Peter Wrote:Any western where the good guy draws and, without aiming, shoots the pistol out of the bad guys hand, without hitting his hand, from about 50 yards.
Ken V could tell you more but I'm sure the old Colts etc. were nothing like that accurate even if you did take the time to aim!
The old Colts were fairly accurate but the ammunition wasn't -- at least not as accurate as modern smokeless ammunition. And back in the '50's, when ammunition manufacturers discovered that hand loads were far more accurate than their factory loads were, they began to hire hand loaders to help them improve the accuracy of their ammunition.
The result was greatly increased accuracy. But as hand loaders can tailor ammunition for specific guns, hand loads are STILL more accurate.
But as far as shooting a gun out of the bad guys hand from fifty yards, that is either ridiculous or it's a one-in-a-million accident.
Someone who shoots that way can hit a
human size target from about 15 yards but that's about the limit.
Quote:Also I've been told that it is virtually impossible to shoot out the tyres on a moving car. The combination of rubber construction and the rotation apparently just cause bullets to rebound off without causing any damage. Or so I've been told, never tried it myself!
I've never tried it, but I have shot .22's at old tires lying against an earthen bank. the bullet just bounces right off. And those were old, rotted tires to boot. As far as hand guns are concerned, it would take a very high velocity "pointed" bullet to penetrate the
sidewall of a tire. And one that's not moving.
I would imagine that to shoot out a tire while it's moving would take a fairly high velocity bullet and it would have to be a moderately heavy bullet as well. And most likely it would have to be shot into the sidewall. It would also probably depend on how fast the tire is rotating.
But I really don't know.
That shooting the gun out of someone's hand business was something we saw on '40's and 50's movies and television shows. The gun would go flying out of the villain's hand and he would shake the sting out of his hand -- and the gun would still be usable.
What a joke!
Then later -- in the '70's and so on, if someone was hit by a bullet he would go flying. A good illustration of this would be in the Tom Selleck movie QUIGLEY DOWN UNDER; where Quigley shoots a bad guy and he flips backward, head over heels. The bullet might knock him off balance, but it would otherwise go right through him.
Another example of this sort of silliness is a scene in the Kevin Costner movie OPEN RANGE (an otherwise excellent movie) where Robert Duval shoots a shotgun through a thin wooden wall and the bad guy on the other side of the wall flies ten or so feet into the wall of the next building before hitting the ground. As the old law of physics states; for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Which means that if the bad guy flew in one direction Robert Duval would go flying in the opposite direction. (And the shot gun blast wouldn't make a huge hole in the wall either -- the shot column doesn't spread that quickly; there would be one inch size holes in the wall. Or if he pulled both triggers at the same time, there would be an oval hole in the wall.
Things seem to have gone from one silly extreme to another.
Oh, and another silly myth is shooting a bullet into a gas tank and causing the tank to explode. The bullet would be very hot of course, but it wouldn't be hot enough to ignite the gasoline -- the gasoline would cool it too fast. Even if the tank was mostly empty, and the bullet passed through fumes, it wouldn't explode the tank. there has to be a considerable amount of oxygen in the tank for the vapor to ignite. Shooting tracers into a gas tank might be different, but I don't know. I've never fired a tracer into a gas tank.
A propane tank is a different matter altogether.
Ken V.