You lost me there. When a bullet fires, the energy is fully contained within the casing until separation. At that point, the projectile has all of the energy it’s going to get - it’s all downhill from there. Longer barrels decrease the effective energy of the projectile, but improve the accuracy. Another factor in the energy release has to do with bore. The bigger the bore, the greater the load required to generate an equivalent momentum. A shotgun has much more wasted energy than a handgun.
So what. That just says the flash is projected toward the end of the shorter barrel. I guarantee you that a shotgun with an equivalent barrel length would have MORE flash.
Now you’re changing the equation. You give me my .44 and I’ll give you your sawed off shotgun with your buckshot…
Modern firearms use what is known a ‘progressive burning propellants’. In other words, the powder does not burn all at once. The velocity of the round will continue to increase along the length of the bore as long as the powder continues to burn. The muzzle flash you see in the powder continuing to burn after the bullet has exited the muzzle.
No no no no. In the case of a .44 magnum revolver, the “flash” he’s talking about are orange flames leaping from the sides of the gun.
You see, in a revolver, the front of the firing chamber does not quite touch the back of the barrel. There’s a tiny gap between them, so that the cylinder can rotate between shots. I have a .357 magnum revolver (a considerably lower-powered gun than a .44 magnum revolver), and you can see the flames leaping out even if you shoot it in broad daylight. If not for the gap between the cylinder and the barrel, these flames would otherwise be pushing the bullet down the barrel even faster.
Incidentally, this also leaves a lot of burned-powder residue on my hands – if I don’t wash my hands after a shooting session, they look like I just got back from mining coal.
Which is why so many criminals choose them as weapons…
Ummm… there’s this principle called friction… maybe you’ve heard of it. It has a tendancy to rob moving objects of their energy.
Wish I could say the same.
It’s chatting with good 'ol boys like you that merely serves to confirm my feelings about why so many people choose to own guns. Your brain cells are obviously so hopped up on testosterone that you are unable to think clearly. You’re outrageous… with a capital RAGE…
If someone has something intelligent to add to the discussion please do so quickly, I don’t know how much longer I can hold onto my lunch…
Time to talk about the efficiencies of barrel length. YOu take 150 mg of gunpowder and make two identicle bullets. Put one in a 3" barrel and one in a 21" barrel. If all of the powder burns up by the time the bullet clears the barrel, then what you say is true. However, if the powder is not used up then much of the potential energy is lost because the powder can’t push the bullet once it is out of the barrel.
If the bullet speed was merely a function of friction in the barrel, then the fastest, most powerful rounds would be pistol rounds. But that is not the case.
No, criminals choose handguns (particularly small handguns) as weapons because they are easier to conceal on their person. If killing power were the only things crooks cared about, they’d all be carrying bazookas.
OK, I will admit to being outrageous, but when it comes to your argument on physics here, You are one thing that I am not…WRONG. You are wrong, wrong, wrong-diddley-ong about the physics of a gun. Please either learn a bit more about them or concede.
I will say it again, people who know very little about guns should not be the ones to make legislation regarding them.
Fortunately, many criminals have the same misconceptions that you do. IF they knew about weapons and ballistics, the world would be more dangerous.
The relative ‘power’ of a firearm can be measured by the muzzle energy it produces (in foot-pounds, IIRC). A .44 Magnum revolver will produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 750 ft-lbs of muzzle energy, while a 12 shotgun will produce about 2500 ft-lbs -three times as much. Almost any long gun is more powerful than any handgun. For anyone interested in looking at boring ballistics tables: http://www.remington.com/Support/ballistics.htm
Joey, just drop all the holier-than-thou, enlightened-philosopher, elitist act, will you?
Shotgun: Shot shoots a spread pattern, increasing the likelihood of getting hit. Creates a lot of kickback.
Handgun: Larger caliber (.357, .38, .44) guns pack a mean punch, but the kickback would probably be too much for weaker users. Smaller, weaker users would probably want smaller, less-powerful weapons.
All guns: The longer the barrel, the more accurate the gun. The longer the barrel, the longer the gunpowder and push against the bullet, resulting in more speed. The longer the barrel, the more unwieldy the weapon will be in an enclosed space.
Best gun for criminal use: Handgun. Why? Because if you want to rob someone, you’re not going to yell “Gimme all your money!” from fifty feet away. You’re going to get right in their face, shove a gun under their chin (or whatever) and then demand money (or whatever). In this instance, a rifle/shotgun (except the sawed-off variety, 'course) would be too unwieldy.
Best gun for home defense: Depends on what you’re good with. I, for example, have shot handguns more than any other type of firearm, and am very comfortable with them. If someone were to break into my house, I’d have no trouble pointing a gun at him, and even shooting, if it were necessary. It’s called “self-preservation”. I suppose my desire to not be harmed or killed makes me crazy, full of rage, irrational, and dangerous to society. Because, of course, we all know that those who function best in society are those who don’t give a crap if their private property and/or self is violated or destroyed.
OK, OK. I made a mistake - don’t have a cow. You caught me - I admit I am not a ballistics expert. I admit that bullets DO accelerate through longer barrels. I do not concede that this makes you right in any other way. There are a lot of other factors that determine the deadliness of one gun over another, not the least of which is, which ones are used to kill more often. This is all irrelevant anyway. The point of this discussion has always been, do we need guns in our society for self protection?
See, this is where your argument really falls apart. There’s absolutely no relevance between the intra-muzzle energies of bullets and the regulation of handgun availability. To suggest such a thing is merely red herring. It doesn’t matter if a bullet is moving slower out of a .38 than buckshot out of a 12 guage, it only matters that the .38 is involved more often in accidental shootings and criminal activity and less often by citizens stopping crime. It doesn’t take rocket science to legislate in this matter, merely common sense.
Sneevil:
Interesting, from studies I’ve seen the muzzle energy for a .44 is greater than 1000 ft.lbs… But more importantly, the muzzle velocity from a .44 is generally greater than 1600 ft/s. A 12 guage is usually about 1200 ft/s and the velocity from shot diminishes fairly quickly. After about 60-80 yards the shot from a shot gun falls below the 163 ft/s required to penetrate the human body. A .44 doesn’t drop to that speed until after many hundreds of yards. Not that any of this has any real relevance about the topic.
SPOOFE:
You’ve got it all wrong. I think of it as the lone voice of reason in an otherwise alarmist dominated thread. I think you’re all scared. So scared that you think you NEED a gun to defend your life from bad guys and even more scared that some politician will take your gun away. It’s undeniable that bad things happen to people everyday. People are killed by other people with guns (sometimes regardless of whether or not the victim is armed). People are killed in cars. People are killed by cancer. People are killed by heart disease. People are killed in industrial accidents. People are killed from falls in the home. There are so many ways to die - most of them much more likely than getting shot by some badie. It’s deplorable - it’s unavoidable. Buying a gun to defend yourself is merely succumbing to your fear of this one statistically rare way to die… and in the process, you increase the chances that you will die from a gunshot by adding a few more opportunities for you, your family, and your neighbors to get shot by your own weapon.
No. It’s not an elitist attitude you sense, it’s one of pity. The same way I pity those who have other phobias or neuroses.
You’re free to live your life in fear. No amount of gun regulation is going to change that. Just realize that most of the ‘civilized’ and peaceful population of the world look on Americans who think they need handguns to protect themselves as sick. You are free to convince yourself that they are wrong and you are right, but realize that denial is merely one of the symptoms of neurosis.
I think #8 is usually called smallshot or target shot. I’ve heard of something called dustshot which might include the #10 Mr. Zambezi is referring to; #11 and #12 shot is sometimes loaded in .22 rimfire cartridges. As far as I can tell, birdshot refers to the shots sizes BB through #6.
I’ve never heard of shot or any spherical projectile being referred to as a slug. Pellet, projectile, ball, or simply shot would be more precise.
I don’t know if I agree that rifles and shotguns are usually more powerful than handguns. Rimfire rifles are relatively weak and also very popular. Most rifle cartridges are more powerful than most handgun cartridges, but this is partly tautological; power is one of the ways we separate the two. In any case, the muzzle energies of a lot of “hunting handgun” cartridges (.50 AE) are comparable to that of a lot of rifle cartridges (.223 Rem), which doesn’t speak to accuracy or ease of use.
Ok, just jumping in here. A shotgun is more dangerous than a pistol. If not for the reasons above, it is just that you do not need to be as accurate. Assume you are ten feet away from someone with a gun.If you get shot with a pistol in the knee, you get 1 piece of hot metal in you. A shotgun would leave quite a few more holes, because the chance of getting hit is higher. This assumes that you have a knee after the shotgun blast. All guns have times when they are useful, and for different reasons. I would definitely fear someone who is a crack shot with a pistol more than someone using birdshot in a shotgun who hasn’t fired it a lot. But a lot of pistol users are not crack shots.
I am thinking more of useless or harmful laws. An example would be the ban on “assault rifles” which concentrated on items such as pistol grips and folding stocks. IT sounded like a good idea and the left did a great job of scaring the American public half mad. Of course, less than 1% of all gun deaths involve “assault weapons.”
Of all the folks panicking here I think you are in the lead by a furlong. You are ready to start passing laws, infringing on the constitution and banning weapons. I just want a pistol in my drawer.
Hmmm. The terms semi-automatic rifle and the term assault weapon (in the Federal legal definition of the latter, not Joe_Cool’s from page 3) are overlapping, but they are not synonymous. The “fewer than 1%” has been applied to both categories, plus a third and even woolier category , military-type guns. This makes me skeptical. Who collected this information? What was the term they used, and what was their definition?
I don’t like the assault weapons ban either, but it affected shotguns, handguns, and magazines, not just rifles. There is a lot of semantic Three-Card Monte that goes on. Assault weapons shouldn’t have been banned because rifles aren’t used much in crime? How’s that work? I’m not saying that’s what you’re saying, Mr. Zambezi, but frankly, it’s hard to keep up with the hundreds of competing definitions of “assault weapon”.
In any case, before banning, there were a couple of 9mm Intratec weapons (TEC-9 and/or DC-9) which made it onto the top 10 list of most-traced weapons. These were definitely not rifles and they were definitely affected by the 1994 assault weapons ban, both by name and by features (shrouded barrels, threaded muzzles, magazine outside the pistol grip, descent from a submachingun). It’s still a bad law.
Boris is correct in that some of the weapons on the ban list, 19 in all, were IMHO, justifiably banned. The problem though, as Boris pointed out, were the semantics used. So instead of 19 weapon types being banned, it turned into 300+. Pistol grip, muzzle brakes, etc., and now I own a collector’s piece that is on the banned list. Is it no wonder that many lawful gun owners feel that they are being singled out?
Yet another reason, boris, that legislators are so bad at gun legislation. I remember a bill that would ha ve banned any gun that could fire more than 5 bullets a second, or something along those lines.
Sounds like a machine gun, but it would include all shotguns.
Joey, don’t take this the wrong way (although it seems like you probably will…), but you have shown yourself to be the first one to take the discussion way off track on tangents to make it sound scarier that we are guaranteed the right to own weapons. But then when a tangent you are arguing to the teeth gets turned back on you and you’re proven wrong, you’re quick to say “well, sure, but that’s not the point!”
You are awfully quick to call gun owners “alarmists” at the same time you’re spouting off such gems as
…and…
My point? You argue based on emotional reactions, completely ignoring fact, dress it up in scholarly talk and a few numbers you get from questionable sources with agendas in order to sound authoritative, and expect other posters to follow rules that you ignore (consistency, factuality, etc).
And by the way, you said a few pages ago that deaths caused by the IRA and its splinter groups are ignored in UK violence studies because:
Yes. but that is a benefit of the natural state of arming yourself, not the reason for the 2nd Amendment. Read up on it for a bit. Try the debates during the drafting of the bill of rights. Try the Federalist papers. Research before you argue. It’s there to prevent liberty from being taken away. But people like you are standing in line to give it up voluntarily, because you believe good ol’ Uncle Sam is there to protect you and care for you, and interested only in what is best for you. You’re wrong. Governments care about 3 things: 1) Themselves. 2) Power. 3) Money.
Think about that. When you have your cats claws removed or muzzle your dog, is it for the animal’s own good? When you disarm your slaves (assuming we lived in a nation that condoned slavery) is it for their protection? Nope, none of the above. You disarm them so it will be easier and safer for you to dominate them.
I’m neither pet nor slave, and I will be neither disarmed nor subjugated. Ever.
Looks like Spoofe and I are not the only ones you would label “Alarmists,” eh, Joey? We’re in pretty good company I think.
Speaking of which, Joe, do you have a link to a transcript of the debates that went on during the drafting of the Bill of Rights? I’ve looked all over for one, just so I could get a better idea of what the motivation behind the 2nd Amendment was, but I can’t seem to find one anywhere. Is a transcription of these debates available on the web someplace?