I think hn and tech culture in general is sleeping on the rise of popular gun culture.
Even with some significant headwinds on social media, gun culture influencers have huge audiences, slick media production, and run the gambit from highly technical to meme fueled gif parties.
It's a long way from the old stereotype of an old white Vietnam vet waxing poetic about 1911 .45s.
Something else that has been interesting to watch has been how much video game culture acts as an on ramp to gun culture. The influence that games like modern warfare have on the real life gun community is fascinating. It makes sense since there are way more call of duty players than actual high speed operators, but still...
If you think about it, it makes sense. Unlike a lot of other gear orientated technical fields, it's almost impossible for people to regularly employ their toys outside of a range setting. Everyone and their brother wants short barreled ARs, but how many people are actually clearing rooms. Same goes for recce rifles. How many folks out there on patrol? It's the equivalent of the guy who buys a land cruiser with a roof top tent and hood mounted jack, but just drives it to the mall on the weekends (and yet look how much the overland community has exploded over the past few years).
This is very much an underserved hobby driven by culture and entertainment. It's almost entirely disconnected from actual military needs/requirements/drivers. I think there is a lot of growth in the industry, surprised it doesn't come up more often.
Yeah fudds haven't made up the bulk of the gun scene since the 90s really.
I hope that since people in video games can use use a wide variety of weapons we get some push back against banning specific gun types. Opening the MG registry would be really good and maybe this is a way to encourage it, same for removing suppressor and SBR regulations.
Btw there is some intersection between the two, a lot of the guys behind the 3d-printed gun movement are moving to decentralized technologies for chat, video hosting, etc. because the gun-grabbers running mainstream platforms don't like them.
The 3D printed gun movement is fascinating in itself as far as the potential influence on the gun industry, society and legislation. I feel like there’s no way entities like the ATF (and Justice Dept) will be able to keep up in about 10 years as guns like the FGC-9 evolve and become more ubiquitous.
I think it comes from the cartoon character Elmer fudd, and stands for someone who is part of the traditional sporting/hunting culture as opposed to someone approaching it from a broader and more modern "self defense", 2A, entertainment (video game/movie) influence.
Those cultures do overlap, but there is definitely some friction between them at times.
That's not the way I've heard it used. In the contexts I've seen it you are a Fudd if you believe, for example, that the American public should be allowed to own guns, but not AR-15s, AK-47s.
True, but you have to remember that until relatively recently, the idea of owning a 556/223 AR platform was pretty far out of the mainstream.
People who liked guns hunted, and or owned things in calibers that overlapped between hunting and the military (think .308). They had revolvers, or full metal frame pocket pistols for self defense.
The standard today would be something like a glock 19 (plastic frame, 19 rounds of hollow point, small size) carried concealed in an appendix holster. Now often with a red dot sight and a rail mounted tactical light. There are dozens and dozens of AR (using the term very broadly) manufacturers out there today, pushing everything from systems designed for suppressed cqb (think short barreled suppressed .300 blackout) to long range precision shooting (ar-10/6.5 cm).
These kind of options, and the hobbies/communities they enable, didn't exist at the consumer level even 10 years ago.
The inflection point seems to be the sunset of the assault weapons ban, but it took quite a bit of time for this stuff to become mainstream.
The old guard supported by a base of hunters and sport shooters is aging out, and not growing anywhere near as fast as this new generation. The needs (and opinions) of someone out on regular elk hunts range pretty far from someone who wants a firearm for self defense.
Uhh that's not what it means the way I've ever heard it used, sorry if you got that tho. How I've heard it and use it, it's for 2 groups:
1. People who don't care about stopping gun-grabbers as long as they can keep their .30-30 henry or remington 870 or whatever, because "nobody needs one of them plastic guns, they're for killing people!"
2. People who are generally ignorant/out-of-date/willfully uneducated. The "muh 2 world wars, stopping power, I use a .45 cause they don't make a 46" boomer-tier stuff. The "22 is the deadliest caliber because it tumbles around inside!" people.
Edit: yeah, as 'nataz pointed out it's from Elmer Fudd. I'll tell you that most of the racist people I've met in the gun scene are fudds. The ones you'd call "fanatical" don't give a shit who you are as long as you're pro-gun and/or anti-govt.
His example for comparison was rather distasteful, but you did reinforce his point. It's name calling with the intent to insult. And while many people present valid information and construct good arguments while doing that, casually insulting your opponent, or worse uninvolved bystanders is bad manners.
You can just say 'racist', or 'person who relies on outdated ballistics information'. No need to have one derogatory term to lump the two in together and then sling in around casually.
People say that 22lr is the 'deadliest caliber' because it is the caliber that has ended the most lives in the United States, that being because it is by far the most common. The original source for that was a study done in ~1970 but there have been others to back it up since.
I'm not going to go so far as to say that _no one_ ever has said that .22lr is more lethal than any other caliber, but it is the exact opposite sentiment of "I use a .45 cause they don't make a .46" so it's not likely to be a person from that group saying it.
He was referring to a common myth that 22LR will "bounce around" inside the body without exciting, and thereby cause more lethal damage than other calibers.
I've read this theory many, many times on gun forums and comment sections.
Ok then I'll disagree with your implication that anybody who cares about more than old hunting arms is "extremist/fanatical". I have no problem with having a term to refer to people who only care about their rights to own their arms. Also what did you mean by "n*-lover" and how do you think it relates to ppl who want more than hunting guns to remain legal? Tbh that makes it sound like you're flaim-bating.
There is a dismissiveness from the extremists toward those who own guns but believe in regulating guns. As though if you claim to be one of us you can't also be nuanced and believe the "other side" have merit as well.
Bump stocks. I think they should remain illegal. I'm a fudd.
Fully automatic, military weapons should probably remain heavily regulated. I'm a fudd.
This is what I'm describing.
Dick Metcalf as editor of Guns and Ammo magazine suggested in an editorial that maybe some gun regulation is a good thing. He was out after that.
Curious, which gun de-regulation measures were publicly supported by gun control advocates?
Or for that matter, what "reasonable" abortion restrictions were supported by pro-abortion advocates? Somehow all the abortion restrictions turn out to be unreasonable, and all the gun control restrictions are always reasonable.
I don't follow these debates too closely but put them in the "culture war" bucket, rather than the "public policy" bucket.
The object is to defeat your enemy, not to make optimal public policy. Facts and figures are recruited to make the other side look bad and worthy of contempt, not to determine which policy is most effective.
Nope, do you remember the "partial birth abortion debate"?
The pro-abortion side basically argues that if you can find a doctor that says you need it, you should be able to get it even at 9 months. And they also insist that psychological harm to the mother is enough of a reason to get it, it doesn't need to be risk of physical injury. And that you can go to as many doctors as you want until you find one that will agree. Many abortion clinics have such doctors on staff to meet the legal requirements of medical consultation.
Or about the "post-birth" abortion debate, in which an abortion is botched and the baby delivered? The pro-abortion side wanted to allow the child to be left on a table and not provided with life sustaining care (or even food/milk) to die in the hospital.
The anti-abortion side insists this is infanticide, which gets the other side really angry, since they are not the ones killing the child, they are just refusing to provide care and letting the infant die on its own.
Interestingly, in the ancient world, people would leave new borns on the side of the road if they didn't want or couldn't care for them. There are lots of stories about these castaway infants - Moses being put into a basket and sent down the river are an example of this genre. Also in Venice (my favorite city) there was a scaffetta, shaped like a lion's mouth, where you could slip an unwanted infant, and it would be raised in one of the Catholic orphanages. Vivaldi was a conductor for a girls' school in such an orphanage -- the Four Seasons was first performed by orphaned and abandoned girls.
Of course the majority of normal people believe in some regulation and some rights. They view these issues as complex and morally ambiguous. But not activists, and certainly not activists in a culture war.
Yeah, fair description. Still think your calling us "extremists" is comparable or worse tho. It's more that "one of us" is more "people who think the government has no business regulating guns" than "people who own guns".
I disagree, bump stocks are largely a gimmick and automatics are "military weapons" because they've been so limited for the populace. I don't see the problem with "fudd" to describe people who care only about their guns.
Gun owners that think we should regulate AR-15's, probably don't in fact own an AR-15. So "caring only about their own guns" doesn't point out any sort of hypocrisy.
"Extremists" is not the word I wanted to use, but I didn't know a better one.
No regulation on any guns at all. Period.
I don't know a good name for that take on gun ownership.
> Gun owners that think we should regulate AR-15's, probably don't in fact own an AR-15. So "caring only about their own guns" doesn't point out any sort of hypocrisy.
Nahh it's perfectly fair because there are gun owners who don't own an AR but think they shouldn't be banned. Same as how I don't wanna buy a hooker but still think prostitution should be legal. Or same idea as "I don't agree with what you're saying but will defend your right to say it."
Not sure why you can't just say "gun rights advocate" cause that's what it is. Saying it's extreme is just as much a value judgement as "fudd". And for somebody who fit the stuff I described above, I don't know any good name other than "fudd" for that take on gun ownership.
> Even with some significant headwinds on social media, gun culture influencers have huge audiences, slick media production, and run the gambit from highly technical to meme fueled gif parties.
As I read that, I heard the words and voice "If you've ever been ..." bounce around in my head. It's the start of a phrase uttered by a very popular YT gun channel on youtube before each video.
I own a gun, I considered buying more too for a time (before ammo got really expensive) and I have friends and acquaintances that really like guns, and have several. I really don't see how software/tech could improve the experience outside of marketing and maybe some wiki-style education, if that's where you're going with your comments. Part of the appeal is the purely mechanical aspects of firearms and another is the actual experience of shooting.
Ballistics simulations could be a big one. More technical literature on how to design things like machine guns and complex operating systems would be helpful also, I think the most comprehensive I've read on the subject is Chinn's The Machine Gun but it's pretty old these days and doesn't cover some new stuff. 3D-printed and homemade gun scene is big and getting bigger and that's def got overlap with tech. Especially since it tends to get booted from mainstream platform and has mostly moved to stuff like LBRY and Rocket chat, helping to keep it up in the face of gun-grabber censorship would be good. Or using tech to expand the reach of gun-rights activism and make it easier to design, modify and print 3d-printed guns. Tons of ways if you want to get involved.
The market for 3d-printed/self-made guns is a... rocky one legally. I personally wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole, but someone is probably willing to do it.
From an engineering perspective, I've always found fascinating how complicated ammo taxonomy is and how weird the various units used are.
I get the historical aspect that led to this giant mess, but ... at the end of the day, there's not that many parameters to define what a bullet is and does.
In particular, wrt physical dimensions, my - probably naive - take is that (radius x length) seems to go quite a long way in describing a bullet.
Anyone more knowledgeable care to explain why things are so complicated and haven't been normalized / simplified over time?
I was once called an expert in external ballistics, this may have been an overstatement but I did spend quite a lot of time writing simulations for the ballistics of various bullets.
There are three phases that are important for bullets: what happens inside the barrel, what happens outside the barrel, and what happens when it strikes the target.
There are a lot of parameters effecting that characteristics of all three. (not just 2 dimensions of size)
Shape, muzzle velocity, reliability, ease of manufacture, etc etc. are all quite important.
There is also long history, a gun is a thing that can be around for decades; you can't so easily throw away the past and start over. There is also a strong consideration for the design process. Fulfilling a set of requirements can conflict with the desire for standardization. Also when standardization is an idea, using an existing standard rather than making a new one has been the pragmatic response.
NATO though has done quite a lot in standardizing American rounds. There are many almost-equivalent NATO standard rounds with things like metric measurements instead of the more historical American measurements.
But also, things are just complicated. When talking about an airplane you might as well say that length and wingspan might "go quite a long way" in describing it. I mean, in some sense sure, but a very long way from fully describing one.
There's a book "American Rifle" which goes through quite a bit of the history of the development of guns in the US.
Because there's a ton of organic growth over more than a century and a shitton of holdovers. Think of it like really old legacy systems in computing.
Like look just at naming: old stuff was often named based on caliber and the number of grains of powder back in black powder days. Like the .45-70 is a .45 bullet and had 70 grains of black powder in a standard load. But then this carried over when they named the .30-06, which had a .30 bullet and 6 grains smokeless. Some handgun rounds are "ACP" because they were developed for new (at the time) auto-loaders instead of revolvers. Now cartridges are mostly named by caliber.
Then there's stuff where cartridges were slightly tweaked, like for NATO. .223 is mostly the same as 5.56 and .308 is mostly the same as 7.62, but the latter are both NATO rounds re-named and changed a bit from their predecessors. Oh and by the way, .308 rifles can typically fire .308 or 7.62, it's not safe to fire .308 from a 7.62 rifle though. Oh but for .223/5.56 it's the other way: You can fire .223 from a 5.56 chamber but not vice versa.
Every country developed its own rounds for a long time, just look at the number of 9mm cartridges there are. Different bullets, different nomenclature, etc.
There's a ton of variety in how you make a bullet, even beyond "broad" varieties like hollow point vs jacketed vs semi-jacketed vs wadcutter vs semi-wadcutter... or the actual metal composition of the bullet, jacket, etc.
Different rounds are also loaded differently, you can have some under-pressured for subsonic if you're running suppressed, there's usually some variation in what's "standard" and bodies like SAAMI and CIP are voluntary and typically define max pressure only. Plus there are overpressure (+p) and over-overpressure (+p+) rounds...
Lots of complexity from over 100 years of a lot of people developing their own ideas than merging them only sort of.
You have to go one layer deeper and think beyond the projectile (bullet) and include the cartridge (bullet, accelerant, primer, case).
Basically how fast some thing shoots (how much accelerant) is just as important as what you are shooting (bullet characteristics).
Each of those variables also have weight and dimension penalties which determine how much you can reasonably carry.
An interesting relatively recent example is the development of small caliber armor piercing rounds. NATO needed something to deal with the rise of body armor. Same requirements, two different solutions to get there in the fn 5.7 and hk 4.6x30 (simplifying enormously here). Basically these are engineering and manufacturing challenges.
For anybody who hasn't heard of them and wants a rough overview of the differences, the 5.7 and 4.6 mostly work on being smaller-caliber at higher velocity. 9mm parabellum usually has muzzle velocity anywhere between 1000 and 1500 ft/s where 4.6 is closer to 2300 ft/s. The 5.7 is closer to 2800. They're also usually steel core.
I'm pretty sure all the steel core 5.7x28mm is considered armor piercing handgun ammo and is therefore limited to law enforcement.[1] I've never seen steel core versions of it sold at any gun store.
Sadly yeah, it's one in a massive list of stupid laws but FOPA states anything that "may be used in a handgun" if I'm remembering the wording right. I believe they submitted the duty round for the NATO RFP tho and that's steel penetrator. If i remember right blacktip .223 is similarly banned because of AR pistols, you can basically only get AP in full rifle rounds (.30-06) or something like .50 BMG.
> there's not that many parameters to define what a bullet is and does
There's a surprising amount of parameters that define what a bullet is and does. Consider this article, which describes the difference between secant and tangent ogives.
From an engineering perspective, long range shooting is FASCINATING!
For the bullets themselves, in addition to the diameter and length you've got mass, material and shape (round nose, hollow point, ballistic tipped, etc.).
For the cartridge as a whole you're also going to be concerned with powder capacity, shape (necked?, rimmed?), and to a lesser extent material.
These are just a few examples and all are significant.
What would the upside be in “simplifying” it? At present, there’s a known set of standard ammo sizes in use, and millions of guns in existence that use them.
Sure, the nomenclature is weird, with a mix of imperial, metric, and just plain weirdness, but it doesn’t seem to be negatively impacting anything.
I think this is yet another area where large budgets and low accountability creates "innovation" primarily in how to spend public money. Large police and military budgets create incentives for manufacturers to innovate away from the standard and introduce "high performance" proprietary form factors.
In some cases a new round size/weight does actually produce better performance for the desired application. In many cases, IMO, those advantages are academic and achieved in highly controlled environments, i.e. they are nullified by the high variability of other factors, in real world situations. I am just an enthusiast and not any kind of professional though.
> Large police and military budgets create incentives for manufacturers to innovate away from the standard and introduce "high performance" proprietary form factors.
extremely few of the calibers out there have ever seen military/LE use, and fewer of them started out with military/LE use.
If you're considering the full history of ammunition going back over 100 years, then yes. But if you limit yourself to the most commonly stocked ammo types that you would see in a store today, which would include
- 9mm
- 10mm
- .357
- 40 S&W
- 308 winmag
- 5.56
- 7.62
then no, these are most (all?) cartridges that began life with LE or military application. Even many of the less common ammo types that are still not unusual to see stocked, or seen at the range, like 300 blackout or 6.5mm Creedmore also start life as RFPs from military or LE operators.
This is a nice overview of common types but I still don't understand the "why" of some of their names, such as the difference between a .38 and a .380 (It's the same number!)
Because there's a lot more than caliber that matters. If you think about it, a .45 ACP is close in caliber to a .50 BMG. But there's hella powder behind a .50 and not so much behind a .45. The bullets themselves make a big difference also, there are at least a half dozen you can read more about here: https://gunvault.com/types-of-ammunition/
If you think having 2 cartridges that both have .38" caliber bullets is confusing, take a look at all the 9mm ones. Just in the ones that are actually called 9mm and not just caliber equivalent, there's 9x19, 9x25 mauser, 9x57 mauser, 9x39, 9mm winmag, 9x18 makarov, and a ton more I can't remember. Some of those are rifle cartridges, some handgun. They have different bullets with different characteristics and different bullet lengths and different bullet weights. And the shape of the cartridges behind them, the guns they fire from, and the amount of propellant each one has is all different.
the full name of .38 is .38 Special, and the full name of .380 is .380 ACP. IIRC, .380 ACP was so named to distinguish it from an earlier related design, .38 ACP. In common use, if somebody says .38 they're referring to .38 Special as that's by far the most common cartridge with .38 in it, and if they say .380 they're definitely referring to .380 ACP, though it's also sometimes referred to as 9mm Browning.
ETA: and in the case of both these rounds, .38" is actually the approximate diameter of the _case_ not the bullet; the diameter of .380 ACP bullet is 9mm, and the diameter of .38 Special is .357".
Former gun owner myself as well back when I lived in the sticks. Would carry on walks in my "yard" because of injured, hungry, or otherwise dangerous wildlife.
> Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust.
This is the sort of thing that gives firearm owners a bad rap. Especially those who advocate for self-defense rights. Everyone already thinks firearm owners are gung-ho cowboys with itchy trigger fingers. The majority are not.
> Movie frames featuring sainted action heroes, gun out-thrust.
>This is the sort of thing that gives firearm owners a bad rap.
You're not wrong, but I do think it's unfair and a little odd. After all software engineers are almost exclusively depicted as engaging in unethical and outright criminal activity in pop culture, regardless of whether they are the 'good guys' or 'bad guys'. Many beginning training materials focus on things that are implied if not outright trumpeted as giving you the ability to commit illegal and immoral acts.
We certainly don't (well someone probably does, but we shouldn't) consider that as a reflection on all software engineers.
> After all software engineers are almost exclusively depicted as engaging in unethical and outright criminal activity in pop culture
Right, I agree for sure. I think the reason why we don't consider this a reflection on software engineers is that no politician has thought using freedom to engineer software as a wedge issue in a campaign. It's absolutely unfair and a little odd. But, after all, I've yet to see a political wedge issue arise that isn't unfair, and viewed as a little odd by other cultures.
Do you have a problem with those terms? If it makes you feel better "stopping power" is at least half a meme these days, from all the old fudds talking about "muh stopping power" with their .45 1911s. And yeah a bullet makes a wound channel? This stuff is just as relevant of you're hunting or similar.
And no, birdshot may not stop a big person. Hurt like hell but often won't kill. I personally don't have a shotgun for home defense though, 9mm hollow points in a PCC do the job fine.
Anybody who's not an idiot wears ear protection when shooting but a few shots won't damage your ears much. But yeah a 9mm handgun is significantly less bad for these reasons. Thank the feds though, it's damn hard to get suppressors without tons of paperwork which would otherwise make this less of a problem.
> Thank the feds though, it's damn hard to get suppressors without tons of paperwork which would otherwise make this less of a problem.
Paperwork isn't that bad and online retailers help a lot. It's annoying, expensive, and you have to wait a long time after purchase to get it, but it's not really "hard" IMO.
Huh never seemed like that, go figure. Tbh i usually shoot 9mm from a PCC so that may have skewed my impression.
I consider a shitload of paperwork, months of waiting, and the $200 tax stamp to be pretty bad. More importantly, navigating that paperwork is hard for somebody kinda new to guns, even though it's better these days esp. with the internet.
And just a quick safety note, a 9mm round can absolutely cause long term hearing damage with just one shot, especially if fired indoors and unsurprised. Lots of variables in play here, but the answer is to always wear hearing protection.
I mean, it's a bit difficult to compare and contrast various bullets without talking about stopping power and wound channels.
You could use euphemisms or be more technical, but in the end you're comparing a thing made to transfer kinetic force and create a hole, on its ability to do those things.
And yes IMHO, a pump action 12ga birdshot reduced-recoil load w/ a standard slug at the end of the magazine is hard to argue against if we're honestly talking home defense load.
I strongly discourage shotguns for home defense. Shotguns have high recoil, making them a poor choice for inexperienced shooters. Spread is minimal at typical room distances so you need to be just as accurate as with a rifle or handgun. Most importantly, people tend to short stroke them in panic situations. If you want a long gun for home defense, a semi-automatic rifle is a much better choice.
That said, you probably want to be able to aim a gun while potentially having a free hand to use a phone, open doors, turn on lights, grab loved ones, etc. A handgun allows you to do all of those things and have higher magazine capacities than a shotgun.
Eh, shotgun recoil is amazingly variable based on the weight of the firearm and the choice of ammunition.
I’d swear by my Mossberg 590, which has enough heft that decades-younger-akerl could easily manage the recoil.
I feel like you’re also underselling spread. You’re not going to be peppering an entire doorway from 5 feet away, but precision is much less relevant than with a handgun or rifle.
That said, if anybody reads the above comment and decides a rifle is their home defense weapon of choice, I’d strongly advice taking similar care to select the caliber and build. A .22 gives you no recoil but very little kinetic energy to work with. By contrast, anything in a more typical rifle caliber (.223 and up, essentially) and you’re running a pretty serious risk to anything that happens to be behind your target. If you’ve decided a rifle is the form factor you want, there’s any number of modern carbines chambered in typically-pistol calibers like 9mm / 40 S&W / 45, which in a carbine will have neglible recoil and mesh much better with a home defense situation.
Ok so UK resident here. Oddly able to own a shotgun (not pump). what is a standard slug? I presumed birdshot would mean the "slug" (big metal thing fired out end of gun) would be replaced by the "birdshot" (tiny metal balls designed to spread and so make hitting bird (plus lots of other things) easier.?
Sidenote: It's unlikely in US as there seems to be a political objection to collating gun stats but are there any stats on threat models in "home defence"? I presume the main one is armed burglary but am interested in how often, where gun is kept vs where it was needed etc etc
Normal shotgun rounds are filled with a number of pellets; the smaller the pellet, the more you can fit. Birdshot: small pellets in large number, Buckshot: large-ish pellets in small number. A slug is a massive (18.5 mm diameter for 12 gauge) single projectile used in a shotgun shell.
Every time a firearm is used in a situation involving police, such as home defense, the data is recorded. It's not always shared, though. Gun use in defensive situations seems to happen about a tenth to an eighth as often as criminal use. This includes gang related shootings, which account for 15% of the total, and there are issues with ascribing intent and motive, so the data has a lot of confounding factors. It's so bad that it's nigh on impossible to make any useful conclusions.
The best bet in self defense is to find a competent professional trainer. Someone with long military or law enforcement experience that isn't an asshole. If you're really into it you can get the same training that Keanu Reeves got and turn yourself into John Wick. That's a hell of a party trick.
>>Gun use in defensive situations seems to happen about a tenth to an eighth as often as criminal use.
I think you mean instances where a shot is actually fired? I believe there are 40-50,000 self-defense uses per year in the U.S., a nation of ~330,000,000, though that does not necessarily mean a shot was fired [0]
>>> the data is recorded. It's not always shared, though.
But that not sharing is the whole politics problem, abs makes any attempt at sensible discussion impossible. You have just rolled off some stats ... but knowing there is missing data. Is that missing data important? Does it exclude rural areas so we have mostly urban stats so can only decide on urban problems?
Exactly - the margin of error for any of these stats could be 99% or 1% and we just don't have a good way to parse it. A lot is self report surveys, or dodgy guesstimates from activists from either side, so yeah - sensible discussion is difficult. I find it useful to look at it from a min max perspective - given an extreme from either end, what is reasonable in protecting safety, liberty, and other interests, and what would a proactive vs reactive policy look like, and so on.
If situation A,B,C...Z, what does the range of appropriate policies look like, and how can you translate that to different regions, cultures, population densities. One size doesn't fit all, but maybe there's a broad, dynamic way to work with these things that is really boring and sensible that won't leave people feeling their rights or safety are being trampled.
There’s a decent cargo cult following for some level of magazine/tube-based escalation of force, where you have some sort of lower-impact ammunition loaded first, followed by higher-impact ammunition. In this case, the pitch is for birdshot at the front, followed by a slug.
The issue is that in practice, once you pull out a gun you’ve fundamentally altered the state of the world between yourself and your assailant, and they have no way to know that you’ve stacked your magazine/tube like some kind of Dragon Ball Z power escalation where you’ll take 5 episodes to get to your Full Ultimate Potential.
In practice, you’re better off just making a choice between wanting lower or higher impact projectiles. Increasing complexity in a high-stress / fast-paced scenario isn’t a great plan.
Fucking around like that seems like a great way to kill someone when you don't have justification for it when you're just trying to scare them. Filling it with buckshot seems dramatically clearer as to what its purpose is for and under what circumstances it should be used.
I think we’re agreeing? The entire premise of my comment is that trying to get clever with tube stacking injects more chaos and risk into an already chaotic and risky scenario.
EDIT: To clarify, in general I also agree with the point you seem to be making that guns are dangerous and trying to make them seem less so by loading so-called “less lethal” ammunition makes it easier for the user to forget that. But if somebody wants birdshot, they should at least just load the whole tube with birdshot and accept that their load has different ballistic properties than buckshot.
If I’m loading a shotgun for for home defense: somebody has broken into my home.
As per my comment above, how I load my shotgun is mostly based around my willingness to inflict harm on somebody who has broken into my home. If I’m trying to limit impact, bird shot is lovely. If not, just load the whole tube with buck shot or slug or similar.
But trying to pre-plan an escalation of force via the shotgun tube ordering is a fools errand.
Police have an escalation of force via visibly different tools. A suspect can see the difference between a stick and a taser and a gun. And a cop can choose to draw any of these in any order. Stacking the tube locks you into a specific sequence that you have to remember and that your assailant can’t know.
Well, the implied assumption is that you probably don't want to kill someone breaking into your house. Though given the home defense crowd...? :/
Given that a shotgun must cycle through its magazine in order (although you could eject unfired rounds), the second assumption is that by the time subsequent rounds are fired, the situation has escalated.
E.g. If you bury a load of birdshot in a wall or someone's skin and they're still threatening you, you likely want to escalate (instead of repeating same). And from the counter-point, you probably don't want your initial choice to be killing someone vs not firing.
As Dick Cheney demonstrated, catching a shotgun shell of smaller pellets usually isn't lethal, as they individually don't have enough penetration to hit vital organs. Or, same, but in sheetrock.
On the other hand, as parent argued, it's adding complexity to an already stressful situation and does make a lot of assumptions about shooter and attacker intent.
I have no intention of prowling my house like Mr Nobody chasing down invaders. To meet me and my shotgun, a burglar has to have broken into my home and also actively entered the room I’m in, after I’ve called 911 and shouted to them that I’ve done so and am armed. If they decide to still try to come see me, I’m not actively looking to kill them but I am optimizing for fastest incapacitation. I’m only qualified to make this decision for myself, but it’s about as much respect for life as seems possible in the circumstance.
Even with some significant headwinds on social media, gun culture influencers have huge audiences, slick media production, and run the gambit from highly technical to meme fueled gif parties.
It's a long way from the old stereotype of an old white Vietnam vet waxing poetic about 1911 .45s.
Something else that has been interesting to watch has been how much video game culture acts as an on ramp to gun culture. The influence that games like modern warfare have on the real life gun community is fascinating. It makes sense since there are way more call of duty players than actual high speed operators, but still...
If you think about it, it makes sense. Unlike a lot of other gear orientated technical fields, it's almost impossible for people to regularly employ their toys outside of a range setting. Everyone and their brother wants short barreled ARs, but how many people are actually clearing rooms. Same goes for recce rifles. How many folks out there on patrol? It's the equivalent of the guy who buys a land cruiser with a roof top tent and hood mounted jack, but just drives it to the mall on the weekends (and yet look how much the overland community has exploded over the past few years).
This is very much an underserved hobby driven by culture and entertainment. It's almost entirely disconnected from actual military needs/requirements/drivers. I think there is a lot of growth in the industry, surprised it doesn't come up more often.