On 2005-01-14T15:42:18-0800, Bill Stewart wrote:

At 01:54 PM 1/14/2005, R.A. Hettinga wrote:

...

<http://www.wnbc.com/print/4075959/detail.html> NEW YORK -- There is a nationwide alert to members of law enforcement regarding a new kind of handgun which can render a bulletproof vest useless, as first reported by NewsChannel 4's Scott Weinberger. ... The weapon is light, easily concealable and can fire 20 rounds in seconds without reloading.

A couple of questions to the gunpunks out there... I've heard that rifles easily penetrate bullet-proof vests, and that vests are really only useful against average-to-small handguns and against shotguns. Is this accurate?

There are various levels of body armor specified by the NIJ. In order of effectiveness (lower to higher): Levels IIa, II, IIIa, III, and IV. http://www.nlectc.org/txtfiles/BodyArmorStd/NIJSTD010103.html Level IV typically takes the form of a trauma plate and is put into a pouch in the front (and/or in the back) of soft body armor. III and IV are heavier, bulkier, and as a result aren't used as much. The NIJ standards are based on stopping standard bullets up to certain velocity limits (preventing them from going through the vest), _plus_ "backface deformation" limits. They put the vests over geletin, and the volume displaced by the vest when it absorbs the shot is measured and must be less than a specified limit. There is a lot of sentiment that this testing method is crap, and all that should matter is whether the bullet goes through the vest. Or at least that backface deformation should be less heavily emphasized. Then there are other specifications outside of the NIJ scheme; for instance, the there's "PAGST" and "CRISAT" body armor. I don't recall what they stand for.

Any idea how much you can saw off a rifle and still have it penetrate typical cop vests?

A lot. 5.56mm pistols (based on the AR-15 and available from olympic arms or bushmaster, among other manufacturers) are perfectly legal and will shoot through IIIa vests. The real jump up is between IIIa and III; the former mainly stops handgun rounds, while the latter allegedly stops standard .223 and .308 loads, but I'm not sure... before I looked it up just now, I thought only level IV trauma plates stopped .308. Cops typically wear level II or IIIa armor. And even trauma plates will not stop repeated hits to the same area. If you expect to be shot at with a rifle, you do not want to be out in the open where many hits are unavoidable. Ceramic plates weaken through chipping, and metal plates weaken through stress/deformation.

(And I assume the "20 rounds in seconds" is just a scary way to say "it has a big magazine and you have to pull the trigger 20 times".)

Of course. Otherwise it would be a machine gun, and new machine guns are not available to civilians... and haven't been since the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act. The anti-gun forces try hard to associate the assault weapons ban expiry with the availability of machineguns. They are lying.

Also, the police expressed worry that criminals might hear about these guns and then the cops would be in big trouble.

This gun, the Five-seveN, has been available for years. What hasn't been available for years, I don't think, is the "practice" non-AP ammunition. And, of course, some FFLs (gun dealers) are unwilling to sell the Five-seveN to private citizens.

Sounds silly to me - while some criminals might buy a "cop-killer handgun" for bragging rights, random criminals presumably only buy weapons useful for the scenarios they imagine being in,

Other armor-piercing handguns include .223 pistols and the CZ 52; there are also nasty rounds, though generally unavailable, for 9mm handguns that will penetrate IIIa armor. Ordinary rounds at +P+ pressures may even do it. The Five-seveN bullets have a muzzle velocity about half-way between handgun bullet velocities and rifle bullet velocities. Given the round diameter (5.7mm) and the short barrel (compared to rifles) of the Five-seveN, it's essentially a rifle round. 5.56mm pistols fire rounds with nearly the same diameter, though they weigh more (5.7mm bullets are ~30gr, standard 5.56mm is 55 or 62gr) and therefore require more powder to achieve the same velocities. Hence the longer cartridges for 5.56mm (I use .223 and 5.56 interchangably; they're technically not the same thing but close enough for government work). Most .223 pistols are based on the AR-15, so their magazines attach outside of the pistol grip and make them look scarier. That also makes them slightly less concealable, which is why they're not being attacked by the anti-gun forces. Perhaps the anti-gunners don't think they're legal.

which is Saturday Night Specials for most applications, or whatever currently fashionable Mac10/Uzi/etc. for druglord armies that expect to be shooting at each other, or rifles for distance work and dual-use pickup-truck decoration.

Uzis, MP5s, short-barrelled rifles. They'll have top of the line handguns; If I were a criminal, I'd carry what I'd carry anyway, a Walther p99 compact plus several full p99 mags (they work in the p99 compact, something that cannot be said for H&K P2000 mags and the P2000 compact). Don't be fooled by the association with James Bond. The factory p99 is an excellent gun (if you don't mind polymer). The PPK is another story.

Do many criminals expect to initiate shootouts with vest-wearing cops in scenarios where a rifle isn't practical?

I don't know what criminals think is practical. Very few criminals make killing police officers their primary objective, for obvious reasons. The fact that they get into a shooting at all implies that they have planned, at some level, to kill police if they need to. The statistics speak for themselves. It's rare to see rifles involved unless the criminal is at home, in a car, or actively committing a crime (and even in the last case, they're less common than in homes and cars). http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm middle of the page, "Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted" According to the 2003 pdf, in 2003, 34 officers were killed with a handgun, 10 killed with a rifle (out of 52 murders). 34 of the 52 were wearing body armor. On page 35 of the pdf (document p. 27), handguns were the murder weapon in 56 ambush situations, compared with only 28 where rifles were the murder weapon.

Do most cops wear bullet-proof vests regularly other than in holdup/hostage SWAT situations, where the criminal might have rifles anyway, and where a regular pistol is just fine for shooting hostages?

They are not bullet-proof. That's a term the anti-gun forces like because it implies that any gun/ammo combination that will defeat the vests are somehow magical or evil. And yes, the majority of officers, particularly city police, wear soft body armor. Typically it is NIJ level 3a or level 2, so it will not stop high-pressure or maliciously-shaped standard-caliber handgun rounds, nor 5.7mm (Five-seveN), nor 7.62x25mm Tokarev (CZ 52). The CZ 52 can be found in very good condition for $100-125. I recall advice from somewhere that the CZ 52 firing pin should be replaced with a titanium one on account of reliability and safety concerns. http://world.guns.ru/handguns/hg58-e.htm

Or is this mainly a problem for the cases when cops want to stage military-style pre-dawn assaults on people's houses, where they expect that the targets usually only have pistols handy near the bed and don't have time for rifles?

It's a problem for any cop wearing common body armor. Most beat cops and detectives wear it. I don't know about SWAT teams -- of course they wear some sort of armor, but I'd guess level 3 and possibly trauma plates as well. I don't know how the Five-seveN training rounds do against level 3, but I'd guess they are stopped.

Seems like scare-mongering to me, not a practical concern.

Of course it's not a practical concern. Criminals already have access to handguns that will defeat common soft body armor. This media panic was instigated by a press release from the Violence Policy Center, which has evidently (for now) given up trying to pass a new assault weapon ban, and is instead finding new legislative targets. -- "War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free." -Heraclitus 53