Bullets and Forensics by AnthonyT

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Bullets and Forensics

POSTED BY: ANTHONYT
UPDATED: Sunday, May 1, 2011 22:19
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Friday, April 29, 2011 3:22 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I've just been watching a murder mystery show, and a dead body was found beside a .357 magnum revolver.

The detective, by eye, discerned that the revolver was 'too big' a gun to have caused the bullet wounds on the victim.

The actual weapon? A 9mm.

Now, I enjoy a bit of target practice from time to time, but I'm not a forensics expert. Perhaps there's something I'm missing.

Don't .357 magnums and 9mm parabellums fire slugs that are of virtually identical diameter?

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”

Jacob Hornberger

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

Mahatma Gandhi

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Friday, April 29, 2011 4:01 PM

DREAMTROVE

Not the same force though

http://www.libertarianpunk.com/2010/03/9mm-vs-357-magnum/

Not maybe that much of a difference

http://www.handguninfo.com/Archive/www.Pete-357.com/9mm.357.compare.ht
m

But a TV writer probably knows less about guns than I do, and I know precious little about them.

.357 magnum, sounds big, you know, 9mm, that sounds small

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Friday, April 29, 2011 4:17 PM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I've yet to figure out a reasonable explanation for the scene other than ignorance, but I'm open to new information if it comes along.

I think you could fill books with things that people think they know.

You should see the arguments about stopping power on gun sites. Meanwhile, one of the most celebrated gunfighters of all time used .36 caliber cap and ball revolvers for much of his career.

Ever since that FBI thing, people have come out with all sorts of opinions about stopping people with guns. Few of them bother to actually read the FBI report about it.

So, anyway, I think the writer was probably ignorant. But it might be me who is ignorant instead.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”

Jacob Hornberger

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

Mahatma Gandhi

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Friday, April 29, 2011 4:29 PM

PIRATENEWS

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Quote:

I know what you're thinking: 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I've kinda lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?
-Mayor Dirty Harry

357 Mag might very well do the same.

It's the exit hole that counts.

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Friday, April 29, 2011 5:15 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Did this murder-mystery show involve that creepy day-walking ginger David Caruso looking cryptic, then slowly taking off his sunglasses while tossing off a rejoinderly bon mot like "Looks like someone wanted to be... a big shot."?

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Friday, April 29, 2011 5:17 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

I think I saw the same show, and I think the "Too big" a gun had to do more with velocity and energy than bullet diameter(although the .357 mag is .357" and the 9mm .355").

For example, the commercially loaded Hornady Critical Defense 125 grain .357 mag has a muzzle velocity of 1500 feet per second and energy of 624 foot/pounds while the ligher 115 gr 9mm Critical Defense has a velocity of only 1140fps and energy of 332 f/p. So the difference isn't in the diameter of the hole, but in the amount of mess.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Friday, April 29, 2011 5:34 PM

KWICKO

Meanwhile, if you can't decide between 9mm, .38, and .357... DON'T. You can have them all, in one gun: the Cadco Medusa.

http://www.securityarms.com/20010315/galleryfiles/1600/1666.htm

The "too big" gun would require the detective to know what loads the .357 was running before he could make such a claim. For instance, a 9mm with frangible rounds can make a whole helluva lot more mess than a .357 with FMJ rounds.

ETA: Haven't heard a single good thing about the Medusa, and it very well may be a case of "sounds too good to be true". Me, I've never had any issues with my favorite old P85 9mm. Tens of thousands of rounds poured through it, and never a problem.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Friday, April 29, 2011 5:38 PM

THEHAPPYTRADER

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Did this murder-mystery show involve that creepy day-walking ginger David Caruso looking cryptic, then slowly taking off his sunglasses while tossing off a rejoinderly bon mot like "Looks like someone wanted to be... a big shot."?

YYEEEAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

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Friday, April 29, 2011 5:52 PM

KWICKO

Bingo, HT. Perfect.

I've never seen the show, just clips making fun of it. And his stupid rejoinders aren't even clever!

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 12:23 AM

DREAMTROVE

Knowing nothing about guns, I did a quick search and found the stuff I posted. The magnum round is longer and heavier, I'm not sure it's travelling faster, but it would make more of an impact, but it's a TV show, and so ignorance is your first best guess on everything. As with hollywood, always assume it's an error. Anyone with any specialty in anything always notices nothing in any movie or TV show actually follows the very simple rules of that field. From a pretty early age I came to accept that computers would appear in movies, and not function the way they did in real life. I didn't know that hollywood would never ever catch up. My brother is a law professor and says he's only seen legal procedure properly followed once in a movie: My Cousin Vinny.

(The closest an early computer movie ever got to functioning like reality was War Games.)

The problem is so bad that there's almost no small town that actually resembles a small town. Maybe Nobody's Fool. I get the feeling producers have never left Greenwich Village or Hollywood, and have no idea what the planet is like, or how anything in it functions.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 2:50 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Meanwhile, if you can't decide between 9mm, .38, and .357... DON'T.

Absolutely right. Buy one of each - at least.

Here in Virginia the legislature passed a law limiting handgun purchases to one per month for each individual. This, of course, lead to the bumper-sticker:

Buy One Handgun A Month
It's Not Just A Good Idea, It's The Law

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 3:13 AM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Meanwhile, if you can't decide between 9mm, .38, and .357... DON'T.

Absolutely right. Buy one of each - at least.

Here in Virginia the legislature passed a law limiting handgun purchases to one per month for each individual. This, of course, lead to the bumper-sticker:

Buy One Handgun A Month
It's Not Just A Good Idea, It's The Law

"Keep the Shiny side up"

Okay, that's damned funny. :)

I get where they're coming from with a law like that (lots of "straw purchases" going to DC, etc.), but as always, it has its unintended consequences. I might buy a new gun every year or two, but a law like that would be likely to make me feel like I *needed* to buy a gun every month or so, lest I "miss out" on my allotment one month!

I noticed something similar with Sony/PolyphonyDigital and Gran Turismo 5. They allowed trading of cars between users via their PlayStationNetwork (PSN), and then they instituted a one-car-per-day limit. Once they put in that limit, I felt I *had to* trade one car per day, because to not do so was to waste an opportunity that I would never get back.

It's only psychology...

Besides, if you buy one gun a month, and find that you don't need a new gun every month, you can always go to DC and sell some of them for a profit, right? ;)

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 3:38 AM

FREMDFIRMA

Did ya know, when I was much much younger, long ago and far away... I considered a career in forensic ballistics, but upon learning that the "good guys"... weren't, and that the "science" behind it was pretty much bunk, I cast the idea aside.

Most of it is courtroom pseudo-science no more "accurate" than bite mark analysis, many conventional drug tests, yadda freakin yadda.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forensic_dentistry#Criticism_of_bite_mark
_analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_test#Poppy_seeds_cause_false_positiv
es_for_opiates
http://www.drbronner.com/punk_rock_soap_opera.html

Sure, it sounds good on the stand, but the actual "science" behind it ?
Mostly bullshit - like the rest, a scam to ensure convictions without proper evidence.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,66007,00.html

Quote:
When cartridges from the same manufacturer were test-fired and compared, computer matching failed 38 percent of the time. With cartridges from different manufacturers, computer matching failed 62 percent of the time.

"Automated computer matching systems do not provide conclusive results" requiring that "potential candidates be manually reviewed," said the experts.

But the experts estimated a California database would grow by about 108,000 entries every year for pistols alone. "This study indicates that this number of candidate cases will be so large as to be impractical and will likely create logistic complications so great that they cannot be effectively addressed," they said.

The test-firing results only scratch the surface of ballistic fingerprinting's problems.

And so, even a supposed expert with years of experience, such a thing is no more than shot in the dark (pun intended) guesswork.

For example, if you shoot someone with a .357Mag FMJ ball round, and shoot someone else with a .38Spl unjacketed hollowpoint, the latter guy is gonna be something of a mess, while the former, provided no vital organs are penetrated, may well survive - so there's more TO it than just caliber, which is the reason I used subsonic semi-wadcutter (aka Keithpoint) rounds in my puny little .380Colt - cause at close range they'd make mincemeat of you without drawing the kind of attention the humongous flash/bang of a large caliber handgun does.

And most writers don't know a damn thing about guns anyway, I had a laugh at Steig Larsson over a "9mm Smith and Wesson revolver" appearing in the third book - at least he didn't try to jack a silencer on it, like some authors.

As far as caliber, stopping power, and all that rot goes, Revy has it right, she does.

(ETA: For vidlink malfunction, it wouldn't let me advance the time to 0:58 in an embedded link, blahhh)

-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 5:16 AM

THEHAPPYTRADER

Quote:
As far as caliber, stopping power, and all that rot goes, Revy has it right, she does.

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 5:49 AM

HARDWARE

To further confuse the issue gun type and barrel length also play a part. For example, a revolver has a gap between the cylinder and barrel. Gases escape from that gap, reducing the energy imparted to the bullet. The figures that the manufacturers use to advertise velocity are from test barrels. Usually a bolt action type where the chamber is sealed and manually opened only after the shot. An automatic keeps the chamber locked until after the bullet has left the barrel. Thus the test barrel and the automatic have no gas escaping and impart all of the energy to the bullet.

There are 9mm carbines that fire the same 9mm parabellum round as a handgun that will obtain similar or higher velocities than a .357 magnum revolvers. Even .38 special, putting people in the ground for a hundred years now comes in a bewildering welter of loadings. .380 is considered the lowest rung in the self-defense calibers. And let us also not forget the 9mm Makarov, also called the 9x18, versus the parabellum at 9x19mm.

Effective manstoppers cluster in similar calibers. Partially because those bullet diameters and velocities have proven themselves to be effective at killing people.

But TV and movie ballistics are complete and utter bunk.

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 6:51 AM

KWICKO

Quote:

To further confuse the issue gun type and barrel length also play a part. For example, a revolver has a gap between the cylinder and barrel. Gases escape from that gap, reducing the energy imparted to the bullet.

Not that it has anything to do with the show in question, but I can think of one revolver that got around the "gap" issue: the Nagant 1895, which used a gas-seal system to close that gap by pushing the cylinder forward against the barrel when the gun was cocked.

Quote:
But TV and movie ballistics are complete and utter bunk.

Generally speaking, yes. Heck, I was a bit overjoyed when "Burn Notice" actually got the Dragunov right, because it's so unexpected that any TV show *will* get things right when it comes to firearms!

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 8:30 AM

ANTHONYT

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

The Nagant, as a consequence, was also adapted with a silencer successfully.

It's the only silenced revolver I know of. Though, there was a line of piston-driven soviet ammunition that eliminated the need for a silencer altogether.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”

Jacob Hornberger

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

Mahatma Gandhi

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 8:55 AM

BYTEMITE

Aw, never mind, Happy got there first.

Oh well.

You guys are my go-to on gun safety and research when I write stuff, just so you know.

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 10:30 AM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

And most writers don't know a damn thing about guns anyway, I had a laugh at Steig Larsson over a "9mm Smith and Wesson revolver" appearing in the third book - at least he didn't try to jack a silencer on it, like some authors.

http://www.vintagepistols.com/range_report_S&W_547.html

Almost bought one once, as a companion to my Browning Hi-Power, but sanity prevailed.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 11:22 AM

FREMDFIRMA

*blink*

Well, I stand corrected - the description thereof and stated origin of the piece do indeed match this description, learn something new every day, I guess.

It's a ridiculous idea though - but apparently to most gunbunnies imma caveman anyways, preferring my little popgun to more manly instruments of destruction, and for more serious uses, the Sistema Colt M1911 variant - or any standard-issue M1911, really.

If I were ever to put an "oddball" weapon in my safe for novelty value though, it'd have to be the Gabbet-Fairfax Mars.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 1:14 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Just an afterthought - what really does it for Revy is the facial expressions, cause you can tell her brain-train runs in a cloverleaf, and just because...

Aww, ain't they cute - NOT.

Seriously, that's one of the scariest things I've ever seen in my life, and that's sayin something.

-F

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Saturday, April 30, 2011 5:14 PM

HARDWARE

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

And most writers don't know a damn thing about guns anyway, I had a laugh at Steig Larsson over a "9mm Smith and Wesson revolver" appearing in the third book - at least he didn't try to jack a silencer on it, like some authors.

http://www.vintagepistols.com/range_report_S&W_547.html

Almost bought one once, as a companion to my Browning Hi-Power, but sanity prevailed.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

Let's not forget the S&W 1917 and Colt 1917 model revolvers chambered in .45acp. They used steel half moon clips to hold rimless cartridges in a revolver cylinder. Same system used in that 9mm revolver. And another .38 round just remembered. The .38 super, a chambering in the 1911 automatic.

I believe some Ruger revolvers also came with a 9mm cylinder or some other way to fire 9mm in a revolver. The same gun was listed in .357, .38 special and 9mm.

And just to make the non-gunny heads spin, any .357 revolver can also fire .38 special rounds.

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

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Sunday, May 1, 2011 2:55 AM

KWICKO

But that S&W 9mm wheelgun specifically DIDN'T use half-moon clips. It had to be designed to NOT use them.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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Sunday, May 1, 2011 7:04 AM

HARDWARE

Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
But that S&W 9mm wheelgun specifically DIDN'T use half-moon clips. It had to be designed to NOT use them.

Yep, surprised me quite a bit when I looked at that web page. Only about 10,000 made, it's quite a rarity. It seems the Israeilis wanted to arm the Palestinian police but didn't trust them with an automatic or a revolver that used finicky moon clips.

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

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Sunday, May 1, 2011 7:36 AM

THEHAPPYTRADER

Yeah, those kids creeped me out. That was by far the most disturbing story arc of Black Lagoon. I enjoyed the series though, did they ever do more than 2 seasons? Season 2 had a hell of an ending!

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Sunday, May 1, 2011 9:31 AM

KWICKO

Quote:
Originally posted by Hardware:
Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
But that S&W 9mm wheelgun specifically DIDN'T use half-moon clips. It had to be designed to NOT use them.

Yep, surprised me quite a bit when I looked at that web page. Only about 10,000 made, it's quite a rarity. It seems the Israeilis wanted to arm the Palestinian police but didn't trust them with an automatic or a revolver that used finicky moon clips.

Be somethin' to look out for at the gun shows. And since I already buy 9mm Luger ammo by the thousands, it'd fit right into my weapons locker!

Israelis arming Palestinian police with much-downgraded weaponry reminds me of Jack Palance in "Shane", tossing a pistol at a sheep-farmer's feet and telling him to pick it up, then shooting him down and telling the townspeople, "You all say him - he had a gun!"

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Sunday, May 1, 2011 10:19 PM

FREMDFIRMA

What creeped me out wasn't just them or what they were - but that shit like the events that created them really happened, and could quite possibly happen again if we don't stand against it.

And yes, there's a third season, introducing Roberta-the-killer-maid's protege, Fabiola.
No word quite yet on the english dub region 1 relase, but it was released in japan July 17th 2010.
Supposedly they'll finish up the dub and get it out some time this year - which is cool cause unlike a lot of dubs the voice actors are actually very damn good and don't sound like they're phoning it in off index cards.
(in fact even some of the most die-hard purists think the english dub is better than the original)

Here's a sample of Fabiola, and no doubt prelude to Bao filing yet ANOTHER insurance claim, his rates must be horrific, heh.

*SYMPATHY WINCE*

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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