Lies, Damned Lies, and Hollywood...

Ambulance Driver has some questions for the gunnie community (side note: I like the idea of a gunnie community. Imagine the local neighborhood watch, for instance...)

I started to pound out a response in his post when I realized, hey, I've been suffering writer's block, here's a good chance to put up a decent post... So on with the questions!

In your view, what are the most common myths among the firearms community about "stopping power" (now there's a fuzzy term if ever I've heard one), penetration, velocity, caliber, bullet weight and construction, firearms accuracy and reliability? If there are other points of contention I haven't mentioned, by all means let me know.

Among the firearms community, I'd have to say that the most common myth is that one must carry a firearm whose caliber starts with "4" and ends in "5". Now, don't get me wrong; there's nothing wrong with the venerable .45 ACP or the .45 Long Colt or the .454 Casull. But some folks just plain don't like firing guns with that much oomph, some folks (like me) are cheap and want something less expensive to shoot, and yet others prefer a gun that's easy to conceal.

None of my carry guns are chambered in .45 ACP.

The smallest caliber I carry is .380 ACP, which is, in +P configuration, the smallest and least powerful caliber that I am comfortable using for self defense. It's marginal, to be sure, but the P3AT is "the gun to have when you don't have a gun" - it is so small, light, and concealable that it really can be taken anywhere (legal, of course, we here at MArooned do not condone the breaking of laws no matter how unConstitutional they may be...)

In your view, what are the most common myths among non-firearms enthusiasts about the same subjects? What are the biggest misconceptions among non-shooters about the destructive power of firearms?

This is an easy one. First off, let's consider the "Hollywood Effect":

1. A handgun round (or rifle, or shotgun, for that matter) is powerful enough to knock someone down and toss them across a room.
2. Your average person can hit a moving target at 100+ feet with a snub-nosed revolver.
3. Firing a semi-automatic handgun as quickly as you can accomplishes something other than wasting ammo.
4. Without insane amounts of practice, firing two guns at once (one in each hand) is a safe and smart practice.
5. Depending on the character of the person shot, a handgun round is powerful enough to kill instantly (if the person shot is an expendable henchman) or weak enough to merely inconvenience (hero).
6. Shotguns, presumably with buckshot, are capable of removing limbs.
7. Shotguns, presumably with birdshot, are capable of turning people into hamburg.
8. Submachine guns are controllable with little-to-no practice.
9. (Just added) The "Lone Ranger" myth - that in the middle of a fierce gun battle, it will be possible for the good guy to merely shoot the gun out of the bad guy's hand. Alternately considered the "couldn't they just shoot him in the leg" line of thinking.

From a non-Hollywood-influenced standpoint, I'd hazard that the general unfamiliarity with firearms, coupled with a genuine lack of knowledge of folks what has been shot, the vast majority of the general population knows about as much about the destructive power of firearms as I know about nuclear physics. There's also the raw unpredictability of the human body, what with the rounded areas of bones causing unpredictable ricochets, the effects of semi-fluid joints on penetration, etc. Sometimes a .45 slug will pass right through and cause minimal damage; sometimes a .22LR enters just right and kills immediately.

In any case, like the gentleman from the Box O' Truth is wont to say, rifles are rifles, and pistols are pistols. (Also known as the "Fistful of Dollars" Corollary: When a man with a .45 meets a man with a rifle, the man with a pistol is a dead man.) There's a reason the Armed Forces issue rifles to their combatants - there truly is no subsitute for raw power (the old truism from the muscle car wars of the late 1960s rings true here: There's no replacement for displacement). The more power behind the bullet, the faster the stop.

Aside from the obvious (the ability to put multiple rounds through a bad guy's left ventricle while under extreme stress), what do you feel are the most important determining factors in rendering someone quickly and decisively dead or incapacitated? I'm talking about the tools here, folks - the weapon and its projectiles - not the training and mindset of the shooter.

Well, without shot placement and the willing to use the gun, you're left with pretty much large caliber and, uh, putting cyanide on the slugs. *g* Really, though, the most significant thing is shot placement - the old saw about "A hit with a .22 beats a miss with a .44" ringing particularly true here. You need a gun that will go "bang" every time you pull the trigger. You need enough ammo to get the job done (capacity). And you need a bullet that creates a sufficiently large wound channel to cause massive shock and trauma before the bad guy has the chance to do to you what you just done to him...

And I hope I never, ever have to find out if my choice of firearm is sufficient.

That is all.