10:41 – Barbara just headed over to meet her sister and parents at one of the retirement facilities on the short list. Barbara’s mom is doing much better. The doctor prescribed antibiotics for the UTI and Xanax for her panic attacks. The combination has worked very well. Barbara says her mom is now back to normal and is actually excited about moving to an independent living facility. Frankly, I hope they like the one they’re visiting today enough to sign up for it. Barbara’s parents really need to be in such a facility, and it’d be best to get things rolling before anything else happens.
Yesterday was a first. We’ve sold kits to customers in nearly all the 50 states, but yesterday we sold the first one to a customer in Puerto Rico. It started with a query email asking if we could sell kits to someone in Puerto Rico. I replied that I thought so but I wasn’t sure, and asked the woman to send me her address so that I could try running a dummy postage label and make sure the USPS would accept the package. She replied that she had three possible shipping addresses. The first was her home address, but she said they’d had problems in their neighborhood with the mailman leaving a package on the porch and someone stealing it. So that was out. Her second address was her work address, which was the US Federal Courthouse. I could just imagine what might happen if we shipped a box full of chemical bottles to a federal building, so that was obviously out. Fortunately, she has a PO box, which the USPS happily delivers to, so that’s where we shipped it.
We also added yet another country to our list of disappointed would-be customers. I got a query asking if we could ship a biology kit to Switzerland, and was forced to tell the man that we couldn’t. That makes more than 20 countries now.
We’re full speed ahead on building forensic science kits. My original goal was to be shipping them by August 28th, which was originally the date the book was to be published, but it looks like that may slip a bit. We’re accepting pre-orders on the web site, where we say that the kits will ship in “late August”, and I’m determined to start shipping on or before 31 August to meet that promise. We still have a lot of work remaining, but we should have at least enough kits finished by the 31st to ship outstanding pre-orders, with at least a few in reserve.
13:51 – Wow. NYPD cops got into a shootout with a man who’d just murdered another man by shooting him five times. The two NYPD cops fired 17 shots and managed to hit 10 people, of whom nine were innocent bystanders. NYPD says there’s nothing else the cops could have done. Really? I thought cops were trained to avoid firing their weapons when there were innocent bystanders in the line of fire unless the criminal was about to fire on those bystanders. I wasn’t there, and I realize that at times it may be unavoidable to fire when there’s risk of hitting an innocent bystander, but hitting nine(!) innocent bystanders in an eight-second shootout seems a bit excessive. Assuming each cop fired roughly half of the 17 rounds, that’s about one round per second each. That’s not quite Timed Fire, but it’s certainly leisurely. Fortunately, none of the innocent bystanders who were shot suffered life-threatening injuries.
The first was her home address, but she said they’d had problems in their neighborhood with the mailman leaving a package on the porch and someone stealing it
This is such a sad statement that I just don’t know where to start. The UPS people are starting to leave packages at our back door nowadays with the same problem. Our USPS people do have the neighborhood mail box for us that can hold a package for us to about 2’x1’x1′ (they leave a key in our little mailbox). I wish that USPS would go to every non-rural neighborhood in the USA and erect these mailboxes. I would imagine that it is a major time saver for them as they do not have to walk the neighborhood.
BTW, I hit my 70th country for shipping our software to last year. We use UPS for outside the USA due to their awesome WorldShip program. It is expensive but you will get absolute knowledge of where, when and who got the package. If they screw up, they will go back and fix it.
Of course, many of my customers are just downloading our software nowadays as the setup file is only 80 MB. I never envisioned our digital world in my youth and I was playing lunar lander on a mainframe back in the early 1970s while my Dad worked.
The two NYPD cops fired 17 shots and managed to hit 10 people, of whom nine were innocent bystanders.
Just imagine if a half a dozen armed, and basically untrained, citizens had participated and tried to take down the shooter. I am all for self carry to defend one’s self. I don’t think it is a good idea to get involved in a shoot out with others just because you are packing.
Several people have stated that the Colorado theatre shooting would not have been as bad had someone in the theatre been armed. I am of a different opinion that many others would have been harmed had five or six “cowboys” opened fire and started shooting.
I now wonder how many lawsuits the city of New York will have to endure because of poorly trained police officers in New York.
The only problem with that argument, Ray, is that most private citizens who carry a pistol are much, much more skilled in using a pistol than are most cops.
The late Jeff Cooper frequently commented that most cops are little better with a pistol than most goblins (his term for bad guys), but that the average person who carried concealed was about three levels above the average cop. Most cops carry a pistol because they have to; private citizens who carry do so because they want to. Which do you think, on average, is likely to be better qualified?
Unless they happen to shoot pistols as a hobby, few cops do anything more than the required qualification, which may amount to 50 rounds once a year on a well-lit range shooting at targets at known distances. Call it maybe 1,500 rounds total over a 30-year career. I’ve shot that many rounds in one day on a combat-pistol course, and I know a lot of people who’ve done the same. Even private citizens who don’t compete in combat pistol generally shoot a lot more than cops do, and they’re generally a lot better at hitting what they’re aiming at.
The other thing going on here which was hit on a little bit in the posts so far is that the military and the police departments all went to 9mm and .40 ‘crunchentickers’ and the ‘spray and pray’ philosophy of gunfighting back in the 80s. With the military it was said they wanted to be standardized with our NATO allies but that don’t cut no ice wid me, ’cause they kept the M16 Mattel toyz instead of going to .308. And back here the department brass didn’t and doesn’t wanna spend the budget on decent weapons training and tactics so they hand out the nines, have one qualifying event per year at the range, the quality of which can vary widely and wildly, and away these people go with full mags; just keep squeezing that trigger and hope the target drops, which they often do not with that caliber.
Meanwhile the rounds go all over hell and in a densely packed urban area like Manhattan someone is gonna catch some stray rounds and not in a good way. The perp in this case actually had a much better firearm and HIS target got dropped pretty fast.
I agree with Bob here on the odds being much better with civvies who buy and train with and practice with handguns far more frequently than the robocops and often with far better methodologies.
As for the movie theater scenario; I could see only a couple of possible responses to that piece of shit. Either somebody gets off a very lucky kill shot instantly, with instant reaction time, which would have been difficult even for a spec ops guy, as this asshole came from the rear through a previously open doorway. Or someone begins charging him and firing at the same time to force his attention away from what he was doing and of course risk being killed instantly oneself. Or someone close enough and strong enough tackles and disarms him and is able to keep him down. All three possibilities would still be pretty hard to pull off.
Unfortunately, anyone can kill anyone else if they are willing to risk dying themselves, and anyone can walk up on an unarmed ‘captive’ group of people as in a movie theater, a store, a restaurant, a sporting event, etc., and begin firing a bunch of weapons at them and dropping them like flies. The only saving chance in that scenario is most likely gonna be a civvie who keeps his cool and shoots well; it has been done and it can be done. Sadly, no one like that was in the theater that night.
In other local and regional nooz, OFD and Mrs. OFD are in the process of moving over the next several weeks and have been hauling stuff and doing some painting in the living room and kitchen and also figuring out neat stuff we are gonna do there. Gorgeous weather but a bit on the muggy side today; a saving breeze off the lake, which most likely will be a bone-freezing blast in the wintuh.
Why don’t the Swiss want you sending chemicals to their country?
And RIP Neil Armstrong.
Neil Armstrong was not just a great astronaut and test pilot, but an excellent engineer. He had to eject twice from crashing aircraft – a plane over Korea, and the lunar lander training vehicle. He was one of the best X-15 pilots, which he reluctantly left to become an astronaut. Instead of becoming a celebrity, he did his debriefings at NASA and went to teach engineering and serve on corporate boards. When asked, he came back to NASA in the aftermath of Challenger and Columbia to lend his wisdom to us.
I met him once, at a celebration of the lunar landings. As a Boy Scout, I was one of 6 or so Scouts that carried the American flag in front of the car with the Apollo 11 crew at their welcome home parade in Houston. I had dinner on a cruise with a golfing friend of his who said he was very shy and an OK golfer.
@OFD: Good luck with the move. It’s always exciting, moving into a new place (and a chance to clear out accumulated cruft), but also a pile of work.
Swiss customs is functional, and the rules are mostly compatible with the EU. However, I can imagine that something in a large assortment of chemicals is likely to trip some rule or other. As an example: for many years, “Jelly Bellies” could not be imported here, because the red food coloring they used was on some list of forbidden ingredients.
If there is anything you would like to have checked from the Swiss side of the border, I am happy to do so. In particular, if you are able to ship to the EU, it is possible that there is only some minor technicality preventing shipment to Switzerland.
Thanks, but the problem isn’t a minor issue. In order to ship to anywhere outside the US and Canada, I’d have to become certified by the IATA on hazardous materials (AKA dangerous goods) transport regulations. The time and cost of doing that simply isn’t worthwhile. Also, the cost of shipping each individual package would be so high as to make it uneconomic.
More on the NYC incident, from a retired Chicago cop:
http://www.crimefilenews.com/2012/08/nypd-officers-turned-street-murder-into.html
Lynn wrote:
“I never envisioned our digital world in my youth and I was playing lunar lander on a mainframe back in the early 1970s while my Dad worked.”
Some of my favourite games are really low-tech, like Star Trek written for CDC Cybers. I wasted many happy hours playing that in the late Seventies.. Or an old text based Adventure, even Minesweeper on the PC. Didn’t some guru once say that the PC would never need more than 640k of memory?
To quote a wise man on the New York shootings – Jim Cerillo wept.
Mr. Cerillo was known for laughing but certainly a proof by example that some in New York can be precise under fire – whatever excuses the NYT makes for calling miscues inevitable.
Better yet, a manual I saw bragged that the PDP-whatever had 128k of 18-bit words, enough for any conceivable business or scientific application.
Yep, my very first computer game was that same text-based Adventure, running on a terminal connected to HP-UX machines at Bose Corporation, Framingham, MA, in 1979. The company that started that went on to more text-based games like the Zork series, and if memory serves, was based in greater Boston, like so many tech firms of the time.
I have Doom II and III on this here Win7 box and Alien Arena but don’t spend a whole lotta time on them.
Lunar Lander on the operators teletype for a Univac 1108 with 32K code space and 32K data space with 36 bit words in 1972. It was freaking awesome and addictive as all getout. I think I used the better part of entire roll of paper that night trying to land that stupid lunar module. Just watching the teletype print was half the fun. .
Talking about using up paper…
I played Star Trek on terminals in the Computing Science department at Adelaide University. Everything was printed, and the department sysprog lamented the amount of paper I went through playing that game. But I loved it.
A few years after that I was playing Star Trek and Adventure on US Government equipment as an Explorer. (Explorers is a program run by the Boy Scouts.) At least I didn’t waste paper because they had CRT terminals by that point.
Remarkable that they let us play on government computers belonging to the DOD. The place is still there today, but is run by a civilian contractor now. They’re still paranoid about security though. A friend worked there a couple of years ago, and his auto insurance company freaked out because the place is in a very bad neighborhood in Indianapolis. They were afraid that someone would break into his car while he was at work. After my friend stopped laughing, he finally was able to explain that wouldn’t happen. The property is surrounded by more than one layer of fence, and the guards have automatic rifles and dogs.
The only problem with that argument, Ray, is that most private citizens who carry a pistol are much, much more skilled in using a pistol than are most cops.
Are there any statistics to back that up? I would not question if you had said many, but I find it hard to believe that most are any better than the average cop. And no, I do not think Cooper’s quote constitutes a reliable measure.
There are stats concerning the number of criminal incidents prevented by the mere presence of a firearm, let alone actually using one, but as to how many civvies carry handguns and are more proficient with them than the average cop, I dunno. I would hazard a guess, though, with Robert, that by numbers alone, there probably ARE far more civvies who can work handguns than there are cops who can. Cops carry them because they have to, they come with the job, and most never fire them in an actual situation throughout their entire ‘careers.’ I’d say that most civvies who carry, though, do so because they like them and they shoot far more often and many of them, especially in these times, are pretty good with them. This is leaving aside, of course, all the gangbangers who, like the cops, use the spray-and-pray method most of the time.
For example, in this county we have a total of around thirty or forty cops; of them, maybe there are a dozen who do target shooting and hunting stuff regularly. Then we have hundreds and hundreds of regular civilian hunters and target shooters, probably several thousand, actually. Multiply this across the country, outside of the coastal elites zones, of course, and you can see where Bob and me might get this outlandish idea.
I know a few people who carry here in Connecticut; perfectly upstanding people but I don’t believe they are the least bit prepared. I don’t know anyone who works out seriously with a handgun except a nephew in another state who has shot competitively.
I expect it varies. I have a cousin (a woman) who I am pretty sure carries a small gun in her purse. They moved about 5 years ago. When we visited last Spring, I suggested we go to a range, but they had no idea where one was in their area. So: carrying, and hasn’t shot in five years. I hope she’s the exception, but how would you know? The problem is the usual: whatever peer group you are a member of seems “normal”.
Me, I have two guns in the house, but no ammo, and haven’t shot either of them in more than 20 years. Stupid, but there you are. I keep thinking I ought to either get rid of them or else start shooting again, but…it just isn’t a priority and I haven’t found the time…
Basic competence with a pistol is like riding a bicycle. Once you know how to do it, the ability doesn’t go away. Yes, you’ll lose some degree of competence, but if you once had basic competence even after many years of no practice, you’ll still be better than someone who never achieved basic competence, which is most cops and nearly all criminals.
Of course, basic competence is a matter of opinion. I practiced until I met Cooper’s definition of basic competence. We used to get outdated #10 cans of tomato juice. Set three of those up at 7 yards, each with a 12-ounce can of soda sitting on top of it. Then, rapid fire, hit each #10 can with your .45, which launches the small can more or less straight up in the air. Hit the small can before it hits the ground. If you can hit the small cans three out of three two thirds of the time and two-out-of-three the third time, you have basic competence. It’s hard, but not as hard as it sounds.
Oh, and you’d probably be surprised by just how many people carry. Although it varies region to region, on average probably at least 5% of the people you see on the street are carrying concealed. Learn to spot a gun purse, and you’ll see what I mean.
I’ve even been surprised, most notably by a young woman who was apparently a typical liberal, including being vociferously anti-gun. She didn’t practice what she preached, because it turned out she packed a .357 Magnum LadySmith.
And then there was the nun who attended Jeff Cooper’s Gunsite. One of the features of Gunsite was the funhouse, where you went through and faced a lot of shoot/don’t shoot decisions. Stuff like a bad guy popping up with a shotgun followed by a workman carrying a long pipe. You were supposed to clear the bad guys without shooting any good guys. When the nun went through, the shooting started as soon as she entered. Bang, bang … bang, bang … bang, bang the whole way through, double-tapping everything that popped up (including a Catholic priest). When she came out the other side, Cooper just shook his head. “She must be from a really tough parish,” he said.
I still don’t understand how anyone can conceal a handgun on their upper body without wearing a reasonably heavy jacket. I mean, a handgun is much larger than my cell phone and I can’t even conceal that without a jacket. It’s noticeable when I’m just wearing a shirt on top.
Now, I’m sure someones busty daughter could carry concealed quite easily. Just pop a handgun inside her blouse, underneath one of her 44DDD boobs. No one would think to look there. Leave a button or three undone for easy access… 🙂
I can carry concealed with any kind of jacket. In a pinch a loose t-shirt would probably be enough if I were using an inside-the-pants holster or even the Mexican carry rather than my custom-made Sparks pancake. It’s helpful if the pistol is flat. They don’t call the Colt 1911 “old slabsides” for nothing. A revolver is more problematic because of the cylinder bulge. Of course, it also helps that I’m a big guy, with a chest much larger than my waist.
RBT wrote: “I’ve even been surprised, most notably by a young woman who was apparently a typical liberal, including being vociferously anti-gun. She didn’t practice what she preached, because it turned out she packed a .357 Magnum LadySmith.”
Please tell me you were surprised by the size of the gun, and not surprised that a typical and vociferous anti-gun liberal doesn’t practice what they preach. Hardly any of them ever do!
Well, *I* certainly wouldn’t want to shoot a .357 Magnum LadySmith. The thing weighs about 21 ounces/600 grams. It’s likely to be a handful. Of course, that said, I do have a 15 ounce .44 Special, which kicks like a mule even with standard .44 Special loads. And at one time I had a .44 Magnum derringer. That one was a real thrill to shoot. First, you aimed (not that that did much good; the thing shot 10 cm groups at 5 meters…). Then you carefully moved your head out from behind the derringer. Then you pulled the trigger, and then you went to pick up the derringer from where it had landed several feet behind you.
I don’t understand. I thought you said the .357 didn’t have enough stopping power.
It doesn’t. We have more than a hundred years of data that’s indisputable. Anything in the 9mm/.357/.38 range, regardless of velocity or muzzle energy, stops an opponent with one solid body hit about 50% of the time at best. (Multiple hits have very little additional effect.)
Bullets in the .44/.45 class provide one-shot stops 90+% of the time, which is about the best you can hope for in a pistol.
How do you feel about the knockdown power of the .40 S&W ?
My son agrees on the 9mm. He put a entire clip into a guy in Iraq spraying with a AK47 and the guy survived.
I assumed stopping power was correlated with recoil. You seemed to be saying that some of the .357s had a lot of recoil. Why use one then? I was assuming that .45 would have even more recoil.
The late Mel Tappan came up with an empirical formula that corresponds pretty well with the observed data.
Stopping power = W * A * V * E
where W is bullet weight in grains, A is bullet cross-sectional area in square inches, V is velocity in feet per second, and E is a semi-arbitrary factor that adjusts for bullet shape. For example, a round nose bullet might have E = 0.9, a semi-wadcutter 1.1, a full wadcutter 1.25, and so on.
If you calculate that for a typical .45 ACP hardball load, you get
Stopping power = 230 grains X 0.1604 square inches X 850 fps X 0.9 = 28,233
knock off the extra zeros and round down to 28.
For a typical 9mm round:
Stopping power = 115 grains X 0.0990 square inches X 1,300 fps X 0.9 = 13,318
Again, drop the zeros and round down to 13.
That fits very well with observed data. The .45 ACP is about twice as likely to stop someone with one center-body hit as the 9mm is.
Just for giggles, you can compare a 12-gauge magnum rifled slug:
Stopping power = 660 grains X 0.4174 square inches X 1,300 fps X 1.25 = 447,655
Which rounds down to 448.
Now, obviously a 12-gauge rifled slug isn’t 16 times more likely than a .45 ACP to stop someone with one center-body hit (especially since the .45 ACP is about 90%), but it is more likely than any other common small arm. Call it 99.99%. People have been hit center-body with a 12-gauge slug and continued doing what they were doing, but it’s probably a one in ten thousand likelihood. People have also been hit multiple times with .50 BMG and not stopped. But a 12-gauge is about as close as it comes to 100% certain. A 12-gauge slug has even been known to drop charging elephants in their tracks.
I think for a given round, recoil is worse with a lighter gun. For the same round, the gun is going to tend to kick back with the same amount of force. Since force equals mass times acceleration, therefore a lower mass gun is going to accelerate backwards faster. That would explain why the derringer Bob mention would have much worse recoil than a 1911 even though the both fire the same round.
At least that is my very well educated guess.
Yeah. Free recoil is a function only of the mass of the bullet and powder charge (well, the primer as well, but that’s milligrams) and the mass of the firearm.
That said, any experienced shooter will tell you that different combinations that have very close to the same theoretical free recoil “feel” different when fired. For example, in a .357 Magnum and a .45 ACP that should have very similar recoil, the .45 ACP seems more like a shove as opposed to the sharp kick of the .357.
In my experience, women in particular do better with a .45 ACP or .44 Special than the 36’s like the 9mm, the various .357’s, the .38 Super, and so on. I’ve had several comment unsolicited that the .45 ACP has heavy recoil but it’s much less unpleasant than the sharp jolt of the 36’s.