handcuffs and guns

[Herrserker]

As seen in the movies. Point a gun at the chain of handcuffs and you are free. Is this possible? Is it dangerous?

[Joey_P]

I’d imagine most guns could break the chain that holds (most) handcuffs together. The problem is going to be where the bullet goes afterwards.

I’d also be worried about that small length of chain that’s still attached to the cuff whipping around and smacking my wrist and cutting it, but that’s probably less of a worry then the stray bullet.

[Rhythmdvl]

Are bullets sharp? If not, isn’t it the equivalent to whacking the chain with a very small-faced and very powerful hammer? Wouldn’t a lot of force get transmitted along the chain to the handcuffs themselves (or causing the cuffee’s hands to slam together)?

[Joey_P]

@Rhythmdvl

Are bullets sharp? If not, isn’t it the equivalent to whacking the chain with a very small-faced and very powerful hammer? Wouldn’t a lot of force get transmitted along the chain to the handcuffs themselves (or causing the cuffee’s hands to slam together)?

You’re hands would slam together if the chain didn’t break, but if it did break, I would assume it would be because your hands/arms have considerably more momentum the the bullet (meaning, they stay still and the bullet keeps going).

[Ethilrist]

@Joey_P

You’re hands would slam together if the chain didn’t break, but if it did break, I would assume it would be because your hands/arms have considerably more momentum the the bullet (meaning, they stay still and the bullet keeps going).

Yes, if the bullet breaks the chain, you need to worry about broken chain bits and the bullet. If it doesn’t break the chain, you need to worry about the cuffs hitting your wrists that hard. And the bullet.

[Hail_Ants]

@Joey_P

You’re hands would slam together if the chain didn’t break, but if it did break, I would assume it would be because your hands/arms have considerably more momentum the the bullet (meaning, they stay still and the bullet keeps going).

Even if it hit the chain it’s not going to ‘pull’ your hands together like a hammer would. The bullet has more force than hitting it with a hammer but it is also for an extremely shorter amount of time. The links of the chain would essentially ‘explode’ apart long before the energy could get transferred thru them into a pulling motion.

Handcuffs are made of very tough steel. It would take a large caliber, I don’t think a .38 would even do it, not with one shot anyway. A .357 or .45 might, but it wouldn’t be like you see in the movies, both in that it may take several shots, and the cuffed person would get hit with shrapnel from the chain and the bullet not mention powder burns from the muzzle. I can’t recall ever reading or hearing about someone ever even trying to do this. Maybe the Mythbusters?

[Lumpy]

I’m reminded of the Mark Twain book “Roughing It” when Twain and co. are lost in a snowstorm:

All agreed that a camp fire was what would come nearest to saving us, now, and so we set about building it. We could find no matches, and so we tried to make shift with the pistols. Not a man in the party had ever tried to do such a thing before, but not a man in the party doubted that it could be done, and without any trouble—because every man in the party had read about it in books many a time and had naturally come to believe it, with trusting simplicity, just as he had long ago accepted and believed that other common book-fraud about Indians and lost hunters making a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together.
We huddled together on our knees in the deep snow, and the horses put their noses together and bowed their patient heads over us; and while the feathery flakes eddied down and turned us into a group of white statuary, we proceeded with the momentous experiment. We broke twigs from a sage bush and piled them on a little cleared place in the shelter of our bodies. In the course of ten or fifteen minutes all was ready, and then, while conversation ceased and our pulses beat low with anxious suspense, Ollendorff applied his revolver, pulled the trigger and blew the pile clear out of the county! It was the flattest failure that ever was.

[tellyworth]

There was a Mythbusters segment about shooting locks. Not handcuffs, obviously, but instructive nonetheless.

Handguns were useless. It took a deer slug or high powered rifle to break a lock. There was quite a bit of shrapnel.

[Ranger_Jeff]

If I was handcuffed, how would I be able to aim the pistol at the chain connecting them?

[jtur88]

Point a gun at the chain of handcuffs and you are free. Hmm. Something is missing.

Point a gun at the chain of handcuffs and pull the trigger to discharge the gun, and you are free. That has possibilities.

This becomes somewhat realistic if a) you have a third hand to hold the gun, or b) you are handcuffed to a urinal or some other plumbing fixture or the like, in which case you have limited choices of a medium against which to fire the bullet and predict its ricochet. This paragraph reduces the question to the almost purely hypothetical, as a real-life situation that incorporates its elements seems improbably contrived.

[Little_Nemo]

@Ranger_Jeff

If I was handcuffed, how would I be able to aim the pistol at the chain connecting them?

I think it would be theoretically possible if you held your hands above your head and held the gun backwards and upside down and pulled the trigger with your thumb.