I'm not sure if I'm looking to open a discussion here or just share what I read recently but it seemed to be a RL person with definate ties to SR. since SR1's Street Samurai Catalogue most pistols have had a reactive trigger, allowing 2 shots in an action the infamous 'double tap' of an execution style shooting. But the source of this is interesting.

In WW2 the British Secret Service, MI6, was virtually wiped out in short order by the speed of Axis advances. While it regroup the governement formed the SOE, Special Operations Executive which was to co-ordinate resistance groups and sabotage behind enemy lines in WW2. There seems to have been a bit of a boys school prank element to their training. One mission put skin irritants into German army condoms in a bordello. Wilderness survival came from the Kng's game keeper on loan from royal estates. Codes were taught by Philby, a mathematics Don, and later proven himself to be a Soviet spy. Hand to hand combat was taught by a Scott named Fairbairn who was Policeman in the far east and an expert in the garott. (Interesting police technique)

In combat training his partner was another former member of the Shanghai police named Sykes. Orginially a sniper Sykes developed a unique style of pistol shooting. Most people, myself included, shoot pistols from the aimed position, that is arm extended and looking down the length of the weapon at a target up to 25 yards away. Shooting from the hip , dispite how it looks in movies, is incredibly inaccurate-yeah I've tried it. At 10 yards I'm lucky to hit the target board(unless using a laser sight then it's easy)

However Sykes observed that most pistol shoot outs occurred at no more than 4 yards. He developed a style of shooting from a crouched position with the gun angled from the hip. He stressed the importance of shooting first and accurately but at close range like that even a miss would result in a 'flinch' from the target at the noise.

He also stressed rapid fire, having observed that while being shot once was enough to knock the fight out of the average man, a person charged with adrenaline could keep going even with a bullet in him. This mean the shooter was trained to do the 'double tap' firing bullets in sets of two, the idea being that the 2nd hit would probably be enough to take down a target only 'stunned' by the first bullet. I know that in SR more than once it has been the 2nd hit from the reactive trigger that has taken down my target, not the first.

But all this was developed in the 1930's, without laser sights or smart links, but it was undeniably effective. Truly plus ca change, plus ca le meme chose.

Who are you, and what have you done with Snowy?

Hm hm... yeah i read the book (pamphlet) of that man, i think.

Well.... what can i add to this bit of information... ummm.

Sometimes you need more than 2 shots. Bullets sometimes do strangely low damage. I read once about a man who wouldn't stop attacking (unarmed against two police officers) untill he had the eight round in the torso. That was 9mm. Also if movies and games are right: three shots is the golden number: quick 2 shots to stun, get his bloodpressure to drop rapidly, then close in fast: aim, headshot. Perfectly ok in SR as well: first IP two shots to get him on his knees (fill his monitor so he loses dice like hell), second: aim, called shot; BAM.

I also read about this "point-and-trigger" system, where (because you can intuitivly point VERY accurately and FAST at near objects) you trigger with your middle finger, and have the index parallel to the barrel. So pretty much for running a close-quarter gunkata *g*. Feasable? I guess it sounds ok.

I prefer the LAPD Tripple Tap
2 in the Chest (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/eek.gif)
1 in the Head (IMG:style_emoticons/default/dead.gif)
Then go for the billy club (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Some non-zero percentage of US WW2 military dead were found to have non-serious or no wounds. Essentially they decided they were going to die, and did. (sorry, can't find the reference right now, but it was a few percent).

I know someone who once shot a thug 11 times before said thug decided to stop trying to shoot him and collapsed. I've seen autopsy pictures of a guy who looked like he had a bizarre case of measles due to all the 9mm holes in him.

Real world people are very unpredictable. You need to shoot them as many time as it takes to make them stop doing things that justify you using deadly force on them. It doesn't matter if you are using a .22lr or a .45, if you need to shoot someone you need to be prepared to shoot them many times. Some people will be psychologically incapacitated by any trivial wound, others will take wounds that should make them DRT but keep trying to kill you anyway.

No kill like overkill.

I recall reading in this book that during the Phillipine-American War, the Americans had to start using higher caliber weapons, because the Filipinos didn't realize that you're supposed to fall down and die when you get shot.

I've read that it turned out that .45s were not much more effective than .38s for stopping drugged up Moro fanatics, but people don't like to talk about that.

I saw a comment on a blog yesterday where an instructor mentioned a student of his, who worked as a bouncer, got shot twice with a .25 in a fight. The head shot ricocheted off his forehead, the one to the center of his chest needed tweezers to remove a few hours later. The idiot with the .25 apparently got a severe beatdown...

He wrote several (link HERE).

In a similar kind, there is the classical "Kill or get Killed" by Aplegate. It's more diversified, touching unarmed as well as armed and firearms combat. Nice reading, showing well that a serious fight is a brutish, nasty thing far from the glamourous/aesthetic spin some action movies put on it.

As for double tap, most of my characters have been partial to the "shoot 'til they drop, then one more in the head so they stay down" tactic.

Interesting stuff...

The .45 is better at stopping drugged up/adrenaline/psychos than the .38, but that has to do with the stopping power at shorter ranges physically knocking you on your ass... the 9mm and 5.56 nato are just crap... give me .308 any day of the week.

Have you ever run into someone on angel dust? Because that sounds just like it. Dusters are terrifying.


Yeah, that. I've read a .38 took five shots to the skull to take down someone on PCP. Not sure if it's true, but my own experiences suggest it might be.

From when you shot someone in the head five times, or when you were shot in the head five times yourself?

It's hard to get good statistics on "How many shots does it take to kill someone?" Sites like this one seem to indicate that about as many people are injured by guns as are killed by them every year - but that doesn't say anything about the severity of the injuries (or the amount of dakka involved in the deaths).

Now I'm curious - is there any group that tracks those kinds of statistics? My Google-fu is not up to the challenge...

Conservation of momentum says if it doesn't knock you down when you shoot it it won't knock down the person who gets hit. If it doesn't require shooting prone, a ring mount or hydraulics to move the turret it isn't going to have "knock down power".

There are some in the trauma literature, if you have access to medical journals.

For example, in the study I have open right now, 4.6% of the 35 personnel who received a gun shot wound in a US Army brigade during the surge in Iraq were KIA (died before reaching a level 2 treatment facility), 4.8% later died of wounds. 13 of 35 were returned to duty from the aid center, 20 were medically evacuated out of theater but recovered.

Others I vaguely remember are that the chances of being killed by a single pistol bullet is under 20% in the US if you get medical attention.

Fairbairn and Sykes were an interesting pair of nutters.

They were both pushing 60 when they were drafted into train the fledgling commandos during WW2. One of them, Sykes I think, was a black-belt in Ju-jitsu and they formulated the brutal close combat techniques that the commandos used. I would imagine it is very similar to Krav Maga, mechanically.

They used to do this stunt where they were introduced to the new recruits in the lodge they were first brought to by coming down the big sweeping stairs and then these two old men would trip and fall all the way down them to demonstrate the usefulness of being able to fall properly.

They also invented the 'Fairbairn-Sykes' pattern fighting knife that the Commandos used for silent assassinations. Nasty, brutal and efficient.

Oh, and that whole pop-up targets thing. I think they used it first in Singapore and developed it fully in Scotland for the Commandos. All the FBI and LEO training stuff you see with the pop-up targets? Fairbairn and Sykes.

Nutters.

I wonder if Sykes would have advocated bump-firing a 1911 from the hip.

Fairbairn was the jujitsu expert hand to hand combat and nasty weapons. Sykes was the firearms expert. Between them they were a two man encyclopedia of dirty tricks. They developed the Fairbairn-Sykes dagger commonly thought of to be the commando knife a model of which I've used as a personel athame for nearly 20 years.

I didn't know they were nearly 60. The pics I've seen make both look like late middle aged fraggers but that would mean they were in their prime in the late 19th Century, the height of Victoriana, fair play, jolly good etc. learning some really dark and dirty tricks.

As for the bullet used, they apparently did conduct tests to compare what was most likely to stop a man, large caliber or high velocity-apparently they could not find a noticible difference-I'm pretty sure we don't want to know how, this was the 1930's not Myth Busters- so focused on the double tap to bring down a target.

Sykes wrote several books. I'm looking out for them. From what I've read he would have agreed pretty much with the shooting philosophy of Wyatt Earp that was basically, take you time, don't rush the shot, but do it fast.

I don't get it? historical facts, slightly off on a tangent, gun related, sounds like me.

Heck, I deleted a whole paragraph on a certain officer seconded from the Royal Navy intelligence section. A man of proven talent he was sent to orgnaize the somewhat chaotic systems at the SOE's Baker Street HQ near Regent's park. He was so good he was then seconded to the OSS, the newly formed American spy service to help them organize. He wrote their charterand it was considered so good, that after the war it was taken, almost verbatum, as the charter of the new cold war spy service, the Central Intelligence Agency.

Snowdonia Foxx, Hexshooter.

This cat sounds interesting. If it's slow at work tonight i'll be heading to the google to check it out myself. Thanks for the tip.



That's because http://ermc.amedd.army.mil/landstuhl/index.cfm is danm good. The one thing I miss about being in the Army is working there.

While correct, you do have to take into account shock. If someone literally locks up when they get shot (as in all of their muscles tighten) they'll likely going to fall over as their own forward momentum (from walking) isn't being averted by placing their next foot down.

Never seen feighting goats have you?

I agree, and since we're drifting into myth busters here, tat was one of their earlier and worst shows- the shooting knock down I mean, not the goats. They argued that Newton's law that for every action their is an opposite and equal reaction meansthat the force to knock down a person hit by a bullet means there would have to be enough force in the recoil to knock down the shooter.

This looks good on paper but doesn't allow for two things.
1) recoil- most weapons have a mechanism for absorbing recoil that will void part of the backward thrust semi-auto and full auto's use this to work their mechanisms. Even with a basic revolver your elbow bends, absorbing and redirecting part of the force.

2) preparing for it. You pull the trigger, you know it's going off, you are braced. If you're the target you don't know this is ocming. sure you know you're being shot at ubt you don't know when you'll be hit "they got me!" You can't brace for it and the shock and surprise contribute to your being off balance and down you go. Seriously, If you can brace for it you probably won't be knocked down, but unless you're Geroge Reeves or tied to a post who is going to just stand there facing the shooter waiting for the hit?

But if the cause is just human reaction, then the only difference between a .22 and a .45 is how likely the person is to notice it - not how how much damage the bullet actually causes. A shallow wound by birdshot should have more knock-down power than a 5.56, because it's more graphic, and hits more nerve cells, hurting more, but fails to reach the tender internals, while the 5.56 just rips everything up and goes on its merry way.

right, a modern high velocity round would pass through a body and only damage what it actuallt hit. By comparrison a soft lead musket ball, very low velocity has only limited penetrating power but it transfers a hell of a lot of kentic energy to the target.

The example used was a crazed fanatic on drugs charging you. He had a LOT of momentum that you have to overcome. If the awesome power of the 1911 in genuine, all American .45ACP can reliably knock off his feet a 160 pound guy immune to pain running at you at with a machete more power to you, but I would suggest not counting on it.

There is a video somewhere I've seen of a guy standing on one leg wearing a level IV vest and getting shot with a FAL on the plate. He doesn't fall down.