[Androgeos Exeunt]

How about bread? A baguette, perhaps?

[General Battuta]

Stabbing someone takes a bit more effort I think, beating certainly takes a lot of will.

Rubbish. All you need is one good swing/stab. Hit someone with a lead pipe on the head in the right place - he's dead. Just like with a bullet.

What weapon you use against an unarmed man - pretty much irrelevant. You can kill a man with ANY weapon in just one hit

While it does happen, this is surprisingly and fantastically difficult, and it almost never occurs.

[TrashMan]

Neither do people get killed from 1 small caliber bullet often.
You usually need more. Like you usually need more lead pipe swings or knife stabs.

[General Battuta]

Yes.

[castor]

Yeah, but with a knife or a pipe you need some skill (excluding surprise attacks), or you end up getting your ass beaten.
With a gun its just point and squeeze - and it doesn't make any difference who is the target (unlike with knifes, pipes etc).

[General Battuta]

Yeah, but with a knife or a pipe you need some skill (excluding surprise attacks), or you end up getting your ass beaten.
With a gun its just point and squeeze - and it doesn't make any difference who is the target (unlike with knifes, pipes etc).

I don't think it's quite that simple. Handguns are notoriously difficult to use, and, conversely, it doesn't take a lot of skill to stab someone a lot.

[BloodEagle]

Handguns are notoriously difficult to use

 

[FUBAR-BDHR]

They can be if you aren't used to them.   After my Dad died I had to look up how to unload his on the internet.  Was a pain in the but since it was a revolver that was recalled at one point for a defective part that allowed it to fire on it's own.  Also you had to cock it to spin the barrel and pull the trigger while releasing the hammer slowly so it wouldn't fire to turn the chamber to unload it.   Luckily my Dad must have know about the problem as he left that chamber empty.  Now the little semi-auto wasn't very difficult and it too didn't have one in the chamber.  Fully loaded clip of hollow points.  I now keep it and the clip by my bed.  Clip not in the gun but can be in a second. 

Oh and the small caliber thing isn't accurate.  A .22 long tends to bounce around in the body and do more damage.  Yea a higher caliber will leave a bigger hole on a straight through shot. 

[General Battuta]

Handguns are notoriously difficult to use

 

Ever shot one? They're very hard to aim. Shooting someone up close probably wouldn't be a challenge, but they're not point-and-click death dealers.

[BloodEagle]

You said "use," not 'aim.'

[Polpolion]

Neither do people get killed from 1 small caliber bullet often.
You usually need more. Like you usually need more lead pipe swings or knife stabs.

Okay. I'll shoot you three times with a 9mm at point blank range and we'll see how you fare.

Oh and the small caliber thing isn't accurate.  A .22 long tends to bounce around in the body and do more damage.  Yea a higher caliber will leave a bigger hole on a straight through shot.

Does that really happen? I know I read it in a book somewhere and I thought it was neat, but given how fictitious the book was I wasn't sure if it was true.

[General Battuta]

They're certainly difficult to use compared to knives or clubs!

[Polpolion]

They're certainly difficult to use compared to knives or clubs!

Maybe difficult to use well.

Untrained, people would be lucky to even hit a guy at 20 yards. Untrained, someone with a knife can pop a lung or slit a throat

Trained, you could hit a guy in the head from 50 yards with a bullet from a pistol. Trained with a knife, someone could probably throw it at you from 20 feet and pop a lung.

[ssmit132]

If the knife is made for throwing, I doubt chucking a kitchen knife or something would work well.

How about bread? A baguette, perhaps?

Try as we might, we just can't make this friendly thing work, Teacher. Even your idea about exchanging the ritual gifts, the `Fruit Cakes' has had problems. It seems that nobody actually wants to eat the Fruit Cakes however, on the plus side, due to the Fruit Cakes' density and other physical characteristics they make excellent projectile weapons!

[NGTM-1R]

Oh and the small caliber thing isn't accurate.  A .22 long tends to bounce around in the body and do more damage.  Yea a higher caliber will leave a bigger hole on a straight through shot.

Does that really happen? I know I read it in a book somewhere and I thought it was neat, but given how fictitious the book was I wasn't sure if it was true.

No, it does not. A .22 is more likely to embed in your body, yes, because most bones will stop it. This does not equate to greater lethality; much the opposite.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Jeremy Clarkson once said to Dame Helen Mirren that he liked to throw food when he was young due to its "aerodynamic efficiency".

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Oh and the small caliber thing isn't accurate.  A .22 long tends to bounce around in the body and do more damage.  Yea a higher caliber will leave a bigger hole on a straight through shot.

Does that really happen? I know I read it in a book somewhere and I thought it was neat, but given how fictitious the book was I wasn't sure if it was true.

No, it does not. A .22 is more likely to embed in your body, yes, because most bones will stop it. This does not equate to greater lethality; much the opposite.

Bones don't tend to stop them as much as break them into fragments or cause them to ricochet.  They also tend to only have the power to penetrate one layer of bone.  Basically if shot at the head they tend to go into the skull, hit the other side, and fragments bounce around. Same for ribs and other bones..   

[NGTM-1R]

Bones don't tend to stop them as much as break them into fragments or cause them to ricochet.  They also tend to only have the power to penetrate one layer of bone.  Basically if shot at the head they tend to go into the skull, hit the other side, and fragments bounce around. Same for ribs and other bones..   

Got a source for that? Because a .22 pistol round is not actually likely to penetrate the skull at most angles from any sort of range. At point-blank, perhaps, but it will embed, not fragment. Bullets don't fragment in the human body under any normal circumstances, unless delibrately designed to do so or of exceptionally poor manufacture.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

I've found  couple of sources but nothing I'd bet money on.   Anyway I didn't say anything about a pistol round.  Both my pistol use long rifle rounds.  Well at least one will use either.  Also I did see several references to the common (cheap) lead bullets being the ones that fragment most often. 

[TrashMan]

Yeah, but with a knife or a pipe you need some skill (excluding surprise attacks), or you end up getting your ass beaten.
With a gun its just point and squeeze - and it doesn't make any difference who is the target (unlike with knifes, pipes etc).

I don't need skill to bash you on the head, especially if I make a surprise attack.
Hitting someone with a gun at point blank range is no easier than stabbing someone at point blank range.