Twitter thread tearing apart some met copper's book Lethal Force.

[Paul Calf]

People who play a lot of Call of Duty or the modern setting Battlefield games might know. That could be his intended audience.

Guns 'n' Ammo subscribers?

Spree shooters?

I feel like we're disappearing down a rabbit hole of intersecting Venn diagrams here.

[Danger Man]

[Sebastian Cobb]

People who play a lot of Call of Duty or the modern setting Battlefield games might know. That could be his intended audience.

As someone else said, it's adjacent to things like Andy McNab, these people like hearing the gun names and being drip-fed fed titbits about them in a similar way to how Clarkson used to drop stats while doing the intro of the car he's about to review.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Guns 'n' Ammo subscribers?

Spree shooters?

I feel like we're disappearing down a rabbit hole of intersecting Venn diagrams here.

We can simplify the Venn diagrams though:



A little light on specifics, but gets the point across?

[Buelligan]

I think the two blue circles should probably intersect if we're going for accuracy.

[Cuellar]

Wouldn't bet on it to be honest

[BritishHobo]

Inevitably can't find it now, but one of the tweets has an amazing moment where he freely admits that a colleague who was called in to assist him, rolled up drunk from the pub. Then he self-corrects, saying 'no he's a good bloke and he wasn't actually pissed'. It reads like a man speaking out loud who has let something slip that he shouldn't have. Did he not realise you can go back and cut bits out?

[touchingcloth]

As someone else said, it's adjacent to things like Andy McNab, these people like hearing the gun names and being drip-fed fed titbits about them in a similar way to how Clarkson used to drop stats while doing the intro of the car he's about to review.

It's not even adjacent to McNab really, it's borderline plagiarism. Find and replace "raghead" with "black youth", and "Gulf war" with "low intensity conflict".

And yeah it is depressing to think that there are British people who could bore on about MAC 10s[nb]I've heard of them in the hips hops, but other than knowing they're "a gun" I couldn't have much of a chat about them.[/nb] in the same way that your nephew[nb]28 years old, he is.[/nb] can tell you exactly what kind of spark plugs the Lexus 59 uses.

[Cuellar]

Inevitably can't find it now, but one of the tweets has an amazing moment where he freely admits that a colleague who was called in to assist him, rolled up drunk from the pub. Then he self-corrects, saying 'no he's a good bloke and he wasn't actually pissed'. It reads like a man speaking out loud who has let something slip that he shouldn't have. Did he not realise you can go back and cut bits out?

I'd be very surprised if, beyond providing some basic notes of what happened and when, Tony Long wrote any of it, let alone edited it.

[Wonderful Butternut]

I've heard of them in the hips hops, but other than knowing they're "a gun" I couldn't have much of a chat about them.

Because I haven't played nearly enough paranoid white bloke modern shooters in the past couple of years, I was picturing the MAC-10 as some sort of serious business military assault rifle (must've been confusing it with the SCAR-H or FN-FAL. Or maybe the ABC-123). Actually it's a machine pistol that looks like it has no accuracy beyond three feet in the hands of someone without professional training and relies on close range spray and pray.

Don't want to trivialise the danger law enforcement can potentially run into, they're not all paranoid nutcases playing army-man (just most of them), but something tells me that even if the gun wasn't a figment of Mr. Long's imagination, the crim wasn't going to pick off a police officer from 50m away with it.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I'd be very surprised if, beyond providing some basic notes of what happened and when, Tony Long wrote any of it, let alone edited it.

Then why is it so shoddy?

[Bernice]

Then why is it so shoddy?

An obliging target audience.

[El Unicornio, mang]

It's ridiculous that he's even dropping brand names of guns in a book which is presumably intended for a British audience. Do people know what a MAC-10 H&K G36 is, or do they just know enough to know that it's some form of gun and to get off on that if they're of a particular mindset?

MAC-10: kind of like an Uzi 9mm but more boxy. Used to off John Travolta in Pulp Fiction
H&K: those guns Euro terrorists always carry in 80s/90s action movies

I doubt the average person knows these things, but maybe the sort of person who buys books like this does. Like a novel about a cheese enthusiast going on about
Gruyère and Roquefort which I wouldn't have a clue about.

[touchingcloth]

MAC-10: kind of like an Uzi 9mm but more boxy. Used to off John Travolta in Pulp Fiction
H&K: those guns Euro terrorists always carry in 80s/90s action movies

I doubt the average person knows these things, but maybe the sort of person who buys books like this does. Like a novel about a cheese enthusiast going on about
Gruyère and Roquefort which I wouldn't have a clue about.

And monkey puzzler?

[jobotic]

HARD CHEESE

[buzby]

MAC-10: kind of like an Uzi 9mm but more boxy. Used to off John Travolta in Pulp Fiction

The MAC-10 is basically an American copy of the Uzi designed by Gordon Ingram for the US Military in Vietnam.

H&K: those guns Euro terrorists always carry in 80s/90s action movies

The H&K used in 80s and 80s movies is the MP5 9mm sub machine gun which is commonly used by armed police units in the UK. The G36 he wanks on about in the book is the G36C, the compact version of the Bundeswehr's current assault rifle (which has a questionable reliability record) which is chambered in 5.56mm NATO. The G36 only came into service in 1997 in Germany and the G36C was developed in 2001.
The gun in the foreground is a G36C, the one in the background is an MP5

Apart from the calibre and associated velocities, the main difference is that the MP5s used by the UK police are semi-automatic only. At least some of the UK Police G36Cs (probably including some used by the Met's SO19) are select fire, i.e. selectable between semi and fully automatic.

The '65-grain soft points' he mentions are jacketed 5.56mm ammuntion with the lead core exposed at the tip, designed to expand on impact and and cause a larger wound than standard full metal jacket ammunition and increase it's 'stopping power' from a single shot (an FMJ round can pass straight through at close range, relying on it's supersonic shockwave to cause internal wounds). They have since been replaced in the Met at least with hollow point ammmunition which expands to an even greater extent to cause even more damage (and reduces the risk of over-penetration), which were first used in the Met's murder of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station.

And monkey puzzler?

I believe that was made up by the writers of Peep Show, presumably as a slang term for fragmentation ammunition

[Chollis]

They have since been replaced in the Met at least with hollow point ammmunition which expands to an even greater extent to cause even more damage (and reduces the risk of over-penetration), which were first used in the Met's murder of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station.

get in!!

[touchingcloth]

The '65-grain soft points' he mentions are jacketed 5.56mm ammuntion with the lead core exposed at the tip, designed to expand on impact and and cause a larger wound than standard full metal jacket ammunition and increase it's 'stopping power' from a single shot (an FMJ round can pass straight through at close range, relying on it's supersonic shockwave to cause internal wounds). They have since been replaced in the Met at least with hollow point ammmunition which expands to an even greater extent to cause even more damage (and reduces the risk of over-penetration), which were first used in the Met's murder of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station.

Good news, Maria, Matosinhos! Your son's murder was the first ever carried out on British soil by police armed with monkey puzzler. It is what he would have wanted. É o que ele queria.

[Paul Calf]

The MAC-10 is basically an American copy of the Uzi designed by Gordon Ingram for the US Military in Vietnam.The H&K used in 80s and 80s movies is the MP5 9mm sub machine gun which is commonly used by armed police units in the UK. The G36 he wanks on about in the book is the G36C, the compact version of the Bundeswehr's current assault rifle (which has a questionable reliability record) which is chambered in 5.56mm NATO. The G36 only came into service in 1997 in Germany and the G36C was developed in 2001.
The gun in the foreground is a G36C, the one in the background is an MP5

Apart from the calibre and associated velocities, the main difference is that the MP5s used by the UK police are semi-automatic only. At least some of the UK Police G36Cs (probably including some used by the Met's SO19) are select fire, i.e. selectable between semi and fully automatic.

The '65-grain soft points' he mentions are jacketed 5.56mm ammuntion with the lead core exposed at the tip, designed to expand on impact and and cause a larger wound than standard full metal jacket ammunition and increase it's 'stopping power' from a single shot (an FMJ round can pass straight through at close range, relying on it's supersonic shockwave to cause internal wounds). They have since been replaced in the Met at least with hollow point ammmunition which expands to an even greater extent to cause even more damage (and reduces the risk of over-penetration), which were first used in the Met's murder of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station.
I believe that was made up by the writers of Peep Show, presumably as a slang term for fragmentation ammunition

The met use hollow-points? I thought they were illegal even in warfare?

[touchingcloth]

The met use hollow-points? I thought they were illegal even in warfare?

Tony Long rolls like Xzibit.

Come and get it, shitted on villains by the millions
I be catchin' bitches while bitches be catchin' feelings
So what the fuck am I supposed to do?
I pop bottles and hot hollow-points at each and all of you

[buzby]

The met use hollow-points? I thought they were illegal even in warfare?

They are prohibited from use in warfare by the 1899 Hague Convention. They can be used by police and other law enforcement organisations though, and in the US are legal for any gun owner to use in most states and can be bought over the counter of any gun store (you could get them in Walmart up until last September). UK firearms licence holders are prohibited to possess them, but UK Police forces aren't.

SO19 were authorised to use them in Stockwell for their increased stopping power and lower risk of over-penetration injuring bystanders. They were authorised for general issue to the Met's firearms officers in 2011, no doubt partially due to the 'success' of stopping de Menezes. This Graun article covers the announcement, which I find darkly comic due to Commander's insistence that they should not be called Dum-Dums, despite that being exactly what they are. Most other UK forces adopted them in the years following (even the BTP), meaning that if you get mistakenly shot by armed police they are more likely to kill you.

[touchingcloth]

So they they're more likely to kill you if their aim means that you're the person that gets hit, but it's less likely that a bullet will go through the first person and hit a second? Bizarre trade off. What is "stopping power" in this context anyway? Surely anything hitting you right through the guts will stop you keeping on with your PCP monkey puzzler binge. 

[Dex Sawash]

Over penetration includes retaining lethal velocity after passing through walls, cars etc.

[buzby]

So they they're more likely to kill you if their aim means that you're the person that gets hit, but it's less likely that a bullet will go through the first person and hit a second? Bizarre trade off. What is "stopping power" in this context anyway? Surely anything hitting you right through the guts will stop you keeping on with your PCP monkey puzzler binge.

As Dex says above, basically yes. an expanding bullet is more likely to dump all of it's energy in the first soft target it hits. Stopping power in this context is the likelihood of a single shot being able to incapacitate the target to the point of them no longer being a threat. A standard full metal jacket round is more likely to carry on straight through a target without dumping all of it's energy, meaning multiple shots may be required to incapacitate (i.e. it 's possible to go straight through without rupturing any major organs or arteries ). It can take hours for an untreated 'gut shot' to kill someone, for instance.