More Gun Help Please? The H&K P7M13

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Admittedly I haven't handled either of these pistols, but I have a hard time accepting that a double-wide grip can account for a step change in the GURPS Bulk stat which seems to be mostly about wieldiness more than comfort.

Looks like a breakpoint situation - the P7M8 is at the large/heavy end of Bulk -1, while the P7M13 is at the small/light end of Bulk -2. It would be similar to someone who is 6'2" being SM +1 while someone who is 5'10" is SM +0, and is something you can't really avoid in a system with breakpoints.

[War_lord]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Admittedly I haven't handled either of these pistols, but I have a hard time accepting that a double-wide grip can account for a step change in the GURPS Bulk stat which seems to be mostly about wieldiness more than comfort.

Bulk has two issues. 1. It lacks granularity. A big subcompact like an all steel Colt Officer's Model is exactly as concealable and weldable as a palm sized aluminum frame derringer. A Glock 19 with a small under-barrel light, something many self defense gun owners conceal in an inside the waistband holster every day, is bulk -3, making it as concealable as the infamously large and heavy MK23 SOCOM pistol.

2. And this is more relevant to your post, it's trying to cover both "handiness" in close combat, as well as how concealable it is. This works fine for long weapons, but it's terrible for pistols, because overall length isn't the main factor in concealing those. Pistols whether worn inside the pants, or on a belt with a cover garment over them, are usually revealed by printing. Which is to say that the create a noticeable bulge from the overall thickness of the pistol, or a hard ledge when the person carrying it bends or stretches. A pistol having a thicker frame or slightly longer grip can make a huge difference to how well it conceals, without effecting handling. This is why single stack designs keep making a resurgence in the civilian market.

Originally Posted by Rupert

The P7M8 weighs 2.1 lbs loaded, the P7M13 2.5 lbs. All the automatic pistols in Tactical Shooting of 2.3 lbs or more are Bulk -2, all those of lower weight are builk -1.

Looking at HT, it looks like the threshold is probably 2.0 lbs, with some adjustment for guns that are especially handy or unwieldy.

That's almost certainly a coincidence. I trust that Hans knows that weight itself doesn't dramatically effect concealability assuming the correct holster and a proper belt. (most) Concealed carriers avoid heavy guns because the weight begins to irritate over time, and the advantages of a duty sized gun in actual use are unlikely to come up, but it doesn't make the gun inherently easier to spot.

Also the Glock 19 is listed as 1.8 and comes out at bulk -2, which fits the dimension argument.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

(The closest substitute is reading lots of intelligent product reviews or a decent military report which discuss a weapon's virtues and faults, but even then an experienced shooter will understand "terms of art" that an inexperienced- or non-shooter will miss.)

Ironically, this isn't true at all. The most experienced shooters in the world in terms of what the average GURPS player is concerned about (meaning actual combat shooting) are high tempo military and police Special Operations units. Most of those guys aren't gun nerds any more than every New York Cabbie is a car nerd. It's a tool or set of tools they use to do their job, and they know exactly as much about it as they need to know to use it effectively. Whenever these units decide they need new weapons, they have guys who are gun nerds within the unit doing the procurement and initial testing.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by War_lord

Ironically, this isn't true at all. The most experienced shooters in the world in terms of what the average GURPS player is concerned about (meaning actual combat shooting) are high tempo military and police Special Operations units.

Point taken, but in my defense I did use the weasel words, "the closest substitute."

That means not just taking the word of one gun writer, but reading multiple reviews, after action reports, histories, interviews with veterans, etc.

Even as a non-shooter, I realize that there is an incredible amount of crap and softcore advertising built into a most gun reviews and lots of errors by people writing about historical weapons. You have to choose your sources carefully and understand their biases.

What is best is engineering reports, followed by interviews with professional gun users where they talk about their weapons' virtues and faults. They will have very pungent things to say about a gun if it doesn't meet their needs, which can perhaps inform fine decisions about weapon stats such as Rcl or Malf. (E.g., every U.S. WW2 vet mentions the BAR's aggressive rise due to recoil.)

Praise for a weapon has to be qualified based on the interviewee's or writer's overall experience with other weapons. Part of the Cult of the .45 was the fact that many people who swore by it were people who just carried that gun when they went to war, or their immediate relatives, who didn't have much experience with other guns.

Shooters are conservative, so when a gun works well for them in a life-threatening situation, they tend to cling to it even if other weapons are objectively better and defend it on emotional grounds. Witness generations of U.S. cops swearing by .38 revolvers because they were "less prone to jamming," despite the fact that the world's military forces had mostly switched over to semi-automatics by the end of WW1.

It's also a very good idea to submit proposed gun stats for review by other experience GURPS players, since they WILL keep you honest and point out details you missed. Once stats have survived a few rounds of review on the GURPS forum, they'll be close to airtight.

[War_lord]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Point taken, but in my defense I did use the weasel words, "the closest substitute."

That means not just taking the word of one gun writer, but reading multiple reviews, after action reports, histories, interviews with veterans, etc.

Even as a non-shooter, I realize that there is an incredible amount of crap and softcore advertising built into a most gun reviews and lots of errors by people writing about historical weapons. You have to choose your sources carefully and understand their biases.

What is best is engineering reports, followed by interviews with professional gun users where they talk about their weapons' virtues and faults. They will have very pungent things to say about a gun if it doesn't meet their needs, which can perhaps inform fine decisions about weapon stats such as Rcl or Malf. (E.g., every U.S. WW2 vet mentions the BAR's aggressive rise due to recoil.)

Well no, not really. A lot of what veterans will tell you about their weapons is subjective, anecdotal and filtered through magical thinking. The .45 ACP blowing hands off after hitting the thumb, .30 carbine bouncing off of winter coats at close range, the AK never malfunctioning, the M16 being a piece of crap, insurgents in Somalia shaking off multiple rounds of 5.56, the Bren gun having sub moa accuracy, 7.62x39 and 7.62x51 being interchangeable.

As it happens I have a video on it right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNf78D3z-AU

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Praise for a weapon has to be qualified based on the interviewee's or writer's overall experience with other weapons. Part of the Cult of the .45 was the fact that many people who swore by it were people who just carried that gun when they went to war, or their immediate relatives, who didn't have much experience with other guns.

The Cult of the .45 is almost entirely the creation of Jeff Cooper, who spent the entirety of WW2 as an officer of the marine security detachment on the USS Pennsylvania. There's very little evidence he ever fired his issue handgun in anger.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Shooters are conservative, so when a gun works well for them in a life-threatening situation, they tend to cling to it even if other weapons are objectively better and defend it on emotional grounds. Witness generations of U.S. cops swearing by .38 revolvers because they were "less prone to jamming," despite the fact that the world's military forces had mostly switched over to semi-automatics by the end of WW1.

I'm very tempted to tackle everything that's wrong with this paragraph, but honestly it'd double the length of the post.To stay on topic, I think you're contradicting yourself here because on the one hand you want to give huge weight to subjective accounts of weapon performance, on the other hand you're ragging on US police departments for not dropping revolvers fast enough for "objectively better" semi-automatics.

There were good reasons they stuck with revolvers, some of these were subjective, but in the the interaction between a man and a tool he's depending on in a critical circumstance, subjective factors matter. This is part of what makes weapon bond a noncinematic perk.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

It's also a very good idea to submit proposed gun stats for review by other experience GURPS players, since they WILL keep you honest and point out details you missed. Once stats have survived a few rounds of review on the GURPS forum, they'll be close to airtight.

It's not that complicated. Every time there's a thread on this someone makes out like GURPS firearms statistics are a deep and involved process. They're not.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by War_lord

It's not that complicated. Every time there's a thread on this someone makes out like GURPS firearms statistics are a deep and involved process. They're not.

They might have been early in an edition, but now there are so many GURPS writeups for firearms that generally you can base the stats on another similar weapon. Occasionally the GURPS authors ask Doug Strong to compute damage, Wound Channel Modifier, 1/2D and Max for a muzzle-loader or an obscure cartridge. Details like the Tokarev's lack of safeties require some judgment.

[War_lord]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

They might have been early in an edition, but now there are so many GURPS writeups for firearms that generally you can base the stats on another similar weapon. Occasionally the GURPS authors ask Doug Strong to compute damage, Wound Channel Modifier, 1/2D and Max for a muzzle-loader or an obscure cartridge. Details like the Tokarev's lack of safeties require some judgment.

Doug Cole shares his excel calculator with anyone who asks though.

When it comes to GURPS firearms, damage relies on known calculations. Weight, ROF and round count you can look up. RCL and Bulk are the only statistics where judgement comes in. And as I alluded to when talking about bulk, I believe that's a casualty of how vaguely defined they are. I've considered doing a project of gun statistics, but the reality of that is that a lot of it will just be minor differences in capacity and weight.

Other systems that simplify to "Pistol 9mm" on this basis aren't exactly wrong in the sense that RPGs with the "catalogue" approach have a lot of redundancy and choices that are suboptimal from a gameist perspective. But to me weapon choice is a roleplaying concern in a roleplaying game. So researching subjective experiences can be an important thing from that perspective. But it has nothing to do with writing up the statistics themselves, on paper the P226 is just worse than the Glock 17 in every way. The Glock being a plastic block with terrible factory sights and a weird trigger dingus "safety" is below mechanical resolution.

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Also, your link site's information about legality and magazine capacity is either
extremely dated or just plain wrong. Currently you can easily buy guns that have magazines with more than a a 10 round limit. I think there may ahve been a magazine limit of 10 back in the 90s but the legislation had an expiration date on it when it had to be renewed or just go away and it was not renewed.

Actually, there are a bunch of states that have in the last decade or so, instituted magazine capacity laws. New York, California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts (I think) & others.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by War_lord

I'm very tempted to tackle everything that's wrong with this paragraph, but honestly it'd double the length of the post.To stay on topic, I think you're contradicting yourself here because on the one hand you want to give huge weight to subjective accounts of weapon performance, on the other hand you're ragging on US police departments for not dropping revolvers fast enough for "objectively better" semi-automatics.

You're right. In some ways I am contradicting myself. Ideally, you want good statistics for gun performance, like repeated trials for number of misfires in a single volley by 100 near-identical guns. After that, the next best thing is professional "after action" or user reports which compile individual accounts and add context. Least reliable are reports by individual users which don't give context. The contradictions come from how one weights the different reports, accounts, etc.

I did a bad job with my examples, which you did a good job pointing out. What I was trying to say is that shooters, or anyone else who bets their life on a piece of equipment, can get blinded to facts once they find a tool that reliably meets their needs. Newer or different gear might be statistically better, but still be perceived as inferior by those who've learned to trust as a particular tool. Conversely, profound trust in a piece of gear or just extreme familiarity can justify a Weapon Bond or similar benefits. If you're researching an obscure piece of equipment, you have to take those facts into account.

Originally Posted by War_lord

It's not that complicated. Every time there's a thread on this someone makes out like GURPS firearms statistics are a deep and involved process. They're not.

For modern firearms, you're right. For old guns where the shooters who used them are long dead and the cartridges for the gun haven't been made in decades, it can get a bit more complicated, mostly in terms of finding good stats for muzzle velocity and bullet weight.

Except for simple conversions, I leave modern weapon statistics to Hans and other folks with personal experience with the subject. For my own games, I like statting up weird old guns that fit into historical and "fantasy with firearms" settings which range from the Renaissance to the 19th century.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Tinman

Actually, there are a bunch of states that have in the last decade or so, instituted magazine capacity laws. New York, California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts (I think) & others.

Treading very carefully into U.S. 2nd Amendment flame war territory, but the magazine capacity limits were part of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994. That law had a "sunset provision" which required it to be renewed after 10 years, and it wasn't renewed in 2004.

Subsequently, some states passed their own bans on assault weapons and large capacity magazines. Relatively recently, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state bans on assault weapons. The constitutionality of the laws regarding high capacity magazines, which typically ban magazines capable of holding more than 10 bullets, is currently in flux with the SCOTUS set to weigh in on the issue in the coming year.

Legal magazine capacity for a given U.S. state is a confusing issue. What is legal in one state might be illegal in another, what was legal one year might change the next year depending on the courts and state politics. Only regularly updated web sites on topics such as concealed carry provide accurate information.

If you're statting up 21st century semi-auto guns designed for the U.S. market, giving them 8+1 shots is the safest bet, but 10+1 shots is also a good choice and doesn't alter weight by that much.

[War_lord]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

What I was trying to say is that shooters, or anyone else who bets their life on a piece of equipment, can get blinded to facts once they find a tool that reliably meets their needs. Newer or different gear might be statistically better, but still be perceived as inferior by those who've learned to trust as a particular tool.

I guess that's the issue I have, is that I don't think that "statistically better" is a useful way of framing it when we're talking about real life. It seems to stem from the same sort of fact sheet thinking that lead to High-Tech declaring "Safe-Action" (Glock's marketing term for the trigger dingus on striker guns) pistols "almost impossible to accidently discharge".

It very much is not impossible to accidently discharge, as evidenced by the term "Glock leg" and the fact that the NYPD had to put stupidly heavy triggers on theirs because cops who either had no previous gun experience or only with Revolvers kept accidently shootings suspects/their wives/their ceiling/themselves. Now, were they also neglecting basic safety at the time? Yes. But police handguns are by their nature issued to people with limited experience and training time who carry them way way way more than they fire them.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Legal magazine capacity for a given U.S. state is a confusing issue. What is legal in one state might be illegal in another, what was legal one year might change the next year depending on the courts and state politics. Only regularly updated web sites on topics such as concealed carry provide accurate information.

If you're statting up 21st century semi-auto guns designed for the U.S. market, giving them 8+1 shots is the safest bet, but 10+1 shots is also a good choice and doesn't alter weight by that much.

And even DURING the AWB magazine ban it was confusing. The federal AWB didn't ban possession or private sale of magazines holding over ten rounds among civilians, it just said that you couldn't make or sell new ones. Apparently the people behind the wording way overestimated how quickly magazines wear out. But at the same time, states had or later passed laws that banned mags over ten rounds entirely. So the federal ban expiring actually made things worse for owners in some jurisdictions.