Disabling guns: how easy or difficult?

[Irishman]

@constanze

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?

Assuming the firing pin is a single straight piece between the hammer and the round, I would think it would be unnoticable unless specifically looked for, it would not have a noticable weight difference or feel, and the trigger would operate normally, just not fire the round. Vs removing a hammer spring or such, in which case I believe the trigger would move without resistance and the hammer would not return. I might be wrong.

TriPolar,
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.
[/quote]

In what situations do the heroes sneaking about find the villains’ guns sitting around in the open available for them to tinker with but not guarded by the villains? The one that comes to mind for me was the example given - person A has a hand gun but keeps it in his glove box because he doesn’t want to carry it on him all the time, like when he walks into a gas station. Person B is riding along with Person A pretending to be a victim/accomplice rather than the villain. Person B has access to the gun while person A is out of sight, and can monitor that person A does not inspect and notice the gun problem before it becomes time to use it. In that limited case, tweaking the gun by stealing the hammer/trigger spring was useful because it allowed continueing the masquerade while knowing the opponent would be caught by surprise and disarmed.

But in a situation where the person B finds Person A’s gun lying about, tweaks it, then leaves it behind and goes somewhere else and just assumes that Person A won’t discover their gun is bad? If the confrontation happens within a few minutes you might rely on the time factor to keep them from finding out, but if several hours go by, including a change of shift, you can’t rely on that. The new shift will bring their own guns, and the old shift will probably (if trained/experienced people and not dumb thugs) clean/service their weapons at the end of the day/beginning of new day.

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?

As discussed, putting chewing gum in the barrel or cylinder is not reliable. Anywhere else in the mechanism? I wouldn’t trust it.

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?)

I suspect the primary reason is that you have to get unsupervised access to said guns to disable them, then have to leave them out of your control so the bad guy can reacquire them. Few situations arise that that makes sense.

Remember the scene in Die Hard?

Bruce Willis wanted to test the guy, he didn’t trust the guy was from the party and not a terrorist. So he asks the guy his background with guns, then preps the gun for him, and tells him it is ready to go. The bad guy then points the gun at him and calls on the radio for backup. He didn’t check it himself because he watched Bruce Willis check it, and was pretending to be untrained. But what would have happened if he had done an ammo check, “like he was taught in gun safety”? Then Bruce would have had to hand over the ammo or try some other dodge.

So it’s just not reliable that you sabotage a gun that you can count on it working out for you. Plus, the bad guys have to have their guns to put the good guy at risk. Right?

@constanze

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.

Either take the gun, or hope you don’t get caught, but don’t take time to disable a gun when you can’t count on that doing any good if you are caught.
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.

[Cheshire_Human]

@Norse

Take the Mauser M98… 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,

<nitpick to part of your nitpick> I’ve got a 98 (German military, made in 1916), and my brother has an Argentinian one made more recently. The firing pin is one solid piece that goes all the way to the back of the bolt. It holds all the working parts in the bolt. You take it “out” and you’ve got nothing to hold any of the other pieces together to reassemble the bolt with. You could take the spring out, and put it together again. But that’s a major job. At least a good 5 minutes, and needs tools you won’t be carrying in your pocket. </nitpick>

[Norse]

CH: If you “need tools you won’t be carrying in your pocket” to disassemble the bolt, I’d assume that “ur doin it rong”. You need one small flat screwdriver (or a Leatherman tool), and the original rifle stock (which often is attached to the rest of the gun ). See surplusrifle.com. The bolt in some other bolt rifles, like the Sakos, is very easy to disassemble without any tools at all.

But yeah, on the Mauser I’d rather remove the mainspring than the firing pin. Or break the firing pin.

[Blake]

@constanze

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?

Generally revolvers don’t have a firing pin. They have a one-piece metal hammer hammer that is quite prominent, relatively difficult to remove and very obvious.

The suggestion for disabling a revolver was to remove the mainspring. If you do that the weapon looks and feels normal until you cock it or squeeze the trigger. Once you do cock it, the trigger or hammer will move with no resistance and it will be quite obvious the weapon has been disabled.

If you remove the firing pin or recoil rod from a revolver, it will behave quite normally for most models AFAIK. You will only know when you pull the trigger and it goes “click”.

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?

Not at all. I’d give the weapon a >99% chance of working.

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?)

I suspect that it’s a combination of things

Lack of imagination. Most Hollywood action/thriller writers are hacks. Guns are there to make loud noises and spill blood and little else.

Lack of audience desire. The audience for action/thriller movie sis mostly younger men. They want to see blood and bangs, they don’t want intricate details.

Lack of opportunity. Related to the above two, but most movies featuring firearms focus on fights between good guys and bad guys. There aren’t many scenarios in movies where this plot point would be usable

@muldoonthief

Can you point to a movie where this solution would have been useful?

In one of the recentish Bond movies, Bond removes the cartridges form a villain’s handgun.

But that is rather missing the point. Movie scripts are written, they aren’t real. This element will only be useful if it is written in as being useful. For example, it could have been used in “Crimson Tide” if one side or the other had disabled all weapons on the magazine to test the loyalty of the various crew members. It could have been used in “Inglourious Basterds”, where the either of the heroines disabled weapons of the various Germans. It could have been used in “Total Recall” or “Aliens” where the various traitors disabled weapons. It could have easily been used in the various “Ocean’s” movies, where this sort of subterfuge happened about a bazillions times.

It wasn’t used in any movies of course, but it could well have been, and would have been at least as plausible and useful as other things that happened in them. In “Aliens”, for example, disabling the weapon would have resulted in Ripley exposing herself to the face hugger and realising to late that it was disabled. In the actual script the fact that the weapon was removed was her biggest clue that something was wrong and that she needed to stay hidden.

These situations do come up in movies, but the idea has never been used AFAIK.

[Blake]

@Irishman

In what situations do the heroes sneaking about find the villains’ guns sitting around in the open available for them to tinker with but not guarded by the villains?

As noted, weapons have been stolen or disabled in Bond movies,“Die Hard”, “Aliens” and I am sure many, many others. In all those cases the villains’/heroes guns were sitting around in the open available to tinker with but not guarded by the villains/heroes.

But in a situation where the person B finds Person A’s gun lying about, tweaks it, then leaves it behind and goes somewhere else and just assumes that Person A won’t discover their gun is bad?

If it’s in an armory/magazine, yeah, probably. Most people don’t check their weapons every single day. Even in the military, weapons are only checked on issue and return.

So it’s easy to imagine a scenario where someone sneaks in, disables the entire armory and then sneaks out. Then when “chaos ensues” the weapons are issued, and only then do they discover they don’t work. If I steal the contents of an armory or a gun case, someone *will *notice. If I disable it, chances are it will go unnoticed until the critical moment.

Imagine something like “Empire Strikes Back”. Very few people walked around armed in the rebel base. If someone had disabled the armory, then when the attack stated and weapons were issued it would be too late to do anything about it. If someone had removed all the weapons, that would probably have attracted attention.

[Raguleader]

Quickest way to disable the weapon without it being immediately apparent? If the weapon’s magazine is designed such that you can’t see the bullets without pulling the magazine, pulling the slide, etc., then you just remove the bullets.

For a semiautomatic handgun, should take less than 30 seconds if your fingers are a bit stiff from the cold. Thumb the mag release, catch the magazine, use the thumb of one hand to pop the rounds out and catch them in your other hand and either pocket them or dump them somewhere. Replace the magazine, replace the gun in its original location. (All this assumes the owner keeps his handgun loaded, of course)

Bad guy catches you snooping around, grabs the gun, takes aim, and clickclickclick

If he keeps the gun unloaded, this strategy loses some of its punch, however. That said, if he DOES keep it loaded, but is the sort to check if that is the case when he picks the gun up, it still buys you a few seconds while he grabs a spare magazine/another weapon, or has to reload the one he’s got.

EDIT: If you do this though, take care to avoid the amateur mistake of forgetting to clear the chamber. If he’s got an empty magazine and a round in the chamber, he’s still got enough ammo to ruin your evening.

[Raguleader]

@constanze

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.

Just saw this, and I need to nitpick: A major plot point in the Terminator series is capturing Terminators and reprogramming them. IIRC, it was a major plot point in two of the four movies and the TV series.

Granted, they were programmed to solve problems with guns. Sometimes very big guns.

[QRK]

The slang term jarking means to detrementally modify a weapon without the
owner’s knowledge. If you sneak into the bad guy’s house and steal his firing
pin when that weapon is pointed at you what you are going to think isn’t “Ha,
Ha I’ve got his firing pin the weapon won’t fire” it’s going to be more like “Oh shit
has he bothered to strip his weapon down since I jarked it and replace the firing
pin”.
Partially cutting through the firing pin (or replacing it with an already cut pin) is
much more likely not to be noticed. The plan is for the pin to strike the round
and break, although there is a slight chance that the first round may go off. Doing
this is going to require a vice, something to cut very hard steel and something soft
to fill the gap. As I said before the one time I know that this was done it didn’t
work to plan with the worst possible results.

[Cheshire_Human]

@Norse

CH: If you “need tools you won’t be carrying in your pocket” to disassemble the bolt, I’d assume that “ur doin it rong”. You need one small flat screwdriver (or a Leatherman tool), and the original rifle stock (which often is attached to the rest of the gun ). See surplusrifle.com. The bolt in some other bolt rifles, like the Sakos, is very easy to disassemble without any tools at all.

But yeah, on the Mauser I’d rather remove the mainspring than the firing pin. Or break the firing pin.

:eek: Ur rite. I’ve been doin it rong. I always assumed that thing on the stock was just decorative. I didn’t know it had any useful purpose… :smack: Thanks. Now I have to go upstairs and try it.

[abel29a]

@Norse

<nitpick>
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.

I had to add, owning a H&K G3 which usually has its firing pin removed, yes, this is a quick and easy way to disable the gun. Totally undetectable unless the gun is test-fired, or taken apart. As a bonus, cocking the G3 rifle and pulling the trigger after the pin is removed will usually end with the whole trigger assembly falling to pieces, causing some extra minutes of fiddling and cursing for the bad guy to reassemble it, even if he has a spare firing pin laying around

[Norse]

@abel29a

As a bonus, cocking the G3 rifle and pulling the trigger after the pin is removed will usually end with the whole trigger assembly falling to pieces

So, you too have tried that?

[Norse]

@Cheshire_Human

I always assumed that thing on the stock was just decorative.

What do you think are the odds of finding “just decorative” details on a standard issue army rifle? :dubious:

[Irishman]

@Blake

So it’s easy to imagine a scenario where someone sneaks in, disables the entire armory and then sneaks out. Then when “chaos ensues” the weapons are issued, and only then do they discover they don’t work. If I steal the contents of an armory or a gun case, someone *will *notice. If I disable it, chances are it will go unnoticed until the critical moment.

It just doesn’t sound practical for me. Think about it - sneaking in involves not being detected. Every minute in the armory is an opportunity to be discovered. 5 minutes a gun for multiple guns does add up.

And typically, when sneaking in, they are sneaking in for a reason - like stealing information, or rescuing somebody. Better off spending your time accomplishing the goal and getting out than wasting time in the armory and hoping you aren’t spotted.

Imagine something like “Empire Strikes Back”. Very few people walked around armed in the rebel base. If someone had disabled the armory, then when the attack stated and weapons were issued it would be too late to do anything about it. If someone had removed all the weapons, that would probably have attracted attention.

Yeah, but who would do that? As soon as the Empire discovered their location, it sent an assault force. Some Imperial sympathizer hiding out in the rebel base and preparing things for the day the assault finally comes? There are much better ways the sympathizer could sabotage the rebels. Like rigging the shield generators with explosives. Actually alerting the Empire rather than waiting for some random probe to stumble on them. Tinkering with each and every hand weapon seems like a massively stupid approach.

[Raguleader]

@Norse

What do you think are the odds of finding “just decorative” details on a standard issue army rifle? :dubious:

I’ve always been under the impression that the carrying handle of the M-16 is either entirely decorative or was only designed to carry the rear gunsight. It’s certainly not for carrying the rifle, according to many NCOs I’ve talked to.

[Cheshire_Human]

@Norse

What do you think are the odds of finding “just decorative” details on a standard issue army rifle? :dubious:

From 1916? Pretty high, given that ones just a few decades older were pretty ornate for “standard issue”. Still, I never looked closely at it, and I’ve had the rifle for over 30 years. There wasn’t no intertubes around to look things up on back then, so I had to figure out how to take everything apart myself. I’ve never looked on da interwebz for it, more recently, so never found out about it til you posted that link.