So are Taurus inferior? When I was looking at the that was just what I was told,without the details, as to why the Taurus is bigger, worse metalurgy. For those who haven't seen them, the Taurus looks like a Beretta on steroids. It is cheaper but bigger and the Beretta just felt better in my hand.

I hate to ask but "single action" "Double action?" My Webley (.38) can be mannually cocked but similarly I can just pull the trigger and it will cock itself before firing. It actually is quicker in that regard than the berretta to get into action, goping from lying on a table. since you have to mannually work the slide on the automatic for the first shot.

For the record, I was talking about single action revolvers, not specifically single action revolvers in the old SAA style. So, basically, just a single action trigger that requires you to cock it before firing. Within SR, I don't think there's any real difference between either action, considering what else you can do as a free action.

Also, I'm curious: why don't you guys go with weapon skill to determine the number of shells loaded instead of Quickness? Seems like the former'd make more sense.

Also, Fox, they should be about even to grab off a table and fire, assuming you leave a round chambered in the Beretta. It's not like that's incredibly unsafe practice, or anything, either.

Arthusa I think that if its single action revolver independent of the style of revolver its going to be significantly slower then a revolver capable of double actions or double/single action. A single action revolver has to be cocked manually every time its to be fired not just the first time as in the case of a single action semi-auto. I believe it is reasonable to make all single action revolvers slower to fire than a double action revolver. Loading should be a case by case. A Colt Army single action should be slower than dirt to load a Schofield single action should be no slower than any "modern" double action revolver.

I do agree with you that it should probably be firearms skill or a combination of firearms skill and quickness for reloading rather than just quickness alone.

mcb

Can you give some examples of Free Actions that make applying this a problem? I mean, I think this falls squarely under the definition of a Ready Weapon Simple Action and I can't think of any Free Action that would create this much friction, but I don't have my books with me at the moment.

All Mundane Free Actions Actions PDF

Activate Cyberware
Delay Action
Drop Object
Drop Prone
Gesture
Observe
Speak a Word
Combat
Call a Shot
Change Smartgun Fire Mode
Eject Smartgun Clip

Thanks, Kanada Ten.

So arguables would be Drop Object, Drop Prone, and Gesture? I suppose cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine counts as a word... Eh... This would be one of those if-my-players-threw-a-fit things, I'd let 'em have it for the sake of saving time. Otherwise, if pulling a trigger is a Simple Action, so is cocking a hammer.

Even making cocking a hammer a Free Action, the weapon is still slower than double, single-double, and self cocking handguns, since there's only one Free Action for each character's combat phase.

That's a good point, though don't forget that the weapon can be cocked for the first shot on the immediately preceding combat phase and then cocked again after the first shot, which basically means you're just as fast as a semi auto pistol until you start using your free actions for other things (like calling shots).

Thanks for explaining it. I thought that's what was meant but no one exer explained it to me.

This thread really does fall into the idea of the differences between Beretta and Taurus that I noticed while shopping. You get hit with their .380 round it won't make much difference to you, but I have small hands and found the berretta("Nice in a lady's handbag") just more comfortable. Oddly enough the Webley, a larger gun, as a slimer grip since it doesn't need to make room for a clip, and I can shoot better with it, though that might be the longer barrel too.

Just for the record, I store All my firearms unloaded.

If I need it I takes only a momment to slam a clip into the berretta and cock it.
Unless I'm actually prepared to fire, I don't like to even chamber a round in the berretta. Keeping a gun lying around with a round chambered is just asking for trouble.

I hear ya on the RL safety concerns but SR-wise its generally better to have a round in the chamber

It's not just SR, though (discounting the fact that SR has no safety concerns short of GM fiat). Anyone living that sort of lifestyle is going to be storing guns with mags loaded, and probably a personal weapon with a round in the chamber at all times. If you don't however, definitely an understandable safety concern.

Curious how you'd load the Webley if you ended up in a situation that called for it, though.

Well, if you can get the .455 Webley's that's a hell of a take down weapon without magnum loads.

I've handled them both and would love to get a .455. Both are good pistols but the .455 is something to go after the boshe with. the .38 is better than screaming for help.

I wouldn't go for the Webley to load in an emergency. That's why I bought the berretta. Most of my guns are more collectors or, personal interest items. The berretta is for defense.

Personally, I have severe resevations about storing a weapon mean for 'instant' defense unloaded (or even without a round in the chamber). Most defense weapons that people talk about would be used within a home, which is well within the 'lethal range' of a knife/bat/etc. If you go for your weapon you immediatly escalate the situation for the person on the other side. They will have to take you out. If you just rolled over, they might let you live. If you are going to have to go for your weapon, it darn well better be ready to fire when you get your hand on it, anything else increases your risk.

As an aside from the Old World, I must say I find the discussion disturbing!

Alright, like most teenagers (those were the days) I was obsessed with violence and as part of my sometime job as a theatrical props man I have some firearms knowledge, but over here in the UK the merest hint of a firearm is such a deterrent that the load status of a weapon is largely irrelevant.

There's a professional hunter lives up the road, used to be on the Olympic shooting squad, so I hear, and is ex-military. He, professionally, keeps weapons in his home. That's a 12gauge or somesuch. The crooks don't even go near the place.

Except the aforementioned obsessed teenagers who get umpty and throw bricks at his car because he wont let them come visit his gun collection... pratts...

bob, lets not turn this into a gun owner debate. I'm a small woman. living in a relatively isolated spot. I am and have been quit prepared to defend myself. I'm betting you have been lucky enough to not be in that situation. I have been. I didn't heistate then and I don't care if I might be escalating it. Someone comes through my door uninvited, they have escalted it and I have no intention of waiting to see how far they want to go. I've been the victim of attempted muggings and the last one, in Yonkers New York, I put in the hospital.

In New York, another time, I had an attempted push in robbery that I stopped with a sword tip to the man's throat. If he had not stopped, I would have thrust home without any reservations. I think he saw that in my face. Because after looking at me he pulled back. I'm not roaming the streets like some crazed vigilanty, but I will defend my home and my family and I won't hesitate. If someone has broken in through my front door and is standing on my living room carpet, there is no debate. If I point a gun at someone, it is with the intention to shoot. You NEVER shoot to wound, that is BS. You shoot and you shoot to kill. Anything else and you will end up dead. If you aren't prepared for that, don't own fire arms. I do, and I am.

Here endeth the lesson.

runners with webleys: a webley .455 oozes class, same reason a Face-type character might pack a luger p-08. maybe it's not perfectly realistic and their are good classy modern weapons but for a anime inspired campaign it will do nicely. also runners that live in areas where no modern firearms are being imported in large numbers will want any functional gun they can find (plenty of yakuza with old 1911A1s, Tokarevs and Makarovs).

snowfox, a bit confused by your .380 comment, so do you have a Beretta 92-series, a Beretta 81-series or a Taurus 92-series?

Going by the figures on Raygun's site, I doubt a 7.62x25mm TT 87gr FMJ @ 1,390fps would still penetrate a NIJ type III-A vest. It might require III-A, though, but I don't think it would perform better than a 9mmP 124gr FMJ @ 1,400fps. How common is III-A compared to other types these days?

The only kinds of RL handguns I could see penetrating any body armor in the 2060s are the überpowerful (.440 Cor-Bon and up) and the rather odd (FN Five-seveN and kin). Of those probably only the former will age well. Personally, I'd rather taken an assault rifle than a .500S&W revolver, simply out of pity for my wrists.

standard .45ACP FMJ 230gr at 850fps is stopped by level I body armor
now about the tokarev round, it's basically the .30 Mauser with some internal case differences and and fired at difference pressures. the russians starting playing around with .30 mauser after WWI when germany and russia were both international pariahs. russia bought a lot of german mauser pistols and wanted to develop submachineguns also using the same round, so the cartridge was modified subtley and got hotter. how much different those pressures are is dependent on locality. the Czech variety is the hottest, it's a total subgun load at fires an 87gr. bullet at a little over 1600fps. it will penetrate IIIA, not III. i don't know if that outperforms 9mm 124gr at 1400fps on bodyarmor, but my hunch is "yes".

I don't know how common IIIA is but it's the most powerful type that can be worn all the time. body armor used to be a little secret that most civilians didn't know about cops. i don't think it would be very polite conversation to ask officer friendly and i doubt that information is as readily available at issue sidearms, cop car models, etc.

yep, shadowrunners probably have their own bizarre little gunnie subculture worrying about penetrating body armor.

.357 SIG (this will be one of the most popular)
.38 Casull (.45acp necked down to 9mm)
7.62x25mm Tokarev (Czechified loadings or saboted .223 Timbs)
.357 Magnum (some specialized loadings chuck a 90gr. at 2000fps, a very versatile cartridge)
.357 Maximum (a magnumized magnum)
9mm Para (+P+ loadings are still very respectable)
9x23mm Winchester (the great underappreciated successor to .38 Super)
.22 Remington Jet (a .357 Mag cartridge necked down to .22)
.17 HMR (i'm not really sure but it's an interesting new cartridge)

some oddball solutions
Taurus Raging Thirty/Bee/Hornet
.30 Carbine
.218 Bee
.22 Hornet

AMT Automag III .30 carbine (sure but it's an AMT and won't work most of the time)
Thompson Contender (for ambush situations)

PS
FN Five-Seven is now available to the public but the regular Armor Piercing ammo for it is not available so it's performance is marginally better than a .22 Magnum, however some enterprising handloader might be able to figure something out but this is pure speculation, i haven't heard a whisper on that front.

I haven't seen any place selling level I body armor, ever. Still, it wouldn't surprise me at all if BulletProofMe.Com didn't have all their facts straight, and, like I said, it wouldn't matter because level I isn't really used anywhere.

I did remember something being said somewhere about the AMT Automags not being exactly reliable, but it was the first cheap semi-auto pistol platform I could remember for some really big cartridges.

All of those might "do the trick" right now, IRL, but I have serious doubts whether anything but the rifle-caliber single-shots would in the 2060s. Of course advances in bullet technology might help some, but then I'm pretty confident some of those calibers will never have hi-tech armor piercing loadings made for them, not now and certainly not in 60 years.

BTW, you can't get a T/C Contender in any of the calibers I mentioned above for the Encore. You can get it in a number of other calibers, though...

http://www.bullberry.com/TCbarrels.html

AE you can get it in even more cartridges if you go with some custom shops. The above is probably one of the better third party custom barrel maker's list for the T/C Contender. They also make Encore barrels in up to 416 Rigby.

mcb

http://www.sb-usa.com/pistol_ammo_page.htm
sellier and bellot the czech ammo manufacturer i spoke of, reports a 85gr pill at 1647fps (from a 4.75in Cz52 length barrel). skeptical of manufacturers numbers further research indicates around 1550fps with 85gr. that same cartridge comming out of a SMG or carbine length barrels could begin to put it into .30 carbine territory.

Raygun, i have a hunch you got your 1,390fps figure from Frank Barnes' book?

A customized CZ52 to Czech out: fast, cheap and easy -- is this a pistol we're talking about?
American Handgunner, Sept-Oct, 2002, by David M. Fortier
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0BTT/159...cle.jhtml?term=

wow.... I might have to look into one of those...

-Mike R.

I guess it was 55 grains. There are pictures in the article of the .223 Timbs 55 grain FMJ loaded into a CZ52 with the slide removed. It looks like it barely fits in there. Anyway, I don't think the SS109 bullet would work too well. You'd be limiting powder capacity too much if you could manage to cram it into the CZ52 action.

Here's an interesting Russian job I found looking for things on a similar vein.

http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?s=&t...&threadid=79139
93gr. at 1770fps!

I can't say I have any idea what kind of stress that causes on the gun or the shooter, but I gotta say that's pretty frightening. An even 876 Joules or 646.1 ft-lbs.

I keep wondering whether calibers more like 5.7x28 actually might become common just in order to penetrate body armor, or whether the need to have something a bit more serious against unarmored opponents would just cause a drive towards SLAP pistol ammunition for militaries.

For example, would it be feasible to have something like a 10x25 with a saboted M993 7.62x51mm AP bullet as the projectile? The main concern is probably the feed at that point -- but assuming a theoretical future weapon that is designed to fire such rounds, what kind of practical limits are there to the cartridge length with conventional (short) recoil operated pistols, if any? If it were possible, what kind of performance could you expect with a 10mm Auto pistol with a saboted 126.6gr 7.62mm projectile, if it actually fed correctly?

[Edit]Failing that, you could always sabot the same projectile onto a .44 Magnum or similar and fire it out of a revolver...[/Edit]

Bah! 165 grain at 1200 fps, That's good enough for me, because it happens to be what I load in my gun!

H&K: The Tommy Hilfiger of Firearms.

Uh- guys, you do know you lost me a page ago right?

How about a Brown Bess firing at about 90 grains?

Can't help it, the penetration claims of the GSh-18 seem like BS to me. Even assuming that upon hitting something hard the core (however large that is) cleanly separates, but retains almost all of the kinetic energy, a 65gr steel projectile at 1,900fps outperforming a 7.62mm 148gr FMJ at 2,750fps by a huge margin doesn't sound very credible.

Do you really believe that a 1-1.5mm reduction in diameter and the switch from FMJ to hardened steel construction would overcome the five-fold difference in kinetic energy that easily?

As for the 10x25 and M993, I really shouldn't have used RL calibers and cartridges as examples. All I was really going for is the possibility of using as effective armor piercing ammunition as possible, whatever that would be, in any pistol design, real or fictious, that can also take advantage of the large-caliber, heavy bullets like I mentioned.

The .224 BOZ seems interesting as an idea, but I'd really like to see whether you could do that by simply saboting the round into a normal 10mm cartridge, since the point was for it to not require any modification to the weapon. Is there some reason why it would work less well as a sabot than as a whole new necked down caliber?

While a simple steel-cored bullet might work rather decently right now against soft body armor at least, my concerns reach at least 30+ years into the future, where it seems to me that body armor would be much better off against conventional small arms ammunition, relative to the situation now. To counter that advantage, you'd need ammunition types that penetrate not just pretty well but exceedingly well by current standards, which is why I was pushing a SLAP originally. The higher cost is the only real disadvantage I can think of over something like full-diameter steel-cored bullets, but penetration should be significantly better.

It certainly doesn't have to be a SLAP. There might be a lot of new advances in small arms projectile technology coming up in the next 30 years, and any of those that have to do with penetration specifically might be applicable. I'm trying to read through the patent, but it's slow going...