Shoot 'Em Up Friday!

Last month, The Gunfighter family received an invitation to dinner from blog-buddy Janet K. I mentioned, here, what a fine time we had. Not only was the company great, and the food fantastic (yes, tacos can be fantastic... you just don't know), but friend Janet and her housemate, Brenda, gave me a gift as soon as we arrived!

Truthfully, I wasn't expecting a gift... Surely, I thought, the gift of food and good company was enough of a token of friendship. After all, I hadn't done anything to be deserving of anything more. None of my immediate thoughts lasted for more than a heartbeat, because the gift turned out to be the first reader-donated item for Shoot 'Em Up Friday!

As you can see here, the gift turned out to be a DVD player. Janet proceeded to read off a short, but heinous, list of crimes perpetrated by the DVD player. Not only was this particular household item guilty of not working, it was also guilty of not spitting out a DVD belonging to Brenda... it was still lodged inside. The Dog! These nice ladies asked me to put this appliance out of their misery, and I am only too happy to comply.

Why? Because I'm a giver!, yeah.

So, in keeping with out tradition of taking advantage of the opportunity of teaching pints while playing, I present to you, our results:

Today, we are going to shoot this DVD player with an assortment of weapons, using various types of ammunition.

The first weapon we used was the FN-P90, which fires the 5.7x28mm bullet.

Here is what kind of hole the 5.7x28mm (hollow point) makes in a DVD casing. The hole shown here won't mean much to you without a comparison, so stay tuned. There is more... oh yes, more indeed!

The next thing we did was to shoot the DVD player (hereafter known as the "evildoer"), with an M-4 rifle, which fires a 5.56 bullet, which is only slightly larger than the first bullet that I mentioned, but has a much greater muzzle velocity, and thereby delivers significantly increased kinetic energy, which some people commonly call "knock-down power"

Anyway, here is 5.56mm bullet hole, next to the previously mentioned 5.7x28mm. Despite the similarity in bullet hole size, the 5.56 did considerably more damage to the unit than the slightly smaller, but much lighter 5.7x28mm bullet did.



Next we used the venerable Sig P-229 semiautomatic pistol, using .357 hollow points. Here you can see a major difference in the size of the bullet hole.

I will pause here for questions.

Yes? "Professor Gunfighter, haven't you already shot-up a DVD player?" As a matter of fact, I have, however, we didn't make a comparison of relative bullet size, which is the point of today's demonstration.

Any other questions? You, young lady... "Professor G, what do the letters BTHP and JHP that are printed under some of the bullet holes mean?" Excellent question! JHP stands for Jacketed Hollow Point. Which means a copper-jacketed bullet with a hollow point. Most bullets made be reputable manufacturers today are covered in a copper sheathing. The purpose of the jacket is to increase bullet strength and to prevent fouling the barrel with lead stripped from the bullet. BTHP means "boat-tailed hollow point", which is a match-grade bullet design that uses the concept of a teardrop like shape to give it a lower drag coefficient and make it produce less turbulence in its wake. Only the base of the bullet has a boat tail-like shape. The idea of the concept means that the bullet will be more accurate.

If there are no other questions, we will continue.

After punching a few holes in our evildoer, I decided that I hadn't spent all of this time setting up this shoot, dragging out the weapons and ammunition just to put three holes in it. That wouldn't be a prudent use of labor, so I decided that I would take advantage of one last teaching opportunity: To show you fine folks what an evildoer looks like after you really shoot the crap out of one of these things!

Simply put, I emptied all of the weapons that I had loaded for our demonstration into the evildoer just to see what would happen.

Behold!



Nice, eh?

But we aren't done

This is what the backside of the unit looked like. Please note that almost all of the bullets went all the way through it.











This is a photo of the electronic whoziewhatsis that came out of the unit.

***Consumer's take note: DVD players don't have a lot inside of them... sort of makes you wonder why they make these things so damned large.***



I'm afraid that our time together is at an end, my friends... but, not to worry, I'm sure that somewhere out there in the blogosphere, someone will have a question that can only be answered by sending me something to shoot up. Until then, keep your powder dry, always count your rounds, wear your body armor, and ALWAYS shoot first, shoot fast, and put your adversary down!

Oh, and Brenda? Look what I got out, just for you, dear!