You people are getting lost in the minutia.
Padeye: My responce was to F. Waffel who was talking about accuracy. Trajectory IS moot to accuracy. No range was specifed but my first sentence addresses that issue. You’re 2-3 feet away from someone, gun sideways, and pull the trigger - do you really care which way it recoils? If you are trained P.O. and want to control a fire-fight - hell, yes. If you are a punk shooting an un-armed victim - no.
I have shot my Baretta this way, in the intrest of science ;), and the ‘sideways’ recoil was not a problem. Nor was the ejected brass. At longer distances my accuracy suffered.
Further, I have been litteraly pelted with hot casings. Yeah, it stings a little, but if you are murdering someone is that really gonna be one of your concerns? Assuming it happenes at all!
I submit most of this thread is theory. Go out and shoot, then come back and post!
And, in a good natured vein, sorry, 45ACP, but my experience with Colts (I’ve owned 2) is that unless you spoon feed them just the right ammo (read:standard hardball) they gonna jam and stovepipe. Oh, I know, you can polish the feed ramp and blah, blah, blah but they are field weapons and behave as such. My Baretta on the other hand…
There’s a great scene in an episode of The Sopranos when Christopher’s drughead buddy Brendan and two of his buddies are robbing a truck. One of his buddies, who’s black, comes out holding his gun sideways. Brendan sees it, sighs in exasperation, reaches over and turns it the right way up, adding a nasty rejoinder.
No need to get into an agument and get thrown in the pit over this.
When I said trajectory was moot I mean arcing trajectory where the flight path crosses the line of sight twice. At short ranges it’s a straight line for practical purposes. I do think changing the recoil to the side makes a difference at seven yards or so but not at point blank range. Not all 1911s perform as bad as the two examples you’ve owned. My own is as reliable as my Sig P245 with all types of ammo and less sensitive to cartridge length than the Sig. It works well with ball, several different hollowpoints and lead semi wadcutters. I have done no reliability work such as ramp polishing. It still has the factory barrel, link, bushing and extractor though I have to say the factory enhanced ejectoin port may help some.
Now it’s my turn to laugh. I think he slipped some kind of hypno-drug into my Diet Coke the first time he worked with me, because when I read your “level and clear…” Iheard it in my head with his particular style of phrasing and intonation.
I don’t think I’ll be able to make it Saturday, unfortunately. If things change, I’ll show, but don’t count on me.
I was under the impression that bad-mouthing someone personally will get you thrown into the pit not disagreeing with someone. Regardless, I’m not upset, I just have a different way of interpreting the data than you.
Where we MIGHT get thrown is into GD.
My point was that we’re not debating the merits of this ‘style’ of shooting so it can be adopted by the Navy SEALs, but rather do street punks ever really use it. My veryWAG is probably sometimes - they don’t tend to be the brightest guys around. And cool, to them, might outwiegh the merits of the isosceles stance. But I don’t know. However, I seriously doubt factors like side recoil or ejected brass would play into their desision making.
So your Colt really eats HP’s with no problem?
Shoot much?..
This is what I was told by an old Isreali (former) member of the Haganah. When the country was starting out (he had been around at that time) for the most part, the only guns they had were war surplus British weapons. A very large number of them were sten guns (the British Tommy-gun). They had a rather pronounced recoil up when fired automatic. It was because of this that they turned them sideways so the recoil would cause the fire to move laterally rather than climbing up a wall behind a target. He said when the Isreali defense forces went to uzis they just kept doing it the same way.
What this has to do with hand guns, I don’t know.
Interesting, TVt, I was shooting with some ‘friends’ once and the sear pin broke or stuck (or maybe he filed it for all I know) on the Colt 45ACP the one guy was firing causing it to, indeed, fire, via recoil, up. But I’m glad it did for if it hadn’t we would have been mowed down like spring grass. Side tracking recoil is bad for friends.
TV, that’s one I have heard of, though I’d been told it was a technique only used for clearing rooms. Bad news if you have any no-shoot subjects standing around beside the intended targets.
FWIW I’ve had several opportunities to shoot a friend’s Sten, Uzi and H&K submachineguns. The Sten is not unique in recoiling upward as *all SMGs do trait. In most cases it’s possible to get two hits on human size target in full auto but every bullet following is usually wasted as the muzzle has risen over the target. It’s not a problem though as the Sten and Uzi have such slow rates of fire that it’s easy to get contolled bursts or single shots even in full auto mode. I can’t imagine the sideways hold is a standard technique. The H&K has a much higher rate of fire which makes singles more difficult but it’s available with trigger packs with two and three shot limited bursts.
Warmgun, I’ve seen a guy shoot a Glock full auto pistol in a match, or attempt to anyway. The result is pretty much what you saw. The recoil was so uncontrollable he never managed to hit a single target except for the first shot in the burst.
What kind of knackered-out pieces were you shooting? I’ve been firing all manner of semi-autos, with all manner of ammo, for close on three decades now, and while a straight-from-the-factory M1911a1 doesn’t much care for semi-wadcutter, there’s plenty of non-hardball rounds that feed just fine. With a good throat job, the 1911 will handle just about anything you can fit in the magazine. And yes, I’ve fired more than one example of the weapon. Actually, counting off the top of my head, I’ve fired… hmm… 19 different examples of the 1911 and it’s close variants (I’ve actually fired 8 different nation’s handguns, for a total number of types somewhere around 120).
Back to the OP: Shooting your piece sideways is a really good way of missing. I suppose if you practice enough, you might become proficient, but I kinda doubt that the sort of people who would try shooting this way as a matter of habit don’t get much time on the range.
A few points:
1)a bullet’s trajectory once it emerges from the muzzle of the gun is determined by its mass, sectional density, velocity, and things like air resistance and wind, etc;
2) it doesn’t matter how you hold the gun or “sight” it while shooting…if the muzzle is properly alligned with the target, and the ballistic parameters are correct, the target will be hit;
3) “Flinch,” the jerking of the gun caused by various gun-handling errors of the shooter as he pulls the trigger, is the major cause of shooting inaccuracy. The major cause of flinch is “anticipation” of noise or recoil that results in the shooter pulling the gun out of allignment with the target. Most right-handed shooters, for example, flinch slightly to the left.
Using the Gangsta style is likely therefore to to convert a leftward flinch to a downward one, i.e, to convert a horizontal inaccuracy to a vertical one.
Since the movies where this style is portrayed involve semi-auto pistols rather than revolvers, there is the additional matter of spent cartridge ejection. Since most autopistols elect to the left, there might be one advantage to Gansta shooting, in that the ejection would tend to be more vertical and less likely to spray spent brass into the faces of the guys to your right…though it might expose those to your left a bit more.
Whip ‘em out, boys, looks like we got ourselves a pissin’ contest. Tranquilis, I’ve been firing guns just as long as you have and probably close to as many. But not 30 yrs on each gun! I fired a .357 Colt Python once with factory ammo. The recoil was hard and the rounds were not seated well (defective from the factory, and don’t you know they got a nasty letter) so the gun locked up. Now that was my only experience with a Python. Do I think they are inferior peices? Not at all. Stuff sometimes happens. I try to be open minded. But I owned a Gov’t model and a Cobat Commander, both of which I shot the hell out of and they did not have “a good throat job” - out of the box (which is my point) and with match-grade wad cutters AND MG HPs they would occasionally jam. Unfortunatly, the CC jammed when a fire fight broke out in the apt next to mine (drug deal gone bad - interestingly the deputy who broke it up shot the dealer in the crotch. OUCH!!!)I’m not on a mission, that is just my experience. I’ve been around guns and gunners a long time and IMHO .45ColtACP owners are by far the most loyal. If you accurize them, give them a good trigger job, polish the feed ramp and install a comp barrel then you’ve got yourself a pretty good and accurate $2000. sidearm :D. They are not bad guns, I just think there are better values out there. And like I said, I was good-naturedly wolfin’ Padeye. No need to get all defensive.
“Why can’t we all just get along”.
I had a nice little post here to warmgun and BlackClaw. Looks like Mr. Cracker the Virus Man killed about 6 posts in this thread alone.
Anyway, in short, warmgun, naw, we ain’t got no pissin’ contest, lesn’ you want to drink a beer with me first, and no, I’m not a rabid 1911 fan, but I do respect the hell out of that breed of shootin’ iron.
'Preciate it, Tranquilis, next time you’re in town, I’d love to toss a few back with ya.
There is one example of a “real” use for it: when holding a weapon weak-handed, if the shooter cannot hold the sidearm out steadily with the weak-hand only. Turning the elbow in [and the sidearm flat] makes it a little easier. FWIW, I checked with a Fed’l firearms instructor.
I credit Steven Seagal with popularlizing it. I remember seeing it in Hard to Kill in 1990. Seagal, being a martial arts afficianado, might well have been familiar with Woo’s earlier films and picked it up there, but he was the first American actor I can remember doing that.
On the OT M1911 debate, it is in my (very, very, very extensive, as in >25000 rounds in .45ACP, .38Super, and 10mm versions) experience with M1911 pistols that with FMJ they will work flawlessy, JHP ammo with little or no problem, JSWC are a little more problematic sometimes, and SWC, RN, and WC(if you can even find them) are nothing but trouble in all but the best-prepared examples. Many other older auto pistols (Browning Hi-Power, S&W Gen 1&2, various Walthers and the like) suffer similarly. Newer guns, like the Glock, Beretta 92/96, and Ruger P85, feed almost everything but RN and WC with little problem.
Ahhh…a M1911 voice of reason. However, though, I certainly can’t argue your experience, I still say JHPs are a little less reliable than you state. Still, I have to respect those numbers. Wow. Thanks for the input.
Check this out… heres an avi of a glock that’s been modified for full auto. I put it on my site for your entertainment…
http://www.blackdimension.com/glock.avi
And NO, that’s not me in the video! Hehehehe, enjoy
-Dani
Isn’t that why later Thompsons had vents on the top of the barrel end–for a jet effect to counteract the tendency to walk? Since nobody else seems to do it, I guess it doesn’t work.
It does work to a degree. You can still get it done. ‘Mag-na-port’ does a fair business offering this very service for magnum handguns. Not sure how effective it would be for a short barreled semi-auto, though. Or even if the slide would have time to clear.
See here.