Most of the target aids are to help people fire more bullets without losing accuracy but from personal experience I was wondering if they could be harming individual shooting.

This might get into a "Raygun" question.

but from actual target shooting, I've noticed a difference.
I have a Beretta(automatic) and a Webley (revolver). The beretta has a lot of padding and a wide grip. When I shoot it I can barely feel the recoil. The Webely is much thinner and I can really feel it kick with each shot, BUT I do better with the Webely when I go through a box of ammo on a range.

So this makes me wonder if the pads which make the beretta more comfortable, to shoot, might interfere with accuracy. Both guns are about the same caliber .38 and .380 and the revolver has a slightly longer barrel but this shouldn't make that much oif a difference over time.

Without being able to see the "padding" on the Beretta (I've never seen a handgun with a grip I'd call padded, certainly not to the degree that it was soft and harder to grip firmly) I'd be much more inclined to just put this down to being all in your head. (no offense meant) You're more confident in one of the guns, so you shoot better with it.

And whether you feel more recoil and more of a jerk would have a lot more to do with how much each gun weighs, and the fact that revolvers always jerk more than automatic handguns, because the barrel is located much higher above the grip than in an automatic and when the gun recoils it has more leverage, displacing your wrist more.

What do you mean by "padding"?

It could be that you're just not getting a good grip on the Beretta. If you have small hands, I'd suggest taking any padding off of the grip and trying it that way. Also, are you using both hands to shoot? Try to get as much surface contact with the gun as possible, and as high of a hold as possible. Get the web of your hand as high up into the beavertail as you can. Wrap your fingers around the frontstrap, then lay your thumb along the grip, under the safety. Then take your off hand and press your index finger up against the bottom of the trigger guard. Wrap your fingers around your trigger hand. Place your trigger hand thumb on top of your off hand thumb and point both along the axis of the barrel, toward the target. Grip firmly. Firmly press your trigger hand into your off hand. Push your arms out as far in front of you as you can, with the gun directly in front of your face. Stand with your shoulders square to the target, feet shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent. Look directly at the target, then bring the gun's sights between your eyes and the target. Try to shoot with both eyes open. It will help with depth perception. See if that helps you out any.

It could also have a lot to do with the trigger. Before the "Age of Litigation" began, triggers on firearms were generally easier to use (not as heavy, creepy) than they are today, so it very well could be that your Webley just has a trigger that doesn't disturb your aim as much while pulling it back before it releases. It could also depend on what trigger mode you're using while shooting. Both the Webley and your Beretta (I'm guessing it's a model 84 if it's a .380), have double-action triggers. If you're not now, try using both from the single action mode (cock the hammer first).

What kind of ammunition are you using for each?

Anyway, there are a lot of factors that can go into this, so I'd need more information before I could give you a good idea of what the problem might be. Do you notice anything particularly strange happening when you shoot the Beretta?

On a more game related note there is no modification that I sor as applying padding to the grip of a gun. Customised grip is just moulded plastic (and now I think about it probably a legal liability) shock pads can not be applied to anything you don’t jam against your shoulder and it is probably about an inch of stiff foam.

I was at a venture (scout jamboree style event for ages 14-18) in Adelaide south Australia and there was a shooting event. One smart cookie decided that if when using a shotgun jammed against your shoulder the recoil would hurt a bit it would be slower if it started 10cm in front so he could slow it down a bit as it travelled back. Predictably he went home with a broken collarbone.

Edward

Because the beretta's an automatic the mag goes inside the grip, masking it wider. At first it felt odd after the thin grip of the webely but now that I'm use to it, it feels more comfortable and the webely more "boney."

The wider grip means that I really don't feel a recoil with it. I'm very careful to aim after each shot, rather than just burn through the mag. I use a teacup grip but the beretta(yep 84 cheetah) has marks for other fingers to hold it on the trigger guard and I try to use those.

The beretta uses standard .380 pisdtol rounds, $10 for a box of 50. the webley uses S&W .38 (not psecial) about $15/box. I shoot more with the beretta.
I'm more aware of the kick in the webely and the flash of gas around the cylinder with each shot.

The guys running the range, when not drooling over the webely, generally say it's in my head but I've been trying to get beyond that. They seem, when comparing them, a little scornful of the beretta by comparison to the webely which, as they point out, was made for combat.

I haven't noticed any particular difference in the trigger pull, but I'll try that with the beretta, manually cocking it to make the trigger more resolnsive.

I'm wondering if I brace more firmly for the webely in anticipation of the kick, meaning I'm holding it more slowly. If so, to get back to SR then the padding which assists rapid fire, could inhibit single shots.

Well, I gotta dump in my 20 nuyen worth.

Your accuracy problems may well stem from the fact that you just can't shoot semiautomatic pistols well. I know my dad's a good shot with his 1911, but put a revolver in his hands and he can't hit squat. Likewise, I'm a halfway good shot with a revolver, but that damn 1911, much as I love it to death, I'm nearly useless with.

Sometimes, it's some microscopic detail that causes difficulties with firearms. For example, when I first started shooting, my dad tried to train me to hold a handgun the way Raygun described, the classic Weaver stance. I couldn't hit anything. So I switched to a stance that simply felt natural - which I later learned was a variant of the Weaver known as the Chapman-Weaver - and suddenly, my accuracy, comfort, and recoil control improved. For those that are interested, the Chapman-Weaver involves tilting your body away from the target slightly, to your dominant side, and holding your dominant arm straight and locked. The weak side armo is held at about a 35 degree angle off the plane of the strong side, bent halfway at the elbow and supporting the grip of the pistol, also pulling the dominant arm back into the locked shoulder. One tends to lean one's head down onto the shoulder with this stance, and I know at least I shoot one-eyed. Depth perception be damned, I can't see the freakin' sights with both eyes open.

That's another stance to try. It sucks for long term shooting, if you're gonna spend 8 hours at the range, you might try something else, 'cuz this one tenses your muscles up and makes 'em sore. But it's helped me, I can actually hit the target now...

Now, if I recall, neither the Cheetah or the Webley have adjustable sights... but revolvers have traditionally been more accurate than autopistols. Nowadays, that's utter rubbish, and any autopistol manufactured after about 1970 should be able to keep pace with any revolver.

And yes, the Webley was made for combat, but the Beretta was made for self defense and uses much newer technology. The guys at the range are being macho twits. As a note of curiosity, where do you live? I know that if I went to my local gunshop and asked for a box of the old .38 S&W rounds, they'd look at me like I was a caveman.

As for padding, there really isn't any 'padding' to speak of on the Beretta, it's just that the good folks who designed it paid more attention to ergonomics than the guy who designed the Webley. The very fact that it's a combat pistol, built to be mass produced cheaply and efficiently, precludes that sort of attention. Back to my own experience with pistols... I pick up the 1911 and it feels like an extension of my hand... but I can't hit squat with it. A good revolver, even one with less than ideal grips, is much better in my hands.

Then again, I'm enough of a twitch that I can't hit anything with handguns in general, and the difference there is not so much how much better my accuracy is so much as how much closer I am to the target when I miss. I need a rifle or carbine to be able to shoot... stupid Tourette's.

Anyway, yeah. I'm starting to tangent here... that's what I got to say. Hope it helps...

I've heard many a tale of such things happening... broken bones always ensue. I can't fault them for ignorance, I suppose... in theory, it's almost a good idea.

That ranks right up there with "when renting an automatic pistol at a range for the first time, don't rest your thumb vertically behind the slide when you fire it." Wacky Brit/Japanese tourists.

It is a reasonable theory but when as a novice shooter you have an obvious theory and the instructor tells you to do the opposite you should consider the voice of experience and at least ask his opinion. You cant fault them for ignorance except the instructor said 4 times “hold the stock firmly against your shoulder”

Edward

I can't believe people would be dim enough to hold a rifle/shotgun stock away from their shoulder. It's like a bad practical joke. I have friends who do a lot of stuff with the History channel and you can always tell when the talking heads have po'ed someone, because they are given an overloaded musket.

"ergonomic" might be a better word than "pad." The beretta is more comfortable in my hand. I was more use to the webley but I had it first. The more I use the beretta, the better i like it's feel in my hand and the webley feels more "boney."

I can understand the idea of holding the good hand with the off hand, instead of supporting it.

I know you could burn through a clip, but I don't want to. I take the time between each shot. sighting the line, not rushing, being careful of the placement. Trying to adjust the aim to compensate- for example if the shot looked dead center, and came in low and right, I aim a little high and left.

To bring up something, I hadn't, I close my right eye. I'm left handed and my left eye is 20/20. My right is 20/40. most time it doesn't both me but keeping both open disturbs the aim as the weak eye is nothing but a distraction. but it's consistent for both weapons and long arms so that wouldn't affect one weapon more than the other.



As for the ammo, I live just north of Philadelphia. About 15 miles south of where they made the Mel Gibson film "Signs." It is a very gun friendly area. The ammo for the webely, .38 S&W (not ".38 special") is more expensive but I've had no trouble finding it, different gun shops and at least one sporting good store in the area I walk up ask for it, show my id and walk off with it.

Isosceles... I knew that... been a while since I really paid attention to that sorta thing. All I know is that it works for me. Sort of. Stupid shaky hands...

I can't believe nobody's brought up the obvious game joke as yet.

Obviously, you don't have the Pistols skill.
You have Pistols 2, with a specialization in Revolvers, 4.

lol, that may well be so, but it doesn't explain why I developed it. Is there a differnece between the more ergonomic beretta and the more stripped down revolver?

Maybe it fits you, as a shooter, better? With whatever stance, arm position, etc, it could just be that you learned what works with the Webley more quickly than with the Beretta.

I mean, I can't explain a lot of the stuff I know - I can't remember Spanish for beans, but I can spout Japanese like a madman. I rock at Unreal but suck at Call of Duty. Maybe it's just a question of what you've had more luck picking up.

Would the barrel length be that significant? Is this the difference between heavy and light pistols?

The beretta fits in a jacket pocket or sits on my hip in a holster easily. The Webley has a little more length or barrel and the grip stand away from the frame a little and cannot be easily obscured. I'm small so maybe a larger person could hide it in a shoulder holder but if I'm carrying it on my person it is in a military web holster.(I'd love to get one of the leather brit military ones but I'm too small for the mastching belts

I thought I should give you guys an update.
It was said I should manually cock the gun before shooting. I could see doing this on the double action revolver, but on the automatic, the gun self cocks after the first round so that wasn't an issue. but to be honest I hadn't noticed it.

From my experience the pad "hurts" aim, because it makes my hand too comfortable. I was at the range today and getting frustrated. I had really good clusters but all low and a little to the right.

I was talking to one of the guys behind the counter afterward along with a guy buying ammo and the comment was "I'd been watching while(I guess the Guess jeans were a good call) you shoot and you got too much meat on the trigger." In short since the gun is easier to hold than the Webley, I'm wrapping my finger too far around the trigger and this is pulling the gun a little off. Since the revolver was less comfortable I had more of a reach so I didn't have that pull.

Meh, I'm just one of those people too. I shoot MUCH better with a revolver (My personal favorite being the .357 Magnum) then I do with any Semi-Auto. And it's because of the stance I naturaly take, is just better with a (good) revolver, with a thinner handle, then a baretta with a "stuffed" one. But even Semi's with a smaller handle I still suck with...

I picked up a S&W .357 today, they said I can also fire .38 specials from it but that sounded odd. Certainly if it's true it will make target shooting cheaper.

The .357 I got has a 4" barrell but in the cabinet they had ones with really big barrells and a couple of the tiches with like a 3 inch barrell. I asked wouldn't that really cut down on accuracy compared with the longer barrells, meaning the gun isn't good for much more than pb range, they said no, but it does mean more of the eergy of each shot transfers to your hands.

.357 and .38 Special differ in only one dimension and that is the length of the brass cartridge. Both will fire equally in a revolver but that doesn't apply to semi-automatics, they will jam.

The 38 special bullet is acutally .357 inches in diameter. IIRc the 38 special round is just a few mm shorter. The long barreled revolvers tend to act like 'barrel weights' and tend to be nicer to shoot that their snubbier cousins.

Going from a 4 inch to 3 inch barrel will cost you ~75 FPS more irritating (not really less, but less ergonomic, you could say) recoil, and some accuracy loss. IIRC a good 3" revolver will still be 'combat accurate' but if you are going for the reduced barrel, make sure you get one with a reputation for accuracy.

ok, this is going to sound odd, but why do they call it a .38?

I know a ".38 special" won't sit in my .38 webley but why not just ".357" and ".357 magnum"? like carrying regular "ammo" or "EX" in SR.

to keep this is Sr terms we're saying my .357 Heavy pistol is firing ammo for a light or heavy pistol?

Will have to wait on Raygun for the definitive answer to why the different calibers are called what they're called. A few things though:
The .38 Special has a case 29.4mm in length and has a SAAMI max average pressure limit of 17,000 psi (18,500 for .38 Special +P). Like Crusher Bob said, the .38 Special bullet is .357" in diameter -- this is apparently true for most if not all .38 pistol calibers.
The .357 magnum has a 32.7mm long case and a SAAMI max average pressure limit of 35,000 psi. I assume the magnum case is also thicker than the .38 Special to accomodate those pressures. Not sure though, will have to wait on Raygun for that, too.

In SR terms, you could definitely say that certain "Heavy Pistols" (ie .357 magnum revolvers) IRL can fire "Light Pistol" ammunition.

IIRC the '38 special' cartiridge was originally a black powder load (iirc the cartidge turned 100 recently) made to replace the 'old' 38-40 colt cartridge. As a marketing term the cartridge (developed by Smith & Wesson) was called the '38 (S&W) Special' to differentiate it from 38 colt. As to why they are called 38s as opposed to 36s, it might have something to do with differentiating them from the 36 caliber cap and ball revolvers that they had recently replaced, I dunno.

I'm trying to figure out WHY you would ever use a 3 inch barrel. It makes little to no difference in concealibility (SR or Real Life) and it has about a million drawbacks.

Good size for a backup pistol. Any bit of weight you can manage to lose, you will be thankful for 99% of the time, and that 1%, if you're using the backup pistol, you're already so fucked that an extra inch isn't going to help much of anything.

A .357 magnum back up???

Remember that for the longest time the only two 'real' choices in pistols were 357 magnum and 45 If you weren't going to carry a cut down 1911, you would carry a cut down 357 instead.

Your other choices (.32, .380, 38 sp) weren't likely to put someone on the ground with one shot, especially out of a short barrel.

And it's handy if you think you're going to be mugged by a humpback whale.

If that's back up what's the main weapon? rail gun? Pulse gun? Thor shot?

The .357 feels like the safest gun. The double action is really heavy but once cocked, very light, this thing is not going off by accident but once ready, very light touch.

It's been a couple of years since I read the book, so maybe it was the 5.56mm round instead. I've never actually fired a 5.56mm rifle cartridge, but it certainly seems to get a lot of smack talked about it on the internet.

Howe complained of the green tips (never figured that meant M855s before now) on several occasions. A bit odd, since the tone of the complaints is that this new ammunition is a whole lot worse than the old (M193), while tests would indicate that the differences are quite small.

I would imagine that a fragmenting 5.56x45mm FMJ would, on average, punch a much larger hole in a human target at close ranges than a 7.62x51mm non-fragmenting FMJ. I'd certainly rather put this in the enemy than this. Never seen the gelatin test results of a fragmenting 7.62x51mm FMJ, but they're bound to be awesome.

Part of the quote that I left out was that Howe was shooting at a group of Somalis that were two blocks away, and he was doing it with M855 from a CAR-15 (11.5" barrel). According to Fackler, there shouldn't be much fragmenting going on in that case. The little bullet is going to make a single little hole that a gauze bandage and a wad of khat are likely to fix, at least temporarily.

And at least in this particular anecdote, I don't remember any others but obviously that's not saying a whole lot, he was comparing the "green-tips" to the 7.62mm M-14, which really isn't much of a comparison at all. There's no mention of M193, or ball ammo, or anything like that that I see or remember.

Maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Maybe it was the reference to the M855s as "new" ammunition, it's true that it doesn't say anything about the "old". Could also be the fact that he's complaining about the M855s specifically, instead of the 5.56x45mm in general. You could put that down to him not being used to discussing ammunition in "correct terms", however -- only ever firing army standard ammunition can do that to you, make you equate a certain type of ammunition with the caliber.

Thinking back about it, another time he complains about the ammunition is when he fires through a wall and a door at a group of three somalis during the night siege. Not too surprising, I doubt many small arms are particularly lethal through a brick wall, certainly not a 5.56x45.

So, yes. In summary, Snow Fox, you must carry an M 14 as your primary and a .357 magnum as your backup.

Ok... So I went shooting recently, and ended up having a very similar experience to yours.

With a .357 magnum revolver I could put 5 shots out of 6 into the target the size of a human head at 20 yards.

With a 1911, I did a little worse, but not much.

With a 9mm Beretta or a .40 cal Ruger, I wasn't remotely as accurate.

After experimenting a little more, I found that with the Beretta I could adjust my stance and grip in order to improve my accuracy considerably, but still didn't do quite as well as with .357, and with the .40, there was nothing I could do to make the damn thing more accurate.

So it definitely seems like I did better with the guns which had thinner grips - although, judging by my experience with the Beretta, I could probably compensate for a "fatter" one with more practice. (I'd discount the .40, since it showed neither good accuracy nor grouping, for me and others that shot it, making me think we just ended up with a POS rental gun.)

As for the frangible effects of 5.56 and somalies...

AE, remember in our earlier discussion re: the frangible effect of 5.56, it seemed to be quite veolcity dependent (ie the bullet needed to be going quite fast to actually fragment). From a full sized rifle this range seemed to be around 50-75 meters. Fired from an M4 of Colt Commando this range has got to be reduced. Also, the somalies (they didn't call them 'skinnies' for nothing) may have not been large enough to give the bullet time to fragment. A lot of hits (even ones in the torso) might have only been looking at 4-6 inches of ballisitc gelatin equivalent, the fragmentation effect might not even start until around 4 inches of penetration.

As for small arms vs brick walls, the M2 is man portable... But 7.62 should be able to penetrate most brick walls, especially is you fire several times.

Once the grunts realize that their troll squaddie and pack an M2 by himself, they probably won't care how much space in the Blackhawk he takes up

This site claims 45-50 meters for the M855 from a 14.5" barrel. The difference between M855 and M193 with shorter barrels was greater than I remembered. It's certainly possible to get engagement ranges well above 50 meters even in MOUT.

"A bullet fired from the front through the abdomen must penetrate about 7 inches in a slender adult just to reach the major blood vessels in the back of the abdominal cavity.", Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness
It should rarely come up with torso hits that there is not enough flesh to cause the tumbling. The M855 cannot be completely relied upon to tumble and fragment anyway, but wound tract length shouldn't be a problem.

Yes, many small arms will penetrate brick walls, even with single shots at close ranges. But most will suck for lethality through them. The 5.56x45mm FMJs will fragment and those bits will be moving rather slowly. The 7.62x51mm is very likely to do the same, although the bits will be a bit bigger and maybe a bit faster.

The HMG troll might be very handy for some special applications, such as anti-vehicular fire. Less useful in MOUT because of size restrictions -- good thing he can fire through outer walls, because he bloody well has to.

Learning when is just as important as learning how to use any weapon if you're going to bother carrying one around. Awareness is probably the most important thing to learn how to manage for anyone who is preparing for the possibility of a fight. You need to be just as aware of what you're doing as you are of what is happening around you. That alone prevents far more crime that waving a gun in someone's face.

That said, I'm reasonably sure that the ratio of injury between people who didn't have a weapon and needed one and people who didn't need a weapon but had one is skewed quite a bit toward the former.