BG> Keith, at 21:11 on May 16 1996, you wrote to Bill Grimsley...

BL> At close range, a .22 is the weapon of choice for the Mafia, for instance. 

BG> extremely quiet, harder to match gun with projectile because the .22
BG> is plain lead, and fragments quite dramatically when it hits bone,
BG> plus they can also be fitted with silencers (which only work properly
BG> with subsonic rounds anyway).

KR> i saw a gun on sale in a shop in paris. it was a bolt action pistol with a 
KR> barrel about 9" long and had a silencer and tele sight.

 BG> Oh dear.  The ideal assassins' weapon.

thats the only use for it that i could see. the shop in question was in an
arcade on the champs elaisee (sp?)and sold virtually any sort of weapon
that you could think of, flick knives, butterfly knives, knuckle dusters,
crossbows etc etc.

KR> the blurb stated that it was .22 calibre, and fired subsonic ammo. it makes 
KR> you wonder which market they were catering to.

 BG> Indoor 25m target shooting would be my guess (or would have been, in
 BG> the absence of a silencer).  The 'scope, bolt action and 9" bbl are
 BG> for accuracy, but I fail to see any need for a silencer.  It's a
 BG> worry.

you wouldn't use a scope for 25m target work. it is worth remembering that,
when mossad were taking revenge for the munich massacre, their weapon of
choice was a .22 pistol with reduced ammo. they had to get really close but
the gun was small and almost silent. it amuses me to see the movie assassin
screw a silencer on a luger and just get a small po when he fires, the ammo
would have to be so reduced that the bulet would hardly make it out of the
barrel.

KR> it turned out that some kids had been shooting at a tree about 500 metres 
KR> away (and quite a lot further up the hill), and missed. you'd have to say 
KR> that the guy was very unlucky, 

 BG> Very.  Any idea where it hit him?  Even at 500m, there's very little
 BG> muzzle energy left in the projectile.  Any reloading manual will tell
 BG> you that too.

no idea, he was obviously very unlucky. i do wonder sometimes when i see
people firing guns into the air, what damage the bullets do when they land.

                        keith
@EOT:

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