Handguns, Blanket ban right, wrong or just badly thought out?

[megah0]

NATO switched to the 5.56 calibre round as it causes more injuries than fatalities, on a battlefield it is preferable to maim or wound your enemy as screaming comrades is bad for morale and if a soldier has to be carried from the field by his mates then you have removed 2 or 3 of the opposing force rather then just one.

Reason being? smaller calibres tend to "tumble" when they hit flesh causing massive internal injuries instead of having a "through and through" where damage is limited to the immediate area.

Bearing in mind of course that a .22 round will penetrate halfway through a yellow pages.

[Skii]

NATO switched to the 5.56 calibre round as it causes more injuries than fatalities, on a battlefield it is preferable to maim or wound your enemy as screaming comrades is bad for morale and if a soldier has to be carried from the field by his mates then you have removed 2 or 3 of the opposing force rather then just one.

Reason being? smaller calibres tend to "tumble" when they hit flesh causing massive internal injuries instead of having a "through and through" where damage is limited to the immediate area.

Bearing in mind of course that a .22 round will penetrate halfway through a yellow pages.

thats actually a myth - whilst itsperfectly reasonable to say that the 5.56 round causes more injuries than fatalities - Nato were persuaded to adopt the 5.56 by America, who primarily saw the advantage being able to fit more smaller calibre rounds per magazine.

5.56 or 7.62 - 95% get hit by either and you'll go down like a sack of spuds.

[RVF500]

Well I can personally vouch for the fact that it is easier to carry a larger number of 5.56 rounds than the equivalent of 7.62. Also it was much nicer to have 30 rounds in a magazine as opposed to 20 and a personal store of more ammunition. Target re-aquisition time was much quicker with the 5.56.

However, the fallen comrade theory fell by the wayside when confronted with a determined opposition with high discipline and morale. The Royal Marines Mountain and Arctic Warfare cadre who engaged their counterparts from the Argentinian Army at Top Malo house during the Falklands conflict were armed with a mixture of M16 and 7.62 SLR. They reported afterwards that Argentinians hit and wounded but not killed outright with the 5.56mm round would fight on and not be carried screaming from the field by comrades. Those hit with the 7.62 were out of it no matter where they were hit. Not the kind of thing you can experiment with in a lab it has to be said. But there it is.

[Flibb]

RVF500 knows his stuff. If you look at the current H&K catalogue they have moved away from the 9mm to bigger rounds, mainly due to the inability of of small rounds to put people out of action. Vickers have also been looking at bringing back the .303 hmg for tank mounts due to its ability to drop people, American Police are also thinking of moving nback to .38 from 9mm due to 9mm habit of going through people, think the current record is 32 9mm in a bloke before he stopped firing back (a very big American).

Couple of other points the dum dum was invented for the lee enfield .303, in a place called dumdum, this was banned by the European powers. Britain then developed the mutch more deadly tumbling bullet for the same calibre, this wasnt banned.The tumbling effect is created by moving the centre of gravity backwards within the bullet, if you get it right it maintains accuracy but tumbles on impact.

Bit of info on .303
http://www.african-hunter.com/303_british.htm

Still used around the world and a good example sets you back £200

[TeePee]

British armed police normally carry 9mm, but only with about 80 grains of powder (minimum specified by Glock for reliable operation is 120 grains), the idea being to reduce the chance of a bullet going through someone and into someone else, and to reduce the lethal distance of a bullet which misses it's target. As a result of this, armed response units have access to heavier calibre weapons, often a H&K G3 carried in the boot, because the 9mm round they use won't penetrate a double glazed window. Of course, in the US heavier weapons have been available since the North Hollywood Shootout.

[RVF500]

Weren't the two guys involved in the North Hollywood shootout armed with AK47s ?

Fortunately we don't have that brand of criminal on our streets just yet. I do believe that it is partly due to the fact that our police are not routinely armed. Criminals in this country know that if they use firearms then an armed response team will be called. They will then certainly face armed opposition. If they don't then they won't. Why take the risk of an armed conflict if you don't have to? If the crime goes wrong you have a better chance of outrunning plod than you do an HK round. Secondly our national temperament and mindset is different to that in the States. We are not a gun culture as a rule. I think this has some bearing on the criminal fraternity.

I do, however, feel these traits are changing. There is a rise in gun crime and a significant amount of this is due to the influx of other cultures that find the use of firearms in crime more normal. The day will probably come when our beat police are forced by circumstance to carry sidearms at all times.

But, to get back on thread, I don't feel any of this has been helped by banning handguns in this country. The penalties of being caught in possession of an illegal firearm were severe before. Control is what was required not criminalisation. The politicians did what they always do. Took the easy way out and in this case rode roughshod over the minority because that minority wasn't powerful enough to cause them any serious harm. However, look on another thread here and see just how far things went because a muslim girl disagreed with the school dress code.

[BUFF]

Have to agree with nichomach - the existing legislation if properly applied & enforced was more than adequate. The new legislation was a kneejerk reaction partly to be seen to be doing something & partly to distract from the fact that the existing legislation hadn't been applied & enforced properly.

At that time I used to shoot regularly in competitions but the new legislation made it so arduous to get a range licence that many clubs couldn't/wouldn't (including mine) & shut down.

Shame - I really enjoyed it

[BUFF]

Actually it is against the Geneva Convention to deliberately design a tumbling bullet but it is kind of unenforceable....

The military moved from 7.62 to 5.56 not just because of the weight but also because it was too powerful in urban situations & increased the chance of a "blue on blue" - a 7.62 will happily go through several walls whereas 1 will usually stop 5.56.
Also for the average person 5.56 is a lot easier to get rounds on target due to lesser recoil. The SA80 is phenominally accurate even without the optic sights compared to an SLR.
Me, I always liked the no.4 - you would be surprised how many accurately aimed shots/minute you can get off with that.

As for 9mm, plenty of stories of Korea etc. with greatcoats stopping the round.
I was always told that if the enemy was close enough for a Sterling to be effective then I should be running

[RVF500]

Interesting note on that url from flibb. The Hague convention banned the use of the Dum-dum round in European warfare as it was considered not fair play but didn't give a stuff about us using them against tribesmen in India. Of course if the tribesmen had had the manners to lie down and be dead or incapacitated by the earlier lighter round then we wouldn't have had to go to the trouble of inventing the Dum-dum in he first place. Damned inconsiderate.

I think the best use for a Sterling was as a club. Had more stopping power that way buff. That and selling them to Hollywood to 'arm' the Empire stormtroopers in Star Wars. The SA80 is very accurate. Over iron sights it comes a poor second to the M16 though. Simply because of the distance between the the rear and foresight. Though the bullpup design makes it much easier to handle imho. The other problem though, is it's lack of reliability. No point being accurate if it doesn't work.

[nichomach]

Interesting note on that url from flibb. The Hague convention banned the use of the Dum-dum round in European warfare as it was considered not fair play but didn't give a stuff about us using them against tribesmen in India. Of course if the tribesmen had had the manners to lie down and be dead or incapacitated by the earlier lighter round then we wouldn't have had to go to the trouble of inventing the Dum-dum in he first place. Damned inconsiderate.

Not an unusual way of thinking; the Puckle revolving gun was sold with two sets of barrels and cylinders, one for round bullets for use against Christians and the other for square bullets (presumably on the basis that they would do more damage) for use against malignant and turban'd Turks and other malcontents...and people wonder why Galatasaray fans are so aggressive; I mean, wouldn't YOU be?

I think the best use for a Sterling was as a club. Had more stopping power that way buff. That and selling them to Hollywood to 'arm' the Empire stormtroopers in Star Wars.

Exactly! And look who won that little contretemps...word to the wise is all...

[Flibb]

My mate was out in Iraq and Kosovo and the SA80's that were adapted by H&K were meant to be very reliable. Quick note Heckler and Koch are British owned. They nearly went down the pan after a failed attempt to supply the German army with a caseless firearm firing from a closed bolt, all went pear shaped. Think Smith and Wesson are British owned as well.

[RVF500]

My own experiences of SA80 were of bits falling off and gas plugs melting after extended periods of firing. Admittedly these issues were being addressed while I was in the process of leaving. The first mods had been done prior to Gulf war 1 but there were still a lot of problems. The magazine was a major weakness being flimsy and prone to damage. If you can't get rounds into the chamber then it doesn't matter how much you've modded the weapon to make it work. So there were a lot of things, not just the weopon itself, that needed addressing. I believe there have been in excess of 200 mods carried out. Though I don't keep up on the intricacies of the workings of the SA80. In fact I was only ever interested in one thing. Will it work when I operate the trigger?

[nichomach]

My mate was out in Iraq and Kosovo and the SA80's that were adapted by H&K were meant to be very reliable. Quick note Heckler and Koch are British owned. They nearly went down the pan after a failed attempt to supply the German army with a caseless firearm firing from a closed bolt, all went pear shaped. Think Smith and Wesson are British owned as well.

Hmmm...the G11. I thought it had real potential, actually. Despite being caseless, they suffered fewer "cook-offs" than an M16, troops would have been able to carry a lot more ammunition for the same weight, and the unusual three-round-burst facility was meant to be awesome.