Gun Safety Rules

[Anders]

Would we have all the accidents if it was part of Guns skill?

[rosignol]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Would we have all the accidents if it was part of Guns skill?

As Hans suggested upthread, it's pretty likely that the people having accidents don't have points in Guns, they're rolling against a default.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Would we have all the accidents if it was part of Guns skill?

Military personnel have negligent discharges all the time. Learning rules doesn't prevent 100% of accidents. You could have a shooters make an IQ-based Guns roll daily or weekly or somesuch, failure means a safety violation, critical failure is a negligent discharge. Laziness, Absent-Minded, and so on ought to penalize the roll as well as sleep deprivation and so on.

[Anders]

I'd probably just incorporate it into their Job roll. The consensus seems to be that it's part of Guns skill.

[Kyle Aaron]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Military personnel have negligent discharges all the time. Learning rules doesn't prevent 100% of accidents.

Perhaps an argument for including the Malfunction optional rule (pB279). Some weapons are inherently more prone to accidents than others, eg Austeyr vs SLR vs 40 year old SLR.

I'd say it's part of the skill. However, whatever the skill if you roll above the Malf level then something inconvenient happens.

Skill or no, remember that firearms are like vehicles - just because you know the rules does not mean you follow the rules.

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Excellent. I'll just add that haranguing everybody else about gun safety can easily lead to an Odious Personal Habit.

I heard a rumour once that a certain young gamer who had used firearms since he was literally a toddler (22 tubefed rifle rested on the side of a ute, under supervision of father who was a lifetime hunter and at the time a soldier) was on recruit course, and for a "joke" another recruit put the magazine on his rifle, cocked the weapon, pointed it at the young gamer, and pulled the trigger, click.

The young gamer stepped in, grasped the barrel and body of the weapon pushing it aside, slammed the guy in the guts with it, the guy dropped to his knees and the young gamer followed up with a buttstroke across the chin and a bash on the top of his head, then he removed the magazine and cleared the weapon, removing the bolt and tossing it all on the offender's bed. Later the medics came and took the offender away, and the corporals came and took the young gamer away and put him in the lockup for the night.

In the morning the Course Sergeant Major showed up and asked, "why did you assault that recruit?" and he told him, the CSM went and checked with the offender in the regimental aid post who innocently confirmed the story, and the CSM returned to the lockup and said, "I told him he was lucky, I would have killed him."

Or so the story goes. It's just a rumour. Some would call it an odious personal habit, I'd call it self-defence. Purely hypothetical, of course.

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

an Army Captain proceeded to clear his pistol by putting the barrel against his chest SAPI plate and racking the slide!

That's ruperts for you.

[PK]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

Would we have all the accidents if it was part of Guns skill?

Sure we would.

The vast majority of accidents are either:

1. Critical failures from someone rolling against Guns, or
2. Someone using Guns at default

And many, many, many criminals use Guns at default. Just from a game mechanic perspective, how many criminals do you know that get 200+ hours of practice with guns? Let's say that a typical criminal gets in a gunfight every month (which is actually ridiculously frequent; in reality, it might happen twice a year, even to an inner-city drug dealer). The average gun fight lasts a lot less than a minute, but let's pretend it's a full minute to be even more generous. That still means that it would take said criminal 1,000 years to acquire a single point of Guns. :)

In real life, people with Guns skill have trained in it. They spend several hours at a time on a range, and go back week after week; and if they really care, they work under the tutelage of a trained instructor. Or they grew up with hunting parents, who taught them how to use a gun at a young age, and have been shooting for a few decades. Either way, we're talking about a combination of regular use, long hours of use at a time, and actual training.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

I'm no expert (although I've almost been shot twice -- by negligence) but IMHO there are two groups that are especially dangerous with firearms.

1.) The rookies who don't know the rules;

2.) Some of the old hands, who think they're so experienced that the rules don't apply. Two relatives of mine were shot (not fatally, thankfully) by this latter group.

If you follow the rules of firearms' safety religiously you will NOT shoot anyone. If you don't you well might.

So, for GURPS, you can have some guy with about 8 points in Guns still make a mistake (see #2 above.)

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

So, for GURPS, you can have some guy with about 8 points in Guns still make a mistake (see #2 above.)

Firstly, very few real life shooters can justify 8 points (1600 hours of instruction, or 6400 of OJT). Secondly this is easily the result of a critical failure.

[Lupo]

Originally Posted by Rev. Pee Kitty

And many, many, many criminals use Guns at default. Just from a game mechanic perspective, how many criminals do you know that get 200+ hours of practice with guns? Let's say that a typical criminal gets in a gunfight every month (which is actually ridiculously frequent; in reality, it might happen twice a year, even to an inner-city drug dealer). The average gun fight lasts a lot less than a minute, but let's pretend it's a full minute to be even more generous. That still means that it would take said criminal 1,000 years to acquire a single point of Guns. :)

Actually, organized crime is known to organize shooting lessons for its members.
According to the book Gomorra, the camorra (the mafia of Naples) even trained young boys to overcome fear and surprise caused by enemy fire... by having them wear bulletproof vests, and repeatedly shooting them with handguns.

So if it is true that a drug-dealer won't be a sharpshooter (a drug dealer outside of the U.S. isn't even likely to own a firearm), a dedicated thug working as "muscle" for a criminal investigation is likely to have received some sort of training.
He might very well be more used to actual gunfights than all those policemen who work mostly at their desk (and who arguably have only Guns (sport), not actual Guns skill).

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Lupo

Actually, organized crime is known to organize shooting lessons for its members.
According to the book Gomorra, the camorra (the mafia of Naples) even trained young boys to overcome fear and surprise caused by enemy fire... by having them wear bulletproof vests, and repeatedly shooting them with handguns.

So if it is true that a drug-dealer won't be a sharpshooter (a drug dealer outside of the U.S. isn't even likely to own a firearm), a dedicated thug working as "muscle" for a criminal investigation is likely to have received some sort of training.
He might very well be more used to actual gunfights than all those policemen who work mostly at their desk (and who arguably have only Guns (sport), not actual Guns skill).

You are talking about pros, not some punk slinging rock.
Eye-talians got style.