" Q: Why carry a handgun? Are you expecting trouble?
A: If I were expecting trouble, I'd carry a rifle. "
i.e., the pistol is an everyday-carry weapon, to take with you if you think a situation might be resolved without use of force. If you know going in you're going to get in a gunfight, you go to the car and grab your shotgun or rifle.
Hollow point handgun rounds drastically reduce the danger of over-penetration present with rifle rounds for likely police scenarios.
Most plausible scenarios where an officer would be forced to discharge a weapon wouldn't really benefit from a larger, more cumbersome weapon. Police usually have to shoot in close-range engagements that end in a few short seconds.
Cost is not really a factor. Look at the cost of weapons used by police departments. Handguns aren't drastically cheaper than decent rifles.
> Hollow point handgun rounds drastically reduce the danger of over-penetration present with rifle rounds for likely police scenarios.
Isn't really true anymore. There are modern cartridges for 5.56 that have great ballistics while in the air, and then very reliably dump all their energy into the first thing they hit, to the point where if you shoot drywall they will make a huge hole in it but not significantly harm a person standing a few meters behind it. If you are concerned about overpenetration, today it should guide your selection of ammo, not your weapon.
Of all the 5.56 vs drywall tests I've seen (and there are lots out there), they never make a hole in drywall larger than 5.56 unless it has yawed, and even then it is a keyhole no larger than the un-deformed round. To make "a huge hole" in drywall it would have to expand massively and immediately, and I've never seen a 5.56 round capable of expansion when hitting drywall. Even frangible rounds essentially turn into 3 or 4 projectiles after passing through drywall, but I'd never say 1/3 of 55 grains at 2000+ fps would "not significantly harm a person".
[0] http://www.olyarms.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=vie...
Relevant excerpts:
"Tests 1-6: Bare gelatin, heavy clothing, automobile sheet metal, wallboard, plywood, and vehicle windshield safety glass, were shot a distance of 10 feet from the muzzle."
"Tests 7-13: All involved shots through heavy clothing, safety glass and bare gelatin at 50 to 100 yards, concluding with internal walls, external walls and body armor at 10 feet."
"The Bureau’s research also suggests that common household barriers such as wallboard, plywood, internal and external walls are also better attacked with pistol rounds, or larger caliber battle rifles, if the objective is to "dig out" or neutralize people employing such object as cover or concealment."
"If an operator misses the intended target, the .223 will generally have less wounding potential than some pistol rounds after passing through a wall or similar structure."
Really unsure as to how you could possibly have come to that conclusion after reading the link....
Edit: now that I think about it, people unfamiliar with ballistic testing might not know that gelatin is almost always used to find out data about efficacy downrange regardless of what other things are being tested, so I can kinda see how you might take my comment at face value and feel that it was immediately contradicted if you didn't read the entire summary (which is a bit long).
I still say though, the original comment I replied to is mischaracterizing what happens when 5.56 hits drywall. It does not make a huge hole, and I don't know how you could say it "would not significantly harm" a person on the other side. See some tests here w/ photos regarding drywall and 5.56 penetration: https://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-14-rifles-shotg...
Pistol calibers very well may penetrate further after passing through drywall (as the FBI tests indicate) but there is no evidence to claim that 5.56 is less than lethal after passing through a sheet of drywall.
"The hypothesis turned out to be correct: V-Max bullets started fragmenting within the first sheet of drywall and completely blew to pieces on their way out of the second sheet, leaving dramatic craters." http://how-i-did-it.org/drywall/results.html
Are you suggesting that submachine guns make you more likely to miss your mark? If so, this is spoken like someone with absolutely zero firearms experience, as submachine guns are much more accurate and controllable than handguns...
Yes, firing from the hip on full rock-n-roll is less accurate than controlled shots from a pistol, though I should think that was both obvious and beside the point.
Carefully controlled shots from an SMG are systematically better-placed than carefully-controlled shots from a pistol. Full stop. Moreover, SMGs are so damn easy to control (again, assuming they're used properly, i.e. with the extensible/foldable/fixed stock) that you can trivially put 3-to-5-round bursts in a human torso at 5 meters. Anybody who can't do that has no business carrying an SMG.
Surely you'll concede than in just about any professional situation, full-auto fire is not used. Full-auto fire is a suppressive technique, and as such it is largely relegated to military action (and not with SMGs, by the way).
It is absolutely absurd to suggest that pistols are more accurate and more controllable than a firearm with a longer barrel and stock.
Absolutely, astoundingly absurd.
Not really. Try moving a fire-selector from safe to semi under stress and see how quickly you stop. Then look at the number of shots fired from fully-automatic weapons during police shootings. Then tell me long-burst fire isn't a concern when deciding where they should be deployed.
Curious if you've ever fired a submachine-gun on full-auto? You'll either rise significantly within a few shots or you're applying enough downward pressure to make it very unstable during recoil.
edit: Your edits to the above post seem to be repeating themselves and adding italics. Maybe I'll just concede the argument so you can stop hyperventilating at your keyboard. Calm down, seriously, for your own health.
I'm perfectly calm. Please don't be condescending. I'm being insistant because you seem intent on missing the point, which is the following:
1) Single, controlled shots from pistols are less accurate than their equivalents fired from SMGs with stocks
2) Yes, automatic fire decreases accuracy. Don't use automatic fire where accuracy is a concern.
To claim otherwise is, again, absurd.
That's what I said. I haven't argued with #1 at all, in fact I've specifically agreed with it. #2 would be my biggest concern in deciding when to deploy fully-automatic weapons to routine law-enforcement. It's a common (and increasingly so) thing in the US to do is to issue semi-automatic only rifles to police officers for their patrol vehicles. In London you'll see a number of police officers at various high-risk locations carrying MP5s, slung while on guard. If I'm not mistaken, they are select-fire.
So in deciding which firearm I would issue for which deployment, what I'm saying is that my list of concerns about a submachine gun or similar firearm, whether or not the situation and the training level of the officers is appropriate for the potential of fully-automatic fire is far higher on my list of concerns than over-penetration. If you miss the target, everything is over-penetration.
I don't see how that's "absolutely absurd". I don't think data is available on how well officers manipulate safety switches under stress, but the rate at which even moderately trained personnel blow through all their rounds without hitting anything, military or SWAT, is astounding. So yes, don't use automatic fire if you don't need it. The reality is not so simple, IMO.
Over here, it's actually much more common to see a police officer equipped with a sub-machinegun or a carbine rifle than a handgun. Firearms are used as a tactical resource to be deployed as needed, rather than an insurance policy for ordinary officers.
That might be because some UK police refuse to carry because the UK doesn't have laws to protect officers (those laws that the US has that are constantly protested). https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/15/police-chief...
Can't say I blame them. Why would someone take on the chance of being charged with murder for carrying out their job's duties? It's not an easy problem to solve, but I think the ease of access to firearms is only going to increase, and they're going to have to get the UK police sorted with carrying.
Perhaps the laws in the UK need fixing (they did in New Zealand last I checked) but it should be a level playing field.
I'm not asking for police to be protected if they're malicious, but if a police officer completes all his training correctly and tries his hardest to make the right decision in that pivotal moment, but makes a mistake and shoots when he shouldn't, then he's sentenced to life in prison if he is held to the same standard as a civilian.
And people wonder why their police officers aren't the best and the brightest: anyone making a rational decision under these terms wouldn't take the job.
But that's the problem! The civilian shouldn't be going to jail, either, should they?
That is, I don't think the standard for prosecution for killing someone should be different for civilians and police.
Some would fix the problem by giving the police special immunity; I'd fix it by changing self defence laws for everyone.
Or perhaps, to put it another way, under what situation could you imagine yourself as a juror convicting a civilian of murder, but acquitting a police officer who acted identically?
Thinking about that for a bit and it sounds reasonable. A cop should only be shooting someone if he believes his or someone else's life is in danger and that's the same standard as civs in most states.
Perhaps cops in the US have more protection with their unions and such. I assumed that there must be a difference between US and UK because UK officers are refusing to carry whereas US aren't, but that difference might be that US officers get fired if they refuse to carry.
I think with recent events in the UK it shows that rapid response is too slow; your cops need guns.
I've shot a bit, but only rimfire long guns, air rifles, and air pistols. The pistols were harder to shoot by a _long_ margin, and I can imagine it'd get orders of magnitude harder w/ more recoil, noise to promote flinching, etc. etc.
So with your comments in mind, and my own limited experience, do you have any idea why every Police-critter here in Australia is armed with a pistol, rather than something easier to use? I mean, in my head it looks like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHEhMKQhGKE
"It feels like you're shooting a toy gun sometimes" (similar to my experience w/ a suppressed semi-auto .22LR)
vs. this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXeYAfMeaBY
The only things I can think of in favour of the pistol:
* Cheaper (maybe?)
* Less intrusive / easier to carry (for the 99.99% of the time when you _don't_ need it).
* Less intimidating (for those who don't know how hard it is to hit a moving target w/ a pistol ;) ).