MachIVshooter
Member
I thought I would submit this section of my mini-book on preparation to all of you for review. It is rather long, so I understand if you don't want to, but I appreciate any feedback. And please, keep in mind when critiquing that this is not geared toward gun nuts like us, but people who are looking to arm themselves in case of disaster and may know little or nothing about firearms.
Also please bear in mind that this is not a book about firearms. It is about preparation and survival, and firearms are but one component of that. They are a section of a chapter, and one that is already longer and more in-depth than any other.
I would also ask that no one plagiarize my work here. Feel free to use it, but credit me if you do.
Chapter 10: Security and Defense
Now this is the fun part for many of us, because it involves lots of cool toys and gadgets. Obviously, one of the primary components of security and defense is the gun, and since it is an area in which I have expertise, we will cover this fairly extensively, in addition to the other aspects of securing and defending you and yours in the event of a breakdown and resulting hunger, etc. that turns otherwise decent people into plundering goblins, and makes those who already have nefarious tendencies that much more dangerous. The basic principle of security and defense is this: If you can't protect and defend what you have, then you don't really have it.
In the United States, there are countless robberies, aggravated assaults, rapes and other violent crimes in every corner of the nation, even when times are OK and law enforcement is not overburdened. Hurricane Katrina showed us just how bad it can be when the law isn't present. Predators, both resource and process, are opportunistic. They will always be most likely to victimize those they see as being least resistant or least able to defend themselves. This is not a novel concept, and there are books upon books written on the subject. In a time of crisis, the potential victim pool becomes much larger. The resource predator wants what you have, and is willing to take it by force. The process predator wants you, and his level of commitment to violence is usually even greater. Either way, physical force or threat of physical force are your only recourse. If the attacker is physically stronger than you, armed, or if there are more than one, your odds are not good without a weapon.
The most obvious choice for defending oneself is the firearm. Some people do not like them, but that doesn't change the fact that they are, unequivocally, the best presently available implement for defense against violent predators. Unlike Tasers, pepper sprays and other less-lethal means that certain people are unaffected by, bullets are effective on all people. The other way a gun is effective in stopping threats does not involve any injury at all, but merely the threat of lethal force. There is no hard figure on how many criminal acts are stopped because the criminal found himself facing the deadly force of a firearm, but it is a large number. Many a big bad criminal has had a change of heart when he realized that his would-be victim was not so helpless and could, in fact, bring lethal force to bear. Myriad interviews of hardened criminals reinforce that one of their greatest fears is the armed citizen. Even physically disabled and elderly people have effectively fended off much younger, much physically stronger attackers with a firearm. No one wants to be shot, and criminals are no exception. So in addition to being our most effective defensive tool, the gun is also the best deterrent.
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of the gun, a brief history on their development and use is in order. If you don't care or already know, then skip the outlined history section. But I feel it is important, especially for those less familiar or perhaps a bit apprehensive about possessing and using a gun, to better understand them.
Firearms are a part of our history that has shaped who and what we are in ways second only to the wheel. Whether you love them, hate them or are indifferent, there is no denying what they mean to mankind. Though it deserves more, I will attempt to summarize the entire history of the gun in about 2 pages.
History of the gun
The quest for ranged weapons is as old as man himself. First the sling, then the bow, the catapult, the trebuchet, and a host of other strange stored energy and kinetic energy weapons, all based on mechanical means of accelerating a projectile. Then around the 8th century AD, things changed. Chemical explosives and propellants came to be, and their potential as a weapon was quickly realized. Though no one truly knows, it seems that the first widespread appearance of hand-held firearms was in the 12th century AD. The early guns were very crude, nothing more than a hollow cast metal tube, sealed at one end, and often attached to a stick. Called "hand cannons", crude black powder was poured down the barrel, and a projectile rammed in front of it. This is known as muzzleloading, and remained the principle method of loading a firearm until the late 19th century. The powder charge was ignited through what is called a flash hole (a small hole exposing the powder charge) by use of a hot iron or smoldering wick (punk). Reliability and accuracy were poor, and it wasn't uncommon for the cannoneer to blow himself up on account of the imprecise manufacturing and metering of early gunpowder.
The next major breakthrough was making the weapon more practical to aim and fire by attaching the barrel to a shoulder stock and making a trigger system that held the smoldering wick above the flash hole until the firer depressed a lever, which would lower the wick, thus igniting the powder and discharging the weapon. This became known as the matchlock and served for quite some time. Always seeking to improve on his fellow man's creation, the drawbacks of the smoldering wick or punk were not ignored and sought to be improved. Enter the flintlock.
The flintlock didn't look vastly different from its predecessor, but its ignition system was a marked improvement. The flintlock firearm used a piece of flint secured to the hammer, which would strike the metal cover over the flash pan when the trigger was depressed. On striking, it accomplished two things; It moved the cover to expose the priming charge, and it created sparks that would ignite that charge. The flintlock also made it possible to have a firearm loaded and ready to fire indefinitely, where the punk of the matchlock had to be ignited just before battle and would only burn for so long. The flintlock became the standard military arm quite quickly, and served for some time. But for its improvement in ignition, the flintlock musket suffered from the same problem as all of its predecessors: Inaccuracy. It took until the 17th century before guns really evolved into a refined fighting implement. It was the advent of rifling (grooves in the barrel which impart a stabilizing spin on the bullet, as a thrown football) that made them accurate enough to be useful in more ways than just military volley fire: With this accuracy, they became a vital tool of the frontiersman for harvesting game to feed himself and his family. The ability to stabilize the bullet also allowed the use of conical bullets instead of balls; The conical bullet can be heavier and more aerodynamic than a ball of the same diameter, thus flying further and hitting harder at range.
In the 19th century, an invention by a clergyman ushered in the modern era of firearms. That invention was the percussion cap, a small, malleable metal cap filled with an impact-sensitive explosive compound that was mounted on a nipple behind the main powder charge. When struck with the hammer, the cap detonated, igniting the main charge. It revolutionized the gun in three ways: It made lock time (trigger pull to ignition time) nearly instantaneous, made loading and "unloading" (a decapped muzzle loader is effectively unloaded) much less cumbersome than the flintlock, and it made guns virtually weatherproof. Equally important, the jump from the muzzle loading percussion gun to one that fired a completely self-contained cartridge was a practical evolution that took very little time, and gave us the ammunition we have today. At first simply being a small lead ball, or BB, stuffed into the end of the percussion cap (the BB cap, or bulleted ball cap) in about 1845, it was a logical progression to scale up the cap and the bullet, and add a powder charge. This allowed for a breech loading weapon, a gun that loads from the back of the firing chamber.
While there had been attempts at breech loading guns, it didn't become practical until the advent of the self contained metallic cartridge. The cartridge case not only houses the bullet, powder and primer, but also creates a gas seal against the chamber walls that prevents hot gasses from escaping and possibly injuring the shooter during ignition. As well, repeating arms before the metallic cartridge required either multiple barrels or a cylinder with multiple chambers, as the revolver, to be fired more than once without reloading. As such, guns were not able to hold more than a few shots without becoming very heavy and cumbersome. With the metallic cartridge, not only could the gun be reloaded very quickly, but the cartridges could also be arranged in a magazine, allowing a firearm with a single barrel and chamber to fire repeatedly with only small and very rapid movements on the part of the shooter.
The final major development was smokeless gunpowder (nitrocellulose) toward the end of the 19th century (several parallel developments). Smokeless gunpowder is more stabile, allows for the very high velocities of modern bullets, and has the obvious benefit of minimal smoke from the discharge. Ammunition really hasn't changed much since then, but firearm design did progress. The revolver and single shot rifle made the transition from percussion to cartridge more or less unchanged, but the development of new, ever-faster firearms became possible. The earliest machine gun was designed in 1861; It was the Gatling gun, a multi-barreled, manually cranked and carriage mounted support weapon that was employed like artillery. The next evolution was quantum, and came 22 years later. It was the Maxim machine gun, and pioneered the basic design upon which all other machine guns to this day are based. It used the recoil energy of the fired cartridge to cycle the action, which ejected the fired case, drew in the belt, stripped and chambered a fresh cartridge. This cycle was repeated 8 times per second until either the trigger was released or the ammunition belt ran out. Though the specific way the action works and the firing rates vary, the principle remains unchanged to this day.
From the Maxim, progression was rapid. The operating system of the machine gun using the energy of a spent cartridge to cycle the action was modified and scaled down into a smaller weapon that could be carried and fired by a single person. This became the auto-loading handgun and rifle. The first successful design was a rifle, the Mannlicher model 1885, which used the high pressure gasses from the spent cartridge acting on a piston to cycle the action, instead of recoil like the Maxim. Then the first successful semi-automatic pistol, the Borchardt, arrived in 1893; It employed the recoil operating system of the Maxim machine gun, but fed ammunition from a spring loaded magazine in the grip instead of a cloth belt. Over the next 20 years, notable designers all over the world tinkered with and modified designs, and many of those designs are still with us today.
About the only real improvements in the world of firearms since then have been the use of ever-lighter, ever stronger materials and more advanced manufacturing techniques. The gun itself, however, has not really changed in the last century. Though there have been attempts with such things as caseless ammunition and directed energy weapons, none have proved superior to the metallic cartridge gun for the individual soldier, police officer or citizen defending himself. Firearms are the great equalizer. Before the gun, a person's combat effectiveness depended solely on their physical strength; The firearm makes a petite female just as lethal as a 6'5", 300 pound monster of a man. The implications for effectiveness in self-defense are obvious.
End of history brief
Safety
It is incumbent on anyone advocating the purchase or use of a firearm to mention the basic safety guidelines. Mostly common sense stuff, nearly every "accidental" shooting or firearm-related injury was the result of a safety violation. By definition, such "accidents" are not accidents at all: It is negligence/carelessness. There are but a handful that are actually the result of a mechanical failure, they almost always result in relatively minor injuries, and are mostly avoidable with proper maintenance of the firearm.
The rules of firearm safety are:
1. Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. You cannot call a bullet back once it is fired, they can travel great distances, and the damage they
can do is permanent.
2. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. A violation of this rule is the cause of virtually all unintentional discharges
3. Don't rely on the safety. a safety is a mechanical device and, like any mechanical device, it can fail
4. Be sure of your target and what's beyond it. See rule # 1 explanation
5. Use proper ammunition. Firearms drive their bullets with very high pressure gasses generated by the burning propellant, and use of the wrong ammunition, improperly loaded ammunition or a barrel obstruction can increase those pressures beyond what the firearm is designed to contain, resulting in a catastrophic failure that effectively turns the gun into a hand grenadeIt is your responsibility to know what cartridge your firearm is chambered in and what, if any, other names that cartridge may be know by, as well as making sure that the ammunition is loaded properly and the barrel is clear
6. If your gun fails to fire when the trigger is pulled, handle with care. This is in place in case of what is known as a "hangfire". A hangfire occurs when the cartridge does not discharge immediately, but has a slight delay. Though a rare occurrence, it does happen.
7. Always wear eye and ear protection when shooting. this is about protecting you from the things that are a byproduct of shooting even when everything is going right. Bullets hit things at high velocity, so ricochets and secondary projectiles are always possible, and the decibel level produced by an unsuppressed firearm being discharged is sufficient to cause instant and permanent hearing damage.
8. Be sure the barrel is clear of obstructions before shooting. See rule #5 explanation
9. Inspect and service your firearm regularly. Like any machine, firearms can wear or suffer broken parts that make them unsafe to operate. If you are not confident in your ability to inspect and/or repair your firearm, pay a qualified gunsmith to do it for you.
10. Do not handle a firearm while intoxicated. Operating any potentiall dangerous equipment while intoxicated is just plain stupid
Until you receive advanced training that allows you to make some very informed decisions, there is no latitude in these
rules.
End Safety Brief
Also please bear in mind that this is not a book about firearms. It is about preparation and survival, and firearms are but one component of that. They are a section of a chapter, and one that is already longer and more in-depth than any other.
I would also ask that no one plagiarize my work here. Feel free to use it, but credit me if you do.
Chapter 10: Security and Defense
Now this is the fun part for many of us, because it involves lots of cool toys and gadgets. Obviously, one of the primary components of security and defense is the gun, and since it is an area in which I have expertise, we will cover this fairly extensively, in addition to the other aspects of securing and defending you and yours in the event of a breakdown and resulting hunger, etc. that turns otherwise decent people into plundering goblins, and makes those who already have nefarious tendencies that much more dangerous. The basic principle of security and defense is this: If you can't protect and defend what you have, then you don't really have it.
In the United States, there are countless robberies, aggravated assaults, rapes and other violent crimes in every corner of the nation, even when times are OK and law enforcement is not overburdened. Hurricane Katrina showed us just how bad it can be when the law isn't present. Predators, both resource and process, are opportunistic. They will always be most likely to victimize those they see as being least resistant or least able to defend themselves. This is not a novel concept, and there are books upon books written on the subject. In a time of crisis, the potential victim pool becomes much larger. The resource predator wants what you have, and is willing to take it by force. The process predator wants you, and his level of commitment to violence is usually even greater. Either way, physical force or threat of physical force are your only recourse. If the attacker is physically stronger than you, armed, or if there are more than one, your odds are not good without a weapon.
The most obvious choice for defending oneself is the firearm. Some people do not like them, but that doesn't change the fact that they are, unequivocally, the best presently available implement for defense against violent predators. Unlike Tasers, pepper sprays and other less-lethal means that certain people are unaffected by, bullets are effective on all people. The other way a gun is effective in stopping threats does not involve any injury at all, but merely the threat of lethal force. There is no hard figure on how many criminal acts are stopped because the criminal found himself facing the deadly force of a firearm, but it is a large number. Many a big bad criminal has had a change of heart when he realized that his would-be victim was not so helpless and could, in fact, bring lethal force to bear. Myriad interviews of hardened criminals reinforce that one of their greatest fears is the armed citizen. Even physically disabled and elderly people have effectively fended off much younger, much physically stronger attackers with a firearm. No one wants to be shot, and criminals are no exception. So in addition to being our most effective defensive tool, the gun is also the best deterrent.
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of the gun, a brief history on their development and use is in order. If you don't care or already know, then skip the outlined history section. But I feel it is important, especially for those less familiar or perhaps a bit apprehensive about possessing and using a gun, to better understand them.
Firearms are a part of our history that has shaped who and what we are in ways second only to the wheel. Whether you love them, hate them or are indifferent, there is no denying what they mean to mankind. Though it deserves more, I will attempt to summarize the entire history of the gun in about 2 pages.
History of the gun
The quest for ranged weapons is as old as man himself. First the sling, then the bow, the catapult, the trebuchet, and a host of other strange stored energy and kinetic energy weapons, all based on mechanical means of accelerating a projectile. Then around the 8th century AD, things changed. Chemical explosives and propellants came to be, and their potential as a weapon was quickly realized. Though no one truly knows, it seems that the first widespread appearance of hand-held firearms was in the 12th century AD. The early guns were very crude, nothing more than a hollow cast metal tube, sealed at one end, and often attached to a stick. Called "hand cannons", crude black powder was poured down the barrel, and a projectile rammed in front of it. This is known as muzzleloading, and remained the principle method of loading a firearm until the late 19th century. The powder charge was ignited through what is called a flash hole (a small hole exposing the powder charge) by use of a hot iron or smoldering wick (punk). Reliability and accuracy were poor, and it wasn't uncommon for the cannoneer to blow himself up on account of the imprecise manufacturing and metering of early gunpowder.
The next major breakthrough was making the weapon more practical to aim and fire by attaching the barrel to a shoulder stock and making a trigger system that held the smoldering wick above the flash hole until the firer depressed a lever, which would lower the wick, thus igniting the powder and discharging the weapon. This became known as the matchlock and served for quite some time. Always seeking to improve on his fellow man's creation, the drawbacks of the smoldering wick or punk were not ignored and sought to be improved. Enter the flintlock.
The flintlock didn't look vastly different from its predecessor, but its ignition system was a marked improvement. The flintlock firearm used a piece of flint secured to the hammer, which would strike the metal cover over the flash pan when the trigger was depressed. On striking, it accomplished two things; It moved the cover to expose the priming charge, and it created sparks that would ignite that charge. The flintlock also made it possible to have a firearm loaded and ready to fire indefinitely, where the punk of the matchlock had to be ignited just before battle and would only burn for so long. The flintlock became the standard military arm quite quickly, and served for some time. But for its improvement in ignition, the flintlock musket suffered from the same problem as all of its predecessors: Inaccuracy. It took until the 17th century before guns really evolved into a refined fighting implement. It was the advent of rifling (grooves in the barrel which impart a stabilizing spin on the bullet, as a thrown football) that made them accurate enough to be useful in more ways than just military volley fire: With this accuracy, they became a vital tool of the frontiersman for harvesting game to feed himself and his family. The ability to stabilize the bullet also allowed the use of conical bullets instead of balls; The conical bullet can be heavier and more aerodynamic than a ball of the same diameter, thus flying further and hitting harder at range.
In the 19th century, an invention by a clergyman ushered in the modern era of firearms. That invention was the percussion cap, a small, malleable metal cap filled with an impact-sensitive explosive compound that was mounted on a nipple behind the main powder charge. When struck with the hammer, the cap detonated, igniting the main charge. It revolutionized the gun in three ways: It made lock time (trigger pull to ignition time) nearly instantaneous, made loading and "unloading" (a decapped muzzle loader is effectively unloaded) much less cumbersome than the flintlock, and it made guns virtually weatherproof. Equally important, the jump from the muzzle loading percussion gun to one that fired a completely self-contained cartridge was a practical evolution that took very little time, and gave us the ammunition we have today. At first simply being a small lead ball, or BB, stuffed into the end of the percussion cap (the BB cap, or bulleted ball cap) in about 1845, it was a logical progression to scale up the cap and the bullet, and add a powder charge. This allowed for a breech loading weapon, a gun that loads from the back of the firing chamber.
While there had been attempts at breech loading guns, it didn't become practical until the advent of the self contained metallic cartridge. The cartridge case not only houses the bullet, powder and primer, but also creates a gas seal against the chamber walls that prevents hot gasses from escaping and possibly injuring the shooter during ignition. As well, repeating arms before the metallic cartridge required either multiple barrels or a cylinder with multiple chambers, as the revolver, to be fired more than once without reloading. As such, guns were not able to hold more than a few shots without becoming very heavy and cumbersome. With the metallic cartridge, not only could the gun be reloaded very quickly, but the cartridges could also be arranged in a magazine, allowing a firearm with a single barrel and chamber to fire repeatedly with only small and very rapid movements on the part of the shooter.
The final major development was smokeless gunpowder (nitrocellulose) toward the end of the 19th century (several parallel developments). Smokeless gunpowder is more stabile, allows for the very high velocities of modern bullets, and has the obvious benefit of minimal smoke from the discharge. Ammunition really hasn't changed much since then, but firearm design did progress. The revolver and single shot rifle made the transition from percussion to cartridge more or less unchanged, but the development of new, ever-faster firearms became possible. The earliest machine gun was designed in 1861; It was the Gatling gun, a multi-barreled, manually cranked and carriage mounted support weapon that was employed like artillery. The next evolution was quantum, and came 22 years later. It was the Maxim machine gun, and pioneered the basic design upon which all other machine guns to this day are based. It used the recoil energy of the fired cartridge to cycle the action, which ejected the fired case, drew in the belt, stripped and chambered a fresh cartridge. This cycle was repeated 8 times per second until either the trigger was released or the ammunition belt ran out. Though the specific way the action works and the firing rates vary, the principle remains unchanged to this day.
From the Maxim, progression was rapid. The operating system of the machine gun using the energy of a spent cartridge to cycle the action was modified and scaled down into a smaller weapon that could be carried and fired by a single person. This became the auto-loading handgun and rifle. The first successful design was a rifle, the Mannlicher model 1885, which used the high pressure gasses from the spent cartridge acting on a piston to cycle the action, instead of recoil like the Maxim. Then the first successful semi-automatic pistol, the Borchardt, arrived in 1893; It employed the recoil operating system of the Maxim machine gun, but fed ammunition from a spring loaded magazine in the grip instead of a cloth belt. Over the next 20 years, notable designers all over the world tinkered with and modified designs, and many of those designs are still with us today.
About the only real improvements in the world of firearms since then have been the use of ever-lighter, ever stronger materials and more advanced manufacturing techniques. The gun itself, however, has not really changed in the last century. Though there have been attempts with such things as caseless ammunition and directed energy weapons, none have proved superior to the metallic cartridge gun for the individual soldier, police officer or citizen defending himself. Firearms are the great equalizer. Before the gun, a person's combat effectiveness depended solely on their physical strength; The firearm makes a petite female just as lethal as a 6'5", 300 pound monster of a man. The implications for effectiveness in self-defense are obvious.
End of history brief
Safety
It is incumbent on anyone advocating the purchase or use of a firearm to mention the basic safety guidelines. Mostly common sense stuff, nearly every "accidental" shooting or firearm-related injury was the result of a safety violation. By definition, such "accidents" are not accidents at all: It is negligence/carelessness. There are but a handful that are actually the result of a mechanical failure, they almost always result in relatively minor injuries, and are mostly avoidable with proper maintenance of the firearm.
The rules of firearm safety are:
1. Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. You cannot call a bullet back once it is fired, they can travel great distances, and the damage they
can do is permanent.
2. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. A violation of this rule is the cause of virtually all unintentional discharges
3. Don't rely on the safety. a safety is a mechanical device and, like any mechanical device, it can fail
4. Be sure of your target and what's beyond it. See rule # 1 explanation
5. Use proper ammunition. Firearms drive their bullets with very high pressure gasses generated by the burning propellant, and use of the wrong ammunition, improperly loaded ammunition or a barrel obstruction can increase those pressures beyond what the firearm is designed to contain, resulting in a catastrophic failure that effectively turns the gun into a hand grenadeIt is your responsibility to know what cartridge your firearm is chambered in and what, if any, other names that cartridge may be know by, as well as making sure that the ammunition is loaded properly and the barrel is clear
6. If your gun fails to fire when the trigger is pulled, handle with care. This is in place in case of what is known as a "hangfire". A hangfire occurs when the cartridge does not discharge immediately, but has a slight delay. Though a rare occurrence, it does happen.
7. Always wear eye and ear protection when shooting. this is about protecting you from the things that are a byproduct of shooting even when everything is going right. Bullets hit things at high velocity, so ricochets and secondary projectiles are always possible, and the decibel level produced by an unsuppressed firearm being discharged is sufficient to cause instant and permanent hearing damage.
8. Be sure the barrel is clear of obstructions before shooting. See rule #5 explanation
9. Inspect and service your firearm regularly. Like any machine, firearms can wear or suffer broken parts that make them unsafe to operate. If you are not confident in your ability to inspect and/or repair your firearm, pay a qualified gunsmith to do it for you.
10. Do not handle a firearm while intoxicated. Operating any potentiall dangerous equipment while intoxicated is just plain stupid
Until you receive advanced training that allows you to make some very informed decisions, there is no latitude in these
rules.
End Safety Brief
Last edited: