The story from South Africa:
Apparently it’s not possible to tell a hunting story in under 1,000 words. Something about the laws of rhetorical physics. You’ve been warned.
I choose Late Muzzleloader season in Eastern Washington because it allows the harvest of almost any deer – three point minimum or antlerless. We see few bucks around here, and since I hunt for the table I don’t care about old, tough bucks with big racks. They’re chewy and don’t taste as good. All that and there are very few other hunters out this late. It’s win win.
Late Muzzleloader lasts one week, so I’ve been out twice a day since last Wednesday. The below zero temp Wednesday morning was hard to take, but it was beautiful and I remember sitting up in the tree thinking, “This is definitely worth it even if I don’t get a deer. Wow!”
The tree I sit in is on a steep slope, with deer tracks crisscrossing all below and behind me, with a few tracks in front along the top of the ridge overlooking the Palouse River. I’ve seen at least six deer by Sunday (or two deer three times) but no clear shots. Mostly I’ve seen them on the run or behind tens of yards of thick brush as I walk to the stand, or after legal hours. One of them got stuck in a snow drift. We usually think of deer as graceful and poised at all times, but this fellow was flailing all over the place, feet in the air even, trying to get away from me. I was a little bit embarrassed for him. By the time I’d stumbled out of the brush to get a clear shot though, he was gone. That’s how it went for several days. Several shots I could’ve taken, but no.
Sunday evening I was going to stay in and rest up, by my son convinced me go out again. Good thing. I see no deer on the way up to the tree. That’s good. Infiltration without detection means I have a better chance of sniping one unawares.
I’d been up there for no more than half an hour, mostly looking around behind me where most of the tracks were, trying to spot a deer before it got to me. Therefore I failed to spot the nice three pointer walking casually along the ridge above, silent as a ghost in the powder snow, until he was right in front of me and already walking away.
It’s a sharp quartering away shot, 20 yards or less at eye level. Good backstop with several miles of empty farm fields behind. The time for the ideal shot was spent with my back turned. Hurry with getting the mitten open so the trigger finger is exposed. Silently cock the sidelock. He’s oblivious. He’s going to be out of view in a few seconds. I have to duck so I can sight under some hanging pine boughs. Aim for the heart. That means hitting behind the rib cage at this angle. Since I’m bending way down to see under the boughs, my glasses frame is in the way of the rifle sights. Crap. Have to dismount and push the glasses farther on. Take aim again. Time’s up.
Crack! I hadn’t thought to worry about the powder charge that had been in the barrel for several days. After that morning in below zero temperature, the barrel had frosted over when I came inside, and it had been snowing every time after, such that I’d take the barrel out of the stock to dry things out each day. No problem. 120 grains of FFG under a patched soft lead 50 caliber ball with a #11 percussion cap. Perfect ignition. This newfangled percussion system you kids have been using just might catch on.
There’s always a moment of uncertainty for me, especially with black powder because you’re peering through a smoke cloud trying to see what happened to the target.
I’ve heard of “anchoring” the animal in its tracks, but was beginning to think the phenomenon a myth. My son and I have killed around 9 deer and this has never happened, even with both lungs, and the heart, obliterated they always run some distance. This time the ball must have upset the central nervous system because the fellow went straight down. Zap! And he only twitched for a short while.
Some sense of reverence comes upon me when I approach the animal. It’s happened every time. They are very beautiful, strong, sleek, and delicious with new potatoes, turkey gravy, fresh fruit and red wine.
The ball had gone in at the back of the ribcage on the right side and exited through the base of the neck under the spine on the left. ~21.5 inches of penetration, and though you could fit your thumb in the entry wound, I couldn’t get but the tip of my little finger through the skin at the exit wound. The ball had just barely pooped out of the skin. Though it’s what we would call a short range prospect, I’m beginning to trust the 50 caliber patched ball load.
It was a good day. I’m happy, and the freezer will soon be full.
I’m still puzzled. That pure lead ball leaves the muzzle at around 1920 fps according to my CED chronograph, or a little more ’cause that’s averaged at 15 feet. Last year I shot a deer at 85 yards and the ball penetrated 25 inches with almost no deformation. We here concluded that the velocity at impact had been subsonic due to the very poor BC, hence a lower pressure at impact, hence the pristine ball (I recovered it from just under the skin and thought it was probably good enough to load again). This shot Sunday was at no more than 20 yards, maybe more like 15, yet I see no sign of ball deformation so far (I’ll check it out more closely upon butchering in a few days). You’d think with all the talk about bullet integrity, hard alloys and such, that a pure lead ball at that velocity would obliterate, giving shallow penetration. So what gives?
There are only two other states requiring the sale of confiscated weapons, Kentucky and Tennessee, both of which must have state governments almost as brainsick as Arizona’s. The NRA says why not sell these weapons to an authorized agent, and therein lies the problem. Gun show participants are authorized agents, and carry a loophole that would allow individual to individual weapons sales without background checks.
Jack E. Dunning
November 29, 2010
Arizona continues to lead the nation in putting more guns in the public’s hands
[This appears to be another case of someone lacking a thinking process. Not only does he have an error in his facts about gun shows but if you read the rest of his post you will discover he apparently believes there is a fixed supply of guns in the universe—he wants the police to destroy all confiscated firearms.
The only people that gain from destroying confiscated firearms are the people employed to do that and the gun manufactures. Yes, this anti-gun advocate is proposing a policy that benefits the gun manufactures by decreasing the supply of firearms in the marketplace. A decreased supply means more sales at a higher price for suppliers.
Sometimes I suspect they really are stupid. But if they were as stupid as they appear they couldn’t manage to string together the words into complete sentences. Nope, I think it has to be a mental defect.—Joe]
While at the Lewiston Pistol Club Steel Challenge match today I witnessed my first gun Kaboom!
As I reported via Twitter earlier, Bill was shooting his Glock 34 when it experienced a “high energy event”. Although there has been speculation as to the cause nothing definitive has been established.
There was no blood loss and although Bill’s hands stung for many minutes we do not believe any medical attention will be required.
Click on the pictures for high resolution versions.
On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?
Thomas Jefferson
Notes on Virginia, 1782.
From here.
[Translating to a simpler form, “Just because we haven’t yet rebelled due to the government overstepping of the constitution in the past doesn’t mean that we won’t hold the government responsible for those infringements in the future.”—Joe]
I knew the big snow storm was coming and rather than make a trip back to the Seattle area last Sunday I stayed in Idaho and worked from home the first part of this week. This saved me two trips over Snoqualmie Pass and 600 miles of travel on slick roads.
This was the view from my “office” on Tuesday:
These are from Thanksgiving day at my parents and brother’s place (they live a couple hundred feet from each other):
The picture below is also from Thanksgiving day on the farm and is to supplement this post. This is the old pull type combine parked behind the barn I was talking about:
The Second Amendment is not about hunting, it’s about an armed citizenry. That’s an unsettling concept for many people. For others, it’s a bedrock of security, constitutionally guaranteed.
Jon Agner
November 24, 2010
Guns and violence: McKelvey wrong on heritage, history
[Blacks walking around anywhere, anytime, without supervision instead of being slaves—that is an unsettling concept for many people. And it’s constitutionally guaranteed.
The problems is as minor restrictions on firearms ownership (or blacks/Jews/gays/whatever) increase the people least in need of restrictions will be affected the most and those that would have abused their freedoms will be affected the least. Hence minor restrictions cause more harm than good. Extensive restrictions are blatant infringements and while they might repress certain aspects of the original problem they create their own disastrous consequences.
And that is the basis of the conflict and why there cannot be a reasonable compromise. A society can choose freedom or suffer the alternative.—Joe]
There are many obvious parallels which could be draw between the TSA and Berlin Wall. The restrictions on travel, freedom, and of course the infamous “Papers!” line from movies about Nazi Germany.
But I want to point out a less obvious parallel—the way the Berlin Wall fell.
On November 9, 1989 there was a misunderstanding between the politburo and their spokesman about a change in travel policy. This was amplified by the media getting the message even more messed up (don’t they always?). The media ended up saying, “The borders are open to everyone” instead of some East Berliners will be allowed to cross if they have proper permission (presumably if they were politically connected and had close relatives to stay behind as hostages).
Crowds of people gathered at the wall and demanded the border guards immediately open the gates. The guards were overwhelmed (no injuries as far as I know) and let people through with little or no checking of papers.
The same thing could happen with the TSA. The only reason they have power over us is because we give them that power. We could ignore their demands for our papers, push their scanning machines aside, and walk straight to our gates and board our planes. If 10s of thousands did it all on the same day the game would be over in a matter of hours.
The guards at the Berlin Wall had machine guns. The TSA just have their uniforms and our timidity.
Why did he marry his dead wife’s brother-in-law’s sister?
Daughter Xenia
November 25, 2010
[I wanted to answer, “Because there was a shortage of women, this is cattle country, and there were no sheep.” But there were too many relatives around listening in and I just said there was a shortage of women.
This came about because while at my brother’s place for Thanksgiving Xenia wanted to know how she was related to some guy that looked and acted kind of like a caricature of some inbred from West Virginia. It was complicated and we couldn’t help but amuse ourselves by giving her all the details of the two sisters marrying the two brothers from another family, the brother and sister marrying the sister and brother from another family (one was married in ‘45 and the other in ‘54), and the double cousins that lived in the same house. Even though she was drawing and labeling a graph she said her head was about to explode so we stopped before trying to put the lines on the tree to show that if you go back far enough her mother and I are cousins from…West Virginia.—Joe]
I find these handguns unaesthetic. They’re ugly. They’re in-between things of no particular utility — but if we banned things on the basis of ugliness and relative uselessness, there’s a whole lot of people who’d never be allowed out of the house.
Roberta X
November 21, 2010 Pretzel Helmke Logic
[Agreed. And if such bans were legal and ethical the first useless thing I wouldn’t allow out of the house would be Paul Helmke. But that isn’t the way this part of world works and it shouldn’t work that way. So we need to continue shaming and pointing out his lies and mental defects.
Roberta did a good job but I kept thinking that in the next sentence she was going to point out that the Columbine killers used an ordinary shotgun (which they had sawed off the buttstock) for most of the murders. But that wouldn’t have fit Helmke’s narrative of an “assault weapon” being the real criminal.
Do you think I’m exaggerating? If so then why did Helmke use these exact words, “The TEC-9 assault pistol used by the Columbine killers murdered 12 of their classmates and a teacher.”?—Joe]
Via Say Uncle and Alan I found this:
The memo, which actually takes the form of an administrative directive, appears to be the product of undated but recent high level meetings between Napolitano, John Pistole, head of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA),and one or more of Obama’s national security advisors. This document officially addresses those who are opposed to, or engaged in the disruption of the implementation of the enhanced airport screening procedures as “domestic extremists.”
The introductory paragraph of the multi-page document states that it is issued “in response to the growing public backlash against enhanced TSA security screening procedures and the agents conducting the screening process.” Implicit within the same section is that the recently enhanced security screening procedures implemented at U.S. airports, and the measures to be taken in response to the negative public backlash as detailed [in this directive], have the full support of the President. In other words, Obama not only endorses the enhanced security screening, but the measures outlined in this directive to be taken in response to public objections.
The terminology contained within the reported memo is indeed troubling. It labels any person who “interferes” with TSA airport security screening procedure protocol and operations by actively objecting to the established screening process, “including but not limited to the anticipated national opt-out day” as a “domestic extremist.” The label is then broadened to include “any person, group or alternative media source” that actively objects to, causes others to object to, supports and/or elicits support for anyone who engages in such travel disruptions at U.S. airports in response to the enhanced security procedures.
For individuals who engaged in such activity at screening points, it instructs TSA operations to obtain the identities of those individuals and other applicable information and submit the same electronically to the Homeland Environment Threat Analysis Division, the Extremism and Radicalization branch of the Office of Intelligence & Analysis (IA) division of the Department of Homeland Security.
The way I read this is that people exercising their specific enumerated right of free speech will be reported to the Department of Homeland Security. Doesn’t that constitute a “chilling effect”? Can the entire chain of thugs all the way up to Obama be charged with violation of 18 USC 241 and/or 18 USC 242?
The Brady Center is about as effective and relevant as TSA which doesn’t say much for either organization. They also share the small-minded trait of getting nasty after having been called out on their goofs. The Brady Center certainly doesn’t provide a very good example of how adults should behave.
John Richardson
November 24, 2010
The Brady Center Doesn’t Act Like Adults
[They are in a desperate situation and desperate people do strange things.—Joe]
I don’t expect but maybe one person out of a 1000 to remember the Quadratic Equation—even though my algebra teacher wrote in my yearbook that if I forgot everything else she wanted me to remember that one thing. I don’t expect but maybe one person out of ten to be able count change without a computer someplace in the process. But there is one “math thing” that is starting to annoy me. I’ve heard this one claim for decades and I have never heard anyone else point out the obvious fallacy. It’s like an urban myth that everyone believes even though nearly everyone with a room temperature I.Q. could demonstrate it is false.
What finally tweaked me enough to do something about it was listening to a podcast by someone who claims to be smart enough that he should know better. I’m withholding the name to protect the guilty, but what was said was something like, “80% of the population thinks they are better than average drivers. That’s mathematically impossible!” Grrr…
Try proving that without resorting to a far less common definition of “average”.
A year or two ago in a much different forum someone else made a similar statement about penis sizes. I politely explained they were full of it and it hasn’t come up again (pun intended).
Now, with a much larger audience, I will now explain the issue using different example to (mostly) save you from thoughts about penis dimensions. I hope I don’t have to be subjected to this myth again, and if I am I will be able to just glare at them and send them a link to this post.
Imagine we have a sample of 50 male/female couples. All the people, except one, had their spouse as their one and only sex partner (I told you to imagine, remember?). It turns out that before the age of government education loans and grants Trixie earned her way through medical school the old fashion way—in bed. She had 1000 sexual partners prior to her spouse.
Lets compute the average (usually understood to be the arithmetic mean) number of sexual partners in this sample.
MeanSexualPartners = TotalSexualPartners/NumberOfPeople
MeanSexualPartners = ((99 x 1) + (1 x 1001))/100
MeanSexualPartners = 1100/100
MeanSexualPartners = 11
In this case 99% had 1 sexual partner and can truthfully and correctly state they have had fewer than the average number of sexual partners. Furthermore, 99% can correctly state they have had less than 10% of the average number of sexual partners.
I will leave the drivers and penis dimension examples as exercises for the reader.
Much like the Antis warnings of shootouts over parking spaces, violent gunfights in movie theatres and general “Dodge City” mayhem, Florida’s crime rate continues to fall, just like the crime rate of the other 39 States who have legislated Shall Issue Concealed Carry. 1.6 million Floridians with CCW permits – crime rates fall.
You’d think, with all that money, that Paul Helmke would be able to buy a clue.
jdberger
November 17, 2010
Surprisingly, another one of Brady Campaign’s Warnings Falls Flat
[Maybe the problem is that Helmke and friends don’t have any money and can’t buy a clue. How else can you explain they are trying to revive dead issues?—Joe]
As we all now know, if you want to answer a question scientifically, you take a poll. That’s the New Scientific Method. Scientific American magazine took such a poll regarding anthropogenic Gluball Worming (that’s Kim Du Toit’s term, IIRC) and since they didn’t like the results, it would seem Reasoned DiscourseTM has kicked in. I suppose the New Scientific Method will have to be amended – you take a poll of Open Society socialists only. Then you’ll get the right results.
This from Hockey Schtick, which has ostensibly maintained a link to the unwanted results. Take it for what you will. Do your own investigation. Myself, I find it hard to believe even though I know the left like the back of my hand and therefore such things should come as no surprise. I heard of this poll on the Dennis Prager show last week, and figured I should share.
I used to subscribe to Scientific American, until I received the impression that desperate academics were using it merely as a vehicle for getting published. I got tired of wading through so much evidence of non-inspiration, just to find the few interesting tidbits. Still I’ll give them credit for being the only place I’d heard of superfluids, pre internet.
To me it’s not terribly important one way or the other. The left has been crying “Wolf!” for generations now and it has worn thin, and worn out, for me decades ago. The planet Earth was supposed to run out of oil in the 1980s, and so we were supposed to adopt more socialism. The “Population Time Bomb” was going to get us by then too, we were told as elementary school students, and so we were supposed to adopt more socialism including forced population controls. The planet was going to freeze up in a new ice age, we were told back in the 1960s, and then it became Glueball Worming, and now it’s “Climate Change”. Those are just a few highlights, but this crap has been non-stop for what – about 150 years? They’ve lost control of the narrative now. What will happen as a result?
I figure it’ll have to get more down to the point – It’ll have to be plain old threats from the left at some point. When the spoiled child’s attempts at lying and manipulation fall flat, the all-out tantrums come next. The best we can do I suppose is ignore them, but when they start breaking things it gets difficult.
Via email from Chet:
In the past I have said I don’t mind private business getting overbearing as much as I do the government doing so. But when an industry leader uses the invasion of your privacy to it’s advantage without repercussions the rest of the industry is almost forced to follow along or get left in the financial dust. And once the technology is deployed and a profit can be made selling it to the government someone will do that too. It won’t matter how evil it is (read IBM and the Holocaust), if the price is right, and with a government involved the price could be you (or your company) continuing to survive, the information will be abused.
There needs to be repercussion for companies who do this. The “noise” and the boycotts need to start before the information is abused.
I know a lot more than I am at liberty to say and it hurts to bite my tongue this hard…
Note: Full disclosure—I work for Microsoft who is a competitor of Google.
Via email from Kris comes this link and an image from Gizmodo which I continued following to find the artist here. This is the image:
Also from Kris is this collection of TSA bumper stickers:
On the more serious side is Bruce Schneier (via Chet) with my favorite section being:
There’s talk about the health risks of the machines, but I can’t believe you won’t get more radiation on the flight. Here’s some data:
A typical dental X-ray exposes the patient to about 2 millirems of radiation. According to one widely cited estimate, exposing each of 10,000 people to one rem (that is, 1,000 millirems) of radiation will likely lead to 8 excess cancer deaths. Using our assumption of linearity, that means that exposure to the 2 millirems of a typical dental X-ray would lead an individual to have an increased risk of dying from cancer of 16 hundred-thousandths of one percent. Given that very small risk, it is easy to see why most rational people would choose to undergo dental X-rays every few years to protect their teeth.
More importantly for our purposes, assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result.
Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists.
Nate Silver on the hidden cost of these new airport security measures.
According to the Cornell study, roughly 130 inconvenienced travelers died every three months as a result of additional traffic fatalities brought on by substituting ground transit for air transit. That’s the equivalent of four fully-loaded Boeing 737s crashing each year.
Hidden costs… That is something that is difficult to get across to many people. Just like gun control. Ban all the guns and the total crimes committed with firearms will probably go down but the crime rate may actually increase because having unarmed or poorly armed victims enables crime. It appears that is just too difficult of a concept for some people.
I’m not sure how to handle this problem. If they didn’t have (or threaten to have) the force of government behind them it would be fairly easy to ignore them and let Darwin take care of them. But that isn’t the way it works. They can use government to force us all to back over the cliff trying to avoid a nut case in front of us who pops up and says “Boogie! Boogie!” once every few years. We should just allowed to carry our guns and put a bullet in his head when he shows himself.
It seems people are beginning to realize the price they are paying for the security theater but will they be willing to embrace freedom and self-reliance?
Whatever the outcome it makes things worse for gun control. We should be able to draw the parallel between security on an airplane and security in schools, office buildings, and college campuses. If this is what it takes to make things safe on an airplane why should it take any less to make a dorm room “safe’?
How many people do you think will be tolerate this sort of “security” every time they enter a building or any other “gun free zone”? I don’t know the answer but we should start asking the question.
Update: I forgot about Rob’s email that I had saved away:
And from Mike:
What you mean “us”, Kemosabe?
The day you’re standing there watching while some anonymous McDonald’s washout of a rent-a-cop is giving Michelle and the girls a full TSA probulation at Andrews AFB before y’all jet off to Martha’s Vineyard or Madrid is the day you will show a shred of leadership on this issue.
Until then, you can put a sock in it. Until the Presidential Junk gets a fondlin’, you’re just talking out your teleprompter.
You first, Barry; you first.
Tamara K.
November 21, 2010
Step up and show some leadership, Mr. President.
[Today is privacy day at The View From North Central Idaho. I received email about stuff that I just had to share. It will be up in a few minutes. Tamara sets the tone.—Joe]
About a month ago I received an email from Steven Otterbacher at BulkAmmo.com:
Hi Joe,
I really appreciate your posting about our opening a few weeks ago (https://blog.joehuffman.org/2010/08/30/bulk-ammo/) ; things are going well and I appreciate your help!I have an idea I wanted to run past you:
We just started carrying Fiocchi ammo and are trying to get the word out about it. If we shipped you a box, would you be willing to give it a fair try and post a review about it?
As long as you link back to the category page on our website (i.e. http://www.bulkammo.com/handgun/bulk-.40-s-w-ammo – maybe with anchor-text like “Bulk 40 cal ammo” or “bulk 40 S&W ammo”), not the product page, we are 100% fine with a positive or negative review – whatever is truthful based on your experience – we just want you to give it a chance!
If you are interested, which product/caliber do you prefer:• http://www.bulkammo.com/bulk-9mm-ammo-9mm158fmjsubfiocchi-50
• http://www.bulkammo.com/bulk-223-ammo-223rem40hvmaxfiocchi-50
• http://www.bulkammo.com/bulk-40-s-w-ammo-40sw180jhpxtpfiocchi-50If you are interested, just confirm you are on board, let me know which caliber you prefer, and then give me your shipping information (and confirm that you meet are terms of sale – i.e. you are over 21, are legally able to own this ammo, etc, etc) and I will get this ammo shipped out to you ASAP!
If this goes well, we might even be able to do a few more as time goes on!
I appreciate your time and look forward to hearing from you soon!
Thanks,
Steven
I accepted his offer and asked for the .40 S&W 180 grain ammo. I was on vacation at the time and there were various things like blowing up pumpkins that kept me from getting to the ammo testing until today. I don’t have a good place to do this type of testing in the Seattle area and had to wait until I could get out to the Boomershoot site.
Since I was going to have everything set up for group and velocity testing I decided to test some other ammo at the same time.
The ammo I actually received was not the JHPs but FMJ. I didn’t realize that until I got out on the range with all the JHPs I was ready to compare to. I did the comparisons anyway.
Rounds fired: 10
Gun: STI Eagle 5.1 with a KKM Precision barrel.
Temperature: 30 F
Elevation: 3000 feet
Chronograph: CED Millennium
Distance to Chronograph: 11’ to first screen
Distance between screens: 2’
Distance to target: 25’
Bullet mass: 180 grains (except the Remington Golden Sabers which were 165 grains)
Here is my setup and the ammo used:
The bag of lentils was torn by the muzzle blast on the first shot and I switched to a roll of paper towels to replace the leather sandbag I had left at home.
The handloads were assembled in 1998 for bowling pin shoots. I used Winchester cases with Rainer Restrike JHP bullets over 6.4 grains of VV N350 powder.
The following table describes the velocity performance at 12’ from the muzzle. If you want velocity at the muzzle add about 4.5 fps to the numbers below.
|
Manufacture |
Product |
Mean |
High |
Low |
SDev |
ES |
|
962 |
981 |
948 |
9 |
32 |
||
|
1009 |
1038 |
975 |
15 |
53 |
||
|
1120 |
1138 |
1093 |
15 |
45 |
||
|
988 |
1016 |
961 |
18 |
54 |
||
|
1044 |
1057 |
1030 |
8 |
27 |
||
|
1050 |
1075 |
1033 |
11 |
42 |
||
|
Handloads |
1001 |
1033 |
941 |
24 |
91 |
Feeding was perfect with all ammo types.
Accuracy information can be derived from the picture below (click to enbiggen enough to see the bullet holes and the ammo names on the targets). The target on the top right is the BVAC. I didn’t label that target in the field because I couldn’t remember the name of the ammo. It was a bulk buy and I had transferred it from the original boxes (of 500 each) into ammo cans.
The accuracy was acceptable for everything except my handloads and perhaps the BVAC remanufactured FMJs. The Black Hills and the Fiocchi ammo did the best.
I was aiming at the bottom edge of the black to get the maximum contrast with the sights as that sliver of “white” disappeared into the black. The order in which the targets were shot is as in the table above.
For self-defense ammo I don’t really care much if the group size is one inch or three inches at 25 feet. Nearly all self-defense shootings are at ranges less than that and the nearly all ammo is going to have enough accuracy to hit the target. The shooter is going to be the dominate factor.
What is important is the velocity of the bullet, the expansion diameter, and depth of penetration. The penetration depth is also affected by the covering of the target. Shirts, jackets, windshield glass, etc. all make a difference. I didn’t have the time or enough ammo to do a full scale test of everything but I planned to do an expansion test with water.
I put a concrete paving stone in the bottom of a old diaper container that was laying around in the garage and put five gallons of water on top of it. This gave me about 15 inches of water to shoot into. I put the paving stone in the bottom to make sure the bullet wouldn’t punch a hole in the bottom if the water wasn’t deep enough.
As I prepared to fire into the container I tried to remember what had happened when Myth Busters did similar tests. I remembered that the 9mm FMJ had surprising depth of penetration and that the water splash was impressive. I keep thinking there was something more I should remember… what was it?
I anticipated getting severely splashed with water but that wasn’t the thing I should have worried about. I fired from about four feet above the container and only my hand and the gun got a little wet. After firing I was pretty sure I just relearned with Myth Busters had learned. The outward pressure of the water is quite strong. The pictures below tell the story:
Yes. The container was blown completely in two and split down the side. The bullet fully penetrated the water and impacted the paving stone.
The bullet jacket completely separated from the core. Here are the bullet pictures (click to see higher resolution versions):
If you know your bullets the jacket in the first picture will tell you which bullet it was. If you can’t guess I’ll put the answer in the comments by EOD on Monday.
Victimhood is cherished by the left. As one of their media of exchange it is like gold to them. It is one of the highest forms of existence, for which they all long, to which they all aspire, and which they would have us all attain at their hands as payment in kind.
Lyle Keeney
November 21, 2010
Comment to Quote of the day—Kurt Hofmann
[This is in regards to Virginia Tech gun control victim Colin Goddard representing the Brady Campaign.—Joe]