Re: Police Worried About New Vest-Penetrating Gun
On 2005-01-15T09:38:23+, Justin wrote: On 2005-01-14T15:42:18-0800, Bill Stewart wrote: Seems like scare-mongering to me, not a practical concern. Of course it's not a practical concern. Criminals already have access to handguns that will defeat common soft body armor. This media panic was instigated by a press release from the Violence Policy Center, which has evidently (for now) given up trying to pass a new assault weapon ban, and is instead finding new legislative targets. I didn't remember which group it was, and I guessed wrong. It wasn't the VPC. It was the Brady Campaign/MMM. http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=41691 -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: Police Worried About New Vest-Penetrating Gun
On 2005-01-14T16:54:32-0500, R.A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.wnbc.com/print/4075959/detail.html Police Worried About New Vest-Penetrating Gun I care? Well, perhaps I do... I should go pick one up before they're banned. The most shocking fact may be that the gun -- known as the five-seven -- is being marketed to the public, and it's completely legal The name is Five-seveN. It's made by Fabrique Nationale (FN). Allegedly the U.S. secret service likes the Five-seveN, along with the FN P90 (unavailable to civilians except title 2 firearms dealers because it's only made in a select-fire version). They both use the same 5.7mm rounds, which makes logistics easier. Of course, they also use MP5s and 9mm handguns... Other guns with civilian-legal armor-piercing ammo include the CZ-52, .223 pistols, and most all rifles. At a distance of 21 feet, Trumball police Sgt. Lenny Scinto fired the five-seven with the ammo sold legally to the public into a standard police vest. All three penetrated the vest. The real ammo penetrates CRISAT/PAGST armor at 100m and 300m respectively. Level 2 or 3a armor is really rather pathetic. Back in Trumball, Scinto said his officers would have to rethink how to protect the public and protect themselves. Police have no duty to protect the public. Anyway, most of the public doesn't walk around wearing vests, so protecting the public from these is no different than protecting them from other firearms. Protecting the police from these is no different than protecting them from rifles. Only trauma plates can stop pointy, high-velocity rounds. This is going to add a whole new dimension to training and tactics. With the penetration of these rounds, you're going to have to find something considerably heavier than we normally use for cover and concealment to stop this round, Scinto said. Cool, more LEOs instantly recognizable as beetles, having exoskeletons. I recommend Kafka's Metamorphoses to them as sociological grounding for what sort of reaction they can expect. -- War is the father and king of all, and some he shows as gods, others as men; some he makes slaves, others free. -Heraclitus 53
Re: Police Worried About New Vest-Penetrating Gun
On 2005-01-14T15:42:18-0800, Bill Stewart wrote: At 01:54 PM 1/14/2005, R.A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.wnbc.com/print/4075959/detail.html NEW YORK -- There is a nationwide alert to members of law enforcement regarding a new kind of handgun which can render a bulletproof vest useless, as first reported by NewsChannel 4's Scott Weinberger. ... The weapon is light, easily concealable and can fire 20 rounds in seconds without reloading. A couple of questions to the gunpunks out there... I've heard that rifles easily penetrate bullet-proof vests, and that vests are really only useful against average-to-small handguns and against shotguns. Is this accurate? There are various levels of body armor specified by the NIJ. In order of effectiveness (lower to higher): Levels IIa, II, IIIa, III, and IV. http://www.nlectc.org/txtfiles/BodyArmorStd/NIJSTD010103.html Level IV typically takes the form of a trauma plate and is put into a pouch in the front (and/or in the back) of soft body armor. III and IV are heavier, bulkier, and as a result aren't used as much. The NIJ standards are based on stopping standard bullets up to certain velocity limits (preventing them from going through the vest), _plus_ backface deformation limits. They put the vests over geletin, and the volume displaced by the vest when it absorbs the shot is measured and must be less than a specified limit. There is a lot of sentiment that this testing method is crap, and all that should matter is whether the bullet goes through the vest. Or at least that backface deformation should be less heavily emphasized. Then there are other specifications outside of the NIJ scheme; for instance, the there's PAGST and CRISAT body armor. I don't recall what they stand for. Any idea how much you can saw off a rifle and still have it penetrate typical cop vests? A lot. 5.56mm pistols (based on the AR-15 and available from olympic arms or bushmaster, among other manufacturers) are perfectly legal and will shoot through IIIa vests. The real jump up is between IIIa and III; the former mainly stops handgun rounds, while the latter allegedly stops standard .223 and .308 loads, but I'm not sure... before I looked it up just now, I thought only level IV trauma plates stopped .308. Cops typically wear level II or IIIa armor. And even trauma plates will not stop repeated hits to the same area. If you expect to be shot at with a rifle, you do not want to be out in the open where many hits are unavoidable. Ceramic plates weaken through chipping, and metal plates weaken through stress/deformation. (And I assume the 20 rounds in seconds is just a scary way to say it has a big magazine and you have to pull the trigger 20 times.) Of course. Otherwise it would be a machine gun, and new machine guns are not available to civilians... and haven't been since the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act. The anti-gun forces try hard to associate the assault weapons ban expiry with the availability of machineguns. They are lying. Also, the police expressed worry that criminals might hear about these guns and then the cops would be in big trouble. This gun, the Five-seveN, has been available for years. What hasn't been available for years, I don't think, is the practice non-AP ammunition. And, of course, some FFLs (gun dealers) are unwilling to sell the Five-seveN to private citizens. Sounds silly to me - while some criminals might buy a cop-killer handgun for bragging rights, random criminals presumably only buy weapons useful for the scenarios they imagine being in, Other armor-piercing handguns include .223 pistols and the CZ 52; there are also nasty rounds, though generally unavailable, for 9mm handguns that will penetrate IIIa armor. Ordinary rounds at +P+ pressures may even do it. The Five-seveN bullets have a muzzle velocity about half-way between handgun bullet velocities and rifle bullet velocities. Given the round diameter (5.7mm) and the short barrel (compared to rifles) of the Five-seveN, it's essentially a rifle round. 5.56mm pistols fire rounds with nearly the same diameter, though they weigh more (5.7mm bullets are ~~30gr, standard 5.56mm is 55 or 62gr) and therefore require more powder to achieve the same velocities. Hence the longer cartridges for 5.56mm (I use .223 and 5.56 interchangably; they're technically not the same thing but close enough for government work). Most .223 pistols are based on the AR-15, so their magazines attach outside of the pistol grip and make them look scarier. That also makes them slightly less concealable, which is why they're not being attacked by the anti-gun forces. Perhaps the anti-gunners don't think they're legal. which is Saturday Night Specials for most applications, or whatever currently fashionable Mac10/Uzi/etc. for druglord armies that expect to be shooting at each other, or rifles for distance work and dual-use pickup-truck decoration. Uzis, MP5s, short-barrelled
Police Worried About New Vest-Penetrating Gun
http://www.wnbc.com/print/4075959/detail.html wnbc.com Police Worried About New Vest-Penetrating Gun NEW YORK -- There is a nationwide alert to members of law enforcement regarding a new kind of handgun which can render a bulletproof vest useless, as first reported by NewsChannel 4's Scott Weinberger. New Gun Frightens Police Scott Weinberger The most shocking fact may be that the gun -- known as the five-seven -- is being marketed to the public, and it's completely legal It was a very difficult decision for members of law enforcement to go public about the new weapon, but officers fear that once word of the weapon begins to circulate in the wrong circles, they will be in great danger. They agreed to speak to NewsChannel 4, hoping the public will understand what they call the most devastating weapon they face. The weapon is light, easily concealable and can fire 20 rounds in seconds without reloading. This would be devastating, said Chief Robert Troy, of the Jersey City Police Department. Troy said he learned about the high-powered pistol from a bulletin issued by Florida Department of Law Enforcement to all of its agents. Troy believes faced with this new weapon, his officers would be at a total disadvantage. Dealing with a gun like this -- it's a whole new ballgame, Troy said. Troy is not the only member of law enforcement to voice concern. As NewsChannel 4 began to contact several more departments in the Tri-State Area, it turned out that officers in Trumball, Conn., had seized one of these handguns during a recent arrest. Certainly, handguns are a danger to any police officer on any day, but one that specifically advertised by the company to be capable of defeating a ballistic vest is certainly the utmost concern to us, said Glenn Byrnes, of the Trumball Police Department. However, the company said that bullet is not sold to the public. Instead, gun buyers can purchase what the company calls a training or civilian bullet -- the type loaded into the gun confiscated by Trumball police. At a distance of 21 feet, Trumball police Sgt. Lenny Scinto fired the five-seven with the ammo sold legally to the public into a standard police vest. All three penetrated the vest. The bullets even went through the back panel of the vest, penetrating both layers. In a similar test, an officer fired a .45-caliber round into the same vest. While the shot clearly knocked it down, it didn't penetrate the vest, and an officer would likely have survived the assault. The velocity of this round makes it a more penetrating round -- that's what had me concerned, Scinto said. FN Herstal told NewsChannel 4 that they dispute the test, stating, Most law enforcement agencies don't have the ability to properly test a ballistic vest. When NewsChannel 4 asked how this could have happened, the spokesperson said: We [the company] are not experts in ballistic armor. Back in Trumball, Scinto said his officers would have to rethink how to protect the public and protect themselves. This is going to add a whole new dimension to training and tactics. With the penetration of these rounds, you're going to have to find something considerably heavier than we normally use for cover and concealment to stop this round, Scinto said. In Jersey City, Troy said he will appeal to lawmakers, hoping they will step in before any of his officers are confronted with the five-seven. This does not belong in the civilian population. The only thing that comes out of this is profits for the company and dead police officers, Troy said. I would like the federal government to ban these rounds to the civilian public. -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: Police Worried About New Vest-Penetrating Gun
At 01:54 PM 1/14/2005, R.A. Hettinga wrote: http://www.wnbc.com/print/4075959/detail.html NEW YORK -- There is a nationwide alert to members of law enforcement regarding a new kind of handgun which can render a bulletproof vest useless, as first reported by NewsChannel 4's Scott Weinberger. ... The weapon is light, easily concealable and can fire 20 rounds in seconds without reloading. A couple of questions to the gunpunks out there... I've heard that rifles easily penetrate bullet-proof vests, and that vests are really only useful against average-to-small handguns and against shotguns. Is this accurate? Any idea how much you can saw off a rifle and still have it penetrate typical cop vests? (And I assume the 20 rounds in seconds is just a scary way to say it has a big magazine and you have to pull the trigger 20 times.) Also, the police expressed worry that criminals might hear about these guns and then the cops would be in big trouble. Sounds silly to me - while some criminals might buy a cop-killer handgun for bragging rights, random criminals presumably only buy weapons useful for the scenarios they imagine being in, which is Saturday Night Specials for most applications, or whatever currently fashionable Mac10/Uzi/etc. for druglord armies that expect to be shooting at each other, or rifles for distance work and dual-use pickup-truck decoration. Do many criminals expect to initiate shootouts with vest-wearing cops in scenarios where a rifle isn't practical? Do most cops wear bullet-proof vests regularly other than in holdup/hostage SWAT situations, where the criminal might have rifles anyway, and where a regular pistol is just fine for shooting hostages? Or is this mainly a problem for the cases when cops want to stage military-style pre-dawn assaults on people's houses, where they expect that the targets usually only have pistols handy near the bed and don't have time for rifles? Seems like scare-mongering to me, not a practical concern. Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
