On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 03:24:37PM -0500, ken wrote: > > A bolt action .50 BMG sniper rifle is not nearly as complex as a .50 BMG > what was it, the M-2 model machine gun? (been more than a few years). It > is really fairly easy to take care of such a weapon as a .50 BMG > chambered bolt action sniper rifle even for a novice. Maintenance is > still critical, but it is not by any means onerous.
My point is that handling guns (not just shooting, but the entire culture of owning, understanding, maintaining, buying ammo, etc.) is a skill - a specialized and complex one. I'm pretty sure that I can still field-strip pretty much anything I can lay my hands on up to small crew-served weapons (I was an M-2 and an M-60 gunner at Ft. Benning), but that's very much a matter of having a bone-deep feel for how guns work and having done it over a long period of time. To do this properly all the way around, you need literally years of training. People who have had all that training often forget what it took - including years of being around people who *think* about guns every day - but as a teacher, that's precisely the thing that I have to stay aware of, and it's a very large amount of knowledge. > Of course you wouldn't want to leave it out in the weather for any > period of time, and anyway there is no need to have it 'deck mounted' in > the sense of being mounted onto a permanently attached pedestal or such. That was what Jim cited as the answer to piracy, etc. - so that's what I was responding to. I definitely don't think that it's the answer. > [...] truth > be told this really big rifle would not be optimum on a small boat, > something more in line might be a bolt action chambered for .300 Mag. > or even something like the oft neglected 6.5 X 55 Swede, which is good > out to around 1000 yds against light targets, then maybe a Mini 14 or > the like with extended magazines for closer ranges backed up by the > Tarus "Judge in .410 shotgun/45 for last resort. In a world where the other issues didn't exist, I'd have something simple and sweet in NATO .308, with a selector switch. Tossing a few rounds out past a quarter of a mile or so will answer any questions the average pirate may have - and anyone who's more persistent than that would gain much insight from one or more 30-round magazines being emptied into their hull, right around the waterline. But that's neither here nor there: the other issues I brought up trump pretty much all of that. > > d) When I was actvely teaching pistol-based self-defense, we recommended > > putting 1,000 rounds down the pipe *monthly* for anyone who wanted to > > stay at the top of the game. > > For home defense you don't need to be at the 'top of your game'. Home defense is a specialized situation - and it has not one single thing in common with dealing with piracy on the high seas. I'm not even sure why you've brought it up. > Even > after all these years I am sure my hand and eyes know how to use my > 1911A1 sufficiently well. I don't think I would be facing more than one > or at most a few intruders at a time and would not need the quick > discrimination that Police for example must often use, and neither do I > think this would be needed in defending against obvious pirates. > And I would add none of us on any Security Force or Landing Party, Away > Team, or even Special Ops burned through that much ammo monthly as a > normal thing that "I" know about. My partner did a number of trainings at the San Diego PD; he also taught at least one CIA agent, who started out skeptical and ended up telling him "I've never experienced anything as effective as this traning in my life." Special Forces people do indeed burn that much ammo during at least one part of their training - they did when I was shooting at Benning, and later when I trained them in Soviet small arms at Ft. Lewis. > When I was in a position to shoot as much .45 ACP ammo as I wanted I > might have gone through 200 rounds a week. Which is pretty close to 1000 rounds a month. > Of course I wasn't in > competition, I know those who were might use the amount mentioned, but > you don't need to go through that much to be throughly capable of > defending yourself. This is, of course, a matter of opinion. I would say that you need to go through 10 to 20 times that amount, with a good instructor in the beginning at least, to be _thoroughly_ capable. > No I'm not a Rambo, just that the training takes over, and you get too > busy to be scared. One reason for the training I guess! Statistics from the US Army, ca. Vietnam era: in an average squad of 10 people when they first come under fire, *one* will have the presence of mind to shoot back. > Upshot is, far better to stay away from places/areas where you might > need to use such force if at all possible because no matter how you look > at it it is a bad deal. There, we agree entirely. -- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET * _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
