At 05:11 PM 6/10/01 -0700, petro wrote:
Secondly, if you think *ANY* firearm you can fire standing up will "Knock them on their behind", take a high school physics class.
Well said, but: In _The Irish War_ there's a description of IRA improvised recoilless 'rifles' which, like their .mil-industrial analogues, toss an equal mass out the back end. The reacting countermass is a bunch of flakes which dissipate the KE against the atmosphere.
Sure, but that isn't a cartridge based pistol, which is what we were talking about. There are also "gyro-jet" type munitions, which aren't all that accurate, but can pack a greater punch because they do some or all of their accelerating post-barrel.
[Ie, consider a barrel open at both ends. Put missile, charge, countermass flakes in that order. Point missile at thing you don't like, and keep friendlies a few meters away from the countermass ejection end of the barrel.]
Given that your average pistol fight takes place inside 3 or 4 meters, that could prove tough.
That said, an (e.g.) hip or knee shot on a biped will cause it to fall approximately back if the posture is right. That also is just the physics of actively balanced inverted pendula, biomechanics.
Knee shots, yes. But if you are that good, might as well go for the triangle formed by the top center of the lip and the eyebrow ridges. That *WILL* cause the target to collapse with anything over a .22LR, and if you get an eye will 100% guarenteed stop the fight (with that individual) now. Only one person has survived a shot (by a firearm) to the eye, and she's been on life support since she was hit by a .22. As for the hip, it's a large and relatively porus bone. There have been a few cases where hip shots have failed to drop an attacker because the bullet just punched a hole, failing to fracture the hip. Heart/lung shots and brain shots tend to be your best bet with a pistol. -- -- http://www.apa.org/journals/psp/psp7761121.html It is one of the essential features of such incompetence that the person so afflicted is incapable of knowing that he is incompetent. To have such knowledge would already be to remedy a good portion of the offense.