Guns for Dummies

A couple of years ago I did a post simply called "Guns" (see:   http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2016/07/guns.html).  In that post I covered ground that had been well trod by others, something I try to avoid in these posts, but I just couldn't stop myself.  I had become so disgusted by the arguments put forward by the gun lobby that I just couldn't restrain myself.  Their arguments are easy to eviscerate because, frankly, they are baloney.

For this post I am going to talk about the actual thing, the gun.  So let me review my credentials.  I owned cap guns and squirt guns as a little kid.   I have fired but not owned BB guns and pellet guns, also as a kid.  But I have never owned or even fired what we now think of as a gun, a device that uses an explosive to expell a small piece of metal at high speed.

Nevertheless, I know something about guns.  I have read vast amounts of fiction of the detective, thriller, or action kind.  Guns feature heavily in this type of literature and you can learn a lot of you pay attention.  Also, we swim in a vast ocean of guns and gun culture.  Guns frequently feature prominently in the news.  Again, if you pay attention you can learn a lot.  Then there are also lots of opportunities to see and hear what actual experts have to say.  And I avail myself of that.  But in terms of actual formal education and training on the subject, there I can make no claims whatsoever.

But I am going to proceed anyhow.  And, unfortunately, you will learn a lot more accurate and reliable information about guns here than you will by listening to the bloviating on TV of many so called experts.  That's because many of these "experts" are more interested in pushing an agenda than giving you clear, concise, and dependable information.  So here goes.

Guns come in a lot of different shapes and sizes.  They can be small enough to conceal in the palm of your hand or so big that they don't fit in a standard railroad car.  These larger guns are often called artillery or "field pieces".  I am going to ignore them (and all kinds of other specialty types of guns) and stick with guns that are designed for single individuals to hold in their hands and use.

They come in two general types.   The smaller ones are generally referred to as handguns and can be operated by an adult using one hand.  The larger ones are often referred to erroneously as "rifles" but are more accurately called "long guns" because they feature a barrel (a long tube with a hole down the center) that is more than about 16" (the actual number varies slightly depending on who is making the distinction) long.

Long guns feature one of three types of barrels.  A "shotgun" has a barrel with thin walls and is typically used to fire a group of pellets out of the hole in the center of the barrel rather than a single "bullet".  A "musket" has a thicker, stronger barrel and fires a single bullet.  When people say "musket" they are generally referring to the "smooth bore" type of musket.  A "rifle" is a musket that has a set of carefully designed groves on the inside that spin the bullet as it travels down the barrel.  (The lack of "rifling" is what gives the smooth bore its name.)  The spin causes the bullet to follow a straighter path resulting in better "accuracy".

The next most important thing that distinguishes between types of long guns is the "action".  The action is the mechanism for handling ammunition.  Revolutionary War era muskets featured a "flint lock" action.  Earlier designs were called "wheel lock" actions.  (For our purposes, these are indistinguishable.)  The "trigger" (a small lever operated by a single finger) caused a mechanism to make a "flint" (a type of rock that sparks when hit) strike a "steel" (literally a small piece of steel).

If all went well a spark got thrown into the "pan", a small depression filled with gunpowder, lighting the gunpowder on fire.  The fire in the pan then burned along a small channel into the rear of the barrel.  This would ignite a larger quantity of gunpowder that would "explode".  This explosion would propel the bullet out of the end of the barrel of the gun at high speed.

Can something go wrong with this process?  Yes!  So guns of this period were cranky and required a great deal of skill and care to operate successfully.  And we haven't even talked about the whole business of getting the bullet to hit what we want it to.  And these guns were heavy.  It typically took a strong man to hold them steady and fire them.  And if you tilted them the wrong way the powder would spill out of the pan and it wouldn't fire.  It was also a complicated and time consuming process to load one and prepare it for firing.  But if everything went well they were quite deadly.  And that was the point.

The design of muskets had evolved considerably from when they were first introduced hundreds of years before the Revolutionary War to the Revolutionary era.  That evolution continued and continues up to the present day.  And one target of this evolution was the action.  Something quicker and more reliable was needed.  In several stages the "cartridge" was developed.

The bullet is one component of the cartridge.  But also includes is a housing, usually called the "shell".  Inside the shell is the explosive and some other stuff.  On the back of the shell is a special spot called the "primer" that can be set on fire just by hitting it smartly.  The shell holds everything including the bullet together and keeps all the pieces properly aligned.  This means you just have to put the cartridge into the gun and you are ready to go.  The process of getting the gun to go off is also much simplified.  You how cause a "firing pin" to strike the primer smartly and everything goes boom.  Note that "bullet" and  "shell" are often wrongly used as if they are synonyms for cartridge.

From here the evolution of the action focused on the specifics of how the cartridge got loaded into place to be ready to be fired.  An early design was called a "bolt" action.  An easily manipulated lever called the bolt sticks out to the side of the gun.  Moving the bolt appropriately ("operating" it) causes an area at the back of the barrel (the "chamber") to open up.

An "ejector" mechanism causes any spent cartridge/shell present to be "ejected" (thrown to the side) from the gun.  The operator then places a fresh cartridge into the chamber and moves the bolt appropriately.  This causes everything to close up, the cartridge to be moved into place, and the firing pin to be "cocked" so that a small pressure on the trigger will now cause it to strike the primer smartly.

All this was a big improvement.  But more improvement was possible.  A "magazine" containing several cartridges was added to the action.  As the bolt was operated it would feed a new cartridge from the magazine into the chamber as soon as the old one had been ejected.  That sped things up considerably.  Early magazines held on the order of a half dozen cartridges.  But this meant the operator only had to occasionally mess with reloading.

But things could be improved even more.  The action could be and was improved so that it used part of the power of the main explosion to, in effect, operate the bolt.  This meant that the gun required no operator action to be ready to fire again almost immediately.  This kind of action is called a "semi-automatic" action.  It means that the gun will fire once each time the trigger is pulled as long as there are cartridges left in the magazine.  But wait!  There's more.

Why require a trigger pull each time you want the gun to fire.  A slightly more complicated action would permit the gun to keep firing rapidly as long as the trigger is held down and there remains "ammunition" (cartridges) in the magazine.  This kind of action is called a "fully-automatic" action and the gun is now called a "machine gun".

The first gun that was capable of firing continuously was the "Gatling Gun".  It saw use in the later stages of the Civil War.  It was big enough and heavy enough that it had to be mounted on its own little cart.  The original design had between six and ten barrels and was operated by means of a fairly large crank instead of a trigger.  A couple of years later a British fellow named Maxim invented a single barrel design that used a fully-automatic action similar to the one described above.  There are advantages and disadvantages to both the Gatling and The Maxim design.  And we see this trade off playing out right down to the present.

And now let me move on to short guns designed for one-handed use, often called "pistols" or "handguns" (the terms are synonymous).  The same kind of evolution characterized their history.  All the very earliest guns were long guns.  But it didn't take long for people to figure out how to jam all the mechanisms of a flint-lock musket into a design that could be used one handed.  So flint-lock pistols existed at the time of the Revolutionary War.  But they were not very practical.  The same "tilt" problem affected them and it was much easier to tilt them because they were smaller.  So, other than "dueling pistols", pistols literally designed in pairs to be used in a duel, they were rare.

But once the cartridge was introduced pistols became a much more practical alternative.  And the original pistols were single-shot weapons roughly similar in design and use to a bolt-action musket.  And, due to their small size, a "double barrel" design was eminently practical and was quickly developed.  These guns featured two triggers, one for each barrel.

A very popular double barreled "derringer" (the term actually refers to any small gun) was introduced by Remington in 1866 and by others soon thereafter.  The double barrel derringer design remained in general use all the way to the 1930's.  Many western movies and TV shows feature double barrel derringers being waved around (and occasionally used) so they are a good place to check out what I am talking about.

But two shots were not enough so the "revolver" design was developed.  Colt came out with an early example in 1836.  A portion of the barrel was replaced with a larger revolving cylinder that had holes drilled in it to hold five or six (in the most popular designs) cartridges.  After each shot a mechanism would automatically rotate the cylinder to align the next cartridge with the barrel and firing pin.  Early revolvers actually predated the general use of the cartridge.  But revolver designs almost identical to modern ones were in general use by the end of the Civil War.

The process of reloading a revolver was fairly elaborate and no way to simplify things and speed the process up was ever developed.  Nevertheless, the revolver was the most common pistol design in use until the 1980's when an entirely different design largely took over.

In 1911 Colt sold a radical new design for a pistol to the U. S. Army for use as a "sidearm" (a pistol in a holster attached to a man's belt at the side) by its officers.  (All the other services ended up eventually adopting it.)  This design used a semi-automatic (but often incorrectly shortened to "automatic" or even "auto") action.  The magazine, (often referred to as a "clip") was housed in the grip of the gun.

A simple lever released the magazine to drop out of the bottom of the gun where it could easily be filled ("loaded") with cartridges.  If an additional magazine that had been pre-loaded was available then the gun could be put back into action within a couple of seconds.  Each standard magazine held seven cartridges but a fully loaded magazine would fit into a gun that already had a cartridge in the chamber so it was possible to fire as many as eight shots before needing to reload.

The "Luger" pistol uses one of several other semi-automatic action designs that have been developed for use in pistols.  But the patents on the Colt 1911 design eventually expired and most "automatic" pistols now use a minor variant of the Colt 1911 design for their action.  And the evolution of the pistol eventually followed that of the long gun and fully automatic actions were developed.  Some designs date back to World War I.  But designs that achieved substantial popularity did not arrive until the US MAC 10 in the 1970s and the Israeli Uzi of the '80s.  Other successful designs have since entered the market.

But, as I mentioned above, there are trade-offs.  The most basic and most long standing is short barrel versus long barrel.  The longer barrel permits more accuracy.  But a long gun is, well, long.  It can't be carried around in a holster as a sidearm.  Foot soldiers most value the long-range accuracy so they carry a long gun.  Officers value convenience more so they go with a pistol.

The other long standing trade off is power.  In the US the "caliber" of the gun is the number most commonly used to providing a rough estimation of its power.  In much the way, engine displacement is used to provide a rough estimation of how powerful a particular car is.  Both are misleading but represent a popular starting point.  (You will have to look elsewhere for more on this with respect to cars.  I provide lots of specifics with respect to guns below.)  Popular guns vary in caliber from "22" (actually .22) to "45" (actually .45).  What is being measured is the diameter of the bullet.  The diameter of a "22" is twenty-two hundredths of an inch.  The diameter of a "45" is forty-five hundredths of an inch.

The rest of the world also uses bullet diameter to provide a rough estimate of the power of a gun.  But instead of using a measure based on English units (inches or fractions thereof) they use metric.  Specifically, they use millimeters abbreviated as "mm".  But it's just a different way of saying the same thing.  "9mm" is pretty much the same as "38 caliber".  7.62mm is the same as "30 caliber".  And the caliber of bullets in an M-16/AR-15/M-4 is .223.  This turns out to be "5.56mm" and references to 5.56mm ammunition are common.

The old "NATO standard" M-14 military rifle used "NATO standard 7.62mm" ammunition.  The original AK-47 was specifically designed to be able to use NATO standard 7.62mm ammunition.  (In a clever move it could also use a slightly larger "Soviet standard" cartridge that did not work in an M-14.)  You can now get an AK-47 that is "chambered for" (uses) other common sizes of ammunition if you want.  But there are lots of AK-47s chambered for 7.62mm ammunition around so 7.62mm ammunition is still manufactured in large quantities.

It would seem like a "45" should be about twice as big as a "22" and, therefore, perhaps twice as powerful.  But a bullet is a three dimensional object and all the dimensions scale in proportion.  So a "45" is actually about 8 (2x2x2) times as powerful as a "22".  Other common sizes like "25", "32", and "38", (along with other less common sizes) also all scale accordingly.  So the size and weight of a specific type of bullet is important.  But the amount and type of explosive in the cartridge is also important.

"22"s come in "short" and "long".  In both cases the diameter of the bullet is the same but the "22 long" cartridge contains more explosive so it is more powerful.  In general, we have standard loads and "magnum" loads of explosive.  A "magnum" cartridge generally contains a bullet of the same diameter as the same size standard cartridge but the "shell" is bigger so it can contain more explosive.  How much more?  There is a standard for the amount of explosive in a "357" cartridge and a different standard amount of explosive in a "357 magnum" cartridge.  The same thing goes for a "44" and a "44 magnum" or for other standard/magnum pairs.  But I don't know if the amount of explosive in each type of cartridge of the same caliber follows a standard ratio or not.

Another long standing difference is between "smooth bore" and rifled barrels.  Rifled barrels are much harder and, therefore, much more expensive to produce.  And rifling a shotgun barrel makes no sense so it is never done.  But there is something very roughly equivalent with shotguns called "choke".  This has to do with how broadly the pellets are dispersed.

If the pellets are tightly grouped then more of them will hit the target but your aim must also be more accurate for any of them to hit the target at all.  So if "winging it" is good enough the choke can be set for a broad disbursal pattern.  If only a multi-pellet hit will do the job then the choke should be set for a tight disbursal pattern.

A key attribute of a gun is its "stopping power", its ability to kill and maim effectively.  Generally speaking a bigger bullet going faster has more stopping poser.  So a "45" has a lot more stopping power than a "22".  At one end a "22 short" is unlikely to kill you.  It's possible but the stars would have to align just right.  It can maim you but it isn't particularly that good that either.  It has little stopping power.  That's what all those other bigger bullets are for.  And, as you might expect, a Colt 1911 "45" has a lot of stopping power.  A big factor in this is the fact that it uses a big, heavy bullet.  But there is more to the story.

Its "muzzle velocity", the speed the bullet leaves the "muzzle" (opposite end of the barrel from the chamber), is relatively low.  And this affects what the bullet does when it hits you.  It tends to break and tear a lot of things.  If any one of those things is critical, you die.  Even if nothing critical is hit you are still likely to be grievously wounded and, therefore "out of the fight".  To a first approximation, the human body is a bag of water and a "45" bullet happens to throw up a big bow wave.  And this bow wave spreads damage far and wide.

The problem with a Colt 1911 "45" is that it is a big, heavy, not very accurate gun.  My father carried one as a Naval Officer during World War II.  It is almost impossible to hit anything at any kind of distance, he told me.  And everything I have learned since bears this out.

And, among other problems, it has a vicious "kick".  The barrel is a long way from the gun's center of gravity.  When you fire it this "eccentricity" causes the barrel to kick (jerk) up a lot.  And that's if you are strong and have a good grip on the gun.  If you aren't or don't, the gun can fly completely out of your hands.  This makes it hard for the gun to stay "aimed" (pointed in such a way that the bullet will hit what you want it to) as the bullet travels down the barrel.

After you have fired the gun you must get the gun's kick under control, reposition it to the general direction you need it pointing in, and re-aim it, all before you are ready to fire again.  And, of course, all this being jerked around is hard on your hand.  Hand fatigue can make it hard to fire the gun rapidly and repeatedly.

A "22" doesn't have much kick so it doesn't suffer from this problem.  But remember that it also doesn't have much stopping power.  There is a happy medium.  The "38" and "9mm" both have lots of stopping power but also much less kick than a "45".  As a result law enforcement used "38" revolvers almost exclusively for many decades.  The "9mm" is a smaller, lighter gun than the "38" that has the same stopping power.  This combination is why it has become so popular in the last few decades.  And that brings me to another point.

An explosion is, in actuality, just something burning very rapidly.  It is common in old time movies to see someone carefully pour out a line of gunpowder (also often referred to as "black powder") on the floor.  The line leads up to a keg of powder.  He will then light the other end of the line and run away.  The line burns slowly (and telegenically) until it reaches then keg.  Then you get a "boom".

The fact that we can observe the line of black powder burning tells us that at that point it is burning too slowly to qualify as an explosion.  But once confined by the keg, the very same black powder does explode.  (The reasons black powder explodes in the keg but not in the line are too complicated to get into so I am just going to skip over them.)

For the purposes of this discussion my point is that when it can be gotten to explode, black powder is a "low" explosive.  The rate at which the burning propagates might be faster in the keg than in the line on the floor but it's still not all that fast compared to other explosives.

AMFO is another low explosive.  The name comes from the fact that its primarily components are Ammonia fertilizer (the "AM") and fuel oil (the "FO").  Commercially prepared AMFO is commonly used in open pit mining.  Timothy McVeigh used a "mix it yourself" recipe he found on the Internet to make the AMFO he used in the Oklahoma City bombing.

C-4 (also known as "plastique") is an example of a "high" explosive.  The burning propagates much faster in a high explosive.  There are technical reasons to prefer a low explosive over a high explosive for use in a cartridge but both can be made to work.

The "low explosive" attribute of black powder is an advantage when it comes to using it in a cartridge.  But other attributes of black powder confer distinct disadvantages when it is used this way.  When it explodes it creates a lot of smoke.  If lots of guns are going off lots of times then after a while no one can see anything.  This led to a change to "smokeless" powder roughly at the time of the Civil War.

And that's not the only problem with black powder.  Relative to modern alternatives, it takes a lot of it to make a given amount of explosion.  So pistols tended to be quite big and heavy before the Civil War.  They needed to be to allow for enough black powder.  Better explosives led to smaller and lighter pistols after the Civil War.

But the improvements did not stop there.  The specifications for a standard "38" cartridge were set a relatively long time ago.  It was more compact than the old black powder cartridges because better powders were available but a "38" cartridge still had to accommodate a fairly large amount of explosive.  As the chemistry of explosives continued to evolve still better options became available.

When the specifications for "9mm" cartridges were set these "still better" powders could be and were specified.  So the "9mm" cartridge could be and was much smaller than the "38" cartridge and still delivered the same amount of power.  And a smaller and lighter cartridge meant the 9mm gun could be made smaller and lighter than its "38" sibling.  And that's why "9mm" guns are so popular now.

Now remember a "38" and a "9mm" are pretty similar in terms of stopping power.  But the ammunition for each is not interchangeable.  The sensible thing would be for Americans to just go with the millimeter thing that everybody else uses.   Instead a pretty idiotic and barely workable alternative was adopted.

There is now such a thing as a "380".  The bullets are the same .38 caliber but the cartridge uses the more modern "9mm" explosive.  So a "38" and a "380" use quite different cartridges.  American gun buyers are told in effect "it's a 38" in terms of stopping power but are told at the same time that they must use the more compact but equally effective "380" cartridge instead of a standard "38" cartridge.  Like I said, idiotic.

There is one more aspect of all this that needs to be explored.  That is the design and construction of the bullet.  Originally, bullets were spheres.  This was the easiest shape to make.  Then over time they became more "bullet-shaped".  They had a little bit of a nose on the front and a round cylindrical shape in the back.  This was more aerodynamic so bullet-shaped bullets flew straighter.

Later some bullets were given a sharp point.  Muzzle velocities had by this time gotten a lot faster and some bullets were now going faster than the speed of sound.  The sharp point was found to help with the "bow shock" of the "sonic boom" a bullet flying at supersonic speed created.

Another innovation was "jacketing".  Early bullets were made of pure lead.  When they hit something they often shattered or splattered.  This tended to give them a lot of stopping power when it came to shooting people.  But it also meant that even modest efforts at bullet-proofing were effective.  A core made of something heavy like lead allowed bullets to remain heavy.  A steel jacket, on the other hand, meant a bullet could also punch though at least a modest amount of bullet-proofing on its way to its intended target.

But a steel jacketed bullet tends to make a nice neat hole through a body.  This is ideal for hunting as the objective is supposed to be to put meat on the table.  A nice "through and through" wound means only a small amount of the meat is rendered unsuitable for dining on.  And, in fact, hunters are heavily regulated in terms of the guns and ammunition they are allowed to use.  They must use a single shot (bolt action or similar) long gun of middling caliber (roughly .30 caliber) firing a steel jacketed bullet and having a magazine that holds only a few (roughly 5) rounds.

But a hunting rifle is not a very good gun to use for a military weapon.  The neat hole it makes substantially reduces its stopping power.  It is a step in the wrong direction when compared to a big spherical unjacketed hunk of pure lead from an older weapon.  So the military spent a lot of money looking for a third way.  And they found it.  A steel jacketed round can do a tremendous amount of damage if it tumbles once it has hit its target.  And it is easy to make a long slim bullet tumble.  So the M-16 (introduced during the Vietnam War in the '60s) pulls together a lot of threads.

It uses a small .223 caliber bullet.  That sounds bad because it is so small.  But the cartridge is a super-magnum design that produces an extremely high muzzle velocity.  The barrel is rifled so the gun is extremely accurate.  And the bullet is much longer than it is around.  So it flies straight while it is in the air but starts tumbling immediately when it hits something.  The high speed is a substitute for the weight.  And the tumbling is a substitute for the shattering/splattering behavior of a pure lead bullet.  The result is a whole lot of stopping power jammed into a small, light package.  This combination is the columniation of hundreds of years of well financed research into the best way to kill people.

And the M-16 can be set to "single shot", "fully automatic", or "three round burst".  So the rate of fire can be adjusted to whatever is most appropriate for the circumstances that are encountered.  The military has since tweaked the M-16 design in various modest ways since to produce the M-4.  It is essentially the same gun and uses exactly the same ammunition.  And Colt, the original manufacturer of the M-16, produced a civilian version of the M-16 called the AR-15.  It is exactly the same gun except that it lacks the "selector" lever.  It is always in "single shot" mode.  Unless, of course, you buy an aftermarket "mod" kit that adds the selector back and turns an AR-15 back into an M-16.

And various manufacturers now make knock-offs of the AR-15.  Regardless of make and model they are all called, for good reason, "assault weapons".  But the tip-off for figuring out if a particular make and model of gun is an AR-15 knock off is the ammunition.  Anything that uses .223 caliber (or 5.56mm) ammunition is an AR-15 or a knock off and, therefore, an assault weapon.  (Guns that are civilian knockoffs of AK-47s are also lumped into the assault weapon category.  As are actual M-16s, M-4s, AK-47s and any other kind of machine gun.)

A gun can be but rarely is used solely for target practice.  And there are guns that are designed and built specifically for competitive target shooting competitions.  It turns out they are bad at killing and maiming and that's why almost no one buys one.  As a result we never see them outside of when there are showing target shooting events in the Olympics.  And we see damn little of them even then.

Other than that, the only thing a gun is good for is killing and maiming.  The market for hunting rifles (see above for their specifications) represents a small and diminishing part of the gun market.  Most guns sold today are military weapons or their close cousins.  That means these guns are designed to solely kill and maim people and are not much good for anything else.

How good are they?  Guns work better than the blasters (or phasers, or whatever they are called at the moment) in science fiction movies and TV shows.  They work better than light sabers.  We see blasters and light sabers and the like in these movies and on TV not because the work better than a plain old military-style gun (they don't) but because they look cooler.  That's how good today's guns are at doing what they have been designed to do.

I grew up in the old "six-shooter" or "six-gun" days, so called because everybody packed a five shot or six shot revolver.  All the cowboys and cops in entertainments carried revolvers of one model or another.  And frankly, in almost all situations, if five or six shots doesn't get the job done then it's not going to get done.  (Sometimes through the magic of editing everybody would blast away seemingly forever without reloading in some kind of melee but often nobody the results were pretty ineffective.)

The exception, of course, is mass slaughter.  If you want to kill a whole lot of school kids or people attending a music concert, or the like, then a gun that is able to fire many rounds at a high rate is the right tool for the job.  Soldiers are now trained to avoid "full auto" and use either the "single shot" or "three round burst" modes.

"Full auto" just doesn't work in most military situations.  And remember that a soldier's job, when he is in combat, often boils down to killing and maiming as many of the enemy as he can as quickly as he can.  But at the same time it is also important to not injure innocent bystanders and modern warfare often puts soldiers in close proximity to innocent bystanders.  In a mass slaughter situation, however, killing innocent bystanders is the whole point so "full auto" works just fine.

There is just no situation in which an assault weapon is the appropriate tool for civilian use.  It is a poor hunting weapon.  It is also almost always illegal to hunt with an assault weapon.  It is a poor "home security" weapon.  It's too big and clumsy.  A handgun just works better.  It is a poor "self defense" weapon.  You can't holster it while you can holster a handgun.  It is a decent weapon to use for target practice.  But better guns for this purpose are available and they are cheaper.  It is, in short, irresponsible for regular people to own these weapons.

And this brings me to the phrase "responsible gun owner".  We are supposed to take it as gospel that 99+% of gun owners are responsible gun owners.  But the evidence is overwhelming that this is wrong.  There are lots of irresponsible gun owners out there.

You are an irresponsible gun owner if you own an assault weapon.

You are an irresponsible gun owner if you own large capacity magazines.  They are only good for shooting lots of civilians quickly.

You are an irresponsible gun owner if you one a "bump stock" (a device that turns a semi-automatic rifle into an full-automatic rifle).

You are an irresponsible gun owner if you "open carry" a long gun in a populated area.

You are an irresponsible gun owner if you own a gun that doesn't have a "safety" on it.  You are also an irresponsible gun owner if you don't religiously set safeties ON for all guns they are not in use.

You are an irresponsible gun owner if you don't always keep all your guns secure.  That means stored under lock and key when not in use.  It means when you have a pistol on your person and it is not in use then it is in a holster that has a security strap and the strap is engaged.

There are a few tiny exceptions.  If you are a collector and you keep your collection unloaded and under lock and key then it's okay for you to own assault weapons or guns that don't have safeties.

Thousands of people are killed by guns every year.  A lot of them are suicides.  And a lot of people commit suicide with a gun they don't own.  If a potential suicide does not have easy access to a gun then the chances of that person committing suicide is greatly reduced.  And if you have suicidal tendencies get rid of your guns immediately.

A lot of other people are killed by gun accidents.  In many cases a small child (under 6) gets hold of an unsecured gun and kills himself or another small child.  Lots of other people (teenagers, adults who should know better, "responsible" gun owners) get to fooling around with a gun and it goes off "by accident" and someone is killed or severely wounded.

Responsible gun owners should know this and act accordingly.

Finally, here is some good safety advice from various experts I have seen -

*** Always assume a gun is loaded even if you "know" it is not.

*** Never point a gun at a person unless you really intend to shoot them.

*** Keep your finger well away from the trigger (outside the trigger guard and extended along the side of the gun works well) unless you are about to shoot your gun.

*** Always make sure a gun is accessible only to those who should have access to it.  That means lock guns up when there are children, strangers, people with mental problems, and especially if there are people who are drunk, angry, or both, around.  If it is physically possible for any of these kinds of people to be around then behave at all times as if they actually are around.

And, of course, the best way to make sure this advice is followed is to have no guns around and stay away from people who do (or even might) have guns around.

Jury Duty

This subject was suggested to me by the end of the first Manafort trial.  There is supposed to be at least a second trial and the possibility of a third trial can not be ruled out at this time.  Nor may various appeals, pardons, etc.  So there is lots of process left.  But I want to focus on one aspect of one part of the process.

I have a line I have trotted out a number of times recently.  It goes like this:

I have never been married and never had children.  That's why I am an expert on child rearing.

The only reasonable conclusion to be drawn from this is that, in fact, I am definitely NOT an expert on child rearing.  Instead, whatever I have to say on the subject should be taken not with a single grain but with a five pound bag of salt.  I usually follow this statement with one that goes:

If you don't find your kids a frequent source of entertainment then for you having kids was a mistake.

I am careful to trot this out only when both children and their parents seem to be having a good time.  Raising kids is both very expensive and very time consuming.  I am not going to go into all the benefits of having kids.  Others who are far better qualified, and that means pretty much everybody, have done a far better job of that than I ever could.  But I do think it helps if parents recognize that along with the usual list of benefits there is also the entertainment factor.  And so on to the subject at hand.

Since it is also true that I have also never studied the subject, my credentials for opining on child rearing are exactly zero.  So what are my credentials with respect to the subject at hand?  They are better but still don't rise to the level of adequate.  Thanks to movies and TV I have an education in the law.  But it is a quite misleading one.  What I can say in my favor is that I have been called several times for jury duty, been "voir dire"ed a few times, and once served on a jury.  So with these marginal credentials in mind, here goes.

So what's a jury's job?  What is it supposed to do?  Well, in various entertainments it sits around and eventually renders a verdict.  And we are led to believe that everybody knows everything there is to know about how that verdict should be reached.  The entertainment leads us, the audience, to the conclusion that the defendant is either unambiguously guilty or unambiguously innocent.  But actual trials are messy things.  Fortunately, the courts devotes significant effort to help prospective jurors understand how to reach a verdict.

In actual trials a considerable amount of time and effort is spent educating potential jury members (before they are selected) and actual jury members (after they are selected) in what they are supposed to do and not do.  Some of this is very helpful.  Some of this is the opposite of helpful.  Let's start with the former.

"Juries are finders of fact and judges are finders of law", jurors are told.  So what does that mean?  Well, it depends on what kind of case is involved.  Cases fall into two general categories:  civil and criminal.  A civil dispute is between two parties and does not directly involve the government.  Most of the time a contract is at the heart of the dispute.  Two parties have entered into a contract and there is a dispute that arises out of this.

For example, one party may sue claiming he was not paid.  The other party may counter-claim that the first party did not do the work he said he would.  How does this all get sorted out?  The two parties go to court and a decision is rendered.  But civil cases seldom generate much interest among the press or public.  So, like the press, I am going to focus on criminal cases.

Here the case is "the state versus X".  Here the "state" may actually be a city, county, or other governmental entity.  Or it may actually be the "state" in the form of the Federal Government.  And, of course, the "X" is usually an individual but it may instead be a group, corporation ("remember, corporations are people", Presidential candidate Mitt Romney famously (and correctly, at least when it comes to the law) informed us).  As an example, the case I referenced above was formally "U. S. versus Manafort".

The other component is that the defendant is accused of violating one or more statutes or regulations.  In Federal cases you will hear "USC yak-yak-yak").  Here, "USC" does not refer to the University of Southern California.  It is the "United States Code".  As you might expect the entirety of the USC is now quite large.  It is broken into volumes.  The volumes are broken into sections.  The sections are broken into subsections.  And so on.  So the actual citation of one of the charges in one of Manafort's cases is that he violated 18 U.S.C. 981(a)(1)(C).  This means he is charged with violating the law found at volume 18 section 981 sub-section "c" sub-sub-section "1" sub-sub-sub-section "C" of the United States Code.

If you have access to a law library you can go to the volumes of the United States Code and pull down volume 18 (which might actually run to several physical volumes).  You can then flip to section 981.  There you will find that it is broken into sub-sections labeled "a", "b", etc.  And that sub-section "a" is further broken down into sub-sub-sections "1", "2", etc.  And that sub-sub-section "1" is further broken down into sub-sub-sub-sections "A", "B", etc.  (And in some cases the sub-sub- business may descend to even more levels but you get the idea.)  And the USC consistently uses lower case letters for the sub-levels, numbers for the sub-sub levels and so on.  This makes it easier to keep which layer you are talking about straight.

The USC is the worst in terms of length and complexity.  But state, county, municipal laws and regulations follow the same pattern.  They are tightly organized in a system that allows the compact citation of a single specific law or regulation.  And the defendant must be charged with the violation of specific laws.  He can't be charged with being a bad person.  For instance, if a person is charged with "vagrancy" by the time the case gets to trial "vagrancy" needs to be replaced with a reference to a specific component of a specific law or regulation of the governmental body levying the charge.

So how does this relate to the "finding of fact" business?  So far all we have talked about is "the law".  Well, each law includes a definition of the crime.  The crime has "elements".  The elements are listed for each specific crime.  It is the jury's job to determine if the facts introduced during the trial phase of the case prove that all of the elements have been demonstrated.  If one element is left unproven then it's game over for the prosecution on that specific "count" of the case.  (If a defendant is charged with multiple crimes than each specific crime becomes a "count".  Manafort was charged with 18 counts.)

And there is another element, call it the zeroth element.  That has to do with jurisdiction.  Did the crime occur within the jurisdiction of the law (and court) in which the case is being tried.  If the defendant is charged with violating a specific section of the Municipal Code of the City of Seattle but the crime actually occurred in Redmond, then the defendant must be acquitted.  Similarly, if the trial is taking place in a Tacoma court room, Tacoma courts have no authority to enforce Seattle laws, so again the defendant must be acquitted.

The judge and the attorneys for the various sides are required to go through all this with the jury.  So, for instance, the prosecutor carefully asked a witness in the case I was involved in what seems like a stupid question "did the crime occur in Seattle"?  The "yes" answer fulfilled the legal requirement to show that the issue of jurisdiction had been properly addressed.  And you can bet that this sort of thing never makes it into the parts of trials that show up in entertainments.

So the first responsibility of a juror is to decide whether all the elements of the crime have been proven.  If the answer is "no" to even one of them then that's it.  But if the answer is "yes" to all of the elements then there is more.  Proving all the elements of the crime is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a "guilty" verdict.  There may be mitigating circumstances.  For instance, in a murder case the defendant may claim "self defense".  "Yes, I killed him but I only did it because he tried to kill me first".  Self defense is usually considered sufficiently mitigating to justify acquittal even though all of the elements of the crime have been proven.

But here is where things get sticky.  What constitutes "sufficient" proof.  Or, more generally, what constitutes "reasonable doubt".  In civil cases a different "standard of proof" is used.  The presumption is that the stakes are lower in these types of cases.  Also the sides are presumed to be more evenly matched in terms of potential liability.  It is not the case that one side (the state) is putting little at risk while the other side (the defendant) is putting a lot at risk (i.e. incarceration, death).  So in civil cases a "preponderance of the evidence" standard is used.  This is usually paraphrased as "more evidence in favor or one side's position than for that of the other".

The problem in criminal cases is there is no accepted standard for "beyond a reasonable doubt".  We saw this on display in the Manafort case.  In his instructions to the jury the judge talked about the meaning of "reasonable doubt" but it was all mush.  After the jury started deliberations they sent out a question to the judge asking for clarification on what constituted "reasonable doubt".  He parroted back the same mush he had given them in the first place.  In other words, he left them on their own.  He was forced to do this because of the lack of an accepted standard.  Reasonable people differ.

So let me start by discussing my approach.  The first thing I do is assume everyone is telling the truth and ask myself "is there a set of circumstances that is consistent with what everyone testified to?".  I have found that this actually works a lot better than you would think it would.

I am not naïve.  I know people misremember or outright lie and they do it a lot.  But I find this a very good starting point.  If you make this assumption you will find that there are far fewer inconsistencies and contradictions than you would think there would be.  And a very important scientific principle lies behind the whole "inconsistencies and contradictions" thing.

Scientists believe the real world is "consistent".  Things are only one way.  If one theory predicts "red" and another theory predicts "blue" then there is a problem.  One, or possibly both, of the theories is wrong.  And if a specific theory predicts "red" but observation shows the actual situation to be "blue" then that theory is wrong and something needs to be changed.

This idea of consistency works well in science and also in the real world.  But it is also surprisingly helpful for dealing with sorting out things like who to believe.  In a trial there may be more than one sets of circumstances that are consistent with all the evidence and testimony.  So start there and see how far it gets you.  If nothing else it should result in only a few areas of dispute that need to be resolved on the way to reaching a verdict.

Next there's the issue of what evidence is appropriate to consider and what weight to give it.  For a long time eye witness testimony was considered the best evidence.  "Circumstantial" evidence (everything else) was considered less reliable.  But things like fingerprints and DNA have turned out to be way more reliable than eyewitness testimony.  We are more and more seeing the consensus shift to valuing certain types of circumstantial evidence more highly than eye witness testimony.

And in the Manafort case the prosecution contended that business documents like bank records, printouts of emails and text messages, and other circumstantial evidence was what the jury should primarily depend on.  The defense tried to discredit the prosecution's key witness but did not make an effort to discredit any of the documentary evidence.  The one juror that has spoken out so far said she relied primarily on the documentary evidence and paid much little or no attention to the eye witness testimony.  But there is still a need for eye witness testimony and for jurors to make judgements about the accuracy and reliability of that testimony.

One of the bedrock elements of our society is a "jury of our peers".  What's going on with that?  Well, one of the things that it does NOT have to do with is for jurors to go out and gather evidence on their own.  Jurors are also not supposed to hold a preconceived notion of guilt or innocence.  It is not okay to decide "this guy a stand up guy so he couldn't have possibly done it" or "this guy is scum so he must have done it" based on how the person strikes you.  Jurors are expected to render a verdict based solely on the evidence presented in court.

Now this often presents problems.  In entertainments we often see the crime committed so we know for sure "who done it".  If not, then usually we are given hints sufficient to push us firmly into one camp or the other.  But in actual trials it is often impossible to produce enough evidence to resolve all issues.  Maybe a witness died or disappeared or was never located in the first place.  Maybe the lab work was bungled or was never performed in the first place.

In many jurisdictions, including the one I live in, (but never in entertainments) the backlog at the crime lab is a year or more.  So everybody prioritizes.  Do we really need this blood analyzed to prove our case?  If the answer is "no" then the blood work is not submitted to the lab in the first place.  This leaves the jury to work through an incomplete case.  Not all the questions that they might reasonably ask are answered over the course of the proceedings.

In the Manafort case the trial took place in a "rocket docket" jurisdiction.  The judges want cases move quickly so they push lawyers to reduce the number of issues in dispute to the minimum and to introduce the minimum amount of evidence necessary to decide each issue.  There is good reason for this.  As a result cases in this jurisdiction often come to trial quickly.  That is not the case in many other jurisdictions.  And this business of getting to trial quickly can help the ends of justice.  But it may also mean that the prosecution (or defense, but in this case the defense presented no case) may end up not presenting evidence that could possibly have resolved the doubts of one or another juror.

In this case one juror cited "reasonable doubt" in her decision to vote to acquit on 10 of the 18 counts.  (She voted to convict on the other 8 counts.)  All eleven other jurors voted "convict" on all 18 counts.  It is possible that if the prosecution had been allowed to introduce a little more evidence that evidence could have been enough to resolve her doubt.  But we'll never know.  What we do know is that we now have a mistrial with respect to ten of the original eighteen counts.  And that may result in another trial to resolve the fate of those counts.

Getting back to my process, I start with a position of "everybody's telling the truth".  Even if that fails it reduces the number of issues considerably.  So the next question is what to do if we have a conflict in the testimony.  This is an area where the jury is supposed to apply their judgement.  Who is likely to be telling the truth and who is not.  And is the "not" person merely making a legitimate mistake or are they lying on purpose?

This is where the jury is supposed to apply their life experience rather than any specific fact or experience.  And it may boil down to a question of whose story is more reasonable or believable.  Again, jurors are expected to apply their life experience to come to a judgment.  And this is why a "jury of peers" is important.  A shared life experience is supposed to result in better judgements.

But what to do about the missing parts?  That's a conundrum and one for which there is no agreed on solution.  The appropriate response to missing parts we are told is "no response".  What does that mean?  Well, I tend to go with the Wikipedia language of "neutral interpretation".  Try to deal with it in a way that favors neither the prosecution nor the defense.  Again, this came up in the Manafort trial.

As I indicated above, Manafort's defense team chose not to put on a case at all.  And it is often the case that the defendant choses not to testify.  The simplest and most obvious interpretation of tactics like this is that the defendant is guilty and the choice made is an attempt at damage minimization.  But that is not "no response" nor a "neutral interpretation".

And there are situations where these tactics are absolutely the right tactics for the defense to use.  Assume that the defendant is innocent and that the prosecution failed to prove one or more elements of each count the defendant is charged with.  Then the defense should win without putting on a case.  If they instead put on a case something could go wrong.  So their best choice is to do nothing.

In fact that was the situation in the trial I was a juror on.  There were two possible perpetrators and at the end of the prosecution's presentation no evidence had been introduced to show that the defendant was the actual perpetrator.  So it would be entirely reasonable to assume that the other possible perpetrator did it.  So I was mystified when the defense didn't point this out and ask for an immediate dismissal.

And, in a perfect example of a situation where the defendant shouldn't testify nor even put on a case, our defendant went on the stand and said "I did it".  He then went on to claim mitigating circumstances but we didn't buy them and he was convicted.  Had the defense not put on a case I would have voted for acquittal.

So if I was on the Manafort jury I would have asked "did the prosecution prove all elements of all crimes charged in all counts"?  Based on what I saw in the press I would likely have said "yes".  Then I would have asked myself "is there any alternative interpretation of the evidence presented that would lead to 'not guilty'"?  Again, looking from the outside, I didn't see any (but I will come back to this below).

Finally, I would have asked myself about mitigating circumstances.  Usually the defense uses their presentation to raise any possible mitigating circumstances they can think of.  But remember they didn't put on a case.  I think it would be an appropriate "no response" or "neutral interpretation" to conclude that none of the usual mitigating circumstances were present in this case.

But I am a rationalist and a "guided by the evidence" kind of guy.  So that's why I think the way I think.  But not everybody thinks the way I do.  But before I go there I am going to take a digression.  There is another reason evidence might be absent.

Let's say one side does a bad thing.  Say, for instance, that the cops break into someplace without a search warrant and, as a result, find a bunch of incriminating evidence they wouldn't otherwise have known about.  Then they cover this up, somehow get a search warrant for the place they have already searched, and go back where, surprise, surprise, they find a bunch of incriminating evidence.  Obviously, they are not supposed to do this.

So let's say the judge becomes aware of all this.  Then what?  The usual response is for the judge to suppress all the evidence gathered in this manner.  Now remember that there's nothing wrong with the evidence itself, just the way the cops got their hands on it.  There is still a good societal reason to make the cops do things properly.  In other scenarios it is the defense that does something bad.  No matter which side does it the judge needs to be able to do something to rebalance the scales.

The judge has only a few crude tools with which to do this and suppressing evidence is one of them.  But for this tool to be effective jurors need to go only by what they hear in court.  The action the judge takes is supposed to weaken the side he takes it against.  But if jurors go out on the own time and snoop around they can find out about this sort of thing.  And that means that one of the few tools that a judge has to maintain an overall degree of fairness is lost.  This is an aspect of our judicial system that is much underappreciated.  Nevertheless, it is an important one.

Back to "reasonable doubt".  I keep bringing it back to scenario building.  What if this happened?  The bias is supposed to be in favorable of acquittal.  If there is a "reasonable" scenario that is consistent to the extent possible with the evidence introduced into court then the defendant should be acquitted, at least on that count.  So what's reasonable and what's unreasonable?

I've already tipped my hand on one aspect.  It's unreasonable if it contradicts otherwise uncontradicted evidence introduced at trial.  I also eliminate the magical and the supernatural from consideration.  God could have caused someone to see "this" when "that" is actually what happened.  I don't include divine intervention in what I consider reasonable.  But others might.  I also eliminate interventions that, while not originating from a divinity, do require the violation of the laws of nature as I understand them.

Finally, I expect a scenario worth consideration to be supported to some extent by evidence introduced at trial.  Suppose someone is being tried for bank robbery.  Well it is possible that a rival gang actually pulled the job but, for reasons unknown, planted evidence to point to the defendant.  It's possible.  But was any evidence introduced at trial for, say the existence of a rival gang with a grudge?  If not, then I don't think such a scenario can be used as a basis for finding reasonable doubt..

But what about something like a "they picked on me" defense.  The Manafort defense argued that the government, as a result of the Trump Russia investigation, chose to single Manafort out for special scrutiny.  If they hadn't done this they probably would not have noticed his crimes and, thus, not charged him.  I'm of the "if you don't want to do the time then don't do the crime" school in this case.  But I presume the holdout juror bought this argument.

And there are circumstances where I could see myself buying it.  Studies show that drug use is about the same among blacks and whites.  But blacks are something like ten times as likely to end up in jail as a result of a minor drug beef.  In the case of the blacks who were convicted the whole "time - crime" thing definitely fits.  But what is really going on is that cops go looking for blacks involved in drugs while at the same time looking the other way when it comes to whites and drugs.  More importantly to me, Manafort at considerable expense assembled a crack legal team.

This option of assembling a crack legal team is not available to most low level black drug offenders.  They do not have the financial resources available to do so.  So I would tend to be much more willing to be swayed by a "they picked on me" defense in situations where the defendant has scant financial and other resources and much more unwilling to do so in the case of someone who is well healed and/or well connected.

So the "they picked on me" defense is one where reasonable people can come to opposite conclusions.  Or even the same person (me) can come to different conclusions based on the situation.  And there are other arguments that are not based strictly on the facts of the case that can sometimes be compelling and sometimes not.  And that, at its core, is why there is no agreed on definition of "reasonable doubt".  I invite my readers to spend some time thinking about what definition of "reasonable doubt" works for them.  After all, they might end up on a jury at some point.

And that is one of the best things about the jury system.  I was impressed by the seriousness with which almost all prospective jurors take their duties and responsibilities.  Yet jurors are the cannon fodder of the legal system.  They are often seen more as a necessary evil than anything else.

They get a few bucks and a bus pass for taking a day (or sometimes several days) out of their lives.  They are supposed to shut up, go where they are supposed to go, do what they are told to do, and otherwise just stay out of the way.  They are suppose to know nothing about the case when they first file into the court room.  In a high profile case this eliminates anyone civically inclined enough to follow the news.  They are not supposed to know any of the judges, lawyers, defendants, etc. involved.

They are asked very personal and sometimes embarrassing questions during "voir dire", the questioning before their selection that is supposed to decide their suitability as honest, upright, and responsible citizens.  If the case goes on for more than a day they are supposed to avoid any press coverage.

They are even supposed to ignore what happened right in front of them (and was often said solely for their benefit) if the judge says "please disregard what you just hard".  Lawyers sometimes want to get certain ideas into jurors' heads but the rules of procedure don't give them an opportunity to do so.  So they "make a mistake" and say or do something they are not supposed to.   The toothpaste can't be put back into the tube.  So the judge says, in effect, "pretend the toothpaste never left the tube".  Only he uses the "please disregard" legal formulation instead.  (Manafort's defense team did this and , for the most part, got away with it.)

It's a tough job but one most people are willing and eager to undertake.  Most shirkers shirk only because they literally can't take the time off.  There is no one else to take care of the kids.  Or they would get fired if they took time off work.  In many low wage jobs they would lose a day or more of pay even if they didn't get fired.  This is a big deal for a shocking number of people as they live from paycheck to paycheck.

Yet people show up and they try their hardest to do a good job.  Even the people who screw it up by doing something differently than I would are doing their best to do right as they see it.  That is literally all you can ask of anyone.  It's also far more than we get from many of the people who are supposed to be dedicating themselves to looking out for our best interests to the exclusion of their own.