Post originally by Derek Murphy at 2003-08-21 14:51:48
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Weapon age isn't really as much of an issue as it might be for some other things. People still fire weapons made 100 years ago, and replicas and knock-offs of older guns are always hanging around.
Avoiding future weapons is somewhat of a concern, admittedly, but in most cases it won't matter -- cops will not carry anything terribly exotic. Prior to the 80s, give them a .38 revolver. Post 80s, give them the same, or a .357, or (most common today) a 9mm like a Glock 17 or SIG 220. Really, it is the book of "Ultramodern" firearms, so it is targeted at the present day.
BTW, if you want more info on weapons over time, check out Call of Cthulu D20, which does go into a bit of detail about what becomes available when. A good Jane's guide will also give you availability dates.
Post originally by David Sinclair at 2003-08-22 19:19:21
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Sure, there's a thriving community of replica gunners out there, but they are a very small minority in general. And a lot of guns are not available for replication. And when a gun is no longer made, the pool of available weapons will shrink through attrition. Parts wear out and become expensive to replace once you have to start having parts machined by a gunsmith. 10 to 12 years after a gun goes out of production, the resale price for them in any condition begins to climb.
My favorite RPG gun book series, Big Bang, also provides the years in which manufacturing started and stopped. I'd rather spend $7.50 every couple months for a new volume of Big Bang, rather than have to shell out $570 up front for the latest copy of Jane's Infantry Weapons. In the end, I may end up spending more than $570 by the time Big Bang concludes, but it will be nibbled away, instead of taking a huge chunk out of my ass with the bite of my wallet that buying Jane's Infantry Weapons would take.
As for cops, prior to the 60's, they would have a .38. The 60's brought about both the .38 special and .357 magnum revolutions. Through the 60's and 70's, cops would have upgraded to these weapons, and in the 80's, the 9mm semiautomatic pistols began becoming standard issue. Of course, this is simply the guns issued by the law enforcement agencies. And as long as firearms have existed, it has been sort of a tradition for an officer to own a firearm, and they don't have to own weapons compatible with the issued equipment, either.
Post originally by Derek Murphy at 2003-08-22 20:16:36
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FYI, Jane's Guns Recognition Guide is a pocket version that only costs about $22.50. ISBN 0-00-470979-9. The book contains hundreds of weapons and is broken into chapters on pistols, revolvers, sub-machine guns, bolt action rifles, automatic rifles and machine guns. It is intended to be recognition manual for any weapon a law enforcement agent might encounter in the real world, and it contains lots of good info for modern RPG fans.
As for the .357, I can only say "Doh!" My comment on the timeframe was based on a lack of thought and a misprint in the glossary of "The Complete Encyclopedia of Pistols and Revolvers." I don't know why it didn't occur to me that "1985" should have been "1935," but there you go.
There are still cops who choose to carry .38s and .357s (including both my second cousin and my soon-to-be sister-in-law), primarily because revolvers tend to be more reliable and easier to maintain. Most of the DC cops I've seen seem to be carrying Glocks, now, admittedly.
Post originally by David Sinclair at 2003-08-23 13:03:08
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Yeah, pistols are the wave of the future for cops. .38, .38 Special, .357 Magnum and 9mm are all on the verge of disappearing. The new police guns of choice are the increasingly rare Colt 10mm and ever more popular Smith & Wesson .40 caliber semi-auto pistols. Stopping power is significantly improved, while retaining the manageability of the lesser calibers cops are used to. The FBI, if I recall correctly, has been authorized to rearm for the second time in less than 20 years. First time was after a shootout in Florida during the late 80's that left several field agents dead due to the choice of revolvers as the issued sidearm. After that they switched to 9mm pistols. Now that the 9mm round is becoming increasingly useless, they've been authorized to rearm with a standard issue pistol in .40. I don't know if they chose a particular pistol as of yet.
The FBI is, of course, just the "biggest name" in law enforcement to make this decision so far. A lot of sheriff's departments have also made this switch too.
Still, your relatives haven't been in a shootout, have they? Revolvers and their perceived reloading time of "forever" even with speedloaders tends to result in the fact that while the cop using the revolver may survive the gunfight, the revolver usually doesn't, replaced with a pistol that reloads by magazine far faster and quite a bit less often.
Post originally by David Sinclair at 2003-08-23 13:07:08
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Well? What's wrong? Isn't there anybody out there just waiting to jump up and down and scream in a rabid fit of spit-frothing rage about how my reviews can't be trusted since they're so biased against products not written by certain individuals?
Better hurry up with your accusations, or I'm going to deafen everyone by dropping a box full of pins all over the floor!
Post originally by Derek Murphy at 2003-08-24 11:48:47
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They haven't. I would wager that only a tiny fraction of police have been involved in a gunfight that required more than a six-shooter. The move to pistols seems to be a "better to have and not need, than need and not have," mentality, which isn't unreasonable.
.40 S&W does seem to be the round of choice for stopping power, but I wouldn't characterize 9x19 as "useless." For one thing, they're cheaper than .40, which is why I shoot them. I also keep JHP around for self-defense, which is likely to be sufficient unless I'm completely incompetant with the gun (in which case I probably shouldn't own one).
Post originally by David Sinclair at 2003-08-27 21:19:27
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Yeah, I'm happy, but I don't know about all the other people with the initials D.S.
The fuss was about the fact that those other people didn't grasp the fact that a new gun book drastically raised what can be considered a standard for gun books. I was vastly impressed by that books and its sequels and I have compared all the gun books I've reviewed to them since then. Unfortunately, my new expectations from gun books result in me considering a lot of other gun books, new and old, to be quite pitiful in comparison.
And then there were the turkeys who seemed to think chewing out a consumer over their own perceived D20 licensing violations by a publisher would somehow influence the publisher into correcting the problem.
Post originally by David Sinclair at 2003-08-27 21:27:34
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Well, next time you have to shoot some drug crazed criminal, you'll understand why the 9mm Parabellum is starting to be considered useless.
In Afghanistan, special ops troops who couldn't afford their own guns had to use the M9, but at least usually could afford to supply their own ammunition (nice way to circumvent the Hague Convention; government can only supply FMJ ammo, but there isn't anything restricting individual soldiers from obtaining whatever type of ammo they want through alternative sources). Even with 9mm HP ammo, they reported having to shoot drug-using taliban and al qaeda members as many as ten times in order to stop them. Meanwhile, all the smart troops who brought along their own personal .45 caliber pistols and choice of ammo were dropping the same sort of targets with 2 or 3 shots. Apparently, in Afghanistan, there is a plant called khat that acts much like PCP when you chew on a mouthful of the stuff.
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