spirituous

I have a character in my story that is kind of a "gun toting maniac", so to speak, so can anyone help with naming a few brands a guns? I know the sizes like 9mm, .32, .50, etc., but need help with brands and stuff. Also the brands of ammo and the effects of the ammo i.e. some ammo explodes on contact, others won't penetrate bones blah blah blah. Thank you very much!

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Pendulum

OK it depends what kind of gun you're looking for as in automatic or non-automatic. Machine guns, shotguns, pistols, rifles, to name a few. I don't know a lot about ammo but I know that most if not all bullets are kevlar coated nowadays. Or you could go for a more retro feel with WWII guns or earlier. Hope this helps a bit.

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spirituous

Thanks for the help, but what I meant by brands was like, for example a Magnum pistol or a Desert Eagle pistol. As for the type of guns, the story is set in modern days so the character would be using semi-automatics if not full automatics; he is a gun-toting maniac after all haha. Still, thanks for the ammo casing info that was really helpful.

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pharseer

I don't recall exactly which manufacturers make what, but if you're only looking for manufacturers: SIG/Sauer, Heckler Koch, Walther PPKs (James Bond's brand of choice), Winchester makes shotguns, Mossberg makes pump action shotguns, the ever popular Glock....

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Ozmandius

Dude, what the hell are you talking about? Kevlar is a woven fabric. How could you possibly coat a bullet in fabric, and why? The only coatings for bullets that I know of are copper jackets for peircing and lubricated coatings like teflon and molybdenum to keep the barrel from fouling.

But back to the main question:

The ammunition type you are talking about here is called a frangible. It is a bullet made of a compressed grain or powder that disintegrates when it impacts a hard object, be it a wall or a bone. The primary idea behind it is that it will wound or kill the intended target but not pass through walls to strike an innocent bystander.

On the other end of the spectrum are armour piercing rounds, the most common of which are full metal jacket rounds coated in a copper sheath. A second type of AP round contains a metal spike inside the lead slug. When the slug stops at the target, the metal spike keeps going. These metal core rounds have since been banned to all but police personel.
Their big brother in military service is the depleted uranium round, which due to its heavier weight (that's where the uranium comes in) can punch through vehicle armour.

A third category are hollow point rounds which have a dimple drilled in the head so that they flatten on impact and do damage to a wider area; ie, better stopping power. A particularly nasty variation of this round is the Black Talon, which is now illegal. Instead of a dimple, it is split at its head so that three razor sharp prongs pop out like an eagle's talons to lacerate the target. We used to use Black Talons for target practice on concrete blocks and they would shatter them with one shot. In contrast, the metal core AP rounds went straight through both layers of concrete.

One more slight clarification: Walther makes handguns of many varities, not just the PPK. Of particular note is their 22 handgun which is favored for up close assasinations due to its extreme precision. We were bullseyeing bottlecaps at thirty feet with that sucker. HK (Heckler and Koch) make the very popular MP9 which you see most SWAT teams carrying. Winchester is best known for their rifles, which they have been making since the 1800's.

A very popular handgun not noted is the Colt model 1911 which was the primary sidearm of the US army for roughly 75 years. Still widely available and easy to get. Very popular with gun loving nutjobs.

Oz

spirituous

Okay WOW thanks a lot. That helped a ton. That's some really great information! I am writing down notes like crazy. Gracias!

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Ozmandius

Always happy to help out another gun toting maniac.

Remind me to tell you about the party where we fired off most of those rounds sometime. Were'nt sober the entire week.

Oz

Talia_Brie

There are lots of tricks with writing about guns, so my only suggestion is make sure your research is thorough. Ozmandious seems to be the man on this topic, so try to stay in touch with him. There's nothing worse than reading a book that has serious gun-related errors.

e.g. Dean Koontz, in the book Phantoms has a police officer shoot at a monster with a revolver. Then later the town doctor turns up and sees a spent shell on the office floor.

Also, silencers only work on automatics (Oz, check this for me), and they muffle the recoil, which means the weapon needs to be cocked and re-loaded manually.

These are just a couple of errors I've experienced while reading about guns, and they are things you need to avoid if you're going to be writing about lots of guns.

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Pendulum

Crap sorry i was thinking of teflon. I got kind of mixed up with Kevlar which is used for body armour. Sorry about the confusion

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Ozmandius

Nope, you can silence anything, automatics, semi-automatics, and revolvers (well okay, almost anything. You can't silence a shotgun). The only requirement is a threaded extension to the barrel that the silencer screws onto which can be added to almost any weapon if you have access to a skilled machinist. Also there is either no or only minimal loss of recoil which means that the weapon does not need to be manually cocked after each fire. A silenced MP9 can fire full auto with the silencer.

All a silencer is, is a series of baffles within the chamber that diffuse the sound in the same way that your car muffler works.

Working on that principle, many people have found several low tech methods of silencing a shot. The most common of which is holding a pillow against the muzzle of the gun. The pillow acts as a natural baffel and the bullet has no trouble passing through it. Also I have heard of coke bottles being modified to fit over the barrel to work as well. Not as effective and clearly very dangerous, but it is purported to get the job done. This last one though is just a rumor so I won't attest to its validity. As a character device though, the coke bottle silencer would clearly mark the person as being very dangerous and devious. Just a thought.

No big. I kind of figured that that was where you got mixed up since they are often mentioned in the same texts since teflon bullets were reported to be able to pass through kevlar armor. This claim has since been proven false however and the teflon coating added no additional penetration power to the round.

Oz

spirituous

Move over Charlton Heston, Oz is the new leader of the NRA HAHAHA

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wudstok77

In a book I've read recently "Just Killing Time" by Derek Van Arman, he talks about silencing a weapon by the use of a plastic shopping bag wrapped around the entire gun and hand of the killer sealed with a rubber band, this creates a vacuum, hides the flash of the muzzle, and has a storage solution for the spent rounds. As long as the load doesn't produce a sonic boom, the end result will be only as loud as hands clapping. In the words of the author.

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Queasy Dillo

If I may ask...for what purpose do you intend to use the gun or guns?

There's a great variety out there, and as with all things some will work better than others. For example, the .50-cal you mentioned is a fairly large piece. It also has a price tag of better than a grand. Needless to say, this isn't something you'll need or even use very much....this is reason we've never seen one used in a crime - it's too bulky and too expensive for your average street thug.

The 9mm, on the other hand, is kinda like the rabbit. You turn your back on two and when you turn back around they've multiplied. The things are everywhere. They're also small, concealable, and certain models are comparitively cheap.

Like I said, whatcha need it for?

Dillo the gun nut

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spirituous

A character in my story is gun crazy, and I know almost nothing about them. Hence me asking about guns.

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Wordsworth

On silenced weapons:

Not all weapons can be silenced. That is to say, not all calibres/types of ammunition can be silenced.

.45, 9mm, .32, .25, .22LR, .22, etc. can be silenced because these rounds are subsonic.

Rifle rounds such as 5.56mm(M16), 7.62mm, .306, .300, 7.62x45(AK), etc cannot be silenced unless the round is specifically made to be subsonic. These rounds travel at over 5 times the speed of sound. Also, a subsonic round's lethal range is greatly reduced.

Bear in mind that silenced weapons are primarily used for CQB (close quarters combat).

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