< Previous.68SHOOTING T O LIVE be constituted by fixed firuig points also permits the staging on occasion of what we are pleased to call " mystery shoots." On these occasions the range, except for the targets, is transformed beyond all recognition, and it is astonishing what can be done in this respect in a building of very modest dimensions. To give an idea of what we mean, the range illustrated on p. 65 has more than once been made to represent the interior of a Chinese lodging-house harbouring, among other inmates, half a dozen bad characters who -will resist arrest. A screen hides all this from the men who are going to shoot. All they see from the outside is a wall with a door, through which, one by one, they will have to enter the lodgmg-house. No one laiows what he \vill encounter inside, and the only instructions given are that hmocent civilians are not to be " killed," such action being likely to impede promotion. The first man to shoot pushes in the door, closely followed by the range officer, and proceeds Avith caution or with reckless abandon, according to his nature, along a dark, narrow, twisting passage, kicks open a door at one point, descends a few steps, treads on floor-boards which give way under him, climbs some more steps and finds himself in a dimly lit room occupied by apparently harmless people (dummies) who vary from mere lodgers to dope fiends or stool-pigeons. He has to take in the situation in a flash, for his appearance is the signal f o r t h e f u n t o c o m m e n c e . A s h o t i s fi r e d a t h i m WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKPRACTICAL PIST OL RANGES69 (blank cartridge in the control room), and the criminals commence then" " get-aAvay " (" crimmals " are life-size targets that bob np from nowhere and disappear as quickly, heads and shoulders that peer at him briefly round a corner, men running swiftly across the room, possibly at an oblique angle, etc., all masked at some point in their careers by the " innocent bystanders," who must not be shot). There is no time to think, and anythmg resembling deliberate aim is a sheer impossibihty. Furniture and dummies impede his movements, and it is noticeable that he instinctively adopts the " crouch " and shoots as a rule with the arm in any position except fully extended. His only course is to shoot quickly and keep on shooting till his magazine is empty, hoping that he is hitting the " criminals " and not the dummies. Any iU-luck as regards the latter is rewarded, when the results are announced, by precisely the sort of comment that might be expected from the crowd. This sort of thing is not mere play-acthig. It is done with the sole purpose of making practice as realistic as possible and of stimulating interest. If the men are kept mdefinitely at the same duU routine they will lose interest, and results suffer accordingly. We should add now that the expenses of these productions are negligible if there are available a little imagination, a lot of wiUing help, some wood battens, straw, old clothes and hessian or old sacking. The steps referred to are easily arranged by having a WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UK70 SHOOTING T O LIVE pit in the floor, keeping it covered over when not required. The loose flooring only requires a very siniple bit of mechanism, worked from the control room, to make it give way slightly when walked on. Targets, always life-size, are dra\vn or printed on the cheapest paper and pasted on to a backing of hessian, old cloth or canvas ; anything will do. This backing is tacked on to frames which are sUd into troUeys, or hung on -ivires which are designed to provide the runners, bobbers, charging men, etc._ to which reference has been made. These devices are aU very simple and only need a little ingenuity to work out for any requirements. The target frames do not merit anything but ^the cheapest wood and roughest workmanship since they very quickly get shot to pieces. Special attention must be given to the ventilation of the range, and there camiot well be too many exhaust-fans to carry away the powder fumes. Continued exposure to powder fumes is hable to produce an affection of the eyes which is in all respects similar to and indeed difficult to distinguish from conjunctivitis (" pink-eye"). The persons most liable to suffer from this complaint are the control room operators who spend much of then- time in patching targets, and that is just where the fumes coUect most thickly when firing at the very short distances which we advocate. The first signs of any inflammation of the eyes should be the signal to re-examine the ventilating system of the range. WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKPRACTICAL PIST OL RANGES 71 We have found that the most practical flooring for the range is beaten earth. We think, too, that an earthen floor helps to reduce noise, which of course is considerably more in an indoor than an outdoor range. Noise can be reduced further by the use of millboard on the sides of the buUding and by curtams suspended from the roof or ceiling. The matter is largely one of experiment, and experiments in this direction are likely to be well worth the trouble involved. WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKCHAPTER VII STOPPING POWER We approach this subject with considerable diffidence. We regard it as essentially one in which theory should be disearded m favour of practice, but even practice, as evidenced in carefully noted records over a number of years, does not lead us to any finality in the matter. Instead, it provides us with so many contradictions that we feel that anything approaching dogmatism would be most unwise. To clear the ground for discussion we can eliminate at once the •22's and ■25's, leaving only the larger calibres available in modern revolvers and automatic pistols. Those %vl11 be calibres -32, -SS and -45, or approximately those sizes. We were brought up in the belief that a heavy bullet of soft lead, travelling in the leisurely manner of bygone days, could not be improved upon if it was desired to dispose of one's human foes in a decisive and clean-cut manner. We believed that such a bullet would mushroom, and that even if it did not do so, the impact of such a formidable mass of lead would infalhbly do all that ■was required, includmg knocking the enemy clean off his feet. We also beheved that bullets of approximately equal weight, jacketed mth cupro-nickel and 72 WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKST OPPING POWER 73 travelling at perhaps a greater velocitj'^, provided penetration as opposed to shock and were therefore nnsuited to their piu'pose ; and we had no faith whatever in light bullets driven at a much higher velocity, unless they could be so made as to secure effective expansion shortly after impact. Expanding bullets, however, are barred by the rules of the game as we have had to play it, so for practical purposes we must confine ourselves to solid bullets. We are not so sure now of these beliefs. Perhaps the reasons for our doubts will be more easily apparent if we recount some actual experiences from the long list m our records. We shall make every effort to be impartial, and can assure our readers that in each case all data bearing on the subject was carefully sifted at the time and nothing has been preserved but actual facts. We shall choose for our first instance one relating to the big lead bullet driven at a moderate velocity. On this occasion, a Sikh constable fired six shots with his -455 Webley at an armed criminal of whom he was in pursuit, registering five hits. The criminal continued to run, and so did the Sikh, the latter clinching the matter finally by battering in the back of the criminal's head mth the butt of his revolver. Subsequent investigations showed that one bullet only, and that barely deformed, remained in the body, the other four having passed clean through. A very similar incident took place more recently —though it relates to a different weapon. A WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UK74SHOOTING T O LIVE European patrol-sergeant, hearing shooting and shouts of " Ch'iang-Tao " (robber), rushed to a rice shop which seemed to be the centre of the tumult, and there saw an armed Chinese robbing the till. The Chinese immediately opened fire on the sergeant with an automatic pistol at about 6 yards, firing several shots until his pistol jammed. Fortunately n o n e o f t h e s h o t s t o o k e f f e c t , a n d m e a n w h i l e t h e sergeant returned the fire swiftly and effectively with a -45 Colt automatic, commencing at about 10 feet and firing his sixth and last shot at 3 feet as he rapidly closed in on his opponent. Later, it was found that of those six shots, four had struck fleshy parts of the body, passing clean through, while one bullet remained in the shoulder and another had lodged near the heart. Yet, in spite of all this, the robber was still on his feet and was knocked unconscious by the butt of the sergeant's pistol as he was attempting to escape by chmbing over the counter. Here we have two heavy jacketed buUets which did not waste their substance on mere penetration, one of them inflicting a wound which came near to being fatal. In theory these two heavy bullets should have stopped the man in his tracks, but the facts are as related. Can anyone explain ? Descending in the scale of cahbres and bullet weights, the only record we have of a man dropping instantly when shot relates to the performance of a •380 Colt automatic (pocket model). In this instance a single buUet penetrated from front to back, lodging WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKST OPPING POWER 75 very near the spine. The victun nevertheless recovered himself quickly and was able to get on his feet again. We think this case is probably analogous to the numerous instances that big-game hunters wiU recall of animals di'oppmg instantly to neck shots that just miss the vertebra, only to get up again a few moments after and disappear over the horizon. Turning now to the high velocity small cahbre weapons, we have seen terrible damage caused by a Mauser automatie, calibre 7-63 mm., of mihtary pattern. We have in mind the case of a man who was hit in the arm by a sohd fuU-jacketed buUet from a weapon of this tjq)e. Though he was in hospital within half an hour of bemg shot, nothing could be done to avoid amputation, so badly were the bone and tissue laeerated. Perhaps " pulped" would convey our meanmg more exactly. Yet m theory at least the buUet should have caused far less shock than it obviously did. From Avhat we have read, the bullet had something of the effect that the latest developments in ultra high velocity smaU-bore rifles are reported to have on game animals. We might add that in the particular service from whose records We have been quoting, notliing is so feared, rightly or wrongly, as the Mauser military automatic. The mention of the word is sufficient, if there is trouble afoot, to send men in mstant search of buUet-proof equipment. We have tried to solve by experiment this question WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UK76SHOOTING T O LIVE of the knock-down blow, but there is no satisfactory way of doing it. The nearest we have come to it h a s b e e n t o a l l o w o u r s e l v e s t o b e s h o t a t w h i l e holdhig a bullet-proof shield. The chief value of that experiment was a conclusive demonstration of the efficacy of the shield. Nevertheless, it did enable us to form some idea of the disconcerting effect of the explosion when a pistol is fired at one at very short range. These experiments with buUet-proof shields amount to no more than the firing of various types of bullets at a very hard surface of considerable area, fiexibly supported, i.e. by the arm. The shock of impact increased in proportion to the velocity of the bullets but in all cases was neghgible, the supporting arm only recoUing minutely. The results to the bullets were exactly what might have been expected. Soft lead bullets at low velocity mushroomed perfectly, jacketed bullets at moderate velocitj?^ broke into sizable and greatly deformed fragments, while high velocity jacketed bullets practically disintegrated. But if the firing had been against a human body instead of a shield, it would not be wise to conclude either that the shock of impact would- have been so slight or that the various bullets would have behaved exactly as they did. Other tests, carried out by firing into wood of varied thickness and hardness, very rarely showed any appreciable deformation of bullets, even if they were of soft lead. WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKST OPPING POWER 77 These little experiments left us, however, with a query which we have not been able to answer. How much, if anything, of deformation or disintegration is due to the sudden arrestation of the rotary motion when bullets are fired from a rifled barrel at objects hard enough to resist them effectively ? To sum up, all that we have done in this chapter is to provide mstances of how various types of weapons and their loads have not run true to form. Preconceived ideas, based on theory or perhaps hearsay, seem to have been upset. We say " seem " advisedly, for in spite of the length and variety of our records we do not consider that we have had, even yet, sufficient visual proof of the behaviour and effects of buUets fired into human targets to enable us to lay down any hard-and-fast rules. We do not know that a big soft lead buUet will not have the knock-dovm effect generally claimed. AU we can say is that we have never seen it. We do not know for certam, either, that a fuU-jacketed high-velocity small-calibre bullet will always have the effect described in the particular instance which we have given. We incline to the belief that the human factor must i n fl u e n c e t o s o m e e x t e n t t h e b e h a v i o u r o f b u U e t s . A pugilist at the top of his form can stand vastly more punishment than a man who is " soft " and untramed. Capacity to resist shock and paiu appears to be also a function of the nervous system, and marked differences occur in this respect as between WWW.RIFLEMAN.ORG.UKNext >