Gunslingers of the 1800's were real, not today though.

Factual Questions
41

Also, you don’t have to use a full load. I use 15 gr. blackpowder in my Colt Navy (recommended charge: 18 gr., max charge: 20 gr.). Almost no recoil, so follow-up shots are (or would be, if I did rapid-fire) easier.

And I was surprised by its accuracy. I thought, ‘This thing is a 150-year-old design. I wonder if it could hit a B-52 at ten paces?’ But remember that people trusted their lives to these guns. Pistoleers such as Wild Bill Hickock and John Wesley Hardin were renouned for their marksmanship. I have a .32-20 Winchester Model 1892 made in 1897 that is a pleasure to shoot and is quite accurate. And I’m not really a marksman.

42

Getting back to the OP.

Yes, if Annie Oakley were a police officer today, she might be able to shoot someone in the hand, rather than the center of mass. Thing is, Annie Oakley put on her shows precisely because she was an unusually good shot. And as others have pointed out, she was putting on a SHOW. So some of her stunts weren’t exactly as they appear.

The big difference between then and today is that back then just about everyone could shoot, so someone who was a particularly good shot would probably discover their talent early. There are probably lots of housewives today who’ve never touched a gun that could have become Olympic-level sharpshooters if they’d only practiced shooting since they were 5 years old.

But the thing is, there’s a big difference between trick shooting and combat shooting. One of the things sharpshooters and snipers learn to do is control their heartrate and zen out so that their involuntary body movements don’t affect the shot. A cop in a shootout or a soldier in a firefight can’t afford that luxury. Yes, there’s a place for trained snipers on the police force and in the military, but most situations where a cop is called on to use deadly force are not SWAT sniper situations, but rather some guy in a dark alley 30 feet away waving a gun around.

Trying to pull off a trick shot would be the wrong choice 99.99% of the time. There’s no such thing as a non-deadly use of a firearm. People MISS, all the time. If a cop isn’t justified in using deadly force, they MUST not discharge their firearm, even if they’re trying to hit someone in the hand or the leg. What if the cop misses, and hits him in the head? What if the cop hits him in the hand, severs a major artery, and the perp bleeds out before the EMTs can arrive? What if the cop misses and the bullet continues on its merry way, to hit God knows what?

If deadly force is not justified, then any use of a firearm is not justified. If deadly force is justified, then the cop should use deadly force. Cops should never be trained to believe they can use a firearm in a less than deadly way. They should be trained to understand in a split second when deadly force is or is not justified, and react accordingly. I don’t want some idiot cop thinking he’s Annie Oakley trying to shoot me in the hand, unless he believe’s I’m an immediate deadly danger. If I’m not an immediate deadly danger he shouldn’t fire. If I am, he should be trained to take the shot that is most likely to neutralize that danger, which is to shoot for the center of mass.

43

Word. Still, it would be great to see a trick shooter bust up an illegal card game by creasing the ace of spades out of someone’s hands at 30 feet.

That will get you some undivided attention.

44

I’m not a gun person, but here’s a timeline of various possibly relevant events from various marginally credible sources:

1860 Annie Oakley Born
1861 Hiram Berdan became Colonel of the 1st United States Sharpshooters; C.H. Ballard patented the breechloading Ballard rifle
1869 Col. Henry Berdan and Marcellus Hartley developed the first centerfire cartridge.
1876 AO maries Frank Butler, later joining his travelling show
1880 Clay pigeon targets patented in the U.S. by George Likowsky.
1885 AO and FB join Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show
1886 Joshua Stevens incorporated the J. Stevens Arms and Tool Company.
1887 Alfred Nobel develops smokeless gunpowder.
1891 The Italian Army adopted the Mannlicher-Carcano, the first Italian smokeless powder rifle.
1895 .30 W.C.F. (.30-30 Winchester, first sporting cartridge designed expressly for smokeless powder.
1901 AO injured in accident, cuts back on touring
1926 AO dies at 66

If these are true, some of the developments indicate an appreciation for a new level of accuracy available amond firearms. Smokeless powder was available from near the very beginning of Oakley’s career, and I would guess it’s not impossible to imagine a superstar like her having it made available to her by manufacturers before a mass-production gun for it was introduced.

Don’t know if that helps anyone resolve any disputes.

My great grandfather was a brass player with BB’s Wild West Show, and rememberd Oakley picking off Indians who had attacked the touring train on occasion. She was definitely not all show.

45

The trick is to announce your target after you’ve already hit it.

“Watch this!” blam “Betcha didn’t think I could hit that acorn from here!”

46

For my guns, all I need is consistency. I can move the group around at will.

If I am really used to my gun, I can do amazing things.

Do not underestimate endurance.

Do not underestimate the number of rounds and length of practice. Very few people have the time and means to shoot as much as some of the old timers did.

If you only have a pool of 100 folks to pick from, the odds are small that you will find the numbers of natural talent that you would find in a pool of 100,000 folks with the same amount of experience.

There are and were a great number of folks who were great shots that disliked shooting guns and did not look to be known as good shots.

My grandmother riding side saddle at a gallop could hit a running jack rabbit at 50-60 feet with her .22 rifle every time anyone ever saw her try. Your disbelief does not change the fact that she could do it.

I have a brother that shoots like a machine. He is not interested but if he could be forced to do it, he would be top Olympic quality…

Ever watch the combat boys compete? Two clips into different targets for every shot at under, what 2 shots / second.

A lot of the distances the shots are taken, the guns still have enough accuracy even when dirty…

The average police officer practices less than the average Joe who does not have much money but likes to shoot.

I figure that until I can do repeatedly 10% of what Annie could do, I’m not going to be a real asshat about what she did.

Showman ship and cheating does not totally account for her ability and I don’t see where she made those claims. Be pissed at the correct people, Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doodie, not Annie.

Just remember, at a certain distance with the same ammo, some guns do the same things, this can be compensated for, especially at shorter distances.

The man sitting on the pile of blocks, is that a lie? Even if he did it with 10 different guns over 2 days, it is incredible.

When I went to basic training in 1961, I got an M1 that would shoot. On qualifying day, my range Sargent did not believe what I was doing. He got my platoon Sargent and my Field First and they were all combat vets. The took turns using my rifle. After I was through with basic, they liberated that M1 as it was the most accurate M1 they had ever seen. Just a fluke but still, it does happen.

Oh, and ask Chuck Yeager what the human eye can see if you happen to be born lucky.

YMMV

47

Of course Annie Oakley was an amazing talent.

But if Annie Oakley was a cop today driving a squad car, she still wouldn’t be shooting the gun out of the perp’s hand. If the situation didn’t call for deadly force she’d keep her sidearm in its holster. And if the situation called for deadly force she’d put an amazingly fast and accurate burst into the perp’s center of mass.

No beat cop should be trained to do trick shooting. If Annie Oakley were a SWAT sniper then she might be trained to do different things. But even then, her main purpose when discharging her weapon would be to put a perp on the ground as quickly and safely as possible. The only reason to shoot someone’s hand or leg would be if that’s the only exposed body part. If she had a clear chest shot there would never be a reason to take a different shot.

48

if you practice this sort of stuff day after day, you can get to be quite good at it. Especially when you are getting paid to do it, and free ammo and guns as well. In the 1950s the Army’ s ‘Quick Kill’ program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_shooting#Quick_Kill proved you could teach people to hit consistantly using a BB gun without sights.
In at least one instance, the circus audience heard Cody’s birdshot dropping onto a hard surface and realised what was up.

49

I’m willing to assume that for the most difficult stunts, Annie and other performance sharpshooters rotated through several freshly-cleaned guns, so fouling wouldn’t be an issue. And of course, if a particular weapon has a bias, a trained shooter can compensate for it. But does anyone have any hard numbers on the random error (spread) for the top-of-the-line, well-maintained firearms of the late 1800s? That’s the real question here, and the one everyone’s dancing around, but numbers seem to be a bit hard to come by.

50

And I imagine Shane would shoot a perp in the hand if that is what he deemed best for the situation. :dubious:

Let’s imagine ninety percent of all local police officers have been trained to feel as confident with their ability to place a shot as a black belt martial artist could put his fist to your forehead and knock you out, or into your forehead to cause your bodily functions to cease functioning. Let’s also imagine the PO is a religious type who does not want to kill if he does not have to; the PO is trained and has the demeanor of a Shane now and can kill, or not, depending on the circumstances.

Today the majority of police officers do not have the option of to kill or not, becuase they haven’t been trained to react like a Shane. And Lemur866 implies that it is not possible to shoot with precision in stressfull circumstances, or to be trained as a martial artist is trained to react in stressfull circumstances.

It cannot be impossible to train people to shoot with precision, and have the option to maim. Present police training does not involve this level of expertise with a firearm, so the option to maim is not with the police officer. Good or bad that this is so doesn’t matter either. I wanted to know if it is possible to shoot like Shane, and then is it possible to have a majority of law enforcement personnel to acquire this option.

And when I was about fifteen years old I shot my brothers 357 Magnum at a firing range. Maybe I didn’t have muscles in my hand, but my thumb hurt, and I used two hands to fire it after that. Sometimes my imagination gets the better of me maybe with that 44 Magnum breaking-wrist sentence I spoke of.

Did people shoot like Shane did in the movie? And can people be trained to not shoot like Shane did not shoot Joey in stressfull situations? That last question may seem like I’m implying something I’m not. I think every PO would like to possess the expertise to shoot a firearm like a Shane, and to have the demeanor to go along with it. But this training is deemed not necessary by brass, and this is what I’m implying.

51

Look, a very select few people can be trained to perform pretty amazing feats of marksmanship.

That’s why those feats are amazing. Because very few people can do them. If it were a matter of a few hours of training every few weeks and pretty much anyone could do it then that level of marksmanship wouldn’t be amazing, it would be routine.

However, real life has shown us that people firing handguns in a firefight are lucky to hit anything at all.

There is no option to shoot to maim.

There are only two cases. In one case, deadly force is not justified. In that case, anyone who fires their weapon should be up on criminal charges, whether they hit or miss, whether they aim for the center of mass or the hand or the leg, whether the victim dies or not. It is absolutely unacceptable to fire a gun at someone if deadly force is not justified.

If deadly force IS justified, then there is no case where anything other than the shot most likely to stop the target is justified. Any officer attempting a trick shot should be fired. If deadly force is justified, if it is justified to fire your deadly weapon at this person, then you make the shot that is most likely to succeed.

There is no such thing as a non-deadly bullet wound. All bullet wounds are potentially deadly, and all police officers should be trained that this is the case. It is impossible to shoot to maim with any degree of confidence, even for a highly trained sharpshooter. Even if the sharpshooter is able to hit where they aim, all while bullets are flying at them, there is no guarantee that shot won’t just kill or permanently maim the target outright.

52

http://www.sassnet.com/

These are the people doing that today, not that any of them are nearly as good as the old “legends”. My ex-father-in-law goes to the SASS meets pretty regularly, has quite a nice cache of replicas and some original pieces (I can’t remember what exactly). I’ve seen these people do some interesting things with lead, keep a can suspended, shooting coins (quarters, not dimes) etc. I think it is, and was at the time, about the quality of the firearm. Speaking from experience, I’ve always been able to shoot better with his single action 38s than with my own modern pistols. They don’t make guns like they used to, commercial does not compair to craftmanship. Granted, technology has come a long way, but I personally would pick a handcrafted piece over a machine milled mass produced piece any day.

53

police commissioners and district attorneys of large metropolitan areas would accept and understand why law enforcement personnel under their command have a …? (I want to be careful with the words I use now …) why law enforcement personnel have little expertise in the use of their firearms under real life situations.

What comes to mind after reading all these posts is while I was walking through crowded Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, several times I would see the National Guardsmen with either the holstered .45 or the M16 rifle, and I thought if anything were to happen there is going to be alot of collateral damage if these National Guardsmen are not the first to be brought down by any slimeball terrorist. Any captain or lieutenant of the situation who set this kind of protection for us leaves me with the hope of luck, and not skill will prevent and thwart some nutjob at any metropolitan transportation hub.

Certain actions of law enforcement policy makers, recently, for example the habit of searching old ladies (grandmothers) luggage at airports after 9/11, who is picking people who think and then implement policies like this? Sure, other measures are being taken maybe but it just does not give an air of confidence towards the leadership of some of those in command of our law enforcement agencies. One has to only read the exploits of those commanding certain Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War to have it come to mind that some people simply should not be in charge of directing the actions of two or three much less give marching orders to hundreds or thousands of men with weapons in their hands. I’m trying to refrain from the use of words like incompetent or negligent with these thoughts because this is not the problem. The problem is the lack of imagination; of practical foresight or something. Common sense? I’m trying very hard to refrain from sounding derogatory … but,

If instead I was to have seen a National Guardsmen with a long barreled pistol that I thought would be used to plug the head of some one, or two or three particular people in a crowded lobby of a hundred other commuters, like Shane could do (or only Hollywood? this question is still not satisfactorily answered to me here), I would then say to myself our law enforcement personnel, and brass, are in control and at least pretend to be on top of the situation.

Maybe I’m the odd one out: the majority of pedestrians feel confident seeing a soldier with a rifle, and this majority is taken into consideration rather than my own? Maybe.

I’ll speak for myself anyway, for whatever it is worth and say I’m not confident. Expertise with a firearm is unneccesary in the mindset of the commissioners and district attorney’s, collateral damage is acceptable and nothing can be thought of to rectify the situation, and wow how frightening to think this lack of imagination or whatever is not somehow within the tens of billions of dollars already spent to bring the federal Homeland Security to be whatever it is.

This post went way off the intended topic for some reason … :smack: