Monster Hunting Guns Made in or Associated with the UK

[Sam Cade]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Carry pistols. In all, would need some 250 of those. Maybe 50 could be full-size, but most of the rest would need to be comfortable for all-day carry and even suitable for carry by civilians with limited training and while wearing clothing that could not always be selected merely for covert carry suitability.

If G17s are around G19 and G26s are usually available too.

Also, 1st through 3rd gen glocks can have their butts chopped to use the magazines of the more compact variants.


Remember that any well appointed machine shop can churn out cheap and nasty military small arms.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

Set up a workshop, get some immigrants from Pashtun, and manufacture anything you want. They make some pretty heavy weapons in Darra.

Every person you reveal the existence of a secret compound to is a risk. Contacts in the military-industrial complex don't have to possess information that can burn your whole operation even if they talk. In most cases, they could burn the person who approached them and then suggest a wider conspiracy, but the media would be much more likely to suspect Whitehall than Windsor. Granted, the government would eventually find out that none of their people had, in fact, been involved, but as long as some loyal courtiers were willing to fall on their swords publicly, the scandal should stop well short of the senior figures and the institution of the monarchy.

It will look like a group of current- and former military people switching the end use certificates of weaponry in order to continue supplying some Arab regime where the official government policy for now is non-intervention. A scandal, to be sure, but one that's happened many times before and no one taken even remotely seriously would dream of connecting the Queen to it.

If they were instead running a secret armament factory staffed by immigrants from Afghanistan or Pakistan, however, any leak at all will bring the full power of anti-terrorism agencies down onto their head, with truly fearsome resources to find out what's going on. And the money they use to finance it and whatever strings you pulled to get the immigrants into the country will be revealed. Since this way isn't as conductive* to the use of cutouts that can fall on their swords and provide a sufficiently plausible cover story**, the investigation will probably continue far longer than in the case above.

*For one thing, while the other options allows the money to come from a foreign monarch who doesn't have to open his books to anyone, renting or buying a factory in the UK, as well as getting a bunch of people through immigration, can't be done as easily and covertly. There would have to be UK names on papers and the money trail would be followed. If it led to a foreign monarch in this case, instead of assuming that it was a 'simple' matter of an illegal arms deal to a country not supposed to be bying from the UK, it would instead raise suspicions that the Arab ruler in question was financing terrorist attacks in the UK.
**What cover story could be plausible in this case? You don't move semi-skilled immigrants into the UK in order to circumvent arms control regulations or even to support any kind of black government team.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

One thing to consider is that their is a famed English tradition of gunsmiths who make awesome arms for the well to do (admittedly usually sporting arms)

The fine upstanding citizenry of the Shadow Court might know some of these gentlemen well enough to ask them to build weapons for the cause

There will have to be at least one and maybe two armourers in residence at the castle where the Rangers are going to be based after 2005. I had thought to make one an ex-military man, but the other would be a former employee at Holland & Hollad, Purdey, Greener or something similar.

Since high-technology interferes with magic, but simpler and less advanced mechanisms cause a lower amount of interference, I had thought that people with magical gifts of their own who went into the field with Rangers would prefer carrying either modern replicas of older guns, or in the ideal cases, refurbished classic guns. But the majority of the Rangers don't have any paranormal powers and are happy to use top-of-the-line TL8 technology.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Every person you reveal the existence of a secret compound to is a risk.

While this is true, it's very probable that any significant size monster hunting organization will want its own manufacturing capability anyway, for the simple reason that you want weapons and ammunition well suited to killing monsters; there's just no convenient supplier for things like silver bullets (on the other hand, the Raufoss Mk 211 is just too cool to not use on monsters).

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Anthony

While this is true, it's very probable that any significant size monster hunting organization will want its own manufacturing capability anyway, for the simple reason that you want weapons and ammunition well suited to killing monsters; there's just no convenient supplier for things like silver bullets (on the other hand, the Raufoss Mk 211 is just too cool to not use on monsters).

Exactly right. But I had planned to have this consist of one or two armourers, likely one who served in the military and one with a career in a British armament company*, assisted by a few of the handier Rangers in residence. They could handle modifications of existing weapons, maintainance and the handloading of special rounds, but asking them to build hundreds of guns from scratch would be excessive.

*If not the classic gunmakers mentioned above, someone from Royal Ordnance or Parker Hale might be nice. Both companies have customised guns that would be good for monster hunting, each in their own ways.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Icelander

There will have to be at least one and maybe two armourers in residence at the castle where the Rangers are going to be based after 2005. I had thought to make one an ex-military man, but the other would be a former employee at Holland & Hollad, Purdey, Greener or something similar.

Since high-technology interferes with magic, but simpler and less advanced mechanisms cause a lower amount of interference, I had thought that people with magical gifts of their own who went into the field with Rangers would prefer carrying either modern replicas of older guns, or in the ideal cases, refurbished classic guns. But the majority of the Rangers don't have any paranormal powers and are happy to use top-of-the-line TL8 technology.

How old is "classic"? A British friend gripes that nobody makes replicas of 19th century British revolvers, so he can't accompany his Wilkinson swords with a handgun suitable for colonial conditions. Apparently the consensus of British officers was that a small-bore, single-action Colt firing round ball was no good in Indian conditions, but the steel of originals is very suspect after 150 years. But if "anything TL 6" will work then they have lots of good choices.

[Icelander]

While any speciality rounds such as jacketed silver or gold bullets, hawthorne shotgun slugs or hollow-points filled with garlic, holy water or silver nitrate obviously have to be hand-made, a large proportion of Otherwhere creatures appear to be harmed by iron. Steel is apparently close enough to be worthwhile, which makes AP and APHC rounds valuable.

Some ammunition is also steel-cased and steel-jacketed, for example many rounds made by Wolf (e.g. their Polyperformance line is polymer-coated steel-jacketed rounds). Obviously, that's not the same as an all-steel penetrator, but as they are no more expensive than standard copper-jacketed FMJ (less, usually), they can work for standard carry if you don't know what you'll face and at least cause an ironphobic enemy some discomfort in addition to what the lead does. Wolf sells .223 Rem and .308 Win rounds, which ought to cover your standard weaponry.

Are there any other good sources for bimetal/steel-jacketed rounds? Would any problems attend a British PSC wanting to order a steady diet of these? These are, after all, cheap rounds, good for training purposes and suchlike.

Fire is often good, against most anything. Which means that API rounds are great. Where can one get those, preferably chambered for the .308 Win or the .223 Rem?

How much trouble is it to handload AP, API, APHC or APHCI? Assume that you're willing to buy any parts that you can get without it raising eyebrows, coming to the attention of the press or the authorities? You can do so through a legal PSC, always with the caveat that they have to take care not to show too much money or go through too much ordnance.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

How old is "classic"? A British friend gripes that nobody makes replicas of 19th century British revolvers, so he can't accompany his Wilkinson swords with a handgun suitable for colonial conditions. Apparently the consensus of British officers was that a small-bore, single-action Colt firing round ball was no good in Indian conditions, but the steel of originals is very suspect after 150 years. But if "anything TL 6" will work then they have lots of good choices.

Well, things that won't cause any problems with magic would be black-powder muzzleloaders made with pre-Industrial Revolution methods. But these obviously have some issues with reliability, ammunition capacity, accuracy and concealability, as well as being both hard to suppress and likely to excite comment if it had to be used to kill someone.

But a lot of the distictions at these low tech levels will be below even a single -1 in GURPS terms. They'll only matter when it comes to judging the total penalty going by everything that's being carried, where such tiny distinctions will encourage rounding in your favour.

That being said, the lower tech you go, the less your final penalty will end up being. A revolver using powder-and-ball will usually net you less than -1. A Victorian-era Webley would not give you more than a -1 penalty and probably not even that, as long as you weren't carrying anything else high-tech.

Cartridge revolvers are much less disruptive than cartridge semi-automatics, even ones of equivalent age. While the revolver might be only a -1, going up to -2 if you are wearing modern clothing and carrying keys and a wallet, the semi-auto will usually land you in -2 regardless of anything else.

Carrying a TL7-8 radio will add at least a -1 more and a cell phone on its own might add -2 to -3, if its got lots of computer stuff on it.

The final total penalty for this won't exceed -5, but that's still a lot of penalties when you're already at effective skill well below 10.

In all cases, storied weapons or ones with a connection to something mystical (or your own history) will maybe give what amounts to a bonus good for reducing your penalties for technological items. So originals might actually end up 1-2 points less than that.

To clarify the mechanics behind it, the penalty is equal to -(TL-3) of your gear and immediate surroundings. If you don't have a full range of high-tech equipment available at the TL, but only some artifacts, halve the penalty. If you have only a single item, divide by 3 or 4, depending on how much technology is packed into the item. Round in whichever way seems fair, judging by how much trouble is taken to avoid high-tech stuff. Making replicas of lower-tech stuff with higher-tech methods works to some extent, but even better results come from making such replicas with period methods.

For people who know about the supernatural, but have no magical powers of their own, carrying as much high-technology as possible actually gives a measure of protection from hostile powers. The disadvantage is that it also interferes with attempts by friendly magic-users to aid you with magic, but this usually balances out, so Rangers without magic will want the best equipment, regardless of TL (which tends to mean higher TL).

People who are going to use paranormal powers in the field will need to pay more attention to what they are carrying and wearing, striking some kind of balance between having enough tools to do their job and trying not to totally douse their magical abilities.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

The other issue, I think, is that the Rangers want a significant quantity of standardized, combat-effective weapons.

Well, ideally. But their full-time Rangers don't number more than ca 8 by the time they became fully operational in late 2005 and won't be more than 20 even by 2010. They would like to have a full platoon of full-time people, plus a headquarter element and support staff, by the end of 2012, but I doubt they'll have reached it.

Most of the weapons are for people in the know and with the right skills, but actually living and working somewhere else. Some of them perform occasional Ranger missions, to allow the full-time ones time off, replace wounded or psychologically incapacitated ones or just reinforce the teams.

Most of the pistols, in turn, are meant for academics who go into harm's way occasionally, accompanied by someone Ranger-qualified (usually a part-timer on assignment).

What partially explains why they need more weapons than they have people to wield them is that they have to have extras to enable the conspiracy to get rid of any that are fired at the scene of a crime which comes to the attention of the authorities. And the fact that they are trying to expand, as fast as they can do while trying to remain covert.*

Weaponry, as such, isn't going to be a huge part of the total cost. The construction costs for specialised buildings, living expenses for years for those members unable to make a regular living due to their duties to the group and other incidental cost factors will probably end up dwarfing even the cost of buying a thousand guns.

All of which means that for the primary Ranger armament, they'll be willing to accept sacrifices in economy and ease of supply in exchange for greater secrecy or better performance in the field.** For the reserve armament, they'll be willing to use whatever is easiest to get without risking exposure too much.

*Yes, I know that their goals are in conflict. It's not a comfortable situation and many senior Shadow Courtiers are deeply uncomfortable with what they see as paramilitary adventurerism. But the Queen decided that they couldn't stand by while they had the ability to help her subjects and so help they will.
**Two more conflicting goals, I realise. A lot of the decisions made by senior Shadow Courtiers revolve around trying to find a happy medium while operating under some very stressful constraints. Happily, however, among their ranks are a number of very adroit financiers, staff officers, administrators and professional wielders of informal influence.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

That would be hard to get on the criminal market, especially in the UK, and likely to provoke seller's remorse or catch police or intelligence attention. So relying on contacts in industry and foreign governments seems more sensible than the commercial market.

Just so.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

If they just wanted a few handguns or shotguns, and were not choosy about what they got, the commercial black market would make more sense. I also wonder if illicit imports from elsewhere in the EU, such as Italy, would be a possibility.

So far, I haven't found any likely links that point in that direction. Well, except for the Vatican's equivalent conspiracy, with whom they have a cautious (and informal) entente cordiale.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Sam Cade

If G17s are around G19 and G26s are usually available too.

Also, 1st through 3rd gen glocks can have their butts chopped to use the magazines of the more compact variants.

One would think that G19s were available somewhere, yes. On the other hand, Icelandic police is armed with G17s, a decision made after consultation with British police, among others. And we don't own a single G19 or G26. People with small hands are just out of luck if we ever have to issue them.

In 2010, SO14, the branch of the London Met that handles protection of Royal Family, finally started issuing G26 to female constables. And this made news, because it was seen as a reverse of a long-standing policy that if you couldn't handle the standard weapons, you simply didn't get into certain units. For a long time, it seems that women with hands too small for a Glock 17 just had to accept that they were not going to become Authorised Firearm Officers.

Originally Posted by Sam Cade

Remember that any well appointed machine shop can churn out cheap and nasty military small arms.

True and if other methods turn out to risk exposure too much, I suspect that's what they'd do. But the former military and police Rangers will no doubt much prefer not to have to rely on home-made weaponry of dubious quality.

Using the machine shops and the gunsmithing skill of an old armourer sergeant to chop a number of retired L1A1 SLRs down into entry weapons with 15"-18" barrels, folding or retractable stocks and able to mount optics and tactical lights, however, might be a completely different matter. How practical would that be?

How much time would a lone gunsmith with a few ex-military assistants, working in a decent machine shop, need for a single weapon like that?

How much could he do for a 30-40 year old Browning HP, retired from British Army service? Would he have trouble buying the parts to refurbish them without someone starting to wonder?