01-16-2013, 09:34 PM | #31 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Monster Hunting Guns Made in or Associated with the UK
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I think that the Canadian Forces still use the Browning Grand Puissance in 9x19mm Parabellum. Part of that is undoubtedly our petrified military procurement system, part of that the good design of that weapon and rarity that soldiers use handguns in combat. I believe that they were considering replacing it as it is hard to replace worn-out weapons and parts.
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01-16-2013, 09:43 PM | #32 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Monster Hunting Guns Made in or Associated with the UK
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All in all, they'd love to standardise if they could, but they'd rather maximise their security and lower the risk of being blown over something like buying new weapons. If that increases their costs, well, then it does. As mentioned earlier, the cost of the guns is trivial compared to the cost of a secret compound or supporting fifty people for a decade while they can't work. They do use a lot of ammo, once they've set up their training facilities at some point in 2005. On the other hand, the calibers that the Rangers train with are fairly standardised, even if the weapons may not be. All pistols meant for front-line use are 9mm. There might be a few PP automatics and revolvers with less standarised calibers, but those are mainly meant as self-defence wepaons for academics (each of whom will select one type and train with only that). The longarms are liable to be 9mm and 7.62mm, with the possibility of 5.56mm carbines if they can get their hands on any. I expect that obtaining up to a million* cartridges per year may pose a severe challenge to their secrecy, as well as being a non-trivial expense (at least 10% of their budget, excluding special gifts like the free use of expensive land and suchlike). I'd welcome suggestions on how to deflect suspion from any organisation buying that much ammunition and in calibers not often used in the UK except by military and police. So far, I think I'll go with having the PSC operated by some of the Rangers (part-time Rangers, as they actually do perform some PSC work) pretend to be deeply involved in training tactical units in the Arab world. Would probably be best if they actually did some of that. Then, with the consent of a few of these friendly foreigners, they'd fiddle the books so that they buy massively more ammo than they actually need. Edit: I'd be willing to cut these ammo numbers in half, if it proved particularly difficult to get amounts this huge. Even down to one-fourth, but no lower than that. The Rangers do need to train trusted academics and researchers in self-defence and, more importantly, they need a higher standard of firearm proficiency than almost any real organisation. Because real criminals or other OpFor don't try to dodge bullets, have probability alteration field that make it much more likely to miss or are able to cover 30 yds in two seconds. Extra Edit: Reloading their ammunition would greatly cut down on the need to buy massive amounts for training purposes. Does anyone (Sam Cade, HANS, Roger Burton-West, other?) know whether there are practical reloading machines that allow you to quickly change between configurations that allow you to reload several different calibers, e.g. one that could fairly easily be adjusted to work for many or all of the following: 7.65x17mm Walther, .38/200 (or .38 S&W), 9x19mm Parabellum, 5.56x45mm NATO (or .223 Rem) and 7.62x51mm NATO (or .308 Win)? If you have something like this for 9mm ammo, how hard is it to reconfigure for 5.56mm ammo or 7.62mm? Or this one in 7.62mm, how hard to reconfigure for the other ammunition types you need? Would it not be worth doing? Or could you change the configuration on a regular basis; running the machine for different types of ammunition on alternating weeks? Alternatively, would it be more practical to buy several smaller ones, with the 9mm and the two rifle caliber ones being able to handle the greatest volume? What would you expect to pay for a workshop enabling you to reload ca 1,000,000 rounds per year (with as little hassle as possible), with most of those divided between 9mm, 5.56mm and 7.62mm? Are there strict legal controls on reloading machines? Even if someone is a licensed gunsmith or an official at a legal gun club and thus entitled to buy such things even in a restrictive jurisdiction like the UK, would there be a potential for an eagle-eyed government employe to spot that someone had bought equipment sufficient to keep an average company of soldiers afloat in ammo and become curious? Or is there no need to register such purchases at any central database, thus making the risk slight as long as you don't buy all the machines from the same place? The Rangers would also have smaller reloading machines and handloading tools at their castle; for truly custom cartridges, with exotic projectiles or one-of-a-kind chamberings. The automatic reloading machines would be to make training ammunition in the massive amounts they'd require. Quote:
And it's not as if the Rangers are trained in a hurry. With the exception of the half-dozen** who went on the first mission before the Rangers properly existed, no one has gone out without at least a year in training and learning about the supernatural and methods to combat it. *At least since 2008. They'd have needed less before that and before they had their own secret compound with a firing range, they six or so proto-Rangers, assisted by some part-timers and a rotation of trusted people who need to learn self-defence, would have been lucky to be able to fire off 150,000 rounds per year. **All AFOs/SFOs (equivalent to armed response or SWAT) or former elite military. They also all had a minimum of five years of being involved in developing methods of fighting the supernatural. Three of them had been doing so since the early 90s. All theoretical up to that point, but I think it would be fair to say that they didn't lack knowledge of firearms or training in their use. Quote:
They had already replaced many of them in spec-ops circles with SIGs, mostly P226 and P229.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 01-17-2013 at 06:48 AM. |
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01-16-2013, 10:27 PM | #33 |
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: The City of Subdued Excitement
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Re: Monster Hunting Guns Made in or Associated with the UK
How about acquiring street guns by way of law enforcement? Surely it would be easier to let a few guns walk out of the evidence room than out of the armory. Easier still if the guns never got entered into evidence in the first place.
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01-16-2013, 10:33 PM | #34 |
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: Fryers Forest Australia
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Re: Monster Hunting Guns Made in or Associated with the UK
Whilst I’m not sure exactly what challenges will face your Rangers, I would make the following points...
Semi-automatic military weapons in common calibres are great when: You need to suppress the enemy with weight of fire, You need to use common cartridges in line with other agencies, You need a fast magazine system for ongoing fire fights. Perhaps these are not necessarily useful for your rangers. This could allow them to use civilian weapons that are much more easily available. For example, the .44 magnum is based on the .44 special, and weapons that will chamber the former should chamber the latter. Using .44 magnum pistols and lever carbines, with low power ammo for the academics etc... could make life a lot easier than setting up a gun factory, or smuggling from overseas, reworking existing guns etc. Personally I would prefer a .44 magnum carbine as more useful entry weapon than a short barrel SLR, with its associated muzzle flash and over-deep penetration. .44 magnum can also easily be made subsonic when loaded with ADI Trailboss powder or similar, with bullet weights still giving reasonable damage. A few .375 H&H magazine safari rifles would round out the collection for larger, or further targets.
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01-16-2013, 10:39 PM | #35 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Monster Hunting Guns Made in or Associated with the UK
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But by far the most of these street guns will be low-caliber, low-capacity, low-quality weapons not good for actual combat.
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01-17-2013, 12:29 AM | #36 | |||
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Down in a holler
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Re: Monster Hunting Guns Made in or Associated with the UK
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As to the chopped pistol in your link.... Wow. That would take forever ( a couple days of hard work) and require some impressive skill to keep it from looking like crap and being functional If there is a CNC mill handy it would be more time effective just to make a new pistol. Quote:
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As for parts comparability between a model 10 and a 36? Not at all. The 10 is a "K" frame, a 36 is a smaller "J" frame. |
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01-17-2013, 03:39 AM | #37 | ||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Monster Hunting Guns Made in or Associated with the UK
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I've only held the Glocks, Colt and the SIG of the above weapons, so I don't really have a good feel for the Browning outside of pictures. Quote:
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In any event, this would be a 'compact' Bulk -2 weapon, not a 'subcompact' Bulk -1, right? Quote:
Ok. Which would you think was more practical as the basis for a 'Fitzed' self-defence weapon in the modern day; a S&W Model 10 .38/200 made during WWII or a Webley IV or VI in .38/200 made sometimes between 1930-1945? Going by which is likely to be more reliable, which produces the smaller and more comfortable piece after 'Fitzing' and any other concerns which might influence the choice. If it is about equal, they might have both.
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01-17-2013, 04:13 AM | #38 |
Join Date: May 2009
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Re: Monster Hunting Guns Made in or Associated with the UK
You have access to the "old boys club" at the top of the military so use that.
Have multiple units involved in decommissioning or relocating a base, there are plenty in the north, then have one of those units relocate part of the older stock to your storage facility and have it "destroyed" from there. You probably want an army unit in your back pocket any way in case you ever need to get noisy. So once you've wormed you way into their command structure sending them on odd maneuvers now and again would be a natural smoke screen. I know you can match weapons to bullets, but how would you track that specific weapon back to the storage facility?
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01-17-2013, 04:44 AM | #39 | |||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Monster Hunting Guns Made in or Associated with the UK
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Sometimes the Rangers face foes that are so preternaturally tough or heal so quickly that emptying a magazine (or even several) at them only serves to momentarily stun them. Under GURPS rules (and probably realistically too), you can pump a lot more rounds into something jumping you from 2-7 yards in the one to two seconds you might have with a RoF 9-13 automatic carbine than you can with semi-automatic one, even if you have maxed the Fast-Firing technique and are shooting nine times per second with the semi-auto. Fast magazine changes are also important for firefights against incredibly fast and/or tough creatures that don't go down even when hit. It is true that the Rangers do not need to share ammunition with other agencies. On the other hand, they do want to be able to buy a lot of ammunition without raising too many eyebrows and they don't want to spend too much of their budget on training ammunition. I don't see .44 Magnum cartridges as being conductive to either. A cover story that your PSC is training Arab tactical teams might work for 9mm, 5.56mm and even 7.62mm, but it's going to ring a bit false for .44 Magnum ammunition. And while it's possible for someone in Great Britain to own some kind of odd bolt or lever action hunting carbine in .44 Mag, probably legally, even, assuming that the total length is more than 60 cm and the barrel is more than 30 cm, I doubt any hunter is going to be able to buy hundreds of thousands of rounds per year. Nor can any gun club, not without taking the risk that some local police will become curious. Quote:
At least the 9mm ones exist in government armouries and/or are occasionally bought and sold by British companies for PMC/PSC or foreign armed forces. What few .44 Magnums there are in Britain are either in private hands of some collector with a very old grandfathered licence, in the hands of very rich hunter or collector with a more recent licence he got through undue social influence* or there illegally. That last is going to be an even smaller group than the other two. *While such influence is available to some of the Shadow Courtiers, it's generally not a good idea to use your personal influence to obtain a very rare weapon chambered in a caliber almost no one uses where you live and then potentially use that weapon to commit crimes. If you must use influence to obtain weapons, it is probably best if the weapons don't leave brass and bullets that can easily be identified as belonging to them. Quote:
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Do any UK-based manufacturers make a good large-caliber safari or big game hunting rifle in the modern day, maybe for export? Large capacity ones, let alone semi-automatics, mostly won't be legal for the domestic market. I suppose they could buy these abroad and import them as legal hunting guns. Just modify them in their machine shop to remove any UK-specific modifications that limit the magazine size, for example. Now, close-quarters against something that can eat 9mm and even 5.56mm rounds like candies, feeling mere pinpricks, that's something the Rangers really worry about. And for that they need at least semi-automatic heavy caliber weapons, with a decent size magazine. What kind of legal hunting rifle could you use as the basis for a large-caliber carbine useful at CQB ranges and also accurate at somewhat longer ranges if fitted with optics? I'm thinking about something along the lines of a Crane Mk 14 Enhanced Battle Rifle, except semi-automatic and chambered for an even bigger round. Edit: If double-rifles weren't so infernally expensive and pretty, using one in .600 Nitro Express or even something more powerful as the basis for a short-range monster slayer would be cool. One could buy/make a CZ 550 modified to chamber anything up to the aptly named 600 Overkill for only 15-20% of the cost of a double with similar power. I wonder how much you could reduce the Bulk of such a weapon while retaining some effectiveness and not guaranteeing that you'll hurt yourself with it? *Obviously, they used to make the best.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 01-17-2013 at 11:28 AM. |
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01-17-2013, 05:05 AM | #40 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Monster Hunting Guns Made in or Associated with the UK
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Of course, they'll only have a relationship with an officer or two and maybe a couple of long-serving NCOs, not any large number of men. But I assume they could arrange for an inside job with just one officer and a sergeant, as long as they had other people outside the unit in question who could provide the right paperwork. *More likely to come from police armouries, in which case it would be the MP5SFA2/A3. Quote:
But many of the serving military people with whom they have relationship, while aware of the existence of the supernatural and in agreement that the armed forces need to have plans in place for it, may not be privy to the extremely illegal actions being taken by the conspiracy to combat it. They know that they investigate the supernatural and informally coordinate planning for the time when it becomes public and they probably know that they protect the Queen in secret, but the fact that they send out teams of men to actively hunt dangerous supernatural beings and even humans who abuse the paranormal in sufficiently terrifying ways, is very closely held. Some police and military officers might even wink and nod at diverting some old weapons due for destruction toward the conspiracy, for the purpose of modification into weapons useful for protecting the Queen from supernatural threats, but not be willing to take more direct and violent action on behalf of what amounts to an illegal conspiracy. So it's a careful balancing act. Gently guide the armed forces and other arms of the lawful (but oblivious) government toward a new doctrine and organisation that will apply in the post-reveal world; but do so without exposing the uglier aspects of the conspiracy around the Queen. Would be easier if the conspiracy confined itself to subtle influence, but the decision was made to take an active role. Quote:
In any case, to avoid such unpleasantness, weapons made before that date might be best. Or at least ones made for export and duly filed as sold to Oman or Bahrain, complete with end-user certificates to that effect. I doubt such weapons are entered into the database as UK weapons.
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Za uspiekh nashevo beznadiozhnovo diela! Last edited by Icelander; 01-17-2013 at 05:12 AM. |
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high-tech, monster hunters, shadow court, tactical shooting |
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