[achtung]

Just wanted to say this is an excellent thread. Educational and thought-provoking.

The mystique surrounding firearms is insane. I'm probably going to put together a big informative post on firearms policy and regulation in the United States when I get back. I'll try to get it short enough to be digestible.  Stay tuned.

[Nuke]

i like how the thread about the option that is not gun control, turned into a thread about gun control.

[headdie]

i like how the thread about the option that is not gun control, turned into a thread about gun control.

apparently

the fact remains, the opening post of this thread was bringing up mental health as part of a statement about gun violence and specifically to minimise the perceived importance of gun control. i object strongly to being forced to ignore this part of the issue so the admins don't have to bother moderating a heated political issue

[Scotty]

FrikgFeek: Despite how laid-back most of the conversation on HLP is, there's a certain standard of debate expected once things get a bit more involved.  Those standards include backing up suppositions and assertions with more than just feelings and assumptions.  If you're going to continue to participate in the discussion, please keep that in mind.

[Grizzly]

I would only intend to kill if the idiot didn't drop his weapon and / or run. I'm assuming he either thinks I'm not there (not likely, the car is a dead giveaway) or has harmful intentions for our persons because otherwise he would have waited until the house was vacant., like a "smart" criminal.

Doesn't matter if you intend to kill him, he might intend to kill you. And in a situation where you both have firearms and are within 5-6 metres(15-20ish feet I guess) it's basically up to luck who gets shot and who survives.

Actually, since bullets do not kill people instantly, chances are you both get shot and both die.

[jr2]

This isn't the movies. If I feel he is attempting to shift and aim, he will be swiss cheese.  This is why, if he had the drop on me, I said that I would indeed have to play Russian roulette because, unless he makes it clear that he does indeed plan bodily harm (and therefore warrants risking everything to attempt to turn the tables) , going for a weapon would be an invitation to get shot.

Bullets do not kill you instantly - no, but if they are larger than a..22, they can and will throw your ass to the ground. (12-gauge shotty will do this nicely too)  There's a lot of kinetic energy there.  Like taking a full - on punch from a large individual.

Let's put it this way. I've seen a fellow  US Marine take a. 223 round to the foot at the rifle range. (someone was a really bad shot, hit the wooden support of the target, which, freakishly managed to find a knot in the wood, which  caused the round to angle down into the target pulling pit after penetrating the post.)

He was instantly SCREAMING. That little less than quarter inch in diameter piece of metal flew 500 yards, penetrating half an inch of wood and then punctured a combat boot causing tremendous pain.

At close range it would probably be like getting hit with a baseball bat.

[Grizzly]

well, if we are going to run with anecdotes.

The point here is that no single ammunition that is typically used by law enforcement officers today can reliably claim to have superior stopping power.

I have seen a .22 caliber bullet completely incapacitate someone and a .45 ACP fail to achieve that result. People and animals shot with 10mm rounds and .357 SIG rounds have continued to run from the police. I have been on scene as a tactical medical provider when a suicidal person shot himself in the head with a .45 Colt round resulting in instant death. And I have seen the same results in suicides that used smaller calibers, including .22, .25, and .32. I have also seen people hit with 9mm, .40, and .45 without so much as staggering or slowing their verbal or physical activities.

[FrikgFeek]

It's worth noting that a baseball bat produces continuous force resulting in continuous acceleration. You can realistically predict the impact of a baseball bat if you know it's mass and velocity.
For a projectile E=0.5mv². A projectile has kinetic energy when it's shot, but most of it is converted into heat and if it leaves an exit wound that means it didn't transfer all of the energy it had possessed. And depending on where you hit and from what angle you can produce rotational force (aka torque). Just knowing the speed and mass of a projectile won't tell you much.
Though if you normalise all other factors then higher kinetic energy=higher impact.

[Nuke]

my favorite home defense device is a louisville slugger that has been leaded and covered in spikes.

[cahdoge]

You know that the baseball bat is following the same physical rules like the bullet and also has cinetic energy.

The difference is that you are usually unable to accelerate a bat that much that air resistances has major impacts but you can measure it.
A object with 0.6kg and 10m/s has the same kinetic energy like an object with 0.006kg and 100m/s

Thar means if you are hitting a pillow with a basball bat it has to absorb the same energy as if you are hoding it out a drivin sports car and the pillow is hitten by a little pebbel.

[Grizzly]

Though if you normalise all other factors then higher kinetic energy=higher impact.

Or it means overpenetration, which means the object simply cut clean trough the other object and then hits something behind that object.

Thar means if you are hitting a pillow with a basball bat it has to absorb the same energy as if you are hoding it out a drivin sports car and the pillow is hitten by a little pebbel.

An object does not have to absorb all the energy though, see above.
Also, the pebble's forces are spread over a much smaller area then that of the baseball bat, thus only a small part of the pillow is doing the absorbing.

[FrikgFeek]

You know that the baseball bat is following the same physical rules like the bullet and also has cinetic energy.

The difference is that you are usually unable to accelerate a bat that much that air resistances has major impacts but you can measure it.
A object with 0.6kg and 10m/s has the same kinetic energy like an object with 0.006kg and 100m/s

it's different because the force exerted on the bat is CONTINUOUS. A projectile, of any kind, has it's initial velocity and that's it. When you're trying to hit an object you don't just swing and then relax your arms letting inertia do the rest. You have to keep "pushing" it as whatever you're hitting exerts surface resistance.
This is why throwing a bat at someone hurts considerably less than hitting him with it. Air resistance isn't even that much of a factor at short ranges anyway.

Or it means overpenetration, which means the object simply cut clean trough the other object and then hits something behind that object.

That has more to do with pressure than just energy.

[deathfun]

I am so very glad I can just call my owning of four (soon to be five, and then six) firearms simply a hobby and storing them in my house a matter of convenience without people bothering me much further about it

And if we're going to start talking about bullet physics, don't forget to account for different types doing different awesome things to the targets
I say awesome because while FMJ hitting a watermelon is cool, it isn't nearly as explosive as a soft point hitting it.

Also remember that it's a focused blow, to account for fragmentation and obviously resistance. Oh, and adrenaline, weight of the subject, pain tolerance and how severe the hit was. As well as if they were running toward you, away, or side to side

Basically there's a lot of variables which account to how effective your bullet will be. That's fairly obvious

[Nuke]

face it, guns are awesome. people want awesome in their home. people will formulate whatever excuse they can to keep their awesome. if a ballot measure or candidate threatens to take away our awesone, there are enough people in the guns are awesome crowd (at least in the us) to vote it down.

[AtomicClucker]

I stopped caring about gun debates, except the bit where people do try to talk about mental health issues.

Prickly part? Asking people who are potentially unstable to submit themselves to unwilling detention, and that's where it goes to hell.

[Scotty]

Asking people who are potentially unstable to submit themselves to unwilling detention

lolwut?

[Nuke]

i went down to the local mental health office. they seem to spend all their money on stuff, like big screen tvs and computers with multiple screens, laptops everywhere, not one scrap of any of it appeared functional. there were animal cages with no animals in them, fishtanks everywhere, only a couple of them actually having fish (only some of which were alive). a huge basket with stress balls with their logo on them, files (no doubt of the confidential kind) strewn out all over the place, like they let a raging schizophrenic handle the book keeping. the floor everywhere looks like it hasn't seen a janitor in a several years. they did hook me up with a therapist free of charge. the guy is a bumbling idiot from an even smaller town that they fly in on the weekends. ive yet to be diagnosed with anything that i can use to get on medicare, and since i live in a state that did not expand medicare i probibly couldn't get on it anyway. you wonder why people dont ask for help? the fact of the matter is that some of these systems we have in place are just ineffectual money sinks. fix that and maybe there will be a slight reduction in crazy people shooting up schools and ****.

[Wobble73]

i went down to the local mental health office. they seem to spend all their money on stuff, like big screen tvs and computers with multiple screens, laptops everywhere, not one scrap of any of it appeared functional. there were animal cages with no animals in them, fishtanks everywhere, only a couple of them actually having fish (only some of which were alive). a huge basket with stress balls with their logo on them, files (no doubt of the confidential kind) strewn out all over the place, like they let a raging schizophrenic handle the book keeping. the floor everywhere looks like it hasn't seen a janitor in a several years. they did hook me up with a therapist free of charge. the guy is a bumbling idiot from an even smaller town that they fly in on the weekends. ive yet to be diagnosed with anything that i can use to get on medicare, and since i live in a state that did not expand medicare i probibly couldn't get on it anyway. you wonder why people dont ask for help? the fact of the matter is that some of these systems we have in place are just ineffectual money sinks. fix that and maybe there will be a slight reduction in crazy people shooting up schools and ****.

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