Shooting for sport
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
I need to know some things about shooting as a sport. Mainly, I'm
thinking about a scene in which one character who's doing target
practice accidentally finds out that another character is a really
outstanding sharpshooter. Is it true that it's largely a natural talent?
And would people recognize it quickly? And how?
Right now, the scene is about character A practicing and not being very
happy with himself; character B arrives and onlooker says that even
_she_ can probably do better; which she does. Character A and onlooker
(range minder, I think) look at her in disbelief, look at each other,
and immediately take her to Different Range to see how really good she
is, and then proceeding to try to get her to start competing for the
local team. I'm a bit handicapped by never actually having been near a
shooting range, despite my father having a couple of modest medals and
having been doing a competition the day I was getting born. He is,
unfortunately, not very easy to pump for details... having perhaps not
wholly coincidentally gone rather deaf. :-)
I take it that guns used in shooting competitions are different from,
uh, real weapons? Character A has a large-caliber gun he's acquired
during the last war, I gather this would be unsuitable for the purpose.
And I'm planning on him reassuring character B that the gun they're
trying to get her to use isn't, er, a real weapon. This doesn't has to
be _totally_ true. He has been known to bend the truth a little.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
homepage: http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
English blog: http://annafdd.blogspot.com/
Blog in italiano: http://fulminiesaette.blogspot.com
David J. Starr
fairly well, well enough for hunting or self-defense or whatever. Just
like baseball there are some individuals who get to be exceptionally
good at it, but they have to practice too. The natural shot will, after
some practice, be able to hit things that ordinary folk miss a lot.
I'd have a little trouble reading a scene where a newbie who has
never held a firearm before, suddenly starts hitting the bulls eye after
a couple of rounds. More believable would be to have your protagonist
put in some time at the range (days, maybe a couple of weeks) and then
have some old pro squint downrange at the target and say something
complimentary.
Target rifles and pistols are basically the same as service and
hunting firearms. A wealthy shooter will spend some serious money on a
finely finished weapon, something that glitters like fine furniture,
whereas the Army is going to issue a pretty plain looking gun. A lot of
target shooting is done with small bore .22 cal ammunition 'cause its a
few cents a round as compared to .30 center fire ammo that might be more
than $1 a round. However, the humble .22 rim fire is a real gun, is
powerful enough for manslaughter or deer hunting. Gun people in this
century are pretty safety conscious and they always treat any gun with
respect. You wouldn't hear them say "it's just a little ole .22 and you
don't have to worry about it". They will give you the full safety
lecture for a kid's BB gun. So your plan to have them say "it isn't a
REAL gun" doesn't quite ring true, I would never expect to hear some
one say that.
--
David J. Starr
Dst...@TheWorld.com
Jonathan Hendry
"Anna Feruglio Dal Dan" <ada...@despammed.com> wrote in message
news:1ffl9c8.3eoco5ktg6rmN%ada...@despammed.com...
> OK, I need the gun bunnies here.
>
> I need to know some things about shooting as a sport. Mainly, I'm
> thinking about a scene in which one character who's doing target
> practice accidentally finds out that another character is a really
> outstanding sharpshooter. Is it true that it's largely a natural talent?
> And would people recognize it quickly? And how?
Reminds me of the scene in Enemy At The Gates where wotsisname
is hiding behind a low wall and about to try to shoot some German
officers, but is clearly not entirely comfortable with a rifle.
Jude Law happens to be hiding in the same pile of bodies behind
the wall. He crawls up, accepts the rifle, and proceeds to
efficiently dispatch 6 or 7 Germans, before any of them can
warn the others or generate a response. Each shot is perfectly
timed, masked by ambient noise, and right on target.
It's right at the beginning of the film.
Ric Locke
> OK, I need the gun bunnies here.
Well, I can get you started.
>
> I need to know some things about shooting as a sport. Mainly, I'm
> thinking about a scene in which one character who's doing target
> practice accidentally finds out that another character is a really
> outstanding sharpshooter. Is it true that it's largely a natural talent?
> And would people recognize it quickly? And how?
Yes, as with any hand-eye coordination skill, some people are
"naturals". That's really all shooting is -- a hand-eye coordination
skill. And yes, the people around on the range would notice, but not
quickly. Most people on the range are concentrating quite hard on
their own practice, and unless they're there as part of a group will
see little of what the ones on adjacent ranges are doing. If they are
there as part of a group, they'll be paying attention to the others in
their group, not to strangers.
A gun club is just as likely to have a member who thinks he or she
owns the place, or is entitled to be arbiter of everyone else's
behavior, as any other type of association. Such a person might well
be watching the newcomer like a hawk, and notice her ability.
But much more likely your protag (who is, as I understand it, teaching
her) will notice, and (if he's a typical fairly good-natured gunner)
will call the others over to see the prodigy, perhaps embarrassing
her.
> Right now, the scene is about character A practicing and not being very
> happy with himself; character B arrives and onlooker says that even
> _she_ can probably do better; which she does. Character A and onlooker
> (range minder, I think) look at her in disbelief, look at each other,
> and immediately take her to Different Range to see how really good she
> is, and then proceeding to try to get her to start competing for the
> local team. I'm a bit handicapped by never actually having been near a
> shooting range, despite my father having a couple of modest medals and
> having been doing a competition the day I was getting born. He is,
> unfortunately, not very easy to pump for details... having perhaps not
> wholly coincidentally gone rather deaf. :-)
"Different range" isn't necessary, nor likely. What they would do is
gradually move the targets back -- newcomers often shoot at a range of
ten or fifteen meters, to make it easier, and more skilled shooters
move the targets back to twenty-five, fifty, or more, depending on gun
type. With short-barreled handguns ("carry" or "use" guns) the maximum
range is usually about twenty-five meters (actually yards here in the
U.S.) Long-barreled guns may go to fifty. Rifles can be as much as
three hundred meters, but those ranges are fairly rare; I'd place this
on a handgun range.
And no, they wouldn't be asking her to join the competition team --
mostly gunners don't _have_ competition teams; it's a solo sport, in
which concentration is very important. The few teams that do exist are
the creme la creme, and a newbie, no matter how good, probably
wouldn't qualify.
Club members frequently organize competition shoots of various types,
but this isn't professional level; it's still hobby, in some ways like
golf. There really aren't many professional-level shooting
competitions.
It might pay you to find a gun club or private range, and spend the
money and time to get introduced. Most gunners are really rather nice
people, actually, and if you explained your quest you'd probably get
more advice -- some of it actually useful -- than you expected. I
don't know how likely you are to find such a thing in Italy; I don't
know the country at all.
>
> I take it that guns used in shooting competitions are different from,
> uh, real weapons? Character A has a large-caliber gun he's acquired
> during the last war, I gather this would be unsuitable for the purpose.
> And I'm planning on him reassuring character B that the gun they're
> trying to get her to use isn't, er, a real weapon. This doesn't has to
> be _totally_ true. He has been known to bend the truth a little.
Well, guns used in genuinely serious competitions are, yes, quite
specialized, just as a racing car is different from your family Fiat.
But, as I said, those sorts of competitions are rare, expensive, and
highly specialized, not to mention expensive (and often frowned upon
by local government). The sorts of competitions they would be most
likely to enter would be more or less the equivalent of a golf game,
and for those it's "shoot what you brung" -- the shooter's normal use
weapon, or perhaps a slightly exotic version of a standard weapon.
Many shooters carry or own the latter as "use" guns.
Your character's big-bore military weapon (which is _extremely_
science-fictional; military handguns are relatively small) wouldn't be
suitable for a shooting competition, no, but that's because it
wouldn't be modified for greater accuracy, not because that particular
model is unsuitable. The object in a shooting competition is to put
the bullet in the middle of the circle; the type and style of launcher
is almost irrelevant, except for barrel length, which correlates to
range.
By analogy: No matter how well the student does in driving class, it's
unlikely that he or she will be invited by Ferrari to captain the FII
team. On the other hand, if she likes the sport well enough, she might
well engage in a gymkhana or two, and possibly even sports-car racing;
in which case most of the cars would be the normal-use cars of their
owners, even though you or I might find them sportier than "normal",
and a few wealthier competitors would have purpose-built cars that
were nonetheless based on standard models.
Guns are machines, and follow the same rules as other machines.
Regards,
Ric
Brian M. Scott
<dst...@theworld.com> wrote:
> Shooting is like baseball in a way. Most folk can learn to do it
>fairly well, well enough for hunting or self-defense or whatever. Just
>like baseball there are some individuals who get to be exceptionally
>good at it, but they have to practice too. The natural shot will, after
>some practice, be able to hit things that ordinary folk miss a lot.
> I'd have a little trouble reading a scene where a newbie who has
>never held a firearm before, suddenly starts hitting the bulls eye after
>a couple of rounds.
But let's not go overboard. An absolute beginner can certainly show
noteworthy talent with a bow, and I doubt that the situation is much
different with firearms. I wouldn't expect to see her shoot like an
expert, but something at the 'Are you sure you've never done this
before?!' level is easily believable.
[...]
> Target rifles and pistols are basically the same as service and
>hunting firearms.
I have the strong impression that if we're talking about the ones used
in serious high-level competition, that's like saying that NASCAR
really does use stock cars. In some cases it may even be more like
saying that a Formula 1 racer is just a car.
[...]
Brian
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> You wouldn't hear them say "it's just a little ole .22 and you
> don't have to worry about it".
I don't think character B buys it either, really.
They will give you the full safety
> lecture for a kid's BB gun. So your plan to have them say "it isn't a
> REAL gun" doesn't quite ring true, I would never expect to hear some
> one say that.
The full safety lecture is very interesting. How would it run?
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> On Fri, 19 Jul 2002 19:28:34 -0400, "David J. Starr"
> <dst...@theworld.com> wrote:
>
> > Shooting is like baseball in a way. Most folk can learn to do it
> >fairly well, well enough for hunting or self-defense or whatever. Just
> >like baseball there are some individuals who get to be exceptionally
> >good at it, but they have to practice too. The natural shot will, after
> >some practice, be able to hit things that ordinary folk miss a lot.
> > I'd have a little trouble reading a scene where a newbie who has
> >never held a firearm before, suddenly starts hitting the bulls eye after
> >a couple of rounds.
>
> But let's not go overboard. An absolute beginner can certainly show
> noteworthy talent with a bow, and I doubt that the situation is much
> different with firearms. I wouldn't expect to see her shoot like an
> expert, but something at the 'Are you sure you've never done this
> before?!' level is easily believable.
Ah, well, good. That's more than enough for me.
> [...]
>
> > Target rifles and pistols are basically the same as service and
> >hunting firearms.
>
> I have the strong impression that if we're talking about the ones used
> in serious high-level competition, that's like saying that NASCAR
> really does use stock cars. In some cases it may even be more like
> saying that a Formula 1 racer is just a car.
What would the differences be? Precision, I guess?
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Jude Law happens to be hiding in the same pile of bodies behind
> the wall. He crawls up, accepts the rifle, and proceeds to
> efficiently dispatch 6 or 7 Germans, before any of them can
> warn the others or generate a response. Each shot is perfectly
> timed, masked by ambient noise, and right on target.
>
> It's right at the beginning of the film.
Yes, I think Enemy may account for the germ of this idea, but Jude Law
gets schooled by his grandfather shooting deer. My problem is that
character B doesn't really care for guns and _definitely_ doesn't care
for character A who's a soldier. She may, but, get drawn into it as a
sport, because she does like games and competitions.
I need this because much later on she ends up with character A's gun,
him having given it to her for self-defence, and her having had to use
against character A's people. And there's no way she can accept a gun
(or he give it to her), even for self-defence, if she hasn't had some
practice.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> "Different range" isn't necessary, nor likely. What they would do is
> gradually move the targets back -- newcomers often shoot at a range of
> ten or fifteen meters, to make it easier, and more skilled shooters
> move the targets back to twenty-five, fifty, or more, depending on gun
> type. With short-barreled handguns ("carry" or "use" guns) the maximum
> range is usually about twenty-five meters (actually yards here in the
> U.S.) Long-barreled guns may go to fifty. Rifles can be as much as
> three hundred meters, but those ranges are fairly rare; I'd place this
> on a handgun range.
thanks, this is exactly what I needed.
>
> And no, they wouldn't be asking her to join the competition team --
> mostly gunners don't _have_ competition teams; it's a solo sport, in
> which concentration is very important. The few teams that do exist are
> the creme la creme, and a newbie, no matter how good, probably
> wouldn't qualify.
Well, she's very young, and I think it's possible that the gun club's
minder sees a future medal for the city, or region, or whatnot, dangling
there. This tends to be the pattern in all the sports I've seen, at
least here: instructor immediately concentrates on the promising
student, basically leaving all the others to their own devices. Since I
never shaw any particular talent for any sport, I noticed this, says she
bitterly. <g>
> It might pay you to find a gun club or private range, and spend the
> money and time to get introduced. Most gunners are really rather nice
> people, actually, and if you explained your quest you'd probably get
> more advice -- some of it actually useful -- than you expected. I
> don't know how likely you are to find such a thing in Italy; I don't
> know the country at all.
Oh, about as likely as anywhere else, I think. I thought about this,
actually. I think you need to get a licence though, and it would be a
bit pointless since I have terrible eyesight and lousy hand-eye
coordination. I'd like to hang around and get a feeling of the place,
but that's difficult if you're so obviously an observer. It would have
been easier if my father had kept it up, but he got bored with shooting
before I started walking, as he got bored with most sports (he was,
though, much better at them than I've ever been).
> > I take it that guns used in shooting competitions are different from,
> > uh, real weapons? Character A has a large-caliber gun he's acquired
> > during the last war, I gather this would be unsuitable for the purpose.
> > And I'm planning on him reassuring character B that the gun they're
> > trying to get her to use isn't, er, a real weapon. This doesn't has to
> > be _totally_ true. He has been known to bend the truth a little.
>
> Well, guns used in genuinely serious competitions are, yes, quite
> specialized, just as a racing car is different from your family Fiat.
> But, as I said, those sorts of competitions are rare, expensive, and
> highly specialized, not to mention expensive (and often frowned upon
> by local government). The sorts of competitions they would be most
> likely to enter would be more or less the equivalent of a golf game,
> and for those it's "shoot what you brung" -- the shooter's normal use
> weapon, or perhaps a slightly exotic version of a standard weapon.
> Many shooters carry or own the latter as "use" guns.
>
> Your character's big-bore military weapon (which is _extremely_
> science-fictional; military handguns are relatively small)
Really? I was going on what my father used to say. What are the
high-bore kinds used for, then?
wouldn't be
> suitable for a shooting competition, no, but that's because it
> wouldn't be modified for greater accuracy, not because that particular
> model is unsuitable. The object in a shooting competition is to put
> the bullet in the middle of the circle; the type and style of launcher
> is almost irrelevant, except for barrel length, which correlates to
> range.
OK.
Brian M. Scott
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>> On Fri, 19 Jul 2002 19:28:34 -0400, "David J. Starr"
>> <dst...@theworld.com> wrote:
[...]
>> > Target rifles and pistols are basically the same as service and
>> >hunting firearms.
>> I have the strong impression that if we're talking about the ones used
>> in serious high-level competition, that's like saying that NASCAR
>> really does use stock cars. In some cases it may even be more like
>> saying that a Formula 1 racer is just a car.
>What would the differences be? Precision, I guess?
I think so, yes. And some modifications designed to improve
stability. You might find some of the pictures at
<http://www.pilkguns.com/fotosg.htm> interesting in giving an idea of
the variety of designs employed. You can also see a couple of exotic
designs a bit more clearly at
<http://home.earthlink.net/~loko/Shooting/Articles/FreePistol.html>.
Brian
Neil Barnes
news:1ffl9c8.3eoco5ktg6rmN%ada...@despammed.com:
> OK, I need the gun bunnies here.
>
> I need to know some things about shooting as a sport. Mainly,
> I'm thinking about a scene in which one character who's doing
> target practice accidentally finds out that another character
> is a really outstanding sharpshooter. Is it true that it's
> largely a natural talent? And would people recognize it
> quickly? And how?
Well, I'm not a gun bunny - but the traditional cliche is:
'Wow, you got the bull, first time. Must have been a lucky shot,
see, all the rest missed.'
'No, they went down the same hole...'
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Well, I'm not a gun bunny - but the traditional cliche is:
> 'Wow, you got the bull, first time. Must have been a lucky shot,
> see, all the rest missed.'
> 'No, they went down the same hole...'
Works better with arrows.
:-)
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> The first (and only) time I ever fired a pistol, I put all five shots
> into the 10 ring at 25 m; it happens.
The interesting question is
> whether or not it happens *again*, not whether it happens at all; almost
> anyone can shoot well, the top target shooters shoot well _all the
> time_. I've met people who had entire competition seaons in which they
> never dropped a point -- never missed the highest scoring part of the
> target. It's consistency, not a surprising single score, that the
> experienced folks are going to be looking for; a new person who shoots
> little tiny tight groups every single time, irrespective of where on the
> paper the group is, will get noticed as skillful well ahead of someone
> who shoots inconsistently.
This is a fair and interesting view.
I went and looked at the rec.guns FAQ: I wasn't even aware of the
existance of the concept of "groups" before. Very nice. They warmly
reccommend the NRA crash-course. If I'm ever in the States for any
length of time, I'd be really tempted. If for no other reason that then
I could tell the folks back home!
It's great being a writer. You can have a whole competition in a sport
you know for a fact you'd be dead lousy in. :-)
I also had a look into the italian equivalent group and drew up lots of
utterly _fascinating_ jargon. It gave me a bit of a fright though,
because I can't help imagining translating that stuff back and forth. I
really should pay attention to both groups for a while and try to work
out a glossary, it would come in dead handy.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> It's a relatively continuous *old* jargon about a subject many of whose
> practitioners have expected to depend on for their lives; it's deep,
> twisty, and highly highly variable by place and time. My general
> recommendation would be to stay the hell away from it; there is no
> useful value of 'right' in many respects, and many concerned readers who
> will feel that there *is*, in the form of their accustomed use. It's
> possible to get around this, but to do it without providing a level of
> detail utterly excessive in all other respects is a thing rarely
> accomplished. (as in, I've never seen it done, but would not care to
> warrant that no one has ever managed.) There are genres that get around
> this with code specific to the genre, but I don't have the sense that
> these are available to you.
>
> The way P.C. Hodgell handles hand-to-hand fighting -- using something
> that is obviously a specialized jargon, and an evocative one to boot,
> which is never, ever given specific reference to tangible events --
> might be your best bet.
>
> In other words, I'd expect you can get away with saying 'good group'
> (probably), but saying what a good group _is_'ll produce nightmares.
Oh, yes, definitely. But it was fascinating. And professionally
interesting.
I translated Micheal McKube's and Clarke's _The Trigger_, and it was a
gruelling experience because it's a book really well-grounded in detail,
and detail means specific jargon, and jargon means a lot of research.
Technical translators know how to do it but I'm much less proficient at
it. At one point I asked the italian groups specialized in military
history for help, and they really were invaluable - but on some things,
I got two or three conflicting opinions, and had to choose the likeliest
and most convincing-sounding.
But, you see, this is why a translator squirrels away jargon greedily.
You never know when it may come in handy. There are places I would fear
to tread but nothing guarantees I won't find an author that _does_, and
I have to translate.
For _my_ piece I can remain vaguely vague, thank heaven.
Charlie Stross
as <ada...@despammed.com> declared:
> They will give you the full safety
>> lecture for a kid's BB gun. So your plan to have them say "it isn't a
>> REAL gun" doesn't quite ring true, I would never expect to hear some
>> one say that.
>
> The full safety lecture is very interesting. How would it run?
Speaking as a non-shooter, what I've been told boils down to:
* EVERY gun is a potentially lethal weapon
* ALWAYS behave as if any gun is loaded
* NEVER point a loaded gun at anything you're not prepared to shoot
... therefore ...
* ALWAYS keep guns pointed away from human beings, ideally at something
that it's safe to discharge into (unless you're intending to actually
shoot someone)
* ALWAYS make sure the weapon is safed and unloaded except when you're
actually planning to fire it (but, despite that, treat it as if it's
loaded -- it's a good habit to be in)
* NEVER prepare to fire it if anyone is in front of you, even off to one
side
Does this cover it?
-- Charlie
Out now: "Toast, and other rusted futures" -- available via my blog
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blosxom.cgi
Slow
> high-bore kinds used for, then?
>
Perhaps your father competed at military ranges, like I did in the
early 60's. I used a Lee Enfield .303; beginning distance was 200
yards to the butts where the 4' x4' targets were raised by men sitting
below; there used different indicators on long poles to show where you
hit after each shot. I had a knack and believe me the other shooters
noticed when the bulls eye indicator appeared after every shot that I
made.
I used the standard battle sight, which is set for 200 yds, and stayed
with it (rather than the leaf sight) even when they moved me back in
100 yds increments to make me miss. I would adjust for the droppage
and wind by firing above the target and perhaps to the left if the
wind was coming from there--such adjustments came to me naturally, but
I began to miss the bullseye at 600 yds, though I kept my grouping
tight.
I was firing prone (vs semi-prone or standing), very relaxed, and
breathing calmly (you fire as you gently exhale).
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> I used the standard battle sight, which is set for 200 yds, and stayed
> with it (rather than the leaf sight)
What are battle and leaf sight? (Curiosity, curiosity!)
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> * ALWAYS make sure the weapon is safed and unloaded except when you're
> actually planning to fire it (but, despite that, treat it as if it's
> loaded -- it's a good habit to be in)
Actually, despite never actually having gotten to see my father's guns,
he managed to drill at least this into me, so that the one and only time
I was in the same room with a hunting rifle, I began to shiver and asked
very urgently my friend to put it away _now_, please, despite her
assuring me over and over again that it was unloaded.
It didn't help that my friend had a track record of lots of accidents of
every kind over the years.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> In the unlikely event that the Blessed Novel sees print, and the even
> more unlikely event that it is ever translated, I expect death threats.
Oh, I expect a lot of beers from K-Mac. :-)
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>I have the strong impression that if we're talking about the ones used
>in serious high-level competition, that's like saying that NASCAR
>really does use stock cars. In some cases it may even be more like
>saying that a Formula 1 racer is just a car.
DC has the Cadillac Grand Prix this weekend (and they handled it
*really* badly) -- the drivers complained yesterday that they had to
practice on the track with rental cars because their cars didn't get
there in time.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
Marilee J. Layman
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>David J. Starr <dst...@theworld.com> wrote:
>
>> You wouldn't hear them say "it's just a little ole .22 and you
>> don't have to worry about it".
>
>I don't think character B buys it either, really.
>
>They will give you the full safety
>> lecture for a kid's BB gun. So your plan to have them say "it isn't a
>> REAL gun" doesn't quite ring true, I would never expect to hear some
>> one say that.
>
>The full safety lecture is very interesting. How would it run?
The NRA has a children's safety program called Eddie Eagle, and it
apparently doesn't work:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25514-2002Jul18.html
Marilee J. Layman
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>I need this because much later on she ends up with character A's gun,
>him having given it to her for self-defence, and her having had to use
>against character A's people. And there's no way she can accept a gun
>(or he give it to her), even for self-defence, if she hasn't had some
>practice.
My brother and I both trained at the Navy's range when we were
teenagers. I would have to sit down to shoot now, but if I was handed
a gun and needed to use it, I think I could.
Richard Kennaway
> I went and looked at the rec.guns FAQ: I wasn't even aware of the
> existance of the concept of "groups" before.
Yes, small groups are the skill to develop: once you can do that,
putting them on the point where you're aiming is just a matter of
adjusting the sights.
The same gun will shoot slightly differently for different people.
Sights set up for the gun's owner may not be right for the beginner
borrowing it. So whether the first shot goes into the 6 ring or the 10
doesn't mean anything. When the second shot is a couple of centimeters
away from the first (assuming a pistol at 10 metres), that will be
noticed by the beginner's companion, but it could be a fluke. When the
first five shots go into a space only a couple of inches across, that's
when those watching start saying "Are you sure you've never done this
before?"
Except for one old-timer who just says, "Let's see the other five."
-- Richard Kennaway
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
>
> Except for one old-timer who just says, "Let's see the other five."
oooh, yes, can I steal it?
Elizabeth Shack
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>Right now, the scene is about character A practicing and not being very
>happy with himself; character B arrives and onlooker says that even
>_she_ can probably do better; which she does. Character A and onlooker
>(range minder, I think) look at her in disbelief, look at each other,
>and immediately take her to Different Range to see how really good she
>is, and then proceeding to try to get her to start competing for the
>local team.
You'd have to work pretty hard to make me believe that. I know
absolutely nothing about guns. But for anything requiring lots of
practice it'd be tough for me to believe that someone who'd never done
it before was really good. Especially if it was convenient for the
plot.
--
Elizabeth Shack eas...@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~eashack/life.html
"You don't have anything except books." -- a friend who helped me move
Erol K. Bayburt
>The NRA has a children's safety program called Eddie Eagle, and it
>apparently doesn't work:
>
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25514-2002Jul18.html
Depends on who you listen to and what your political bias is:
http://www.dailypundit.com/archives/003270.php#003270
--
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com
--
Erol K. Bayburt
Ero...@aol.com
Doug Wickstrom
<slrnajin5l....@hunding.localdomain>
Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> excited the ether to say:
>Rifles go out to _1100_ meters, for target competition.
Further than that, even. One mile is not unheard of.
--
Doug Wickstrom <nims...@attbi.com>
"Pardon me while I have a strange interlude." --Groucho Marx
Brian Pickrell
That's the one where Mark Twain is taking the piss out of James Fenimore Cooper?
Brian Pickrell
> OK, I need the gun bunnies here.
One thing you need to figure out is what kind of shooting you're
talking about: pistols? small-bore rifles? shotguns? There are
different ranges involved, different targets, etc.
>
> I need to know some things about shooting as a sport. Mainly, I'm
> thinking about a scene in which one character who's doing target
> practice accidentally finds out that another character is a really
> outstanding sharpshooter.
Do you mean
a) a skilled and knowledgeable expert?
b) a beginner with obvious aptitude?
c) a self-taught shooter who would benefit from proper instruction
and equipment?
d) somebody who makes miracle shots even though she's never seen a gun
before?
Unless your story really requires it, you probably don't want d).
You're probably thinking of b) or c). So that you'd like your
character to do those things well that she plausibly could, and not do
things she couldn't.
> Is it true that it's largely a natural talent?
> And would people recognize it quickly? And how?
You know how beginner writers tend to think that writing skill is a
matter of magic, and you either write great stuff the first time you
sit down, or you don't? You know that in real life it takes a lot of
practice to learn to write and there are a lot of things that anybody,
no matter how talented, has to learn. The person with talent will
learn faster and will be able to do more with the basic stuff once
they know it. It's the same way with shooting, or any other skill for
that matter.
I don't think you're looking for a competition-type shooter for this
story, though, nor do you want someone who shoots flies out of the air
at 500 yards with her eyes closed. You want a believable novice who
shows that she's got basic aptitude and is trainable.
Some signs of a promising beginner would be:
- holds the gun comfortably
- body and hands not too tense
- comfortable stance
- no unnecessary movements
- doesn't flinch when she pulls the trigger
- not afraid of gun, but doesn't mess around or do unsafe things
- smooth, fluid motion when bringing gun up to firing position (with
shotgun, for instance; this doesn't apply in those kinds of shooting
where the shooter doesn't move between shots)
- uses the sights, lines the gun up
- doesn't have to be told things twice
These are things that an exceptional novice might do without being
told.
Common problems for beginners:
- Uses a weird grip, weird stance, or doesn't aim. One cause of this
is plain ignorance; another is that people learn from the movies that
any kind of wild snapshot will hit its target if the shooter has the
right magic mojo.
- Doesn't know how to use the sights properly
- Jerks the gun when pulling the trigger
- Impatient. Would rather blast tin cans with a shotgun than spend
hours and hours at a range every week shooting tiny holes in little
bits of paper.
- Shifts position or holds gun inconsistently from shot to shot
Except for the impatience, these are things that any average person
can be taught to correct. But an exceptional beginner might have the
instincts to not do them.
>
> Right now, the scene is about character A practicing and not being very
> happy with himself; character B arrives and onlooker says that even
> _she_ can probably do better; which she does. Character A and onlooker
> (range minder, I think) look at her in disbelief,
Target shooting for score doesn't offer the opportunity to wow people
with one or two miracle shots. Distances and targets are set, and
people are expected to hit the bulls-eye all the time anyway. Maybe
better if she brings in her targets after an hour or so and they see
the bulls-eyes are riddled with holes, or they find out she's
mistakenly been putting up 25-meter targets at 100 meters.
> look at each other,
> and immediately take her to Different Range to see how really good she
> is,
"see how good she really is" probably means "see how good she can
learn to be."
> and then proceeding to try to get her to start competing for the
> local team.
What they'd probably ask her to do is start practicing with the local
team--if she picks up their techniques well enough, then she'll start
competing in matches.
> I'm a bit handicapped by never actually having been near a
> shooting range, despite my father having a couple of modest medals and
> having been doing a competition the day I was getting born. He is,
> unfortunately, not very easy to pump for details... having perhaps not
> wholly coincidentally gone rather deaf. :-)
>
> I take it that guns used in shooting competitions are different from,
> uh, real weapons? Character A has a large-caliber gun he's acquired
> during the last war, I gather this would be unsuitable for the purpose.
Yes, there are very specialized target-shooting guns. They're not
very practical for any other purpose such as fighting or hunting--too
expensive, too flimsy, too slow to load and shoot. Remember, though,
that at the local shooting range people will bring whatever guns they
own.
But do you really want her to get training with a competition gun?
From your comments, it sounds like she really needs to learn combat,
not target-shooting, techniques. Many of the things cops learn are
the exact opposite of what you do in a competition match--reloading,
dealing with distractions, quick-draws, diving for cover, etc.
> And I'm planning on him reassuring character B that the gun they're
> trying to get her to use isn't, er, a real weapon. This doesn't has to
> be _totally_ true. He has been known to bend the truth a little.
This is very common. Look at any gun-control debate, if you can find
one on the Usenet :) Gun owners are constantly pointing out that
their guns are collector's items, or for target shooting, and are not
for killing people.
David Bilek
>On Sat, 20 Jul 2002 08:51:01 -0400, in message
><slrnajin5l....@hunding.localdomain>
> Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> excited the ether to say:
>
>>Rifles go out to _1100_ meters, for target competition.
>
>Further than that, even. One mile is not unheard of.
Somebody here must know the answer to this one...
What's the longest confirmed kill (or wound, I guess) made by a
sniper? I know the data for non-Western countries is probably shaky
at best, so even the longest shot by a member of the US military
works.
-David
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Some signs of a promising beginner would be:
>
> - holds the gun comfortably
> - body and hands not too tense
> - comfortable stance
> - no unnecessary movements
> - doesn't flinch when she pulls the trigger
> - not afraid of gun, but doesn't mess around or do unsafe things
> - smooth, fluid motion when bringing gun up to firing position (with
> shotgun, for instance; this doesn't apply in those kinds of shooting
> where the shooter doesn't move between shots)
> - uses the sights, lines the gun up
> - doesn't have to be told things twice
>
> These are things that an exceptional novice might do without being
> told.
I had mistakenly posted this message on the Italian newsgroup too, and
one denizen answered and told me that something like that happened to
him: he brought a friend along at the range, got him to shoot just for
the hell of it, and "he had never seen a gun but he took up
instinctively the right position, with arm and shoulder relaxed, the
finger loose on the trigger etc... and most of all, when he shot he
*didn't* close his eyes. He got eleven on sixteen, IIRC, and ended up on
the team instead of me. Tie'!"
Which gives me a pretty good congruent information, I'd say. <g>
> Common problems for beginners:
> > Right now, the scene is about character A practicing and not being very
> > happy with himself; character B arrives and onlooker says that even
> > _she_ can probably do better; which she does. Character A and onlooker
> > (range minder, I think) look at her in disbelief,
>
> Target shooting for score doesn't offer the opportunity to wow people
> with one or two miracle shots. Distances and targets are set, and
> people are expected to hit the bulls-eye all the time anyway. Maybe
> better if she brings in her targets after an hour or so and they see
> the bulls-eyes are riddled with holes, or they find out she's
> mistakenly been putting up 25-meter targets at 100 meters.
>
> > look at each other,
> > and immediately take her to Different Range to see how really good she
> > is,
>
> "see how good she really is" probably means "see how good she can
> learn to be."
>
Yes.
>
>
> > and then proceeding to try to get her to start competing for the
> > local team.
>
> What they'd probably ask her to do is start practicing with the local
> team--if she picks up their techniques well enough, then she'll start
> competing in matches.
Oh, yes. There are reasons that I'm working out for them to want to
start training with them.
> Yes, there are very specialized target-shooting guns. They're not
> very practical for any other purpose such as fighting or hunting--too
> expensive, too flimsy, too slow to load and shoot. Remember, though,
> that at the local shooting range people will bring whatever guns they
> own.
Well, they do here. This is another planet, another time. There are
specific reasons for there being guns at the club.
> But do you really want her to get training with a competition gun?
> From your comments, it sounds like she really needs to learn combat,
> not target-shooting, techniques. Many of the things cops learn are
> the exact opposite of what you do in a competition match--reloading,
> dealing with distractions, quick-draws, diving for cover, etc.
I don't need to turn her into a good combat soldier overnight.
The thing is, one plot strand is about an ex-soldier who gets his
bearings back after a very long stint at a very bad front (invalidated
home for psychiatric reasons, I think). The other plot strand is about
this young girl that goes from determined pacifism to being a guerrilla
fighter. At one point and quite crucially she accepts the ex-soldier's
gun, long before there is any unrest on the horizon, because there is
somebody stalking her and they are both afraid. But he would never, I
think, give a combat pistol to somebody if he isn't satisfied that she
can use it sensibly and well, and she would never accept it if some
inroads hadn't already been made in her instinctive dislike of weapons.
Trust me on this: she comes from a culture where firearms just aren't
everyday objects and her reaction to being offered one would be
_absolutely no_, just as mine would be.
So I need her to start becoming accustomed to them. Also I think he
talks her into taking the gun by reminding her that she can probably,
since she has become good enough in the meanwhile, shoot not to kill.
She does later on shoot to kill, but not too far from the target and
with, I think, quite a bit of luck.
The actual combat gun doesn't, I think, ever get actually fired, though
it turns up in the following installment (which I have already written).
> > And I'm planning on him reassuring character B that the gun they're
> > trying to get her to use isn't, er, a real weapon. This doesn't has to
> > be _totally_ true. He has been known to bend the truth a little.
>
> This is very common. Look at any gun-control debate, if you can find
> one on the Usenet :) Gun owners are constantly pointing out that
> their guns are collector's items, or for target shooting, and are not
> for killing people.
I know. I haven't been on Usenet this long for nothing, <g> and besides,
_the Trigger_ all about this.
Jouni Karhu
wrote:
>ada...@despammed.com (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote in message news:<1ffl9c8.3eoco5ktg6rmN%ada...@despammed.com>...
>
>- holds the gun comfortably
>- body and hands not too tense
>- comfortable stance
>- no unnecessary movements
>- doesn't flinch when she pulls the trigger
>- not afraid of gun, but doesn't mess around or do unsafe things
>- smooth, fluid motion when bringing gun up to firing position (with
>shotgun, for instance; this doesn't apply in those kinds of shooting
>where the shooter doesn't move between shots)
>- uses the sights, lines the gun up
>- doesn't have to be told things twice
>
>These are things that an exceptional novice might do without being
>told.
One thing the beginner could do to amaze onlookers, I guess, would be
to shoot reasonable groups with a semi-automatic pistol *very, very
fast*. A natural ability for pulling the trigger so that the gun will
not budge even a fraction of a millimeter would help as well.
>> Right now, the scene is about character A practicing and not being very
>> happy with himself; character B arrives and onlooker says that even
>> _she_ can probably do better; which she does. Character A and onlooker
>> (range minder, I think) look at her in disbelief,
(some creative cutting and pasting)
>> Character A has a large-caliber gun he's acquired
>> during the last war, I gather this would be unsuitable for the purpose.
>
>Target shooting for score doesn't offer the opportunity to wow people
>with one or two miracle shots. Distances and targets are set, and
>people are expected to hit the bulls-eye all the time anyway. Maybe
>better if she brings in her targets after an hour or so and they see
>the bulls-eyes are riddled with holes, or they find out she's
>mistakenly been putting up 25-meter targets at 100 meters.
That large-caliber gun might well be the reason for not hitting
anything. Old ammunition and worn bore throw a handgun out of whack
really easily. Perhaps B is given a smaller-caliber gun for
demonstration purposes.
>> and then proceeding to try to get her to start competing for the
>> local team.
>
>What they'd probably ask her to do is start practicing with the local
>team--if she picks up their techniques well enough, then she'll start
>competing in matches.
She would have to have absolute nerves of steel, with no distraction
whatsoever working on her, for them to ask to start competing right
away.
// JJ
Cyde Weys
"Anna Feruglio Dal Dan" <ada...@despammed.com> wrote in message
news:1ffl9c8.3eoco5ktg6rmN%ada...@despammed.com...
> OK, I need the gun bunnies here.
>
> thinking about a scene in which one character who's doing target
> practice accidentally finds out that another character is a really
> And would people recognize it quickly? And how?
>
> happy with himself; character B arrives and onlooker says that even
> _she_ can probably do better; which she does. Character A and onlooker
> and immediately take her to Different Range to see how really good she
> local team. I'm a bit handicapped by never actually having been near a
> shooting range, despite my father having a couple of modest medals and
> having been doing a competition the day I was getting born. He is,
> unfortunately, not very easy to pump for details... having perhaps not
> wholly coincidentally gone rather deaf. :-)
You haven't missed much ... a bunch of people, shooting guns, at targets ...
> I take it that guns used in shooting competitions are different from,
> uh, real weapons? Character A has a large-caliber gun he's acquired
> during the last war, I gather this would be unsuitable for the purpose.
> And I'm planning on him reassuring character B that the gun they're
> trying to get her to use isn't, er, a real weapon. This doesn't has to
> be _totally_ true. He has been known to bend the truth a little.
Have you ever seen Star Wars Episode IV? Well, I'm thinking about that part
where Luke is making the run on the Death Star exhaust vent, and he turns
off his targetting instrumentation. Follow me here ...
In the future, there's no reason any weapon should ever miss. Computers are
just getting smaller and smaller, gyros are getting more complex, etc.
There's no reason you simply couldn't point in the general direction of what
you're hunting and zap it every time.
That said, what distinguishes the expert marksmen from the rookie hunter
isn't the ends, but the means. They will both kill animals, but the expert
marksmen relies less on the gun's targetting suite and more on his internal
abilities; the "Force", for instance.
Does this idea pan out for you?
David M. Palmer
Speaking as someone who knows nothing about guns and has never even
fired one (or at least that's what I told the judge).
It may be more believable if the character has a transferable skill.
Perhaps she is a birdwatcher who sits for hours holding a telescope
dead stable. Maybe she's a photographer who has taught herself to do
hand-held long lens slow exposre shots.
Or maybe she is driven to preternatural abilities by a pathological
hatred of paper targets ('one killed my father').
--
David M. Palmer dmpa...@email.com (formerly @clark.net, @ematic.com)
Elisa
>> So I need her to start becoming accustomed to them. Also I think he
talks her into taking the gun by reminding her that she can probably,
since she has become good enough in the meanwhile, shoot not to kill.
Well, I haven't been around a lot of gun-oriented talk, but I think that part
of the Standard Lecture, mentioned earlier, is:
Don't ever shoot at a living creature, unless you're willing to kill it.
So, in my limited experience, a person who's involved with guns isn't going to
give a reassuring talk to someone--that 'you can shoot not to kill.'
People that know more about guns might be able to set me straight, though.
*****
To reply directly, remove the obvious
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Well, I haven't been around a lot of gun-oriented talk, but I think that part
> of the Standard Lecture, mentioned earlier, is:
>
> Don't ever shoot at a living creature, unless you're willing to kill it.
>
> So, in my limited experience, a person who's involved with guns isn't going to
> give a reassuring talk to someone--that 'you can shoot not to kill.'
>
> People that know more about guns might be able to set me straight, though.
Keep in mind that this isn't the USA. The guy they are afraid of is
almot certainly _not_ armed with a firearm. And they are both, even the
soldier, _very_ against the idea of killing people. He probably figures
that it's ok to kill in self-defence, but she doesn't. I'm not kidding
when I say that she's a determined pacifist.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Or maybe she is driven to preternatural abilities by a pathological
> hatred of paper targets ('one killed my father').
I may go for this, yes yes... <g>
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
ada...@despammed.com (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
[...]
> And there's no way she can accept a gun
> (or he give it to her), even for self-defence, if she hasn't had some
> practice.
Oh, I don't know. If shit comes to shove, I can see him saying "point
this, pull that" and handing her the gun, simply because the alternative
is being dead.
Even firing into the air might help her under _some_ circumstances.
Briefly. Time to leg it, then.
You *may* get away with her being surprisingly competent if you've
established her earlier on in the book as having very good hand-eye
coordination in some other field.
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
cha...@antipope.org (Charlie Stross) wrote:
<skip gun rules>
> Does this cover it?
There's "get someone else to double-check that the chamber of your weapon
is empty, after you finish shooting, and you do the same favour for them",
and "always show the range officer your safety catch (ON) and magazine
(REMOVED) and chamber (EMPTY) before leaving the range".
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
[...]
> Well, she's very young, and I think it's possible that the gun club's
> minder sees a future medal for the city, or region, or whatnot, dangling
> there. This tends to be the pattern in all the sports I've seen, at
> least here: instructor immediately concentrates on the promising
> student, basically leaving all the others to their own devices. Since I
> never shaw any particular talent for any sport, I noticed this, says she
> bitterly. <g>
Or you could always have a character who isn't a shit instructor...
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> Charlie Stross <cha...@antipope.org> wrote:
>
> > * ALWAYS make sure the weapon is safed and unloaded except when you're
> > actually planning to fire it (but, despite that, treat it as if it's
> > loaded -- it's a good habit to be in)
>
> Actually, despite never actually having gotten to see my father's guns,
> he managed to drill at least this into me, so that the one and only time
> I was in the same room with a hunting rifle, I began to shiver and asked
> very urgently my friend to put it away _now_, please, despite her
> assuring me over and over again that it was unloaded.
>
> It didn't help that my friend had a track record of lots of accidents of
> every kind over the years.
You would have been better to ask your friend to leave the room, in that
case. :) She should at least have been able to point to the empty innards
of the weapon and indicate the lack of thing to go boom.
It was my grandfather who managed to spook me with "every gun is a loaded
gun", but to be fair, he died when I was very young. If I'd been older,
he would have taught me the useful thing -- how to ascertain for myself
what condition a gun is in, e.g. whether it's loaded or unloaded. And not
to take anybody else's word for it.
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
eas...@nospam.earthlink.net (Elizabeth Shack) wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Jul 2002 22:05:21 +0200, ada...@despammed.com (Anna
> Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>
> >Right now, the scene is about character A practicing and not being
> very
> >happy with himself; character B arrives and onlooker says that even
> >_she_ can probably do better; which she does. Character A and onlooker
> >(range minder, I think) look at her in disbelief, look at each other,
> >and immediately take her to Different Range to see how really good she
> >is, and then proceeding to try to get her to start competing for the
> >local team.
>
> You'd have to work pretty hard to make me believe that. I know
> absolutely nothing about guns. But for anything requiring lots of
> practice it'd be tough for me to believe that someone who'd never done
> it before was really good. Especially if it was convenient for the
> plot.
Just a quick question, would it be difficult for you to believe that
someone could wallop a tennis ball over the net first time and wipe out
the opposition? Or hit a six in cricket? That is: is it something about
guns, or something about hand-eye coordination, that makes it hard to
credit? That 'lots of practise' makes me think it's the hand-eye
coordination thing, rather than glamour-of-the-gun syndrome, but I'm not
sure.
That's the difficult thing with hand-eye *anything.* People are tuned
differently enough that 'lots of practise' is true for many people, and
then 'hardly any practise' is true for a substantial amount of others.
As, sadly, is 'practise will not help'. The problem is that practise
often will raise someone's ability, to the point where the idea that
practise may not be required appears very odd.
I'm leaving aside the 'convenient for the plot' part, for the moment;
thinking about it more, it would be reasonably easy to make the person
capable in a couple of other cognate areas earlier on, so that, even if
_she_ was surprised by how good she was, the reader would be thinking "ah,
yes, but now I see it was inevitable that she would be". It's just that
planting the early evidence wants to be done a bit deviously.
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
Starr) wrote:
> I'd have a little trouble reading a scene where a newbie who has
> never held a firearm before, suddenly starts hitting the bulls eye after
> a couple of rounds.
<cough>
Except that real life is evidently more surprising than you take it to be,
so if I were writing that scene, I'd have to find some way to make that
plausible to you -- other than "it happened to me", which is rarely if
ever useful in fiction...
Not immediately sure how I _would_ do it, in fact. Persuading people of
something in a story when they know nothing is a lot easier than
persuading them when they know something that isn't invariably the case.
Mary
Elisa
>>Keep in mind that this isn't the USA. The guy they are afraid of is
almot certainly _not_ armed with a firearm. And they are both, even the
soldier, _very_ against the idea of killing people. He probably figures
that it's ok to kill in self-defence, but she doesn't. I'm not kidding
when I say that she's a determined pacifist.
Hmm. . . I'm not sure how the USA got into the discussion. The point that I was
trying to pass on is--that many gun-users belive that shooting at someone, in
the belief that you won't kill him, is being self-deluded. It's too serious an
issue to play that sort of games with.
Treat guns as though they were loaded.
Don't point your gun at something you're not willing to shoot.
Don't shoot at something you're not willing to kill.
The logic of caution is the same, in all three cases. Of course, you can shoot
at someone, trying to wound, and not kill, but you'd darned better be willing
to face the consequences of killing, or you'd better not pick up the gun in the
first place.
At least, that's how I've interpreted what I've heard.
But, I'm drifting into the theoretical, and away from your particular story and
characters. Character A is free to say whatever he wants, of course.
djinn
news:biljju8cmnr9na44k...@4ax.com:
got this from rec.guns - Looks like about 2.5 kilometers. They were using
a .50 caliber rifle.
U.S. bullets help Canadian snipers set world record
Killing shot made at distance of 2,430 metres
Stephen Thorne
Canadian Press
A world-record killing shot by a Canadian sniper detachment in
Afghanistan could never have been made with the ammunition they were
issued when they left Edmonton last winter, the triggerman said in a
recent interview.
See this link. It's long, you may have to patch it together.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Arti
cle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1026143313994&call_page=TS_World&call_pageid=968332
188854&call_pagepath=News/World
Alma Hromic Deckert
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>David M. Palmer <dmpa...@email.com> wrote:
>
>> Or maybe she is driven to preternatural abilities by a pathological
>> hatred of paper targets ('one killed my father').
>
>I may go for this, yes yes... <g>
er... what does come to mind after that last sentence is a mildly
obsessive feminine version of "my name is inigo montoya, you killed my
father, prepare to die"...
A.
Del Cotter
David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com> said:
>Doug Wickstrom <nims...@attbi.com> wrote:
>>>Rifles go out to _1100_ meters, for target competition.
>>Further than that, even. One mile is not unheard of.
>What's the longest confirmed kill (or wound, I guess) made by a
>sniper? I know the data for non-Western countries is probably shaky
>at best, so even the longest shot by a member of the US military
>works.
_The Magnificent Seven_ was on telly tonight, so of course I watched it.
"That was the best shot I've ever seen!"
Coburn: "Hell, I was aiming for the *horse*"
--
. . . . Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk . . . .
JustRead:ThreeMenInABoat:WilliamGoldmanThePrincessBride:AlastairReynolds
RevelationSpace:GregEganQuarantine:KimStanleyRobinsonTheYearsOfRice&Salt
ToRead:BenJeapesHisMajesty'sStarship:JohnCrowleyLittle,Big:RobertCharles
Brian D. Fernald
> Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 19 Jul 2002 19:28:34 -0400, "David J. Starr"
> > <dst...@theworld.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Shooting is like baseball in a way. Most folk can learn to do it
> > >fairly well, well enough for hunting or self-defense or whatever. Just
> > >like baseball there are some individuals who get to be exceptionally
> > >good at it, but they have to practice too. The natural shot will,
after
> > >some practice, be able to hit things that ordinary folk miss a lot.
> > > I'd have a little trouble reading a scene where a newbie who has
> > >never held a firearm before, suddenly starts hitting the bulls eye
after
> > >a couple of rounds.
> >
> > noteworthy talent with a bow, and I doubt that the situation is much
> > different with firearms. I wouldn't expect to see her shoot like an
> > expert, but something at the 'Are you sure you've never done this
> > before?!' level is easily believable.
>
> Ah, well, good. That's more than enough for me.
>
Just a note, women are often better 'learners' then men when taking
formalized weapons training, because pride becomes less of a
hindrance.
Some more meatier points...
The keys to being a 'natural' shot are steadiness of hand and the
ability to control one's breathing. Eyesight is often mentioned as
being important but in my experience it is a hindrance. (I shoot
better with my glasses off then I do when I have them on).
It is really only in competition shooting that rings or bullseyes matter.
Practical shooting is better measured by the size of the grouping on
the paper. A grouping is the distance between the various holes on
the target, or a circle that contains all the bullet holes. I have seen
first time shooters, after receiving the barest minimum of instruction
shoot five inch groupings at a hundred yards, which is excellent.
There is also a big difference between the formal and sport sight
styles. Sight styles is basically the means that you use to aim the
weapon. Sport (or hunting) sighting takes into account the windage
and 'fall' of a round. This means that you are often just pointing and
shooting. Some people can do this almost naturally. (I am not one
of them) More formalized styles can be found in military and target
shooting. These have a basic set of steps that you follow to set the
shot up.
The process used in US Marine Corps training goes like this.
1. Sight Alignment - look through the back aperture sight to find
the front post sight.
2. Sight Picture - Focus on the target area, then focus on the front
post sight. The target itself should get blurry and the exact spot
that you are aiming at should appear just over the top of the front
site. The bullseye on a target for example should round the flat
top of the post off.
Breathing adds another wrinkle because each intake of breath
will raise the barrel of the weapon and each exhalation will lower
it. This is why you take half a breath and then hold it before squeezing
the trigger. The intake will raise the muzzel and then reaquiring the
target at the hold phase will steady the aim.
Another note is dominant eye. I am left eye dominant despite the
fact that I am right handed. This means that I can only focus through
sights properly when I am shooting left handed. I had to prove this
to my range coach at Parris Island by showing him several times
that I could not close my left eye independently from my right.
Not at all sure that this helps at all, but I figured I would get it out
there.
> [...]
> >
> > > Target rifles and pistols are basically the same as service and
> > >hunting firearms.
> >
> > I have the strong impression that if we're talking about the ones used
> > in serious high-level competition, that's like saying that NASCAR
> > really does use stock cars. In some cases it may even be more like
> > saying that a Formula 1 racer is just a car.
>
The key difference between service weapons, target weapons, and
sport firearms is really the ammunition. Stabilizers, balance points,
etc. make a difference, but not so much as the 'normalization' of the
bullet components. Service ammunition tends to higher velocities with
flatter flight paths. Target ammunition is made behave in a uniform
manner. Sport ammunition often varies between rounds in the same
package. (Price / quality 'improves' the ammunition)
<snip>
--
Brian F.
FSOBN.
Brian D. Fernald
news:slrnajirid....@raq981.uk2net.com.antipope.org...
> Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
> as <ada...@despammed.com> declared:
>
<snip>
> * ALWAYS make sure the weapon is safed and unloaded except when you're
> actually planning to fire it (but, despite that, treat it as if it's
> loaded -- it's a good habit to be in)
>
An addition, never take anyone else's word that a weapon is
unloaded before you accept it from them. Have either the person who
is handing you the weapon check it with you watching, or check it yourself.
This is best checked by cycling the action, visually checking the chamber,
and watching for a round to eject.
I know at least three people who were injured by guns that they thought
were unloaded when handed to them, when they were in fact loaded.
John F. Eldredge
Hash: SHA1
On 20 Jul 2002 18:05:01 GMT, ero...@aol.com (Erol K. Bayburt) wrote:
>Marilee J. Layman wrote:
>
>>The NRA has a children's safety program called Eddie Eagle, and it
>>apparently doesn't work:
>>
>>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25514-2002Jul18.html
>
>Depends on who you listen to and what your political bias is:
>
>http://www.dailypundit.com/archives/003270.php#003270
>
As it was reported on NPR (which, admittedly, tends towards a liberal
bias), the study showed that none of the gun-safety programs aimed at
children were particularly effective when compared to gun-safety
programs for adults. I would personally guess that a large part of
this is the childhood tendency to believe that "bad things happen to
other people, but not to me"; by the time they reach adulthood, most
people have learned that they, too, can have bad things happen to
them.
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--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power;
not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace."
Woodrow Wilson
Erol K. Bayburt
My take on it is that any gun *might* kill, and if you're not willing to accept
that posibility, then you shouldn't shoot whoever or whatever.
But: There are a large number of guns that won't *reliably* kill, even though
there's always the chance that they might kill. Hunting weapons are
designed/built/intended to reliably kill whatever critter they're meant to
hunt, but most (almost all) of the guns intended for fighting other humans do
not reliably kill. (On the gripping hand, they don't reliably not-kill, either,
which is why shooting someone is such a serious matter, legally and morally.
You can't "shoot just to wound" and if you try then you're being criminally
reckless.)
A shot from a typical 9mm pistol, for example, has roughly an 80% chance of
stopping someone and a 20% chance of killing. If you need to stop someone -
badly enough that you're willing to risk his life to do so - then that pistol
is a pretty good choice.
For hunting, it's simply not good enough. And for an assassination, you either
hope to get lucky or else commit yourself to making a carefully-placed
"finishing shot" once you've brought your victim down.
Erol K. Bayburt
>Speaking as a non-shooter, what I've been told boils down to:
[snip]
>Does this cover it?
That's one way to put it. I'm inclined to think that there are nine-and-sixty
ways to put the gun safety rules - some a longer and more impressive list, and
some shorter and thus easier to absorb and remember.
As an occasional shooter myself, my own version runs:
Rule 0: Don't touch other people's guns without permission.
Rule 1: Always keep the muzzle pointed in a "safe" direction, for the local
maximum value of "safe." Always. In particular, don't point the muzzle toward
another person unless your safety or a third party's safety depends on your
doing so.
Rule 2: Keep your finger off the trigger and out of the trigger-guard until you
are ready to actually pull the trigger.
Rule 3: If you think the gun is unloaded, check the chamber. (If you don't know
how, ask.) The only reason not to check the chamber is if you're positive that
the gun is *loaded*
Rule 4: Other safety rules vary with local circumstances, hunting regulations,
range policies, and laws. Check with your local authority.
Ric Locke
> Ric Locke <warl...@mesh.net> wrote:
[snip]
> > Your character's big-bore military weapon (which is _extremely_
> > science-fictional; military handguns are relatively small)
>
> Really? I was going on what my father used to say. What are the
> high-bore kinds used for, then?
Handguns used by the military are for two purposes: last-ditch
defense, and the equivalent of a sword -- something officers carry to
differentiate themselves from enlisted. That's gradually changing, at
least in U.S. military practice, because we're moving more and more to
"special forces", in which small units are likely to find themselves
in melee; but it's still true of military forces in general.
In either case, light weight and ease of carriage trump most other
considerations. Something that will be used very seldom, or not at
all, is extra weight, and soldiers hate extra weight, unless it's
ammunition for their primary weapons. That means that a military
handgun is relatively small, although the bore may be large, and its
overall power isn't much. About the heaviest handgun ever used by the
military is the M1911A1 pistol, which is 45 caliber, i.e. the bore of
the gun is 0,45 inch; its barrel is very short, and the cartridge
doesn't contain much powder, so its range isn't much over twenty-five
meters, if that. Nowadays most militaries carry 9mm pistols of various
types. Soviet-descended militaries use even smaller bores; the bullets
are faster to make up for the small size. We Americans don't think
much of the idea, but, then, Americans sometimes drive 300KW pickup
trucks weighing two tonnes a kilometer to the store for six cans of
beer.
A soldier's primary weapon is the rifle; troops also carry grenades
(possibly hand-thrown, possibly launched by the rifle, possibly having
a dedicated launcher), or larger weapons such as mortars, machine
guns, and on up. Rifles are sometimes large-bore, but even there
modern practice is to use small, high-speed bullets instead. The
ammunition is smaller and lighter, which allows the soldier to carry
more units of it. The standard American army rifle is the M16, which
is 223 caliber (0,223 inch), and the European/NATO standard round is
7,62mm.
Large-bore handguns exist in some numbers, but they aren't common.
They are the equivalent of the small car with a big engine, popular
among some sorts of automotive enthusiasts: overpowered for what most
people can really control. It takes a strong person to withstand the
recoil of a big-bore handgun, and even for a large, strong person
using them is very tiring and apt to cause injury. There are a few
people who enjoy shooting them, but they're regarded as weird by most
other gun owners.
I'm sorry to be so longwinded, but you sounded as if you were a bit
behind start on this project, and it is something I know a little
about. If you really need to get deeply into detail, I may be able to
refer you to someone -- another American who is genuinely, deeply
knowledgeable about all phases of the subject. If you like, I can ask
him to email you; does the address in the header work (I'm on Google
Groups).
Regards,
Ric
Ric Locke
[snip]
>
> It's great being a writer. You can have a whole competition in a sport
> you know for a fact you'd be dead lousy in. :-)
You might be underestimating yourself. It isn't like ball games, or
even archery -- there are the sights, guides for where the bullet is
going, instead of having to judge by relationship to your body. Rifles
with telescopes are even easier.
I've not met many people who couldn't learn to shoot reasonably well,
and that includes myself; I'm pretty hopeless with throwing things, or
sports like skiing. If you choose a gun that's appropriate for your
size and weight, you can probably learn to shoot. If you can keep from
flinching -- jerking your muscles and closing your eyes -- when the
gun goes off, I can practically guarantee you can learn to do well at
it.
On several occasions I've encountered people who found this remarkable
and gratifying. The reaction in those cases was something like "Wow! I
can _do_ this, and well!" Combined with the cachet of guns as
something dangerous and out of the ordinary, it can be really
self-satisfying. I particularly remember one young woman who came to
the range at the insistence of her boyfriend; she was reluctantly
convinced to try it, got the Aha! experience, and spent the rest of
the afternoon grinning from ear to ear and burning up ammunition with
every gun anyone would loan her, while the boyfriend stood in the
background shuffling his feet, anxious to get out of there... perhaps
something like this happens to your protagonist?
Regards,
Ric
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> In article <1fflzyc.mk0z6q1yik76oN%ada...@despammed.com>,
> ada...@despammed.com (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > And there's no way she can accept a gun
> > (or he give it to her), even for self-defence, if she hasn't had some
> > practice.
>
> Oh, I don't know. If shit comes to shove, I can see him saying "point
> this, pull that" and handing her the gun, simply because the alternative
> is being dead.
This is what happens much later, but with another person and another
gun.
I realize that Checov would not approve, but this particular gun that
passes hands doesn't get fired... It does keep turning up in the story,
though. Which is not to say that I'm using it as a symbol of anything,
but if it keeps surfacing I'm sure people will _attribute_ a meaning to
it.
> Even firing into the air might help her under _some_ circumstances.
> Briefly. Time to leg it, then.
>
> You *may* get away with her being surprisingly competent if you've
> established her earlier on in the book as having very good hand-eye
> coordination in some other field.
I was just thinking about this, but I don't know how to show this - the
other thing she's good at is sailing.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Hmm. . . I'm not sure how the USA got into the discussion.
Because there _are_ lots of people with a gun around in the USA. And
people _think_ about them. They know they're out there - I'm not even
certain that the relative number of firearms per person is much higher
than it is here, but people just don't _think_ about it here. (Which
doesn't make the advice any less good, but does makes it a lot less
likely that people would be able to follow it.)
Where my characters live, now, it would just not _occur_ to them the
other guy can have a gun. It certainly would not occur to _her_. She
only has a gun because she knows somebody that brought it in from
offplanet, and reacts with outrage at finding out that he has. They're
in a remarkable pacific city, people don't go hunting because there
isn't much to shoot down in the vicinity and they tend to go fishing
instead,target shooting is very much a fringe sport. They have no army
and no police force. They have crime but it tends to be passional and
spur-of-the-moment. Guns are extremely exotic objects, belonging in
movies, and very old movies at that. Or so they fondly believe.
I happen to think that both of them underestimate the danger, for
different reasons, but I'm dead sure that if asked about it, they'd
swear up and down that the probability of the other guy being armed is
nil.
The point that I was
> trying to pass on is--that many gun-users belive that shooting at someone,
> in the belief that you won't kill him, is being self-deluded. It's too
> serious an issue to play that sort of games with.
>
> Treat guns as though they were loaded.
> Don't point your gun at something you're not willing to shoot.
> Don't shoot at something you're not willing to kill.
>
> The logic of caution is the same, in all three cases. Of course, you can
> shoot at someone, trying to wound, and not kill, but you'd darned better
> be willing to face the consequences of killing, or you'd better not pick
> up the gun in the first place.
Yes, but these people have been trying to kid themselves about a lot of
things, and this isn't the last.
If it's any consolation, she tries to kill a couple of people later on
and she fails and there is a _lot_ of grief because of that. For her
personally too. A projected trilogy in fact. <g>
> At least, that's how I've interpreted what I've heard.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> A shot from a typical 9mm pistol, for example, has roughly an 80% chance of
> stopping someone and a 20% chance of killing. If you need to stop someone -
> badly enough that you're willing to risk his life to do so - then that pistol
> is a pretty good choice.
A 9mm is what's being used in this case, my father having said much the
same thing to me about my grandfather's 9mm Beretta (IIRC) long ago.
(My grandfather apparently came back from the war with a 9mm Beretta and
a box of ammunition. Years later we found out that the box held .22
rounds. We _hope_ they came together after the war but knowing my
grandfather, he very well may have gone through all the Great War with
the wrong ammunition. Reportedly he never fired a shot with it, though
he did get to wave it in the air encouragingly and lead a charge out of
a trench.)
Bear in mind that these characters are not _me_, ok? One of them is not
above lying to manipulate other people, and he wouldn't even realize it
was lying, and while he's careful about weapons he has become a little
cavalier about killing; and the other is a very scared seventeen year
old from a culture that knows _nothing_ about weapons, and she trusts
the other guy. He is having a very hard time to get her to buy the
concept that she should defend herself at all, and may figure that
getting her to shoot at all is better than nothing. This may be a very
foolish thing, of course.
Neil Barnes
news:eed75299.02072...@posting.google.com:
> Neil Barnes <nailed_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> Well, I'm not a gun bunny - but the traditional cliche is:
>> 'Wow, you got the bull, first time. Must have been a lucky
>> shot, see, all the rest missed.'
>> 'No, they went down the same hole...'
>
> That's the one where Mark Twain is taking the piss out of
> James Fenimore Cooper?
>
<grin> Dunno where it came from - but JFC deserved everything MT
threw at him :)
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> I've not met many people who couldn't learn to shoot reasonably well,
> and that includes myself; I'm pretty hopeless with throwing things, or
> sports like skiing. If you choose a gun that's appropriate for your
> size and weight, you can probably learn to shoot. If you can keep from
> flinching -- jerking your muscles and closing your eyes -- when the
> gun goes off, I can practically guarantee you can learn to do well at
> it.
Which makes sense: the gun wouldn't be such a popular object if it was
difficult to use and few people could do it well, after all.
> On several occasions I've encountered people who found this remarkable
> and gratifying. The reaction in those cases was something like "Wow! I
> can _do_ this, and well!" Combined with the cachet of guns as
> something dangerous and out of the ordinary, it can be really
> self-satisfying. I particularly remember one young woman who came to
> the range at the insistence of her boyfriend; she was reluctantly
> convinced to try it, got the Aha! experience, and spent the rest of
> the afternoon grinning from ear to ear and burning up ammunition with
> every gun anyone would loan her, while the boyfriend stood in the
> background shuffling his feet, anxious to get out of there... perhaps
> something like this happens to your protagonist?
Yes, exactly. <g>
And I've just noted down last night that my ex-soldier realizes that the
other gun club people, most of them delightful old men from a time when
target shooting was a lot more fashionable sport in town, get a much
bigger kick out of doing it because they see some glamour in the danger
and exotism part. He doesn't: he's there only because he has to
practice, and tends to view anything below artillery level as not worth
his consideration anyway, but comes to appreciate the ambience, and the
social gatherings and lunches and tall tales of past competitions of the
others. He even gets to improve his performance a little.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
>
> I'm sorry to be so longwinded, but you sounded as if you were a bit
> behind start on this project, and it is something I know a little
> about. If you really need to get deeply into detail, I may be able to
> refer you to someone -- another American who is genuinely, deeply
> knowledgeable about all phases of the subject. If you like, I can ask
> him to email you; does the address in the header work (I'm on Google
> Groups).
No, this is very much the information I needed - some things I sort of
knew but it's nice to have it set out.
One thing that I've never been able to understand is the order of the
calibers. For me, a 9mm is a large bore - but then as I said, my only
contact with weapons is my father's target pistol and it was a .22. My
father seemed to regard my grandfather's 9mm (which he brough back from
the army) as a big gun.
Neil Barnes
news:r1cjju81valph4k5k...@4ax.com:
> On Sat, 20 Jul 2002 08:51:01 -0400, in message
> <slrnajin5l....@hunding.localdomain>
> Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> excited the ether to say:
>
>>Rifles go out to _1100_ meters, for target competition.
>
> Further than that, even. One mile is not unheard of.
>
Hmm, one of the James Bond books - damned if I can remember which -
has the man taking a refresher course at Bisley, shooting at half a
mile to a mile.
Neil Barnes
news:1ffnark.owh5581ath7loN%ada...@despammed.com:
> David M. Palmer <dmpa...@email.com> wrote:
>
>> Or maybe she is driven to preternatural abilities by a
>> pathological hatred of paper targets ('one killed my
>> father').
>
> I may go for this, yes yes... <g>
>
'S easy: he worked in a paper target factory, and a palette full
fell on his head in a bizarre ladder-involving accident. No
problem :)
Neil
Brian M. Scott
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
[...]
>Bear in mind that these characters are not _me_, ok? One of them is not
>above lying to manipulate other people, and he wouldn't even realize it
>was lying, and while he's careful about weapons he has become a little
>cavalier about killing; and the other is a very scared seventeen year
>old from a culture that knows _nothing_ about weapons, and she trusts
>the other guy. He is having a very hard time to get her to buy the
>concept that she should defend herself at all, and may figure that
>getting her to shoot at all is better than nothing. This may be a very
>foolish thing, of course.
You know, it occurs to me that you may have to do more work to
convince the reader that she's capable of shooting with intent to kill
than to convince him that she's naturally a good shot.
Brian
Slow
> Slow <slow...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> > I used the standard battle sight, which is set for 200 yds, and stayed
> > with it (rather than the leaf sight)
>
> What are battle and leaf sight? (Curiosity, curiosity!)
The battle sight on a Lee Enfield is a sturdy, low, aperture (peep)
sight that is unlikely to catch on anything and break off during the
rigors of battle (the rifle had a bayonet for hand-to-hand combat); it
is accurate to around 200 yds. For shooting beyond that distance, one
can flip up the more delicate leaf sight, which has a moveable
aperture bar that can be set (along calibrated markings) for shooting
at the required distance. This rifle is capable and deadly at 1000 yds
in the hands of a skilled shooter.
Interesting that you zeroed in on the sights. When the Brits used the
first models of the Lee Enfield in the Boer War, it was found, to
their horror, that the sights were off (due to a manufacturing error),
thus saving many Boer butts.
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > In article <1fflzyc.mk0z6q1yik76oN%ada...@despammed.com>,
> > ada...@despammed.com (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > And there's no way she can accept a gun
> > > (or he give it to her), even for self-defence, if she hasn't had
> > > some
> > > practice.
> >
> > Oh, I don't know. If shit comes to shove, I can see him saying "point
> > this, pull that" and handing her the gun, simply because the
> > alternative
> > is being dead.
>
> This is what happens much later, but with another person and another
> gun.
Fair enough.
>
> I realize that Checov would not approve, but this particular gun that
> passes hands doesn't get fired... It does keep turning up in the story,
> though. Which is not to say that I'm using it as a symbol of anything,
> but if it keeps surfacing I'm sure people will _attribute_ a meaning to
> it.
It'll accrete meaning to itself, I guess. I'm never quite sure about this
-- symbol and theme are things I tend to do most of "underground" until
the last pass across the story, and then I see if the things I had a feel
about need bringing into sharper focus, or whether I can leave them alone.
As regards the not-firing, you can always have a character comment on this
towards the wrap-up of the story -- that'll defuse the lingering audience
expectation. I think quite often people don't mind their expectations
being derailed so long as it's acknowledged in some way. It's the "dumb
author didn't even spot that themselves" feeling that sparks resentment.
>
> > Even firing into the air might help her under _some_ circumstances.
> > Briefly. Time to leg it, then.
> >
> > You *may* get away with her being surprisingly competent if you've
> > established her earlier on in the book as having very good hand-eye
> > coordination in some other field.
>
> I was just thinking about this, but I don't know how to show this - the
> other thing she's good at is sailing.
That would be okay -- it's like dancing, it's an exercise of whole-body
coordination. If I saw her moving flawlessly across the deck when the
sea's being sloshy, and being able to shove bits of equipment precisely
where they should be*, then I'd believe that as foreshadowing of
other skills.
Mary
* So, yeah, *all* I know about sailing is that boats are very small, the
sea is very large -- and deep -- and on the whole I would prefer to look
at both from the land. :)
And damned if I don't have a short sailing trip to research, myself...
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> > I was just thinking about this, but I don't know how to show this - the
> > other thing she's good at is sailing.
>
> That would be okay -- it's like dancing, it's an exercise of whole-body
> coordination. If I saw her moving flawlessly across the deck when the
> sea's being sloshy, and being able to shove bits of equipment precisely
> where they should be*, then I'd believe that as foreshadowing of
> other skills.
>
> Mary
>
> * So, yeah, *all* I know about sailing is that boats are very small, the
> sea is very large -- and deep -- and on the whole I would prefer to look
> at both from the land. :)
>
> And damned if I don't have a short sailing trip to research, myself...
I think she is presented throughout as physically competent: graceful,
smooth, quick, and so on. And she sails very small boats, the kind that
you sail single-handedly - that is, with both hands, both feet, an
occasional knee, and firmly resisting the idea of using your teeth too.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
Yes; that's what all the business with the guns is working up to. She
does, in the end, but were it not for the fact that she had been playing
around with target practice guns, and that the ex-soldier had talked her
into at least keeping one around and _considering_ shooting with it, I
don't think she would have, even finding herself as she did under fire.
That's all this plot strand is about, really, and I hope I can pull it
off, but the jury's still out with that - it's not written down yet.
Richard Kennaway
> Richard Kennaway <ar...@dircon.co.uk> wrote:
> > Except for one old-timer who just says, "Let's see the other five."
> oooh, yes, can I steal it?
If you like.
-- Richard Kennaway
Adrian O`Thomas
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>In article <3D38A0A1...@theworld.com>, dst...@theworld.com (David J.
>Starr) wrote:
>
>> I'd have a little trouble reading a scene where a newbie who has
>> never held a firearm before, suddenly starts hitting the bulls eye after
>> a couple of rounds.
>
><cough>
>
>Except that real life is evidently more surprising than you take it to be,
>so if I were writing that scene, I'd have to find some way to make that
>plausible to you -- other than "it happened to me", which is rarely if
>ever useful in fiction...
>
>Not immediately sure how I _would_ do it, in fact. Persuading people of
>something in a story when they know nothing is a lot easier than
>persuading them when they know something that isn't invariably the case.
How's this:
Rik lives and breathes microtechnology. Once you find his shop and are
able to gain access to it and to the trust of the wonder lad himself,
a new world opens. Sure, we've all heard of him; heard the stories
about ordinary looking devices that are half-machine, half-biological;
wondered about it all; dismissed it all as urban myth in this city of
myths and liars.
But Rik is real and his weapons are real. I know. Didn't you see the
visuals of the GBCE Terabyte Terrific the city awarded me last week?
All for shooting the nose and ears off that horrible statue of Damian,
spy from the North, when I'd never even held a laser pistol before,
let alone aim and fire one. Now I'm the owner of the machine Gates
Bill himself must have envisioned when he created Computer Everlasting
so many years ago, and all because I held a weapon that responded,
swirled its tiny inertial guidance system to adjust its position in my
loosely held grip, in response to my thoughts. A child could have won
that competition, I tell you, but you probably don't believe my story
anyway.
Adrian
Adrian O`Thomas
wrote:
>Neil Barnes <nailed_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<ahb550$rg8uj$2...@ID-123172.news.dfncis.de>...
>> ada...@despammed.com (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote in
>> news:1ffl9c8.3eoco5ktg6rmN%ada...@despammed.com:
>>
>> > OK, I need the gun bunnies here.
>> >
>> > I need to know some things about shooting as a sport. Mainly,
>> > I'm thinking about a scene in which one character who's doing
>> > target practice accidentally finds out that another character
>> > is a really outstanding sharpshooter. Is it true that it's
>> > largely a natural talent? And would people recognize it
>> > quickly? And how?
>>
>> Well, I'm not a gun bunny - but the traditional cliche is:
>> 'Wow, you got the bull, first time. Must have been a lucky shot,
>> see, all the rest missed.'
>> 'No, they went down the same hole...'
>
>That's the one where Mark Twain is taking the piss out of James Fenimore Cooper?
An ordinary man should have no trouble doing that; for Mark it must
have been like jumping over a frog.
Adrian
Adrian O`Thomas
(Elizabeth Shack) wrote:
>On Fri, 19 Jul 2002 22:05:21 +0200, ada...@despammed.com (Anna
>Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>
>>Right now, the scene is about character A practicing and not being very
>>happy with himself; character B arrives and onlooker says that even
>>_she_ can probably do better; which she does. Character A and onlooker
>>(range minder, I think) look at her in disbelief, look at each other,
>>and immediately take her to Different Range to see how really good she
>>is, and then proceeding to try to get her to start competing for the
>>local team.
>
>You'd have to work pretty hard to make me believe that. I know
>absolutely nothing about guns. But for anything requiring lots of
>practice it'd be tough for me to believe that someone who'd never done
>it before was really good. Especially if it was convenient for the
>plot.
Wouldn't that all depend on the weapon? If someone gave me ten cruise
missiles, along with the coordinates of your house, I could hit it
dead centre nine times out of ten, statistics have shown. And that
wouldn't even be science fiction, in which I could do far better and,
perhaps, even be believable. I worked for the cruise missle-equipped
Navy, but the Army has some big guns which can do similar things.
Adrian
Charlie Allery
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote in message
<1ffo5xb.1w52ddylf53lsN%ada...@despammed.com>...
>I think she is presented throughout as physically competent: graceful,
>smooth, quick, and so on. And she sails very small boats, the kind that
>you sail single-handedly - that is, with both hands, both feet, an
>occasional knee, and firmly resisting the idea of using your teeth too.
>
Teeth can come in useful when you don't have jamcleats ... :-) But I don't
make a habit of it.
Charlie
Elizabeth Shack
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>Just a quick question, would it be difficult for you to believe that
>someone could wallop a tennis ball over the net first time and wipe out
>the opposition? Or hit a six in cricket? That is: is it something about
>guns, or something about hand-eye coordination, that makes it hard to
>credit?
I think the practice, the hand-eye coordination, not the gun itself.
I'd have an easier time believing that someone was naturally good at
tennis, though I wouldn't believe they could pick up a racket for the
first time and beat the instructor. But maybe shooting is easier than
I think it is. :) I've never held a gun; I don't know how easy it is
to tell where you're aiming.
>I'm leaving aside the 'convenient for the plot' part, for the moment;
>thinking about it more, it would be reasonably easy to make the person
>capable in a couple of other cognate areas earlier on, so that, even if
>_she_ was surprised by how good she was, the reader would be thinking "ah,
>yes, but now I see it was inevitable that she would be". It's just that
>planting the early evidence wants to be done a bit deviously.
If she was good at other hand-eye coordination things, and not
startled by sudden loud noises, it'd be less of a stretch of my
imagination.
--
Elizabeth Shack eas...@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~eashack/life.html
"You don't have anything except books." -- a friend who helped me move
Erol K. Bayburt
>Erol K. Bayburt <ero...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> A shot from a typical 9mm pistol, for example, has roughly an 80% chance of
>> stopping someone and a 20% chance of killing. If you need to stop someone -
>> badly enough that you're willing to risk his life to do so - then that
>pistol
>> is a pretty good choice.
>
>A 9mm is what's being used in this case, my father having said much the
>same thing to me about my grandfather's 9mm Beretta (IIRC) long ago.
Entirely reasonable. It's just as you pointed out earlier, that there are a
*lot* of guns and gun owners in the US - enough that you get arguments over the
relative merits of 9mm vs .45 vs revolvers. These resemble the "holy wars"
between PC, Mac, and Linux users, more than anything else.
>(My grandfather apparently came back from the war with a 9mm Beretta and
>a box of ammunition. Years later we found out that the box held .22
>rounds. We _hope_ they came together after the war but knowing my
>grandfather, he very well may have gone through all the Great War with
>the wrong ammunition.
Um, I don't think you could *load* a 9mm Beretta with .22 rounds. I don't have
a Beretta myself but <goes and checks> with the 9mm pistol magazines I do have,
.22 rounds can't be made to stay in - the magazine spring will pop them right
out. So if your grandfather went through the Great War with the wrong
ammunition, then he went through with an unloaded pistol. (Or he could have
loaded it with the right ammunition, and at the same time picked up an extra
box of the wrong ammunition for (unused) extras.)
>Reportedly he never fired a shot with it, though
>he did get to wave it in the air encouragingly and lead a charge out of
>a trench.)
>
>Bear in mind that these characters are not _me_, ok? One of them is not
>above lying to manipulate other people, and he wouldn't even realize it
>was lying, and while he's careful about weapons he has become a little
>cavalier about killing; and the other is a very scared seventeen year
>old from a culture that knows _nothing_ about weapons, and she trusts
>the other guy. He is having a very hard time to get her to buy the
>concept that she should defend herself at all, and may figure that
>getting her to shoot at all is better than nothing. This may be a very
>foolish thing, of course.
>
OK. If you start your beginner with a .22, then the guy might well be the sort
who disparages .22s as "mouse guns" or "cockroach killers" - not a reliable
stopper for *real* self-defense. He'll still insist on following the safety
rules, but more as a matter of learning good habits, not scaring the other
range members and avoiding the chance of a freak accident.
It's common, and a really good idea, to start beginners shooting with a .22, so
it would be entirely believable in your story. Also, depending on your
characters and the needs of your story, then your guy might well give your
beginner a 9mm to try next, once she shows herself to be "very good for a
beginner" with the .22. Equally plausable would be for him to *avoid* having
her shoot anything other than a .22, if he's worried about scaring her off from
shooting.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Um, I don't think you could *load* a 9mm Beretta with .22 rounds. I don't
> have a Beretta myself but <goes and checks> with the 9mm pistol magazines
> I do have, .22 rounds can't be made to stay in - the magazine spring will
> pop them right out.
Just what my father said. Pheeeeew - plink, to use his words. <g>
So if your grandfather went through the Great War with the wrong
> ammunition, then he went through with an unloaded pistol. (Or he could have
> loaded it with the right ammunition, and at the same time picked up an extra
> box of the wrong ammunition for (unused) extras.)
Yes, we figured one or the other. We only found this out after he was
dead, so he was not around to be asked. I wouldn't rule out the
unloaded gun option: as somebody (perhaps you) said, an officer's gun is
more decoration than anything else. Though in the first World War, it
was also used to shoot your own men to encourage them to get out of the
trench, they tell me. I can't see my grandfather doing _that_.
>
> >Reportedly he never fired a shot with it, though
> >he did get to wave it in the air encouragingly and lead a charge out of
> >a trench.)
> >
> >Bear in mind that these characters are not _me_, ok? One of them is not
> >above lying to manipulate other people, and he wouldn't even realize it
> >was lying, and while he's careful about weapons he has become a little
> >cavalier about killing; and the other is a very scared seventeen year
> >old from a culture that knows _nothing_ about weapons, and she trusts
> >the other guy. He is having a very hard time to get her to buy the
> >concept that she should defend herself at all, and may figure that
> >getting her to shoot at all is better than nothing. This may be a very
> >foolish thing, of course.
> >
>
> OK. If you start your beginner with a .22, then the guy might well be the sort
> who disparages .22s as "mouse guns" or "cockroach killers" - not a reliable
> stopper for *real* self-defense. He'll still insist on following the safety
> rules, but more as a matter of learning good habits, not scaring the other
> range members and avoiding the chance of a freak accident.
Oh, it's _me_, the wily writer, that want to acquaint her with the idea,
he introduces her to target practice perfectly innocently, the problems
that lead him to give her the 9mm come much later.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
Oh yeah. Tell me about it. My mum just lost a finger on the boat because
of one of those things you're not supposed to make a habit of... she
palced a hand between the hull and a mooring line. Not serious if
you're on a dinghy, but on a 41 feet boat...
Ivana Marinkovic
> 'Wow, you got the bull, first time. Must have been a lucky shot,
> see, all the rest missed.'
> 'No, they went down the same hole...'
Each time before competition you are allowed to fire 5 (if I remember well,
it's been a long time) bullets to allow for the corrections. You set your
sights acording to where those 5 went, and it is unlikely that they will hit
the bull's eye at first. Also, only someone with a bit of experience will
know how to set the sights. And another detail: you would blacken the sights
with a match flame.
This is more plausible:
> 'Wow, you got a 2, first time. Must have been a lucky shot,
> see, all the rest missed.'
> 'No, they went down the same hole...'
In competition, after each shot somebody has to glue a small piece of paper
over the hole to ensure against this (done behind a wall) - that's how I
used to earn money when I was a teenager.
Ivana
Ivana Marinkovic
> > uh, real weapons?
Some of the free choice rifles in the sixties were so beatiful, even free
choice air guns. Especially free air guns. Hand carved wooden parts, and
mechanisms a bit more complex than standard (like tiny ball bearings that
one does not know where to put back). Even "standard" rifles looked good.
What I see now on rare occasions there's a TV coverage or something (not
exactly a spectator sport) does not look so exciting any more. Strangely
enough, none of the gun collectors that I know is interested in any of
those.
> > And I'm planning on him reassuring character B that the gun they're
> > trying to get her to use isn't, er, a real weapon. This doesn't has to
> > be _totally_ true. He has been known to bend the truth a little.
Small calibre weapon is the choice of sharpshooters. I remember in one of
Raymond Chandler novels Marlowe identifies the murderer as a hired assassin
through that.
A beginner in the sport will start with lighter waepons to get used to the
recoil first. The advantages of the large calibre rifle is that it carries
further. The advantage of large calibre pistol (handgun) is that one does
not have to take aim.
Ivana
Brian M. Scott
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>> On Sun, 21 Jul 2002 09:24:15 +0200, ada...@despammed.com (Anna
>> Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>> [...]
>> >Bear in mind that these characters are not _me_, ok? One of them is not
>> >above lying to manipulate other people, and he wouldn't even realize it
>> >was lying, and while he's careful about weapons he has become a little
>> >cavalier about killing; and the other is a very scared seventeen year
>> >old from a culture that knows _nothing_ about weapons, and she trusts
>> >the other guy. He is having a very hard time to get her to buy the
>> >concept that she should defend herself at all, and may figure that
>> >getting her to shoot at all is better than nothing. This may be a very
>> >foolish thing, of course.
>> You know, it occurs to me that you may have to do more work to
>> convince the reader that she's capable of shooting with intent to kill
>> than to convince him that she's naturally a good shot.
>Yes; that's what all the business with the guns is working up to. She
>does, in the end, but were it not for the fact that she had been playing
>around with target practice guns, and that the ex-soldier had talked her
>into at least keeping one around and _considering_ shooting with it, I
>don't think she would have, even finding herself as she did under fire.
>That's all this plot strand is about, really, and I hope I can pull it
>off, but the jury's still out with that - it's not written down yet.
Something to bear in mind: I've read in several places that a World
War II study of U.S. infantrymen showed that only 15-20% could
actually bring themselves to fire at an exposed enemy soldier. In
Vietnam it was about 90%, but that was thanks to improved training
techniques.
Brian
Berry Kercheval
> An addition, never take anyone else's word that a weapon is
> unloaded before you accept it from them. Have either the person who
> is handing you the weapon check it with you watching, or check it yourself.
I *ALWAYS* check it myself, EVEN IF I have just watched the other person
check it. *ALWAYS* is an easier rule to remember than "always, unless
this and that."
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
I've heard this, yes. I've also heard that this lead to more or less the
kind of training depicted so vividly in _Full Metal Jacket_, but I've
also heard it said that this is bullshit. (This is, however,the way to
make a torturer out of a normal person according to a lot of first-hand
accounts I've read.)
I should also go fish out "An intimate history of killing" from the
to-be-read pile and give it a read.
's kinda hard when Curse of Chalion beckons, though... <G>
Brian Pickrell
>
> Where my characters live, now, it would just not _occur_ to them the
> other guy can have a gun. It certainly would not occur to _her_. She
> only has a gun because she knows somebody that brought it in from
> offplanet, and reacts with outrage at finding out that he has.
You've got two logical holes here. First, if this is an absolutely
gun-free culture, then why are there shooting ranges and competition
teams? Second, you say she's outraged at the idea of even holding a
gun until he talks her into it--but the very first time he meets her
she's already got a gun and is using it.
Another comment. If you want to portray her as being from a culture
that's virtually never heard of guns, that's a very different thing
than being from a culture where they know all about guns and are
opposed to them. Perhaps guns are so obsolete on her planet that the
idea of real-life violence doesn't even occur to people when they
think of them--much as our attitude toward about suits of armor is
today.
At that level of ignorance, it's possible she's never even heard of
the concepts of target shooting, target practice, or gun safety.
jhetley
"David Bilek" <dbi...@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:biljju8cmnr9na44k...@4ax.com...
> Doug Wickstrom <nims...@attbi.com> wrote:
>
> >On Sat, 20 Jul 2002 08:51:01 -0400, in message
> ><slrnajin5l....@hunding.localdomain>
> > Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> excited the ether to say:
> >
> >>Rifles go out to _1100_ meters, for target competition.
> >
> >Further than that, even. One mile is not unheard of.
>
>
> What's the longest confirmed kill (or wound, I guess) made by a
> sniper? I know the data for non-Western countries is probably shaky
> at best, so even the longest shot by a member of the US military
> works.
>
> -David
US snipers in 'Nam scored kills at well over a mile, using .50 cal. sniper
rifles. I've fogged on the actual figures, though.
--
Jim
THE SUMMER COUNTRY, by James A. Hetley: a novel of dark contemporary
fantasy
Coming in October 2002 from Ace Science Fiction & Fantasy
-----= Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News =-----
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Doug Wickstrom
<biljju8cmnr9na44k...@4ax.com>
David Bilek <dbi...@attbi.com> excited the ether to say:
>Doug Wickstrom <nims...@attbi.com> wrote:
>
>>On Sat, 20 Jul 2002 08:51:01 -0400, in message
>><slrnajin5l....@hunding.localdomain>
>> Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> excited the ether to say:
>>
>>>Rifles go out to _1100_ meters, for target competition.
>>
>>Further than that, even. One mile is not unheard of.
>
>Somebody here must know the answer to this one...
>
>What's the longest confirmed kill (or wound, I guess) made by a
>sniper? I know the data for non-Western countries is probably shaky
>at best, so even the longest shot by a member of the US military
>works.
My father once knocked a German artillery spotter off a utility
pole at better than two miles -- he used a 37mm anti-tank gun.
Don't know if he hit the spotter or the pole. It didn't matter.
--
Doug Wickstrom <nims...@attbi.com>
"Pardon me while I have a strange interlude." --Groucho Marx
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> You've got two logical holes here. First, if this is an absolutely
> gun-free culture, then why are there shooting ranges and competition
> teams?
It's not a completely gun-free culture. Besides, there are people doing
archery as sport, but we are hardly a culture where bows are used in
combat or self-defense, right?
> Second, you say she's outraged at the idea of even holding a
> gun until he talks her into it--but the very first time he meets her
> she's already got a gun and is using it.
No, absolutely not. She ends up at the range where _he_ is practicing
for other reasons entirely (which I will make up <g>). This is something
like chapter three or four, they know each other well. She would never
hear of this firing range or consider taking up shooting for fun if it
weren't for him.
> Another comment. If you want to portray her as being from a culture
> that's virtually never heard of guns, that's a very different thing
> than being from a culture where they know all about guns and are
> opposed to them. Perhaps guns are so obsolete on her planet that the
> idea of real-life violence doesn't even occur to people when they
> think of them--much as our attitude toward about suits of armor is
> today.
Yes, I'd have to think about it.
It's a very low-crime culture, but I don't think it's completely
gun-free. I think both of them are underestimating the level of
violence, and potential violence, in this society. It's not much but it
is there. I suspect there are people who are nervous about invasion, for
example - with good reason, because they _do_ get invaded - and would
try at least to train for the eventuality and stock weapons. It's
complicated. After all, you don't get people who are sanguine about
violence when there isn't any around.
But even in places where guns _are_ around (hell, my father had one) one
can go through life without seeing them, or thinking about them, and
feel downright terrified when faced with one. And Italy is a far more
violent society than the one she lives in.
> At that level of ignorance, it's possible she's never even heard of
> the concepts of target shooting, target practice, or gun safety.
Or not thought much about them.
Doug Wickstrom
<slrnajlu9e....@hunding.localdomain>
Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> excited the ether to say:
>In <r1cjju81valph4k5k...@4ax.com>,
> Doug Wickstrom <nims...@attbi.com> onsendan:
>> On Sat, 20 Jul 2002 08:51:01 -0400, in message
>><slrnajin5l....@hunding.localdomain>
>> Graydon <gra...@dsl.ca> excited the ether to say:
>>>Rifles go out to _1100_ meters, for target competition.
>>
>> Further than that, even. One mile is not unheard of.
>
>1100 is the furthest I knew of, for iron sights.
Who said anything about iron sights?
Doug Wickstrom
<1ffowiq.3y67401d4qa6mN%ada...@despammed.com>
ada...@despammed.com (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) excited the ether
to say:
>Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
>
>> Something to bear in mind: I've read in several places that a World
>> War II study of U.S. infantrymen showed that only 15-20% could
>> actually bring themselves to fire at an exposed enemy soldier. In
>> Vietnam it was about 90%, but that was thanks to improved training
>> techniques.
>
>I've heard this, yes. I've also heard that this lead to more or less the
>kind of training depicted so vividly in _Full Metal Jacket_, but I've
>also heard it said that this is bullshit. (This is, however,the way to
>make a torturer out of a normal person according to a lot of first-hand
>accounts I've read.)
FMJ, it must be remembered, is fiction.
Ric Locke
[snip]
>
> One thing that I've never been able to understand is the order of the
> calibers. For me, a 9mm is a large bore - but then as I said, my only
> contact with weapons is my father's target pistol and it was a .22. My
> father seemed to regard my grandfather's 9mm (which he brough back from
> the army) as a big gun.
There are three important variables: the size of the bore, which is
about the same as the bullet diameter; the amount of powder used to
propel it; and the length of the barrel. They interact.
For handguns, the amount of powder usable is relatively low; if you
have too much powder, and therefore too much power, the reaction from
firing the gun ("kick") is too great, and the gun is too difficult to
use. Handguns also have relatively short barrels, and the powder takes
a finite time to burn. The designer's objective, other factors aside,
is to make the barrel long enough that the powder has just finished
burning when the bullet leaves the barrel; that couples the maximum
energy to the bullet. But the overall objective is to couple max
energy to the bullet, so as to do the most damage possible to the
target within the other constraints.
In U.S. usage, the "caliber" is usually the bore diameter in inches,
with an understood decimal point before it. Converting, a 22 is 0,22
inches or about 5,62 mm; the bullet is light and small, and since the
powder charge is also small and the barrel short, the bullet has
little energy. Next up would be 30 and 32; 7,62 and 8,1 mm,
respectively. The bullets are a little heavier and the powder charge
is larger; the barrel length is about the same, but this is still a
"small" gun [American slang for gun this size is "lady's gun" or
"mouse gun" depending on cultural background]. A 9 mm is about 0,35
inch, not too different from the 32, so it's still a "small" gun. Up
to and including 9 mm, the physical size of the gun remains handy for
carriage, and the "kick" stays low enough that most people can handle
it, but as another poster says, there remains a fairly high likelihood
of it not doing the job, especially if the person being shot is robust
and strong.
The 38, 9.65 mm, is not quite a "big" gun; it's sort of intermediate,
and used to be very popular, especially with police, for that very
reason. 9 mm handguns might also be considered intermediate in size.
At roughly 10 mm or 0,397 inch -- what we call "40 caliber", ignoring
the third decimal place -- guns start being considered "big". The most
famous "big" gun is the "Colt 45", a 45 caliber (11,4 mm) automatic
pistol properly called the "M1911A1" after its original military
specification. This gun was invented during the Phillipine
Insurrection, in which it was noted that the Moros would tie vines
around their limbs to deliberately induce gangrene and therefore loss
of sensation. Such a person was so numb in the limbs, and in so much
pain otherwise, that he wouldn't react to the pain of a wound; the
only way to stop him was to knock him down, and for that a big bullet
was needed. Anything larger than a 45 is definitely a "big" gun. A 50
caliber (12,7 mm) handgun is large indeed, and takes a strong person
to control it. Larger ones exist, but primarily as brag generators.
Rifles have a different set of constraints. The powder charge is much
larger, the barrel is longer, and they aren't held in the hand, so the
kick is more controllable. The most common rifle is the 30 caliber,
also known as "308" or by its metric size, 7.62; next most is probably
the M16, which is "223" or 5.66 mm. A 9 mm rifle would indeed be a
"big" gun, and anything larger would be used for very specialized
things. One of those specialized things is extremely long range, and
for that it's common to use 50 caliber, truly a big rifle.
If your A has a "big" handgun, and it's a military or military-like
setting, it would probably be a 45. The basic M1911A1 Colt has been
copied, and developed, by almost every firearms manufacturer, and is
available in every imaginable quality range, from poorly-stamped
knockoffs to high-precision, handmade versions. A military man who
regards pistols as something of an excrescence would probably have
either a 45 or a 9 mm, but he wouldn't refer to the latter as "big".
Regards,
Ric
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
rogue...@aol.comdiespam (Elisa) wrote:
> Anna Feruglio Dal Dan writes:
>
> >> So I need her to start becoming accustomed to them. Also I think he
> talks her into taking the gun by reminding her that she can probably,
> since she has become good enough in the meanwhile, shoot not to kill.
>
> Well, I haven't been around a lot of gun-oriented talk, but I think
> that part
> of the Standard Lecture, mentioned earlier, is:
>
> Don't ever shoot at a living creature, unless you're willing to kill
> it.
>
> So, in my limited experience, a person who's involved with guns isn't
> going to give a reassuring talk to someone--that 'you can shoot not to
> kill.'
>
> People that know more about guns might be able to set me straight,
> though.
The reassuring talk would be more along the lines of "if you keep to
<rules for sensible shooting> you won't kill anyone with it
_accidentally"._
This is reassuring, since there's a large number of people who could
potentially shoot well, did they not have the expectation the gun was
going to jump out of their hands, bite them, and lay waste to the
surrounding neighbourhood. I don't sneer at this: I used to feel exactly
the same way about power tools.
In both cases, sensible instruction in precisely how the piece of
machinery works, how you make it do ABC, and how you make sure it doesn't
do XYZ, goes a long way towards making the person safe and confident.
I've enjoyed the shooting I've done, although I'm definitely not willing
to kill a living creature unless under the most exceptional circumstances.
Sometimes it _is_ possible to regard it as "fun thing go FOOM!" and enjoy
potting paper targets, divorcing that from the idea of its primary
purpose.
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
(Brian M. Scott) wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Jul 2002 09:24:15 +0200, ada...@despammed.com (Anna
> Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >Bear in mind that these characters are not _me_, ok? One of them is not
> >above lying to manipulate other people, and he wouldn't even realize it
> >was lying, and while he's careful about weapons he has become a little
> >cavalier about killing; and the other is a very scared seventeen year
> >old from a culture that knows _nothing_ about weapons, and she trusts
> >the other guy. He is having a very hard time to get her to buy the
> >concept that she should defend herself at all, and may figure that
> >getting her to shoot at all is better than nothing. This may be a very
> >foolish thing, of course.
>
> You know, it occurs to me that you may have to do more work to
> convince the reader that she's capable of shooting with intent to kill
> than to convince him that she's naturally a good shot.
I could be brought to believe she'd either shoot in a complete panic, in
the air, or that she'd flip and go suddenly calm and shoot well, and then
fall apart afterwards when she has to face what exercising her skill has
got her.
Mary
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
> Erol K. Bayburt <ero...@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > A shot from a typical 9mm pistol, for example, has roughly an 80%
> > chance of
> > stopping someone and a 20% chance of killing. If you need to stop
> > someone -
> > badly enough that you're willing to risk his life to do so - then
> > that pistol
> > is a pretty good choice.
>
> A 9mm is what's being used in this case, my father having said much the
> same thing to me about my grandfather's 9mm Beretta (IIRC) long ago.
> (My grandfather apparently came back from the war with a 9mm Beretta and
> a box of ammunition. Years later we found out that the box held .22
> rounds. We _hope_ they came together after the war but knowing my
> grandfather, he very well may have gone through all the Great War with
> the wrong ammunition. Reportedly he never fired a shot with it, though
> he did get to wave it in the air encouragingly and lead a charge out of
> a trench.)
>
> Bear in mind that these characters are not _me_, ok? One of them is not
> above lying to manipulate other people, and he wouldn't even realize it
> was lying, and while he's careful about weapons he has become a little
> cavalier about killing; and the other is a very scared seventeen year
> old from a culture that knows _nothing_ about weapons, and she trusts
> the other guy. He is having a very hard time to get her to buy the
> concept that she should defend herself at all, and may figure that
> getting her to shoot at all is better than nothing. This may be a very
> foolish thing, of course.
Of course it is -- she might shoot _him._
If I was him, I wouldn't want a shit-scared 17 year old with no knowledge
of weapons waving a gun around behind me (in front of me, or anywhere near
me!) I'd take care to give her a good basic instruction in guns,
especially the "here's how NOT to kill me by accident" stuff.
Mary
Ric Locke
[snip]
>
> And I've just noted down last night that my ex-soldier realizes that the
> other gun club people, most of them delightful old men from a time when
> target shooting was a lot more fashionable sport in town, get a much
> bigger kick out of doing it because they see some glamour in the danger
> and exotism part. He doesn't: he's there only because he has to
> practice, and tends to view anything below artillery level as not worth
> his consideration anyway, but comes to appreciate the ambience, and the
> social gatherings and lunches and tall tales of past competitions of the
> others. He even gets to improve his performance a little.
If this is the context, you don't need the competition aspect, and it
may well be undesirable.
The attitude of people who don't use guns toward those who do tends to
be a sort of combination of fear and contempt. You expressed a bit of
it yourself ("gun bunnies" in the original post); it may have been
unconscious, but that in itself is telling. Gun users are well aware
of the attitude, and more than a bit saddened (among other things) by
it.
That being the case, if B discovers that she can shoot well and enjoys
it, the other members of the club will be extremely supportive,
regardless of whether or not there's any formal competition involved.
They will loan her guns, give her ammunition, and generally treat her
as a highly-welcome convert, even outside the context of the range.
One thing highly likely to occur is the arrival, midway through B's
development, of a range regular who has been away for a while. The
others then inveigle him into an impromptu competition with B, with
amusing consequences (another instance taken from life).
Regards,
Ric
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> On Sun, 21 Jul 2002 21:28:41 +0200, in message
> <1ffowiq.3y67401d4qa6mN%ada...@despammed.com>
> ada...@despammed.com (Anna Feruglio Dal Dan) excited the ether
> to say:
>
> >Brian M. Scott <b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> Something to bear in mind: I've read in several places that a World
> >> War II study of U.S. infantrymen showed that only 15-20% could
> >> actually bring themselves to fire at an exposed enemy soldier. In
> >> Vietnam it was about 90%, but that was thanks to improved training
> >> techniques.
> >
> >I've heard this, yes. I've also heard that this lead to more or less the
> >kind of training depicted so vividly in _Full Metal Jacket_, but I've
> >also heard it said that this is bullshit. (This is, however,the way to
> >make a torturer out of a normal person according to a lot of first-hand
> >accounts I've read.)
>
> FMJ, it must be remembered, is fiction.
Yes - it was just to give the general idea. In _An Intimate History of
Killing_ there are several accounts of training that seem not too
different. I wouldn't know how reliable they are though.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> The attitude of people who don't use guns toward those who do tends to
> be a sort of combination of fear and contempt. You expressed a bit of
> it yourself ("gun bunnies" in the original post); it may have been
> unconscious, but that in itself is telling. Gun users are well aware
> of the attitude, and more than a bit saddened (among other things) by
> it.
Sorry: it certainly wasn't my intention - I thought the terms was only
mildly teasing, like calling writers "hacks". Not complete mastering of
the nuances, I'm afraid. It's not immediately evident but my command of
the language really isn't that of a native. However I really don't
despise people who shoot - as I said, my father was one. (And tons of my
relatives are hunters, for that matter).
> That being the case, if B discovers that she can shoot well and enjoys
> it, the other members of the club will be extremely supportive,
> regardless of whether or not there's any formal competition involved.
> They will loan her guns, give her ammunition, and generally treat her
> as a highly-welcome convert, even outside the context of the range.
Yes - this is what they do even with A when he turns up, and I think I
can use it as a good way to get her involved - it would seem inpolite to
turn down offers of help and reject such enthusiasm.
> One thing highly likely to occur is the arrival, midway through B's
> development, of a range regular who has been away for a while. The
> others then inveigle him into an impromptu competition with B, with
> amusing consequences (another instance taken from life).
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Of course it is -- she might shoot _him._
Well, years later she will realize that she could have saved herself and
tons of other people a lot of grief if she _had_...
And she actually does shoot and kill him, later on, but since she wasn't
aiming specifically at him, she doesn't get him in the head and they
revive him.
> If I was him, I wouldn't want a shit-scared 17 year old with no knowledge
> of weapons waving a gun around behind me (in front of me, or anywhere near
> me!) I'd take care to give her a good basic instruction in guns,
> especially the "here's how NOT to kill me by accident" stuff.
Yes.
The timeline is like this:
A meets B first thing as he comes off the orbital elevator. B doesn't
much like him, and is very suspicious because he's an offworlder and a
soldier and so on.
A however is a guest of B's older brother or father, and so they get to
know each other.
B mellows somewhat towards A. Not much but enough to be on civil
speaking terms.
One day B goes in search of A because, oh, I don't know, he's gone off
with a bycicle and she's left the library card in the bike bag or
something, and she tracks him to this range. She gets talked into trying
to shoot, would like to get out of it but out of simple courtesy tries a
few rounds.
People in the gun club fall over themselves in trying to get her to
train with them, and since she rather likes being good at things she
starts training. A gives her a hand.
About a year later A gets home and finds one of B's friend that is
trying to rape her. Picks him up, beats him up a bit and chucks him out
the door. Does first-aid stuff to B. B starts to trust A. They even have
long matches at some sort of Azad-like strategic simulation game.
After a few months B mentions causally that the guy who's tried to rape
her keeps calling her and hassling her. She doesn't seem too worried but
A is.
After unspecified development I'm going to have to think about, A shows
up at B's door and tells her that he'd feel much better if she would
keep a gun around. She balks. He insist. She accepts to keep the gun
around. The stalker never does attack her, and ends up (boh, I'll think
of something).
Due to another plot strand, A decides to leave the planet B lives on and
go back to his military career.
The governament A is serving decides to invade B's planet. B finds
herself involved in the resulting mess and pushed into a corner finds
herself with a gun (another, not the one A's given her) and starts
shooting. She ends up in the armed resistance. At this point the gun A's
given her comes in handy, but it will only show up in the next volume,
when she gets capture with that gun.
Things go downhill from here.
Charlie Allery
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote in message
>Charlie Allery <cha...@charlieallery.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Teeth can come in useful when you don't have jamcleats ... :-) But I
don't
>> make a habit of it.
>
>Oh yeah. Tell me about it. My mum just lost a finger on the boat because
>of one of those things you're not supposed to make a habit of... she
>palced a hand between the hull and a mooring line. Not serious if
>you're on a dinghy, but on a 41 feet boat...
>
Ouch. Not good. Sympathies.
I don't like big boats particularly. My Dad had a 25 footer and it used to
make me very nervous. I don't like anything that's too big for my body
weight to make a difference. At least I know if a dinghy goes over, I can
always right it. You can cope with almost anything in a dinghy.
Charlie
Charlie Allery
Brian D. Fernald wrote in message ...
>
>Another note is dominant eye. I am left eye dominant despite the
>fact that I am right handed. This means that I can only focus through
>sights properly when I am shooting left handed. I had to prove this
>to my range coach at Parris Island by showing him several times
>that I could not close my left eye independently from my right.
>
Just a note on eye dominance. I have a master right eye, but can close
either eye independantly. The way I was taught dominance is to pick an
object and point at it with both eyes open. Still pointing at it, close one
eye. When I close my left eye, the picture I'm seeing doesn't change -
because my right eye is dominant and I've kept it open. When I close my
right eye however, my finger appears to move quite drastically to the right.
This is because suddenly my brain's receiving signals from the opposite eye,
and that's a viewpoint to the left of the normal dominant viewpoint.
Charlie
Charlie Allery
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote in message
>OK, I need the gun bunnies here.
>
Not a gun bunny as such, but have had some limited experience. I note that
everyone so far is talking about handguns or rifles. There is a third
discipline/weapon you might like to bear in mind - the shotgun. The shotgun
is much more of an instinctive weapon, being used primarily to shoot at
moving targets (clay pigeons). Hence someone with good hand-eye
co-ordination and a natural talent can indeed score respectably. In this
country (UK) it's a much more common weapon in the country than handguns or
rifles. Most farmers have a shotgun for foxes etc and shoot in local
competitions during the summer.
The difference with shotgun competitions is that they're individual events,
not team events. They're often run as fund-raising activities, and anyone
can turn up on the day, pay their fee and shoot a round - or several.
There're usually cash prizes and there's often a pool shoot where all the
fees for this particular set of stands go into a kitty and the first three
places win proportions of the entry fees. A beginner showing promise with a
shotgun will almost certainly be encouraged to attend a shoot to 'have a
go'. You don't even need a licence to shoot. As long as the owner of the gun
and licence holder is with you, anyone can shoot the gun. You don't have to
be a member of a gun club either.
Just extra info - I know you've already got a weapon of choice. :-)
Charlie
Brian Pickrell
> In article <3d39a095...@news.earthlink.net>,
> eas...@nospam.earthlink.net (Elizabeth Shack) wrote:
> >
> > You'd have to work pretty hard to make me believe that. I know
> > absolutely nothing about guns. But for anything requiring lots of
> > practice it'd be tough for me to believe that someone who'd never done
> > it before was really good. Especially if it was convenient for the
> > plot.
>
> Just a quick question, would it be difficult for you to believe that
> someone could wallop a tennis ball over the net first time and wipe out
> the opposition? Or hit a six in cricket? That is: is it something about
> guns, or something about hand-eye coordination, that makes it hard to
> credit? That 'lots of practise' makes me think it's the hand-eye
> coordination thing, rather than glamour-of-the-gun syndrome, but I'm not
> sure.
Whoever said shooting is just a matter of eye-hand coordination is
plain wrong. A little common-sense analysis will tell you this, even
if you know nothing about shooting. Have you ever heard of an
organized competitive sport where a lucky beginner has just as much
chance to win as an expert? Or one that required no knowledge beyond
eye-hand coordination? Events like that soon get boring to the
dedicated practitioners of the sport, who are after all the people who
make the rules and organize the competitions. So they set the rules
such that you have to have not only flashes of brilliance but
consistency, depth of skill and staying power to win. This is true in
just about any activity, be it shooting or dance contests or Monopoly
tournaments.
The way competitive shooting works, you have to get near-perfect
scores over a large number of shots to win. Hitting the bulls-eye is
nice, but can you do it fifty times in a row? Missing by a half-inch
once in a while is enough to cost you the competition. So the
critical skill is not eye-hand coordination, but the ability to do
exactly the same thing every time with robot-like consistency. If you
take up a stance with your feet an inch closer together than they were
the last time, then you won't shoot exactly the same.
There's a lot of arcana involved in target shooting that has nothing
to do with coordination and that a novice couldn't possibly be
expected to know. Things like controlling your breathing and firing
between heartbeats, accounting for microscopic variations in the way
you look through the sights, and how to hold a gun so that your
muscles shake the least.
One upshot of this is that no matter how talented the beginner,
they'll have a lot to learn. Another upshot is that she doesn't have
to be a natural athlete. There's no reason a girl who's slow,
asthmatic, and has fat legs couldn't turn out to be a good shooter.
In fact, she doesn't even need good eyesight--in some events, you're
supposed to focus on the front sight of the gun anyway and the target
is just a blur.
>
> I'm leaving aside the 'convenient for the plot' part, for the moment;
> thinking about it more, it would be reasonably easy to make the person
> capable in a couple of other cognate areas earlier on, so that, even if
> _she_ was surprised by how good she was, the reader would be thinking "ah,
> yes, but now I see it was inevitable that she would be". It's just that
> planting the early evidence wants to be done a bit deviously.
>
> Mary
They might be surprised--see above.
Brian Pickrell
> during the Phillipine
> Insurrection, in which it was noted that the Moros would tie vines
> around their limbs to deliberately induce gangrene and therefore loss
> of sensation. Such a person was so numb in the limbs, and in so much
> pain otherwise, that he wouldn't react to the pain of a wound;
What toss. I absolutely DO NOT BELIEVE this story.