Getting shot by a handgun
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He drew a short straw on the weapon of choice. .22 caliber slugs tend to bounce around inside a person. Anything carrying more energy would likely have shattered his scapula, and gone clean through him. The energy of the slug wouldn't have been used up bouncing around his chest.
I took care of a person shot in the ankle with a .22. The entrance wound was in his ankle and the exit wound was in his groin. Another client had a single hole in his skull with no exit wound. Needless to say, the poor sap didn't do well after having a slug rattle around inside his skull for a while.
But I digress. I just finished watching the first season of The Wire tonight. It reminded me a lot of my stint in Chicago, and I guess I have ballistics on my mind. Back to coding...
Admittedly, a .22WMR is pretty much a different animal than the .22lr. Out of a rifle, it would have probably been a through and through, assuming a FMJ bullet -- you'd probably get 2000fps for a 40gr. A JSP might not have, and out of a Ruger Single Six, it's a lot closer to a really hot .22lr rifle.
If you post some expert-level stuff about physics or microbiology or linguistics or early Medieval French poetry then most people won't understand it but nobody will complain because they're ashamed (well, at least slightly) of their ignorance on these subjects.
On the other hand if you post some expert-level stuff about guns or football or Justin Bieber then people will complain because they're proud of their ignorance on these subjects. Being an expert on those subjects marks you out as part of a group which some people here don't want to be seen as being part of, so folks are quite proud to proclaim their ignorance on these subjects.
Of course, go to another corner of the internet and it's all switched around.
I don't think your comment is true, either. I'd be very surprised if most people here were ashamed, even slightly, of their ignorance on any given 'nerd' subject. Very often, the top comments in a story are either explanations or requests for explanations followed by explanations, maybe followed by more requests for clarification. I also bet I can find more people here proud of their ignorance about say, Haskell monads, than about guns, judging by how loud they are about it.
Finally, Justin Bieber is a subject of a different nature--his prominence in culture is disproportionately higher than his importance, so people usually don't want to hear about it. Not a fair comparison.
In fact, I'd say that there are more of them, than hackers.
It is quite common for criminals in the UK to "re-bore" replica or deactivated weapons. It is also very common for these guns to backfire, killing the shooter.
The idea of gun hacking simply put me in mind of these sad occurrences.
I'm not suggesting anyone is a mouth breathing redneck, or an inept criminal for that matter, lets put it this way: when I think of some of the things I've hacked in the more conventional sense, I wouldn't feel safe if those things had been potentially lethal :)
EDIT: before anyone else brings this up, it has just occurred to me that the category of "potentially lethal" includes every object in existence, especially cars, which people love to hack and I would never anyone accuse of being reckless for hacking. So feel free to disregard my whole point.
I don't really see a huge complexity issue here.
Relatedly, the world doesn't have enough good spy movies.
I don't know anything about hit squads using .22, but in the (rural) area I'm from, .22 rifles are known as poachers rifles because when used with subsonic ammo and a homemade suppressor, they are very quiet.
That said, I'm not sure that hit squads are very concerned with being quiet. That Iranian virus expert that got killed the other week was blown up, the Israelis that killed the Hamas leader a while ago didn't even wear disguises and were filmed full frontal. From the targeted killings that make the news, being 'subtle' doesn't seem to be a consideration.
Oh and drug dealers who kill people don't care about being silent, either. All high profile shootings of the last few years in my area were with heavy caliber weapons.
The subject of the article was shot with a 22WMR (Winchester Magnum Rimfire) round. This round can use the same bullet as the 22lr round but contains lots more powder.
The velocity of the bullet leaving the barrel of the firearm depends on how fast the charge contained in the casing wants to push it and how much the barrel wants to slow it down due to friction. Almost all rifles barrels are between 16.5" and 24". For a average 22WMR round shooting an 40-grain (unit of mass) bullet out of a mid-length rifle barrel one would expect the bullet to leave the barrel at around 2000 feet/sec. The deceleration caused by friction can be altered by changing the exterior-most material of the bullet: a full metal jacket (usually lead totally encased by copper) is potentially slicker than a jacketed soft-point (only partially encased, with the tip exposed).
A Ruger Single Six is a type of handgun. The story describes a single-action revolver, which the Single Six is not, but let's ignore that. It comes in barrel lengths of 2.75", 4", and 6". Out of a 4" or 6" barrel, the 22WMR has about 1400-1600 feet/sec of velocity. This is roughly comparable with the upper (or hot) range for a 22lr fired out of a rifle barrel.
The Single Six is, in fact a single-action revolver. See manufacturer's product page: http://www.ruger.com/products/newModelSingleSix/firearms.htm...
Also, .22LR ammunition is generally subsonic outside of hotter loadings. This avoids the characteristic supersonic crack of higher velocity cartridges.
(as an aside, subsonic ammo is looked at suspiciously around these parts. since it's mostly used for poaching; when used with a home-made suppressor on a rifle, it's very quiet, like you say, in large part because of the lack of sonic boom).
Doing a bit of googling, the .22LR doesn't gain much velocity beyond 14" barrel length, and loses less than 200fps from a 4" barrel vs the 14".
Well, given that .22LR out of a rifle length barrel is less than 200FPS above subsonic speeds, that kind of plays right into what he was saying.
Now, you could use one of the other rimfire variations (.22 Short, .22 Long, .22 CB) which generally will fire from a .22 LR chamber. These would most likely get you subsonic velocities.
Another thing to consider when shooting a pistol vs a rifle and comparing sound signatures is that a pistol will eject more unburnt powder into the air around the muzzle as its had less barrel length to burn said powder.
As far as suppression goes, there are four main components of the sound signature of a gunshot:
1) muzzle blast - the expansion of deflagrating powder in the atmosphere as it exits the barrel.
2) sonic crack - the bullet creating a shockwave through the air. Can be avoided by using subsonic cartridges/loadings.
3) the weapons action - at the very least the firing pin's impact on the primer. This is louder than you'd expect.
4) the bullet's impact - very much louder than you'd expect. A rifle bullet impacting flesh is a very loud slap. Imagine dropping a large boneless beef roast on a tile floor from a few meters up.
Of these bits of the gunshot, only 1) can be addressed with a suppressor. And it does make shooting much more pleasant. You can generally avoid most ear protection shooting suppressed, even with supersonic ammo (you won't be in the shockwave so no need to worry about it).
I personally have fired rather large rifles without ear protection, and its generally not real pleasant. I really wish that there was no NFA and we could buy suppressors like some countries (New Zealand comes to mind). A .22 suppressor there is something like $40NZ, here you're looking at $4-600, a $200 tax stamp, and a 6month wait for the BATFE to do a background check that the FBI does in less than a week. Oh, and you can't let your wife/kid use it without being in violation of the NFA unless you have it owned by a trust where the family memebers are trustees.
The only stuff that's consistently making supersonic out of the list is the high velocity stuff. Even Remington Golden Bullet (which Remington advertises as "high velocity" according to the box I have sitting on my desk) falls short of supersonic from pistol length barrels.
I guess the fairer thing to say would be that .22LR is borderline but it drops below supersonic pretty quickly once you start shaving barrel length.
This is a pretty ugly story that would have gratifying appeal to many people on either side of the issue (I heard it from a conservative guy who was grinning with glee at the supposed cleverness of the Israelis) so there's a good chance it's an urban legend. Confirmation or refutation would be welcome.
In other words, "anti-Semitic libel"?
P.S. To go further, the guy who told me the story was planning on buying such a gun if he could confirm it, just to have a conversation piece. Plus the story sounds perfectly in line with the bizarre results you get when bureaucrats are asked to classify things.
I think I have just experienced what a non-technical user feels like when talking to a hardware geek.
My limited first-ass experience: I got hit by a 9mm FMJ ricochet. Someone put a round into a concrete floor near me, and the bullet broke apart and a piece hit me, or a piece of concrete hit me in the back of the thigh; it left a mark, but didn't break the skin; we found the bullet completely deformed with the jacket shredded in several pieces). The worst part was the sound; despite shooting a lot, it was the first time I'd ever been next to a firearm fired inside a 3m x 2m x 3m concrete room without wearing hearing protection. I also had a sore throat from yelling at the guy for the next ~15 minutes. Strangely, I wasn't actually afraid until the next day (when I realized how easy it would have been for the guy to have shot me in the leg instead, or for the ricochet to have hit me somewhere important nearby, etc.)
Temporary deafness (wax basically protects your ear from further damage by blocking the ear canal; I used hydrogen peroxide to clean it out later, and let a medic look at it with an otoscope to make sure the eardrum wasn't too damaged).
The whole experience made me 1) trust people even less and 2) want to become a certified emt or paramedic at some point, mainly to deal with trauma.
A group of us were preparing for an IDPA match at a local gun range. One of our most experienced members got a little too complacent and was joking with a friend after finishing a course of fire. He ignored the range safety officer standing next to him. He didn't clear his weapon before he holstered it, and as he holstered it, his hand slipped and the weapon discharged.
We all thought he was fine, and so did he. The range safety officer was in the middle of yelling at him when one of the other members noticed that the guy was bleeding pretty heavily from his right leg. He'd given himself a nice 9mm through-and-through wound to the calf.
The round didn't hit anything important, and we got the bleeding stopped and him off to a hospital without much problem.
A few weeks later, before our next shoot, our group met with a local paramedic and an ER doctor for an informal crash course in gunshot trauma treatment.
He provided a lot of statistics and made some recommendations, but the overriding theme and message of the book was that the result of shooting someone, or being shot, is unpredictable no matter what kind of weapon is involved. Some examples:
A fatal bullet through the heart can leave a guy up and shooting for over ten seconds -- obviously an eternity for a law enforcement officer in a point-blank shootout.
A guy can get shot and not know it. Police officers are trained to check themselves carefully when any shots are fired, because it has happened that officers thought they were unharmed, went home, laid down to rest, and bled to death.
A guy can be in a shootout and THINK he got shot, and it turns out there's not a mark on him. They get knocked over, feel intense pain, cry out, etc. There were enough of these cases that the researchers were able to find some involving officers who were previously decorated for valor and had in fact been shot before.
A guy can get shot multiple times with a powerful weapon and get lucky, or he can get shot with a tiny weapon and get unlucky. I still remember the story used to illustrate this: a fight between roommates got ugly, and one guy shot the other six times in the chest with a .45. The second guy went to his attic, found his great-grandfather's Civil War-era relic small caliber revolver (something like a .22), went back downstairs, and shot his roommate through the heart, killing him. Forty-eight hours later, his desire for medical care overcame his aversion to getting caught, and he walked into an emergency room. He recovered completely.
The book had a lot of complicated reasoning about the trade-offs involved in choosing handguns and ammunition and made some strong recommendations, but I don't remember any of the specifics. I just remember the author stressing over and over again not to expect any particular result when you shoot somebody.
Here's a PDF analyzing the effectiveness of firearms. It was written in 1989 so it is a bit out of date. Perhaps someone with more experience with firearms can check to see if the article is still relevant.
It does confirm that "Even if the heart is instantly destroyed, there is sufficient oxygen in the brain to support full and complete voluntary action for 10-15 seconds".
"The only way to ensure instantaneous incapacitation is to destroy enough important brain matter. Do you want to aim at a 2-inch square target on your opponent's fast-moving head, or do you want to take your chances aiming for center mass?"
So I don't know if this instructor is an oddball or if he represents the current popularly held wisdom, but this instructor at least acknowledges that the effects of gunshot wounds are extremely unpredictable, which lines up with that study.
Most civil war revolvers are .36 and .44 (very close to .45) and one shot to the heart would easily be fatal. It is not unheard of for someone to suffer multiple .22 shots to the chest yet suffer little injury. However it _is_ simply unheard of for someone to suffer six .45 shots to the chest yet walk around for days.
Citation? Source?
You read the book "about fifteen years ago". Knowing something about guns (in particular .45's and .22's) and the fallibility of human memory, it is reasonable to remain skeptical.
Because after 15 years it is more likely that you mis-remembered the story or erroneously conflated stories, etc.
And I understand the huge number of possibilities.
Such a remarkable story justifies a citation request: were it a more likely story, none would be required.
Let me turn the tables on you a bit: what is _your_ justification for the story as stated? I see no reason other than a 15-year old memory, possibly that of a child.
P.S. dkari - about your possible "urban legend" (that was downvoted) concerning the Israeli use of .22. I believe it far more likely to be true than the above story.
I can't provide a citation because I don't remember the title or the author's name, but I can tell you that by expressing skepticism of the story you are in disagreement not just with an anecdote but with the book's overall message and consistent motif, which is not a detail I could have misremembered. You disagree with the author, in short, about whether the result of shooting someone with any particular caliber of handgun is consistent and predictable. The author felt strongly (based on the data he compiled) that it was a mistake to generalize about the effect of any type of gun or ammunition. The author seemed to fear after examining his data that the mere act of stating his conclusions on the relative merits of different types of handguns and ammunition would reinforce a more orderly and predictable vision of the world than the data justified. He said a lot of the appetite for research of the kind he was doing came from officers whose colleagues or subordinates were killed after placing a number of accurate shots on criminals who then lived to serve their sentences in comfort and good health, and he said he had no answers that would prevent that from happening again in the future, only recommendations that would make such incidents a little bit rarer. He took great pains to undermine the idea that the characterization of the real-world performance of any firearm or ammunition load is anything more than statistical, confounded by many other variables. He felt it was wrong to say about any kind of gun or ammunition that it penetrated well or consistently yielded a one-shot stop. He could say that a certain caliber of gun seemed to yield one-hit stops slightly more often than others, but regardless of the caliber you will still see a certain number of four-or-five-hit non-stops followed by the suspect emptying his gun at the officer and then drawing a knife. (I don't think the author put it exactly that way, but it's not snark or exaggeration on my part.) And of course any caliber of gun will yield a one-hit or even zero-hit stop a certain amount of the time, and the best-penetrating round will occasionally fail to penetrate when it matters.
To be more concrete, in a gunfight between (say) a .45 and a .22 fired with equal accuracy, any trained person would want to be holding the .45, but the very clear-cut and undeniable advantage a .45 has over a .22 does not translate to a predictable outcome, any more than having two aces in hold 'em guarantees that you will have the best hand after the flop. You can be 100% certain that a .45 is better than a .22 in that situation, but you can't predict with 100% confidence that the guy with the .45 is going to end up better off after the random confounding variables are figured in. You would bet on the .45, of course, but sometimes you'd be wrong, even measured by the long-term effect of the wounds (which as I understand it is more predictable than the short-term effect of being shot.)
And of course, as I pointed out before, he had excellent reason and opportunity to cherry-pick a perfect example that would surprise his readers and undermine their appetite for generalizations (which appetite many of them doubtless bought his book to feed.)
No, I merely don't trust that story! It is literally incredible. Human memory is fallible, conflatable, and we often confabulate unconsciously. Were you to provide a citation then I could research it. Perhaps you will remember the author or title after some pondering.
Your AP English classes were not wasted - you're a distractingly excellent writer. But please put down the red fish; you are among friends here (I think).
Chapter 1 of the Emergency War Surgery Manual (updated in 2006 to collect lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan) dedicates Chapter 1 to dispelling misconceptions about injuries. The science comes down on the side of the cop answering in Google: the weapon is of little use in predicting the outcome.
Interesting read. Knowing "how" to react and "reacting" in a appropriate, timely manner in a chaotic environment is a big jump even with the right kind of practice (as opposed to fake practice: http://bootload.posterous.com/through-my-eyes-fake-practice ) especially at the first response end. How do you train for the gap between working in calm controlled environments to chaotic ones?
Cudo's, HM's ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_Hospital_Cor... are well trained because sometimes they are the closest to medical aid you get and as such are much respected.
More than the shotgun (I would spect to die and Im not very curious on that matter) what really intrigues me is what would I feel after 10 years of zero sexual activity.
Sexual feelings are really strong, that has to cause real pain through the years, I dont know if being grateful of being alive could easily overcome them
He also says getting shot is worse when you're running away from someone than when it takes you by surprise. He said some other things, but I don't really remember them.
But no info on who this is or the backstory on the context of why he got shot.
Now as a side note, I want to say to everyone who downvoted my comment without saying why, I think this is an idiot's move. Yes, I am saying it. At least if you are going to do it, give a feedback. Otherwise you haven't added anything to the conversation. And just so you know, it's not about karma. It's about you not adding anything to the conversation.
Upvotes and downvotes add the same thing to the conversation: 1) They're a system by which the collective collectively modifies what comments get seen, and in what order 2) They're a system of feedback about what is a valuable contribution
Neither of those contributions requires "saying why". Of course, it is true that the second function works a lot better if the voter communicates a "why", that's easy to see. But it's easy to see that the first function is served just fine by voting without comments (and indeed, since your downvoted comment was erroneous, the conversation benefited from it being removed via downvoting).
Further, we all already know that some explanations of "why" distract from the conversation more than they contribute. The most-obvious example is "+1 agree" or "+1 this", or even "+1 this comment told me something I didn't know". Or, in your case, people could have commented "-1 unsubstantiated" or "-1 parent post misread FA" or something.
Either way, whining about voting _really_ doesn't add to the conversation. If I had downvote ability, I'd downvoting comments that complain about downvotes.
tl;dr: Downvotes without explanations are just as much a positive contribution to the conversation as upvotes.
Whining about downvotes without "saying why" is an idiot's move. Thank you. According to your comment I am not an idiot because I "said why" : if you are going to do it, give a feedback. Otherwise you haven't added anything to the conversation. .
I cannot start to think of a world where giving someone a coin as a way of saying you are adding value is just as effective as taking away a coin from them as a way of saying you are taking away value. The way we communicate online should just be an extension of how we communicate in real life. In practice you should only be able to downvote someone because you upvoted them in the past. So in a sense you would take back what you gave them. Otherwise it is nothing short of robbery.
I have never downvoted anyone, unless it was done by mistake. Maybe we are different, but I just do not see how downvotes are helpful. I respect your point, but I think it doesn't make sense.
Whew! It's a good thing too ... stopping all that senseless accidental shootings from law abiding citizens. Many the criminal will take the hint. Oh wait ... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/5712573...
For the UK: 0.38 to 0.46
Source (and more sources): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re...
In Northern Ireland (where as far as I'm aware the gun law is the same) it's 6.82.
It's interesting that England and Wales features in 7th lowest spot for death rate whereas Northern Ireland is 7th highest.
So in NI we're talking about just over 1,000 deaths against E/W combined, about 200. Hence the separate treatment.
It isn't, a lot more people in NI own firearms.
I've bemoaned the difficulty in finding reliable, research-quality statistical data like this for a long time. I've even tried to raise capital to for a start-up to do this. No luck.
And, the UK's low firearms death rates predate the firearms laws, which largely occurred post-WWI to stop a communist takeover.
Note the US' firearms death rate isn't uniform. For example, most of the peninsula's is better than the UK's best, but East Palo Alto, which has exactly the same laws (and lower firearms ownership than Palo Alto), is horrendously worse.
Parts of the US are third-world, with all that that entails. Gun control won't change that.
If you know of a specific reference I'll be very pleased to read it.
You do have to convert the raw numbers into per-capita rates.
I reckon we could have a fucking boring argument about it though. I've seen it done, it looks easy.
Deal with accordingly.
(This is definitely one of the debates to avoid here because it is very polarizing, however, for the record we have a pretty good firearms record in the UK)
At least; that is my impression from the cases I see.
Tbh I'm not really giving an opinion on the actual issue, my orginal reply was supposed to "show up" the fallacy of the gp.
The relationships between guns, crime and their banning is way too complex for me to have an opinion on :p
How do they get "caught carrying weapons" without a search to find said weapons? (Terry v Ohio explains some of this, but note that Terry lets police search you even if you're not carrying.)
If our goal is to catch drug dealers, we could just let cops search based on hunches. After all, those hunches are fairly accurate.
> At least; that is my impression from the cases I see.
And those cases are representative of what?
happy sigh
I later found what looked like a lead colored smudge mark above a button hole on my white shirt and my chest was bright red behind that spot.
How the heck did that .22 not enter my chest? I had a thick cotton work shirt on with a tee shirt on beneath it -- But that is not enough to block a .22 in my experience.
?Anyone?
This happened 4 days ago so my recollection is fairly fresh.
This is one of the many reasons y'all should use SI.
So, if you use one pound of force to move an object one foot, you have used one foot pound of energy (or about 1.355 Joules).
Pounds per surface area is pressure. Foot pounds per surface area is something else.
When calculating torque, the force is applied in a direction perpendicular to the distance that is measured, because the distance refers to the distance between the place where the force is exerted and the center of rotation. Therefore torque is calculated by taking the cross product of the force and the distance. So while the units look the same, what they are measuring is different.
WolframAlpha calculates the energy of a 40 grain bullet at 1550 feet per second to be 213.3 foot pounds, not 324. Winchester claims that a 40 grain .22 magnum bullet from a rifle-length barrel exits the muzzle at 1910 feet per second and has 324 foot pounds of kinetic energy. WolframAlpha agrees.
I can see a use for such a unit; it's just not one I've ever encountered before.
There is so much anecdotal evidence in this thread. I thought that the HN community would have a greater adversion to firearms as even their ownership by a community increases the chance of fatal violence.