Variable velocity rifle

As seen on slashdot, a company is claiming development of a rifle variable velocity bullets:

A gun that fires variable speed bullets and which can be set to kill, wound or just inflict a bruise is being built by a US toy manufacturer. The weapon is based on technology used to propel toy rockets.

Lund and Company Invention, a toy design studio based near Chicago, makes toy rockets that are powered by burning hydrogen obtained by electrolysing water. Now the company is being funded by the US army to adapt the technology to fire bullets instead.

The US Army are interested in arming soldiers with weapons that can be switched between lethal and non-lethal modes. They asked Company Invention to make a rifle that can fire bullets at various speeds.

And later...

Lund says that the new weapon system will use different types of bullet for lethal and non-lethal use. Police forces already use separate shotguns for non-lethal loads – typically marking them with bright orange tape to prevent any confusion – so this shouldn't be an issue.

The existing VWS design is a .50 calibre (12.7 mm) rifle weapon, but Lund says the technology can be scaled to any size, "handgun to Howitzer".

As a note, the New Scientist article used the term "non-lethal". A more correct term is "less lethal", since there have been documented cases of people dieing after things like tasers, pepper spray and rubber bullets / bean-bag round were used on them.

Of course, the actual circumstances of each case are unique; there may have been other factors in play. What is clear is that all weapons are just that: weapons. Not to be used indiscriminately.

Back to this rifle. While the article mentions an interest in riot control, there are other uses.

Long range shooters would appreciate a higher velocity, as this would prevent muzzle drop.

Also, anyone using a silencer would appreciate reducing the muzzle velocity to subsonic levels in order to further quiet the weapon. Even with a silencer to capture the gases from the fired round, if the slug itself is traveling at supersonic speeds there will be an audible "crack" as the slug passes the supersonic barrier.

An interesting concept, and one I hope merits further review.

Suicide rates and firearms

Interesting article from the American Journal of Psychiatry:

Guns and suicide: possible effects of some specific legislation

CL Rich, JG Young, RC Fowler, J Wagner and NA Black
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego.

The authors describe suicide rates in Toronto and Ontario and methods used for suicide in Toronto for 5 years before and after enactment of Canadian gun control legislation in 1978. They also present data from San Diego, Calif., where state laws attempt to limit access to guns by certain psychiatric patients. Both sets of data indicate that gun control legislation may have led to decreased use of guns by suicidal men, but the difference was apparently offset by an increase in suicide by leaping. In the case of men using guns for suicide, these data support a hypothesis of substitution of suicide method.

So, what's that mean?

It means there's data that shows banning firearms does not lower suicide rates. Instead of shooting themselves, suicidal guys throw themselves off buildings.

Once again, controlling the tools does not control the behavior. People just find other tools.

Knife attacks overtake terrorism as top priority in UK

From the Seattle Times there's this story on an arrest in a vicious knife attack in London:

British police arrested a suspect Saturday in the brutal murders of two French students who were tied up and stabbed scores of times before their bodies were set alight.

The killings have shocked a country already worried by a spate of knife attacks involving young people; 18 teenagers have been slain in London this year.

Officers detained a 21-year-old man on a street in southeast London at about 3:40 a.m. (0240 GMT) Saturday, police said. He was being held at a London police station.

Police would not say whether the arrested man was the prime suspect in the case, and appealed for witnesses to come forward.

On June 29, Laurent Bonomo and his friend Gabriel Ferez, both 23, were bound and stabbed to death at Bonomo's rented apartment, near where the arrest was made. Bonomo had been stabbed nearly 200 times, while Ferez received nearly 50 stab wounds.

The apparent motive is, perhaps as usual, something incredibly banal:

Police said Friday the murders may be linked to the theft of two PlayStation game consoles, which they believe were taken from the apartment the night of the killings. A laptop computer also was stolen from the apartment six days before the attack.

But this strikes me as an interesting tidbit:

The brutal killings have shocked a country already concerned by a spate of knife attacks involving young people. Eighteen teenagers have died in suspected murders in London this year, compared to 27 in all of 2007. Most were stabbed, and police in the city say the fight against knife crime has overtaken terrorism as their top priority.

More proof that banning firearms does not prevent crime. Criminals just find different tools to use in pursuit of the same insane reasons they have for attacking others.

LA Times: WTF?

So, in reaction to the Supreme Court ruling on the 2nd Amendment the LA Times has an opinion piece, with this tidbit:

This year, about 12,000 Americans will be shot to death. It's a staggering figure, and even though lawmakers have continued to pass gun-control laws to try to bring the number down, they have not significantly reduced the murder rate. Indeed, for the last decade, guns have steadily remained the cause of about two-thirds of all homicides.

Gun manufacturers insist that these deaths are not their fault, preferring to pin the blame on criminals and irresponsible dealers.

Say what? The manufacturer of a legal machine is responsible for it's use?

So... Ford and Honda are responsible for drunks who use their cars to kill people?

Spoons are responsible for people eating too much ice cream?

This is the sort of idiocy those of us who support the right to keep an bear arms just scratch our heads at. Firearms are machines, not demon infested imps which act independent of human will.

Blaming the tool for the user's actions just leads to the same action being performed with a different tool.

Ohio gets the Castle Doctrine

Governor Strickland has signed Senate Bill 184, aka the Ohio Castle Doctrine into law:

Over the objections of law-enforcement groups, Gov. Ted Strickland yesterday signed into law a bill that relaxes certain gun restrictions and establishes a "castle doctrine" for shooting an intruder in self-defense.

The legislation, Senate Bill 184, takes effect in 90 days.

It was backed by the National Rifle Association to establish a presumption that a person acts in self defense when shooting someone who unlawfully enters his or her home or occupied vehicle. Supporters say it will protect the innocent from facing charges.

Amendments added to the bill will allow people to carry unloaded firearms in the cab of a vehicle with ammunition nearby and prohibit landlords from telling tenants they cannot own guns.

What press coverage there is seems critical, but the announcement on the Governors site has this to say:

State Senator Steve Buehrer sponsored SB 184, which presumes that a person has acted in self-defense when using force that may cause death or injury against an individual who has unlawfully entered the person’s home or occupied vehicle. Under current Ohio law, the burden lies on the resident who has used force to prove his or her reasoning for such action.

Get that? Under current law, if someone breaks into your home and you use lethal force to protect yourself you're presumed guilty and must prove you acted in self defense.

However, if someone breaks in and kills you, they're presumed innocent. Really.

This bill corrects that. The folks at OhioCCW have an analysis up, but neither they nor I are providing legal advice or a professional interpretation. You want that, pay a lawyer.

Good news for the people of Ohio.

How to commit mass murder without firearms

Every now and then, some anti-gun type points to countries like Japan, which heavily regulates firearms to the point of an almost total ban. They say the lack of firearms prevents mass murder by removing the tools of offender.

Bullshit.

TOKYO - A Japanese man rammed a truck into a crowd of shoppers, jumped out and went on a stabbing spree in Tokyo's top electronics district Sunday, killing at least seven people and wounding 10 others.

The deadly lunchtime assault paralyzed the Akihabara neighborhood, which is wildly popular among the country's cyber-wise youth. The killings were the latest in a series of grisly knifings that have stoked fears of rising crime in Japan.

A 25-year-old man, Tomohiro Kato, was apprehended in the attack.

Note that besides such spectacular attacks, there seems to be a rise in attacks overall in Japan:

Once rare, stabbing attacks have become more frequent in Japan in recent years as violent crime has increased.

In March, one person was stabbed to death and at least seven others were hurt by a man who went on a slashing spree with two knives outside a shopping mall in eastern Japan. In one of the worst attacks, a man with a history of mental illness burst into an elementary school in Japan in 2001 and killed eight children. The killer was executed in 2004.

Stories like this are infuriating, but also serve to illustrate that those determined to do hard to others will find a way.

Disarming the populace, who in large majority do not commit violent crimes, serves only to ensure a pool of available victims.

Police officers, for the most part, do an admirable job of dealing with violent crime but even the best police simply can't be everywhere at all times.

Obviously it's best if incidents like this never happen in the first place, but removing firearms from the population does not facilitate that goal, as incidents like this illustrate.

Deadly mob beating unnerves Cleveland neighborhood

This story on the AP gives me pause.

CLEVELAND (AP) — Even by tough, urban-crime standards it was a grisly attack: Up to 15 people chased a man, then kicked and beat him to death on the street. Before police arrived, one attacker urinated on the victim's head.

When the crime-hardened neighborhood awoke later that morning, two people reported a man lying on the pavement, his clothes being dragged off by his assailants.

"You got a male being assaulted by 15 other guys. He's laying on the street," one 911 caller said.

The April 27 attack on Charles Gooden Jr. happened in the most murder-ridden neighborhood in one of the nation's poorest cities. But it was also within a 10-minute drive of the city's skyscrapers, sports venues and tourist attractions.

The motivation for the attack seems so childish as to be laughable. The sort of thing that if a writer put it in their story most people wouldn't find it credible.

Conwell said the motive was based on an argument involving a woman and a threat by her cousin against Gooden, 41.

"He went to defend his malehood honor. He hit the cousin in the mouth. When that happened, the other gang members jumped on him," said Conwell, relying on information from police and neighbors.

Charged in the slaying were Latangia Anderson, 23, Johnny Brown, 20, and Paris Moore, 19, all of Cleveland. They were each jailed on $1 million bond.

So that's it. One guy feels offended, so he hits a guy. Then the crowd beats him to death and pisses on his corpse.

I'll note, in an attempt to salvage something from this sad story, is that apparently none of the parties involved were armed.

Sad proof, if some was needed, that people's actions aren't defined by their tools. The absence of firearms does not equate to the absence of violence.

In fact, that the witnesses were unarmed and no police were around seems a likely contributing factor to the man's death. There was no one there to stop the mob. Just people left to call 911:

"They're stomping somebody and ripping their clothes off. You need to come," another caller said. "Like 15 of them beating the hell out of him."

The emergency dispatcher asked if an ambulance should be sent. "You better bring a stretcher, too," the caller replied. "Please hurry."

Orwell on gun control

Bad kitty!

From Lio of course.

Australian gun ban: No effect

From University of Sydney

Shot Down: gun law study shows no effect

21 April 2008

In the spirit of the 2020 Summit, academics have released startling new evidence about the impact of Australian gun laws, and argue that future public policy must differentiate between what does and does not work.

In a new peer-reviewed study, Dr Samara McPhedran from the School of Psychology, and her colleague Dr Jeanine Baker, who also hold executive positions in the International Coalition for Women in Shooting and Hunting, show that the accumulated studies on Australia's 1996 gun bans and half billion dollar 'buyback' do not point to an impact.

The authors say that this provides a clearer foundation for evidence based policy development, particularly within the area of suicide prevention.

"This research will enhance the ability of policymakers to build upon inclusive programmes that have delivered outcomes, such as the National Suicide Prevention Strategy, rather than pursue measures that do not achieve the stated goals."

The study evaluated whether past published studies on the impact of the 1996 laws on firearm related homicide and suicide are consistent with one another.

"Using different analysis methods and time periods, none of the four studies found evidence for an impact of the laws on the pre-existing decline in firearm homicides," said Dr McPhedran.

"The statistical outcomes were in complete agreement, even though the conclusions varied."

According to the new study, disagreement over whether or not the 1996 legislative changes had an impact has not arisen from inconsistent results, but from different ways in which the same results are interpreted.

"We identified a series of interpretive misunderstandings that give the appearance of inconsistency. For example, some studies conclude the laws had an impact on firearm suicides, without realising that non-firearm suicides also began falling from the late 1990s onwards."

"This coincides with the introduction of comprehensive suicide prevention strategies, and implies that social changes such as greater awareness of mental health influenced suicides across the board."

The overall consistencies revealed in the review, and identification of how the appearance of incongruent findings has been created, show that disagreement can be put to rest.

"Just as one swallow does not make a summer, a single study cannot definitively answer whether or not the laws had an effect. Collectively, though, the research has become a flock of swallows with a very clear direction."

Emphasis mine.

This isn't much of a surprise to me, but might be to some. Limiting the tools of bad behavior does not limit the behavior itself; the determined just find different tools to accomplish the same goal, whether that goal is to harm other or to harm one's self.

You might be a gun nut if...

This is hanging in your shower...

Ballistics evidence... more like a hint?

In some recent discussions related to ballistics evidence I recalled this post about the National Research Council saying ballistics databases aren't that effective.

Well, as part of those discussions I dug up the press release from the National Research Council. It supports the earlier story, but has some interesting passages as well.

The report notes that the fundamental assumption underlying forensic firearms identification – that every gun leaves microscopic marks on bullets and cartridge cases that are unique to that weapon and remain the same over repeated firings – has not yet been fully demonstrated scientifically. More research would be needed to prove that firearms identification rests on firmer scientific footing, said the committee that wrote the report.

and ...

Claims of Certainty About 'Matches' Without Firm Grounding

The report does not assess the admissibility of firearm toolmark evidence in legal proceedings, since making such a determination was not part of the committee's charge. However, it cautions that the statement commonly made by firearms examiners that "matches" of ballistic evidence identify a particular source gun "to the exclusion of all other firearms" should be avoided. There is currently no statistical justification for such a statement, and it is inconsistent with the element of subjectivity inherent in any firearms examiner's assessment of a match.

If firearms identification is to rest on firmer scientific ground, more research would need to assess the fundamental assumption that toolmarks are unique and remain recognizable over time, despite repeated firings. Such research should include a program of experiments covering a full range of factors that may degrade a gun's toolmarks, as well as factors that might cause different guns to generate similar toolmarks. Intensive work is also needed on the underlying physics, engineering, and metallurgy of firearms, in order to better understand the mechanisms that form toolmarks as a weapon is fired.

Gods damn.

So, there's no evidence that ballistic matches are viable evidence over time.

I wonder how many convictions have been obtained nation wide on ballistic evidence, and how many of those convictions are only the result of faulty science.

The full report is available National Academies Press. In case you're wondering, no that's not a paid referral.

Lethality of the .22lr

Very interesting article on the penetration of the .22lr round over at snipers hide.

Short version: At 300 yards and in 18 - 30mph winds the shooter hit a partially frozen turkey wrapped in three layers of clothing with a .22lr rifle. This is good shooting in my ( or, likely, anyone's book ), but the interesting bit is the .22lr fully penetrated the target.

It's an interesting write up; well worth the read.

Chicago schools and handgun bans

So, in addition to city schools underperforming other schools around them, in Chicago there's been a rash of student killings.

The NPR story links to audio; they report 22 students killed this year, 20 of them with handguns.

The handguns statistic is interesting. There have been the usual calls for gun control in the wake of the shootings, but considering that the city of Chicago bans private ownership of handguns, it doesn't seem that the prohibition against handguns has reduced violence.

Banning the tools of self defense only requires law abiding citizens to be defenseless. Time and time again this is proven, and stories like this continue.

Self defense is a civil right.

Rather than preventing people from defending themselves, how about politicians do something about the causes of crime in the first place?

Even an attempt at enforcing the law against those committed to breaking it would be a refreshing change, rather than focusing on inanimate objects. Then again, that might require actual work rather than feel-good bloviating. Who cares how many die, so long as everyone feels like their doing something worth while?

Kids and guns

Saw this over on MP.Net

Looks like a military open house in the Czech Republic. Cool to see the little ones enjoying themselves.

Nice engraving...

Gun Control

Read her shirt.



Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.

Supreme Court hears 2nd Ammendment Case

Unless you've been living under a rock[1], you've heard of the Supreme Court case involving the 2nd ammendment, District of Columbia v. Heller.

The NRA's ILA has a collection of legal documents available, including a link to the transcript ( note: PDF ) published by the Supreme Court.

There's a great quote in the transcript I heard on NPR, but haven't heard anywhere else.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: What is -- what is reasonable about a total ban on possession?

MR. DELLINGER: What is reasonable about a total ban on possession is that it's a ban only an the possession of one kind of weapon, of handguns, that's been considered especially -- especially dangerous. The --

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: So if you have a law that prohibits the possession of books, it's all right if you allow the possession of newspapers?

This is exactly what many supporters of the right to keep and bear arms have wanted; treat the 2nd Amendment in the same way the rest of the Bill of Rights is treated.

Note that this wouldn't mean unrestricted access to firearms in the US. Just as libel isn't protected speech, there would seem to be some restrictions that the Government can place on the right to keep and bear arms which would not violate individual rights.

While the Supreme Court, in oral arguments, did seem to support that the 2nd Amendment is an individual right, there seems some debate on what restrictions are "reasonable":

If it goes without saying that the nation is divided over gun laws, the Supreme Court certainly seemed to mirror that split during arguments today challenging the District of Columbia's handgun ban. Though many justices appeared to lean in favor of an individual right, they diverged over whether such a decision would still allow D.C.'s law to stay in place.

As a reminder, the restrictions in Washington DC boil down to:

• No private ownership of handguns.
• Private rifles and shotguns must be kept either disassembled or with trigger locks, rendering them useless for immediate self defense.

The effectiveness of those restrictions on crime in DC is, to put it mildly, a matter of no small debate.

A decision from the Supreme Court is due in June.

[1] Ok, ok... non-US readers can be forgiven for missing the intricacies of US politics ;)

Science pannel shoots down wider ballistics database

Panel Shoots Down Wider Ballistics Database

In recent years, some lawmakers and gun control groups have pushed for a national database that would record the ballistics signature of every gun sold in the United States. But a new report from a prestigious scientific panel says it's probably not a good idea.

The idea isn't necessarily a bad one; at least it appears well intended.

By comparing bullets taken from the victims, investigators knew that the shootings were linked. But to what gun? Whose gun? Police couldn't tell. The federal government does have a database of markings on bullets that police can search, but it includes only guns that have been already used in a crime.

That led some lawmakers to wonder whether the unique markings left by all guns should be recorded whether the guns should be fired and their ballistic signatures noted before they were sold. That way, if the guns were ever used in crimes, investigators could trace them.

Kinda like fingerprinting everyone in the US; one could then compare fingerprints at a crime scene with a national database to see who was there. Barring privacy concerns of course, which are not insignificant, but it appears as a technical matter it just doesn't work.

"We sell between 1 and 2 million handguns in the United States each year. So if you were to enter every single gun, you'd be entering 1 to 2 million every year," he explains.

Rolph says today's technology for comparing images would have a hard time sorting through so many. It would spit out lots of possible matches.

"It never tells you ... like on CSI ... 'this is a match.' It tells you, 'here's some potential candidates,'" he says.

Getting too many candidates would be a big problem ... because to know if a match is real, a forensics expert would have to pull the evidence for closer examination.

"It's OK to have them look at maybe 10 or 20. Do you want them to look at several hundred? ... It would be really very difficult to use in a practical way," he says.

So, the characteristics of rifling on fired bullets are unique but not able to be automatically identified and sorted via computers. The more database entries there are, the more possible matches and therefore the less useful the database is.

Apparently, the identification of which bullet was actually fired by which firearm is still only done by humans. Since humans make mistakes, I have to wonder how many miss-identifications have been made over the years.

From the Associated Press story on this same study, there's this interesting bit:

The report also questioned the underlying theory behind ballistic imaging. It said the idea that each firearm produces unique marks has not been scientifically proven.

Other variables make the program even more unreliable, the report found. For instance, guns leave different markings on different types of ammunition and the type of ammo used in a crime might not be the same type used during test-firing.

It seems it's quite possible that ballistic fingerprinting isn't even unique.

SRM Arms 1216 Shotgun

Saw this on both tactical underground and on The firearms blog.



The magazine seems innovative; given it's design, I suspect it would be a bit more reliable than more traditional designs. One can only hope it makes it out to us lowly plebeians.

Made by SRM Arms.