Bugs Bunny banana peel effect - Bugs puts a finger in a rifle barrel to plug it, and the rifle explodes in the hunter’s face in the form of a banana peel. I don’t remember the details, but the first surprise was that normal fingers didn’t fit into normal rifle barrels; the second, that jamming a barrel was hard - most stuff flew out with the shot, propelled by the gases; and even with welding or otherwise solid blocking, the rifle didn’t produce a banana peel effect, it just made a small explosion of some kind.
SmithCommaJohn,
something highly corrosive would be a highly potent acid, which is difficult to carry around for a normal person. Also, I don’t know if that would be 100% reliable, as removing the firing pin/ spring (the solution I like best so far) would.
Projammer
I found a tube of super glue to be difficult in one’s pants pockets - they always ran out and stuck to my pocket. Aside from that, would that really glue metal fast enough that the discharge might not break it? Usually for superglue, you have to press the two parts together, which need to be smooth, not rough like metal. Would that work reliably enough?
TriPolar,
if Team A is quietly sneaking around the compound/ house of Team B, and finds a weapon lying on the kitchen table, taking it away immediatly alerts the patrolling guards of Team B that intruders are about, so the alarm will sound; and team B will go into the armoury and get a new weapon.
If Team A instead disables the weapon without obvious visible signs (by removing the firing pin/ spring/ other inside parts), then : no alarm; and even if Team A gets accosted by Team B, instead of having to put their hands up, can laugh at Team B because they know the weapon doesn’t work.
Aside: I never understand why the Hollywood heroes never think of this. Unless Team A is working on a split-second time plan and can’t afford one minute, the heroes either don’t know anything about guns (unlikely in the American culture) or are carrying idiot balls, so that Team B can later confront them with working guns to complicate matters.
I prefer smarter heroes than that.
**2square4u **
Thanks, that’s what I was thinking of as only possible explanation: modern guns might be so sturdily built on purpose that they can’t be disabled. However, as Blake and others have explained, knowing what vital part to remove renders even these guns unable. Though not explosive…
silenus
huh? I’m sorry if I was that unclear. I meant only to ask a broad question with applications in sub-categories; the rest was context added to make the scenario clear.
Well, I’m not the expert, but it sounds from Blake et al. as if dis- and re-assembling can be done by somebody with moderate practice in 5 min. Unloading the gun, pulling the bullets, dumping the powder and re-seating things sounds … longer and needing more tools?
ChickenLegs,
you say that only recently fabricated Smith&Wesson have that lock, but I was thinking of action taking place in the 70s to the 90s. Also, I think it’s a bit implausible if the heroes expect the other side to have only Smith & Wessons… And if the bad guy has a gun with a lock, I would expect him to carry his key - the villains shouldn’t be dumb, either.
QRK,
I’m sorry, I’m not quite following you here. What exactly is called jarking - generally disabling a weapon or one of the specific techniques mentioned yet? Do you mean “filing down”?
Also, a firing pin that’s “jarked” = filed down?, yet still works enough, is different from a firing pin that has been taken away completly. I am not a gun expert, but I really have a hard time believing that the latter can still fire…
I think the agreement was that blocking the barrel is unreliable, but I don’t recount any warnings against removing the pin or spring?
Gotten lost in the first page, but putting chewing gun (more believable to be carried around by a normal person than modelling clay) in the revolver - is that reliable or not?
Would anybody like to speculate why Hollywood practically never, and standard action literature rarely, mentions heroes disabling guns? Is there a strong aversion to destroying guns? The notion that guns are useful, as long as the heroes are holding them? Writers don’t know anything about guns (which is why Hollywood guns never run out of ammo, never become hot after continous fire, never jam, and seldom recoil?)
<nitpick>
A well-designed gun should be quite easy to disable if you know what you’re doing, because it should also be very easy to field strip for cleaning. Take the Mauser M98, the H&K G3 or the H&K MP5 which I’m quite familiar with: I could remove the firing pin and/or the mainspring and reassemble the gun in less than five minutes. For the M98, I might need a screwdriver or a Leatherman to reassemble the bolt, but for the G3 (or the MP5) I wouldn’t need any tools. And you probably wouldn’t know before you tried to shoot with it. I can’t tell about handguns, though, since I don’t have any personal experience with those.
But it takes a bit of bad luck to have it blow up in your face, and plugging the barrel might just as well get you shot as having the gun blow up in the bad guy’s face.
ETA: But the “just as well” part is what would never make me fire a gun with an obstructed barrel. I value my eyes and my hands too highly. And besides, It would ruin the gun anyway, and I probably wouldn’t like that in real life…
A few reasons:
Your particular scenario doesn’t come up very often in movies.
Trusting your life to a gun that you disabled, but then was out of your sight & control for an unknown amount of time, is remarkably foolish. If my choices were between (a) disabling the gun, and hoping the bad guys didn’t notice between the time they picked it up and our next encounter, or (b) just take the damn gun, so I’m armed too, I, and I bet 99% of people knowledgeable enough about guns to disable them, would pick (b).
And I’m not sure why you describe the fact that guns are useful as a “notion”. Of course they’re useful. They’re not magic wands of course, but if someone is trying to actively kill you, having a gun of your own and shooting back will increase your chances of survival.
Even considering that taking a gun that’s openly lying around immediatly signals “intruder”? And given that the opposition will likely have more than one gun, how will you carry them all?
If an intruder alert is sounded because you took the gun, then the other side will re-arm, and it’s likely to develop into a standoff or shooting match.
Disabling the gun invisibly will lure the other side in a false sense of safety, and instead of shooting it out with them, you are the one with a working gun.
Also, Hollywood heroes either come already armed (most action heroes) or are opposed to using guns on principle (MacGyver), so taking the gun only to arm themselves doesn’t apply.
But they are often treated this way - guns solve all problems. Even in the Terminator movies, people shoot the machines instead of hacking and re-programming them.
Well, yes, which is why I want to stop them from shooting at me in the first place, if possible.
Sorry, I thought in your scenario Team A was unarmed. What’s armed Team A doing sneaking around the compound? Escaping? Looking for information? Trying to rescue someone else? Why isn’t patrolling Team B carrying their guns, instead of leaving them where Team A can find them? How will Team A later confirm that the guns Team B is carrying when they accost them are the ones they disabled, and have not been repaired in the interim, so they can laugh at them? It just seems like a risky and somewhat time consuming thing to do, especially since the only rational response for Team A if accosted by Team B later is to act as if all Team B’s guns are fully functional, since there’s no way to be certain they are not.
Can you point to a movie where this solution would have been useful?
And how do you hack & reprogram a Terminator that’s shooting at you right now?
By 4square:
On afterthought, I’d go for removing the entire gun rather than the firing pin, as others have suggested. Fastest and easiest solution.
[/QUOTE]
Right. Then shoot the bastard with his own gun!
You could always have Team A take the gun and ambush Team B, and proceed to bind and gag them. Even interrogate them if the mission is simply to extract information.
It would be easy to coerce a small group if yours was the only one armed, and they can’t simply go back to the armory or alert the rest of the team.