OK, sometimes people notice. Indy's revolver was either a 32 or 38 caliber. Somebody out there will probably tell me, cause there are lots of people around who know more about these things than I. Anyway, revolver bullets from 32 or 38 caliber revolvers probably wouldn't have dropped the guy on the spot. Revolver bullets in 32 or 38 caliber in the 1930's were poorly constructed and traveled relatively slowly, and that bad guy was wearing those thick robes, which would have functioned a bit as armor against attack. If it wasn't a movie, the guy likely would have not cooperated with the writers so nicely. So although that revolver would have served to stop most of those regular bad guys that Indy floored with one punch, like the big Nazi sergeant the sword fighter was a bit tougher, and that revolver would not have been up to the task.
Back in the days when America actually was imperialistic for a bit, and we thought that owning the Philippines was a cool idea, (which you will all remember from your history lessons. Yeah, I had to look it up too. It was around 1896. Don't worry; in the schools today they teach that we are still imperialistic.) we sent in the army and navy to convince the residents of those islands that they really wanted us there. It was an unfortunate time.
Anyway, our army ended up fighting with these guys called Moros. Moros were Muslim natives who turned out to be exceptionally fierce fighters. Not only were they motivated to run off these Americans occupying their land, but they had the old religious thing running through their heads and some potent home grown stimulants running through their veins. They'd show up screaming, and ran directly through withering rifle fire until they could use their long knives to best advantage in hand to hand combat with our soldiers. Wounded many times, they would just keep on fighting as if possessed. It really was a mess. Of course, those 32 and 38 caliber revolvers that our soldiers used when the fighting was up close and personal weren't any more effective at stopping these warriors than Indy's should have been in the movie.
That's when the army decided it liked the 45 caliber pistol better. The model 1911 Colt semi-automatic pistol carried 8 cartridges instead of the 6 in a revolver, so one didn't exhaust the supply as quickly, and the bullet it fired was heavier and larger in diameter than those revolver rounds. This weapon functioned in battle far better than the revolvers. It stopped people right now.
This gun stuff is nasty business, and no one denies this. But since the time when our ancestors first stood on only their hind legs so that they could carry sharpened rocks in their hands as weapons to hunt for food and kill each other with something other than their teeth, people have been inventing better weapons to give themselves the advantage when competing with other people. It's been this way since we stopped calling ourselves monkeys. When I went on line to check on the name Moro, I found something like 8 other wars that were raging around the world at just about that same time. Somehow fighting wars is the thing mankind does the most, if not the best.
There may have been any number of people in history who decided they didn't like weapons and didn't like fighting, so they simply stopped using those and doing that, but they are not around anymore so I cannot ask them if that was the better way. Maybe, when it's time for the Starship Enterprise to come along, people will stop killing each other on this planet, but they will still arm the Enterprise to fight the folks they find out there, cause that's the way it is.
So fast forward to more modern times, the second half of the 20th century....
Humans of course, were still fighting and killing each other. Some used weapons to attack, and others used them to defend against attack. And over time the weapons got more dangerous. Of course, the old good guy-bad guy conflict is a relative thing, but just for sake of convenience, I'm gonna call us the good guys, and those others that would hurt us we will call the bad guys. And to muddy the waters further, let's make the police and our military the good guys and those criminals and enemies of our nation the bad guys. Not politically correct but there is no time for that here. However, from time to time I will mention the people who think just the opposite of me about this, if it suits my mood.
Two stories follow for illustrative purpose...
Actually they are kinda the same story but one at a time. For years the police mostly armed themselves with 38 caliber revolvers. Six guns, cause they carried six cartridges. Everybody knew that they were not the most effective weapons (see above), but they were inexpensive, which the taxpayers liked, and they were less likely to kill the bad guys. (?????) (Think Lawyers and The Media) The bad guys didn't worry about these artificial constraints, and they acquired any better weapons they could find (which they used to kill innocent people as well as each other). Some police officers carried the 45 Colt, but they were usually thought to be playing too nasty by the folks who hate violence in any form, and this was discouraged. So as a consequence, lots of cops got killed by the bad guys.
Finally, after several FBI officers were killed by one bad guy with a semi-automatic pistol, even though the officers had shot the bad guy several times with those 38's (before they ran out of ammunition and then got killed), somebody decided to get the cops better weapons, too. The 45 was still considered too effective, and since those more civilized countries we admire so (think Europe) used mostly 9 millimeter semi-automatic pistols, our police started to carry these. Large capacity semi-automatic pistols were just the thing when it came to dealing with criminals armed with the same. It’s what ya call evolution.
Except.... if you had a bad guy hiding in a car, which happens, and you needed to stop him from killing you by killing him, and you had a 38 or 9 millimeter in you hand, you'd get really annoyed when those bullets you fired kept bouncing off the windshield or doors of that car. This happened from time to time, including that time where the FBI guys got killed, and this was considered a bad thing. So somebody invented a steel core, jacketed bullet that would penetrate windshields and car doors, and could be used on these rare occasions, and maybe keep a cop alive. These were essentially similar to amour piercing rounds used by the military. And since they were abrasive to normal handgun barrels and would destroy said costly barrels, they coated the bullets with teflon. Only a few of these rounds were ever made, and they were sold only to police departments, but boy did they create a fuss.
A few of those people who hate violence of any kind live in most countries, and they spend a lot of time complaining, and we have a bunch in this country. Apparently, they think that the best way to get bad guys to stop hurting the good folks is to disarm the good folks. Unlike trickle down economics, which sometimes actually works, trickle down disarmament has never been a big success, but that has never stopped these people from trying it on the rest of us. Since many gun owning folks fail to see the logic to the disarming argument, they need to be re-educated into surrendering their guns. And if stretching the truth makes the re-education process work better (see propaganda), these folks who would disappear the guns don't hesitate to do this.
Do you remember when the Washington Post announced the arrival of the plastic gun that would allegedly evade metal detectors at airports and thus make every airliner a highjack victim? Well, they did announce that, and then demanded the gun be banned. The gun was the Glock, and according to the Post it spelled the end of Western Civilization. Just months later, when the Washington DC police signed up for a new and far better pistol for its officers to carry in the street, the Washington Post announced this as wonderful news. Western Civilization was saved. The pistol was the same Glock! One problem we have with our media....they often don’t have a clue what they talk about and they sometimes bend reality to suit their needs. And if they are gonna re-educated folks, sometimes this is what they choose to do.
Those steel core, teflon coated bullets that were designed to save police officer lives became COP KILLER BULLETS this same way. Somebody came up with the idea that they could claim these bullets might defeat the new body armor that the police were wearing, and therefore they should be banned. Since to these people, the saving of Western Civilization rested with disarming the good guys, a massive campaign to ban cop killer bullets resulted. How’s that work? Well intentioned disarm-the-good-guys people drove the mania about cop killer bullets, the media jumped on board, and they got their compliant legislators to write a law that would ban ANY bullet that could pass through light body armor. This was perfect! That's cause this law banned virtually every bullet used by hunters, too. Double whammy. Pretty soon with no ammunition all the guns would be gone! Surely the bad guys would give up their guns soon after, and peace would rein on earth.
Uh, no… Some of us, those 90 million or so good guys who own guns without using them to rob banks or kill people, objected. We know the benefit of guns, and resent the implication that they are the root of all evil on earth, so we suggested the law banning all ammunition be changed back into a law that would limit the sale of Teflon coated armor piercing ammo only to the police. There is a certain logic to this. It was those nasty degenerates at the National Rifle Association that suggested this revised law, and it was passed because of course the politicians are all afraid of the NRA. Which is why the good guys still can own guns.
To date, despite the media lies, the sum total of cops killed by cop killer bullets is zero. The number of good guys who have defended themselves when attacked by criminals (by using their guns, as if this argument isn't transparent enough) is somewhere in the many thousands. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the media to announce this.
The same arguments surfaced when somebody invented the term assault weapon, and decided to ban them. Since there isn't actually such a thing as an assault weapon, they had to come up with a definition, so why not include a whole bunch of firearms they’d like to ban? Those arguing for a ban could apply the term to most anything they chose. This led to some confusion, cause those of us who own these various firearms don't always know when we became a threat to Western Civilization or just another gun nut. Some stated that if a firearm looks kinda like a military weapon, it must therefore be more dangerous than any other. So we would loosen one screw and remove some extraneous part to alter the appearance of the rifle safely stored in our gun safe, and we made it legal again cause it was less scary looking. Others proposed that magazine capacity or firing mechanism made all the difference, but they still had trouble defining what exactly made one gun more demon-like than another.
It didn't help that with the exception of some gang infested areas in Los Angeles, nobody could find many places where their so-called assault weapons were much of a problem. Most police departments keep statistics on the weapons used in crimes, and few bother to track these weapons, since they are a tiny statistical blip.
None of this stopped the media from helping out. Whenever one of these weapons was actually used in a crime, it made national news, over and over again. It turned into the same feeding frenzy that the media created for pitbulls. By ignoring most incidents caused by other breeds, pitbulls became the Damien dog, even though most people also have trouble actually defining what a pitbull is. And in their quest for opinion bending “news” the large media organizations often bent this truth.
For instance, the reason many people think that assault weapons are fully automatic machine guns just might be because when the television news does a special on assault weapons, the camera always shows a machine gun in action. They did similar things when they deliberately set GM pickup trucks on fire when they could not make them burn in actual accidents. It's visually exciting and certainly persuasive, but it is also totally dishonest. Machine guns have been illegal since 1934, so the assault weapon ban hardly cleared the streets of these. All those “assault weapons” that were banned back in the 90's are still out there, cause the ban only affected the sale of those few that could not be cosmetically altered back to legal, so there are in fact many more “in circulation” now than at the time of the ban. And they still are hardly ever used in crime.
Oh, and remember when Mel Gibson set out to save the world, (before he became the drunken anti-Semite idiot) and he shot through a bulldozer blade with a “COP KILLER BULLET” to eliminate the villain in a silly movie? Mel's a big gun ban fan, and this abuse of the truth I guess is justified by him trying to save us from ourselves. This would be after he made millions for himself shooting up the movie screen.
That horrible crime in Tucson will of course rekindle the same arguments, cause those people who wish they could end violence forever have certainly been re-stimulated. The deranged murderer used a Glock, the plastic gun. It is a large capacity semi-automatic pistol. He used a novelty elongated magazine, which I suppose made it into an “assault weapon”. He set out to kill people, and people died. Oh, and the media has been mentioning it over and over again. (I'm reminded at times like this of the second worst mass murder committed in this country’s history prior to 911. This killer used gasoline, and he killed over 100 people within minutes. This mass murder lasted about a week on the news and did not result in an outcry to ban gasoline.) (The worst mass murderer used diesel fuel and fertilizer)
A judge in California noticed that this state's new ammunition ban is unconstitutional. So of course a legislator mentioned on TV that this will turn all the criminals loose with cop killer bullets. The call goes out again to ban assault weapons, magazines, semi-auto firing mechanism, anything to “get the guns off the streets”. It's the guns' fault.
Meanwhile, bad guys do bad things. Nothing new here. Well intentioned people blame the good guys, and try to limit their freedoms in order to keep the bad guys in check. And good guys have to defend themselves from those well intentioned people for no good reason. And it keeps coming back to bad guys do bad things. The one thing that will never change in human behavior.
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