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The Joy of High Tech

by

Rodford Edmiston

Being the occasionally interesting ramblings of a major-league technophile.

A Mechanism for Defense

Over and over again, you see non-technical people making mistakes involving firearms. These are unfortunately not limited to fiction. Or even to the nightly news. (The bullet is the projectile! A unit of ammunition is a cartridge! The bullet is only the front part of the cartridge!) Many soldiers have died because some bureaucrat thought they knew more about weapons than they actually did. One lesson in regard to this comes from the US Civil War. Practical cartridges had been around for a while when this conflict began, but most military weapons using gunpowder – from cannon to handguns - were still muzzleloaders.

With cartridges soldiers could carry ammunition more handily, worry less about getting it wet and load their weapons faster. However, some "experts" feared that even single-shot cartridge rifles would allow soldiers to shoot so fast the guns would overheat and burst. Repeating firearms – especially long arms – were seen as being even worse, and viewed with great suspicion by old-school officers. In addition, bean counters were incensed over the idea that this innovation would encourage soldiers to waste ammunition. Abraham Lincoln – a technophile who held at least one patent - had to overrule his own Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, to buy Christopher Spencer's lever-action repeaters for his troops. (These became known to Confederates as "That damn Yankee rifle you load on Sunday and shoot all week.") Fire control discipline training helped prevent the "waste" predicted. Unfortunately, Lincoln's insight wasn't shared. After the War repeating rifles of all types were removed from US service. Part of the problem was that Spencer's efforts to meet his military contracts bankrupted him.

There are so many myths about handguns that only the most egregious can be addressed in this column. Perhaps the most misleading is "knock-down power." No bullet from a standard, man-carried firearm is capable of literally knocking someone down. As Newton's Third Law of Motion illustrates, for a bullet to hit hard enough to knock down a human-mass target, the impact would have to transfer enough kinetic energy to perform the work. The recoil from firing such a formidable projectile would shove the shooter in the opposite direction. Yet this idea appears over and over, including in science-fiction stories. I once read a novel which early in the first chapter had a character firing a handgun (apparently with one hand) whose flechette projectiles hit so hard they picked up the man hit and hurled him across the room. Not mentioned was made that the shooter went the opposite direction with equal vigor.

Note the requirements that the projectile carry enough energy to noticeably shove a person backwards, and be able to transfer it to the person. A .50 Browning bullet has an enormous amount of energy, but those projectiles are designed to go through hard targets, such as brick walls and engine blocks. They aren't good at transferring a large part of that energy quickly to such a soft target as a human body. People have survived getting shot with a .50 because the bullet just goes through, punching a relatively small hole without imparting much of its energy to the target. Note likewise that the tale of someone getting spun forcibly around after getting shot in a finger by this or that type of bullet is a myth. A human finger isn't tough enough to transfer that much energy to the body. It would simply tear off.

However, the shock of the sudden impact of a bullet can cause an animal - and humans are animals - hit with one to literally jump. If the hit is instantly disabling, the target then drops. This combination of actions can give the impression that the target was literally knocked down by the bullet.

From the above it is obvious that a handgun - any handgun - is a poor choice for quickly and reliably stopping a human or a human-sized or larger animal. To be potent enough to be effective in quickly stopping a large creature the gun has to be so powerful as to be very difficult to use. (Yes, there are people who can rapid-fire a .500 S&W revolver one-handed. I have a strong grip and wouldn't want to try it with both hands.)

Classical firearm bullets are monolithic slugs, originally of reasonably pure lead. Later came lead alloys, usually with a hardening agent such as antimony added. Exactly when the first hollowpoint was designed is unknown, but given the long history of experimentation with projectiles it probably wasn't long after the first real firearm was built. People have used bullets which were spheres (the most common form for centuries) cubes, spikes and just about everything else. (One of the earliest cannon shot a heavy arrow.)

As a rule, none of the alternatives worked much better than the monolithic, rounded slug.

As noted, the original bullet was a sphere or oblate spheroid, going back to the days of the sling. Because of this, even today monolithic bullets are referred to as "ball" ammunition, no matter what their actual shape. In military parlance - and this has been pretty much universally adopted by all shooters - when someone today refers to ball ammunition they mean a solid slug with a copper alloy jacket. The shape of a modern military ball bullet is the result of centuries of development. For repeating firearms, a cartridge must feed reliably, have a bullet with reasonably low drag for the intended purpose (handgun, rifle or shotgun) and be effective on the target. You can quickly see that this is a lot to ask of a simple piece of copper-jacketed lead. So it should come as no surprise that standard military ammunition is fair at many things but excellent at none.

To reiterate, the effectiveness of a bullet depends on how well it transfers energy to the target. Soft, pure lead bullets are very effective at doing this to soft targets, such as people. Ball rounds are not, due to the often thick copper alloy jacket, and may not noticeably change shape after going through an enemy solder and his equipment. A hollowpoint bullet, if properly designed, will have good penetration yet expand in tissue. So why don't military organizations use them?

There are several reasons. Hollowpoint bullets are slightly more expensive, and when you're buying them by the million that can run into real money. The Hague Convention of 1899 (not the Geneva Conventions; those deal with the treatment of prisoners of war) prohibits the use of hollow point or other expanding bullets in war between the countries which signed that agreement. The US is not a signatory of this agreement, yet uses ball ammo for several reasons.

The primary reason for this is that, in the early days, hollowpoint bullets didn't feed well in repeating arms, especially the early autoloaders. These days, several generations of both bullet design and firearm design later, that is no longer true.

Military ammunition has requirements not found in other venues. For example, the enemy may be wearing body armor, inside a vehicle, behind a wall. Therefore, penetration is of very high importance. Penetration is therefore high on the list of requirements. Ball rounds are very good at penetration. Adding a steel or tungsten core greatly improves the penetration without altering the aerodynamic shape of the bullet.

Police requirements are similar to those of the military but not quite as extreme. Police may be engaged in extended shootouts with felons inside buildings or vehicles. The sheet metal of a modern auto is pretty thin, and most modern handguns can punch through this. Windshields are much tougher, and can even bounce a .357 Magnum bullet which hits at an angle. Of course, there's far more to a car body than sheet metal. Mechanisms and reinforcements inside doors can stop bullets, for example.

The FBI, a few years ago, had agents involved in a shooting during a road stop where their then standard handgun load simply didn't penetrate well into the felons' car. Several agents were killed and many others wounded because they simply couldn't reach the bag guys with their bullets to stop them. (Of course, even after the felons exited they were shot several times ineffectually.) As a result the FBI established new standards for handgun bullets which required a large amount of penetration in ballistic gelatin, even when that was covered in layers of cloth. They also specified minimum expansion and weight retention. The FBI settled on a modified version of then new 10mm cartridge. That is a very powerful round, and the FBI quickly reduced the power. This still left them with something more potent than most law enforcement used at that time. With the bullet design used this cartridge definitely met the requirments. The ballistic characteristics of this load inspired the development of the .40 S&W cartridge, of which more later.

A high level of penetration is not a good match for most law enforcement use, since a bullet can go completely through the intended target and endanger bystanders. One reason the .38 Special LRN (Lead Round Nose) cartridge was used for so long (with the main one being sheer social inertia) was that it rarely overpenetrated while having fair stopping power. However, it was obviously underpowered for penetrating car bodies. Police agencies for decades tried various combinations of cartridge and firearm (the .41 Magnum being strongly marketed as an ideal cartridge for those patrolling isolated sections of highways) to try and find the best balance. Most today use any of several modern loadings of the 9mm in any of several modern handguns, for reasons detailed below.

Civilian handgun defensive rounds have yet a different set of requirements. Reliability in rapidly stopping an attacker is of paramount importance.

Many reading this may already be familiar with the Thompson-LaGarde Tests of 1901. Some may even know of the Thompson-LaGarde Cadaver Tests of 1904. The severe deficiencies of the .38 caliber revolver had been made obvious in several then-recent military actions (though to be fair, the cartridge which failed in the Philippines was the .38 Long Colt, which was less powerful than the later .38 Smith & Wesson Special) and the Army wanted more. As a result of these tests and other evaluations, the military services of the United States adopted the Browning M1911 in .45 Auto. That cartridge being designed as a modern, smokeless powder replacement for the old, blackpowder loading of the .45 Colt, which had been so successful in US military use.

These tests were deliberately focused on finding an effective military cartridge. Their relevance to civilian or even police applications is remote. Yet many to this day - and in spite of many developments in firearms and ammunition – they are still held to be revealed truth for civilian use by some. At the opposite extreme are those who flatly state that the only thing they demonstrated was how stupid steers are. (The most common reaction of the test animals - steers about to be humanely slaughtered for food anyway - to being shot in the lungs with a handgun was to look around to see where the noise had come from.)

Keeping in mind the specific goals of military handgun ammunition is important. The .45 Auto has a strong reputation for stopping a fight with one shot to anywhere on the torso, while it's greatest rival, the 9mm, is widely regarded as a wimp. Yet far more military forces - including most from the US these days - use the 9mm. There are many reasons for this. The 9mm is far from useless, and in ball ammo form it has much better penetration than the .45. More rounds can be carried for the same weight and volume. Many consider the recoil to be more manageable, but this varies widely with the specific handgun/shooter combination. Yet many parts of the US military retain the .45 Auto and more are going back to it, simply because the 9mm cartridge in military trim just isn't as effective as the .45. When using ball ammo...

Now we come to the long battle between revolver and automatic. The revolver definitely has its place. (Hey, I own several.) However, for self defense the automatic is simply far superior.

Some argue that the revolver is more mechanically reliable. Nonsense. A well-designed, well-built gun is going to be reliable, whether revolver or automatic. In fact, many autopistols are mechanically simpler than a typical double-action revolver. Some say that a double-action revolver is quicker and easier to put into action than an autopistol. That depends on the autopistol, with some of those being double-action as well. These require only that the shooter pull the trigger to cock the hammer and drop it on a round in the chamber in one smooth motion, exactly like a double-action revolver. One handgun, the Heckler and Koch P7 family, requires only that you grip the gun firmly and pull the trigger in single-action form. The revolver's true main advantage in a self defense situation is that it is simpler to learn, but if you aren't going to bother to practice and learn how to use your firearm you shouldn't have one. Yes, revolvers can certainly be successful as self defense tools. A good-quality autopistol is better.

One more advantage of the autoloader over the revolver is that it tends to have less recoil than a revolver of the same weight with the same cartridge. However, perceived recoil is such a fickle thing that a revolver with good grips can seem to have less recoil than an equivalent autopistol.

For generations, cartridges and their bullets were designed through a combination of experience, intuition and testing. Some worked well, some worked poorly. Theories came and went as to what made a good self defense round. Today there are two primary schools of thought, which can be simplified into the theorists and the statisticians. The theorists have a model, tested in ballistics gel, which says one thing. The statisticians compile information about actual shootings, usually those where a single shot to the torso ended the fight quickly and thoroughly.

Their results disagree. Not by a huge amount, but the difference is there, and it is significant. The statisticians tell the theorists that they need to change their theories. The theorists tell the statisticians that their data is at best anecdotal and badly analyzed, and at worst a work of fiction. Still, they do agree in some areas. Personally, I lean strongly towards the statisticians. I'm an engineer, and am trained to select real world data over theory. As noted below, the difference is primarily in which specific bullet is best for a particular cartridge.

Today, with better materials and modeling techniques, as well as an organized body of data, bullets can be tailored very exactingly. Expansion characteristics can be very precisely set, based on cartridge and bullet weight. No longer is the same basic design - usually proprietary by company - used for every hollowpoint of the same brand. Instead, jacket thickness, cavity depth and serrations can be adjusted to provide the desired penetration and expansion reliably for a specific loading. Today, much of the difference in effectiveness comes with where the designer of a particular load (the cartridge/bullet weight combination) believes the balance between penetration and expansion should be.

These days, with modern hollowpoint and jacketed soft point designs the difference between the best-performing loads in various calibers is a matter of only a few percentage points. Yes, specific cartridge/bullet combinations are better in specific situations. For general self defense use there's at least one commercial cartridge loading in all of the major calibers which will reliably stop a fight with a single shot to the torso well over 90% of the time.

What is a major caliber? These include (and while I'll try to be thorough I may miss some) 9mm, .45 Auto, .357 SIG, .40 S&W, any of the centerfire Magnum cartridges except perhaps the .32 H&R (though the more modern .327 Federal Magnum pushes things further into the "Acceptable" column), 10mm and .45 Colt. Note that many of these are so potent that most beginners should not consider them. Many are also not chambered in any autopistols suitable for self defense.

Lesser cartridges are far from harmless. For example, pistols chambered for the .380 ACP are very popular as a hideout or backup gun among law enforcement officers. The best of the loads for this are fairly effective, being somewhere in the 70% - 80% range for one-shot stops, depending on the source of information. (This is still better than the .38 Special with a traditional load, which performs in the mid sixties. With modern designs it does better, and with +P (mild overpressure loads intended only for modern, strong firearms) the .38 does much better.) However, the .380 ACP seriously lacks penetration. One member of an online shooting list I belong to described an accidental discharge of a .380 auto pistol in his kitchen, caused by a defective striker. The bullet bounced off a single pane glass window. (He didn't mention bullet weight or design.)

However, the size and weight ranges of .380 pistols overlaps largely with those of defense-suitable 9mm pistols, so there's really no reason to go with the less powerful round for normal self-defense, except for people who have such low hand strength that they can't cycle the slide on any 9mm. There are some models of .380 ACP pistols which are loaded by tipping the barrel up and sliding a cartridge into the chamber, rather than racking a spring-loaded slide.

So which gun/cartridge combo is best? That's like asking which tool is best, a hammer, screwdriver or wrench. The choice depends on what you want to do. The simple answer is "The one you can best use in a self defense situation." Police and military agencies select the firearm and train people to use it. A private citizen has to try multiple choices.

Personally, I have long been a devout member of the Church of Browning. The M-1911 and the HP-35 are wonderful self defense arms. The M-1911 has been around for over a century and can be found chambered in just about any pistol cartridge - and some rifle cartridges - which has ever been produced. The HP-35 is a later and simpler design primarily available in 9mm and .40 S&W. Which would I chose among these? I have a Series 80 Colt M-1911 in .45 Auto... and a HP-35 in 9mm... and a HP-35 in .40 S&W. The Colt is the most accurate in both self defence practice and target shooting, but any of the three are more than adequate for self defense. Likewise in accuracy and effectiveness. Both designs are designed to be carried cocked and locked (that is, with a live round in the chamber, the hammer cocked and the safety on). The .40 HP-35 magazine holds only ten rounds, whereas the 9mm holds 13 (factory standard) to 20 (very reliable aftermarket magazine). The .45 factory magazine only holds seven rounds, some flush aftermarket magazines hold eight, and there are overlength magazines for the gun which are very reliable and provide more rounds.

However, I have lately become a member of the Cult of the P7. This family of handguns has the interesting feature of a lever at the front of the grip which, when squeezed, cocks the gun. Release the lever and the gun decocks, actually tipping the firing pin out of alignment with the hole in the breech so the gun can't fire. Squeeze the strap and pull the trigger (and as mentioned above it has an excellent trigger) and the gun fires. Release the strap and... well, you get the idea. As long as the strap is kept squeezed (which takes less effort than a normal firm grip) the gun recocks with each shot, just like most autopistols.

The manual of arms for the P7 is simple to learn (though I've read a few people's comments that they just couldn't manage it). For actually firing the gun there's no separate safety, or slide release lever. Just that front lever. The slide locks open after the last round is fired. Once the new magazine is in place just take a normal firing grip and squeeze. The slide closes, chambering the top round, and the gun is ready to fire.

There are several models of the P7. The PSP has a magazine which holds eight rounds of 9mm. The M8 is identical except for having the magazine release on the side of the grip below the slide instead of on the heel. The M13 has a magazine which holds 13 rounds of 9mm. The M10 takes the .40 S&W. There are other models which chamber less powerful rounds.

Unfortunately, the gun is expensive. Also, H&K discontinued production in 2006. However, a large number of German police surplus P7 PSP pistols were subsequently imported to the US. Most of these have been factory refurbished. Some are like-new, and cost half the price of new. If interested, shop around.

So which handgun would be the one I grab if someone is kicking in the door of my house? A few years back a famous gun writer - who had worked for decades in law enforcement and won numerous pistol shooting competitions - was asked which handgun he kept under his pillow at night for defense against intruders. He answered "A 12 Gauge pump in the closet." :-)