On the Nature of Things | Forum

Demon of Undoing wrote:We yes paintball to do force- on- force shooting scenarios for a couple of years. It will disabuse you of certain notions. It can be a valuable training tool if everyone treats it as such. It hurts enough that I wouldn't call it fun, and won't do it except for good reason.

This makes sense if you are law enforcement and most of your shooting scenarios will be close quarters. The people I were with were dressed and, it seemed, inspired by military scenarios, in which the limited range of paintball guns, and the fragility of the rounds, doesn't make for a very accurate simulation. I can hide behind a small bush 50 meters away from you and be almost totally immune to paintball fire, but of course a rifleman in the same circumstances, even a poorly trained one, would drop me effortlessly.

You know some interesting points here, many folks in the tactical community will not participate in competitive shooting sports (real guns) because they think they will pick up bad tactics. Others disagree. A case of hard and fast rules vs. having an open mind and using your judgement. My experience paintballing was helpful, but I imagine if I was to do it more it would become about getting better at paintballing vs. any real world utility. Eg the unlikeliness of being in a 5-10 person group against another 5-10 person group. But the chaos and accidents were insightful, or like noddy the random bullet scenario.

Mr. Perfect wrote:. . My experience paintballing was helpful, but I imagine if I was to do it more it would become about getting better at paintballing vs. any real world utility. . .

Very good point. Most sports, while they may have their roots in real-world utility, have moved beyond practical necessity to an enjoyment of the activity solely for its own sake. Rodeo, fly fishing, fast draw, target shooting with bow or rifle, mountaineering, hiking, and many more are all enjoyed just for the sport of it.

I actually did my paintballing with a private group in N TX. Much the same use profile, though.

Competition is good as long as you can stay formless. Mostly, the pressure and the unfamiliarity are what's valuable. When it becomes old hat, do something else.

There is a new training tool for knife defense called the Shocknife. It's a rubber training knife with a conductive wire along the edge. It sounds and hurts like a stun gun but doesn't incapacitate. The fear level goes through the roof and thus it makes for a valuable tool. However, eventually trainees even become complacent to the shock pain because pain is relative and you get used to anything. Doesn't diminish the value of tge tool, but it illustrates exactly how adaptable people are.

Having said that, the military has turned to competitive civilian shooting as a test bed for tools and techniques, including fielding their own teams. Three gun, practical pistol, of course LR. It's kind of a Renaissance era for personal martial arts. The tech began to be tailored to individual instead of group fire, with good results.

My brother- one of those guys that carries a ten shot .22- will be down Friday, with his two sons. I and my daughter are going to take them shooting at our nearby indoor range while they are here. Primarily, we will shoot .22s with the kids ( his are 18 and 14) but he says he's brining a couple hundred 9mm. This means he willprobably bring the Taurus PT 92. He has had it since 1987, and because it looks like an M9, he has carried it illegally ( I think) on four continents.

On any assembly line, due to the vagaries of the ( old ) way of manufacturing, 998 out of a thousand will be more or less the same and shoot little different or distinguish itself one over another. But because tools wear at different rates, different operators change shifts, different lots of materials, etc., two will be different. One will be a hopeless turd, and there will be little you can do to remedy it. It is a lemon, an inheritor of all the recessed genes.

That other one is Excalibur. It's that literal one in a thousand piece. My brother has that piece. He was always magnificently lucky when he needed to be. This thing is 100% original but for Pachmayer grips. He practiced with it when he was on the pistol team, quite a lot. Maybe 250k rounds? My understanding is that it has yet to jam except with reloads. Unless I miss my guess, it will still put all 16( you can carry the PT cocked and locked like a Colt, CZ or Browning) into a heart at 25, fast. He was a he'll of a guitar player because he had fast hands.

Well, I have my own Excalibur. I've only seen better triggers on multi-$k custom revolvers. In double action, it has the smoothest build to a moderate stage, then a break like the proverbial glass rod. In single action, there is a barely discernable creep before about a three pound , very crisp release. You can swat flies with this thing, and the gun is built so strongly that im not sure you can put enough powder in an empty case to blow it up.

Neither his kids nor mine have ever unlimbered a .44 Redhawk with 300gr JHPs @ 1200. My daughter is no masochist and won't shoot it. His boys, though, are all full of testosterone. They will bite. I'll bring my weightlifting gloves with the padded palms. it will be an experience to remember.

You gonna offer them the chance to shoot some .44 Spcls first?

• They'll probably decline, will double your amusement.
  
  • And your daughter would probably love shooting the .44 Spcls.

i thought id add that my paintballing experience was a couple of "team building exercises" with the last of the corporates i worked for about 15 years ago and whilst i did have insight during it, and more so in later reflection ,it would incorrect to say it was a serious experience.

it was coders versus sales & marketing and the venues rules of no shooting at less than 2 metres went out the door in the opening round when i was hit in the gut twice from point blank range by a sales guy who snuck up on me whilst i was engaged with another person.

it was just pure vendetta and shaudenfraude, never before have i been able to leave bleeding welts on those people and i took full ability of this window of oppurtunity with everything i had... obviously this went both ways aswell.

i can still see the fat arse sticking out from the bushes and the comical thrashing around whilst I unloaded as many into it as i could before he managed to reverse back out and call himself dead.

cdgt wrote:You gonna offer them the chance to shoot some .44 Spcls first?

• They'll probably decline, will double your amusement.
  
  • And your daughter would probably love shooting the .44 Spcls.

Nah. I couldn't find 300s today, so I got regular 240 JHP. Will still give the idea without telling the whole story. That's most of what you'll ever need out of a .44, anyway. The Buffalo Bore stuff is for special applications.

My daughter said no way. Wants to master her .22 first, her words.

Demon of Undoing wrote:. . The Buffalo Bore stuff is for special applications. . .

And believe me, up here we know exactly what they are . . .

Demon of Undoing wrote:

cdgt wrote:You gonna offer them the chance to shoot some .44 Spcls first?

• They'll probably decline, will double your amusement.
  
  • And your daughter would probably love shooting the .44 Spcls.

Nah. I couldn't find 300s today, so I got regular 240 JHP. Will still give the idea without telling the whole story. That's most of what you'll ever need out of a .44, anyway. The Buffalo Bore stuff is for special applications.

My daughter said no way. Wants to master her .22 first, her words.

Smart girl. Oldest child, I expect? They tend to be a bit more cautious.

180 .44 Spcls should be pretty mild in that heavy Redhawk. They are almost .22LR-like out of my 1894.

More to the point, if you've ever caught a line drive or a throw from shortstop to first, you've had as hard a slap to the hand as you'll likely ever experience with a handgun. Until people start getting very stupid, very clever, or cut the stock off a rifle, it's just not that big a deal.

Demon of Undoing wrote:More to the point, if you've ever caught a line drive or a throw from shortstop to first, you've had as hard a slap to the hand as you'll likely ever experience with a handgun. Until people start getting very stupid, very clever, or cut the stock off a rifle, it's just not that big a deal.

It can be if you're at close quarters with an attacking grizzly. A past borough mayor saved his life by, while on his back, pumping round after round from a .44 mag into the bear on top of him chewing him to pieces.

You can read the story right here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=edKX8l ... ck&f=false

Prototype Quadrotor with Machine Gun

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Real or fake?

Tannerite augmentation, methinks.

Typhoon wrote:Prototype Quadrotor with Machine Gun

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Real or fake?

If this one is fake, there are real ones that can be made. I will say the weapon looked wrong.

It's fake. That weapon has no action, no feed chute, no operating spring. All they had was a 9mm barrel in a quad rail, with some sort of end cap with a high pressure hose fitting.

But the idea is sound. How much lift can you get? Lightest 9mm submachinegun conceivable, with 100 rounds ammo, is still nearly eight pounds. Add another ~2 lbs for self destruct payload and associated gear. Ten pounds weapons. Not insurmountable.

All of the explosions were obviously triggered on the ground.

I don't see the point of mounting a machine gun on one of these things. AGMs do more damage, with more precision, from a higher altitude, and the missiles are guided. What would a hypothetical flying MG do that you can't do better with a Predator or a soldier with an MG?

Ibrahim wrote:I don't see the point of mounting a machine gun on one of these things. AGMs do more damage, with more precision, from a higher altitude, and the missiles are guided. What would a hypothetical flying MG do that you can't do better with a Predator or a soldier with an MG?

You could have soldiers in combat situations piloting such things. If the target acquisition tech were proper you could snipe people with them. Would be good for situations where short range communications are necessary. With a rig like that though the most efficient use for it would be as an explosive. You could make guided missiles that cost only about $ 1000 a pop. Imagine a Humvee loaded up with like 20 of those and you can just fly them through a window and kill your target inside without blowing up the whole block?

Ibrahim wrote:I don't see the point of mounting a machine gun on one of these things. AGMs do more damage, with more precision, from a higher altitude, and the missiles are guided. What would a hypothetical flying MG do that you can't do better with a Predator or a soldier with an MG?

Possibly better target discrimination. If you have the latitude to lay in an Hellfire or drop a SDB, fine. But if the terrorist/ freedom fighter/ parking offender is in a warren of apartments or an interior office, this might be the thing. You could clear room to room with it, in theory. Give it to grunts that play XBox and are getting shot at daily and just watch. They will do lots of things with it that the builders never imagined. Like turn over outdoor toilets.

Size matters, though. Too big ( and that might well be too big as is) and you lose lots of options.

Enki wrote:All of the explosions were obviously triggered on the ground.

Tannerite. Not triggered on the ground.

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Demon of Undoing wrote:

Ibrahim wrote:I don't see the point of mounting a machine gun on one of these things. AGMs do more damage, with more precision, from a higher altitude, and the missiles are guided. What would a hypothetical flying MG do that you can't do better with a Predator or a soldier with an MG?

Possibly better target discrimination. If you have the latitude to lay in an Hellfire or drop a SDB, fine. But if the terrorist/ freedom fighter/ parking offender is in a warren of apartments or an interior office, this might be the thing. You could clear room to room with it, in theory. Give it to grunts that play XBox and are getting shot at daily and just watch. They will do lots of things with it that the builders never imagined. Like turn over outdoor toilets.

Size matters, though. Too big ( and that might well be too big as is) and you lose lots of options.

The stability and precision required to fire any kind of firearm accurately seems to me to be the real challenge, especially for the kind of target discrimination you are describing. All the stabilizers and targeting systems that could be packed on would increase the side, and soon you've got half an Apache.

Not that it isn't a neat idea from a purely technical point of view. It's no surprise that engineers somewhere are thinking about it/building it.

A whole mess of cheap swarming hand grenades would seem more useful overall.

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One expensive puppy could be shot down. Check out that video.

I see I'm going to have to bring back the Meganeuropsis americana from the Carboniferous period and create a chimera with a Jack Russell intelligence.

I need thirty years, 400 PS3s in parallel and a home beermaking kit. Stat.

A Saiga 12 with a drum mag. Trying to defend against swarms like that, trap-shooting on steroids.

cdgt wrote:A Saiga 12 with a drum mag. Trying to defend against swarms like that, trap-shooting on steroids.

I hate to tell you this but most conventional forces would jam these bots immediately with simple EW countermeasures. They are only useful against non conventional forces like they have in Afghanistan and civilian targets who don't have EW capacity. Why do you think is was so easy for the Iranians to down the RQ-170.