[twoblink]

<rant on>

The Taiwanese government is rediculous. I feel like they just took a play out of China's government playbook.

The 2 days after our parliment elections here, they announced a major breakthrough in the March 19th attempted assissination of the Taiwanese president.

First, they claim they have all the "evidence" to link an underground bullet manufactoring group, to the bullets used in the attempted shooting.

They have the bullet (wholly intact, that went through a window of the car, nicked the leg of the VP, through the rear of the car frame, and lodged into the concrete pillar across the street.. ALL WITHOUT A SINGLE DEFORMATION or DEVIATION FROM A STRAIGHT LINE. Ok.. the guy just on TV claimed that the bullet was reclaimed, as well as the casing, they confirmed that the bullet was indeed fired from that casing, and that they were crimpted with the very machine that they just found..

The problems:

The officer in charge said that the bullet was not military issue, because military issues only FMJ's, and that's a lead roundnose. Yet the bullet (wholly intact, without a single deformation) is a FMJ.

Second, they said they were able to recover 1 of the bullets, but they have 2 casings, and again, they show a rimmed casing, and a non-rimmed casing, and they said they were able to conclude it was fired from the same gun. How? Primer dent?? There's no extractor marks, that's not mentioned, and again, we are back to the same problem of the same gun firing two bullets that is rimmed and unrimmed. Even if it is as Jim March says, a zip gun, which I'm more than willing to accept, how are they able to confirm that it's the same gun?

The amount of factual errors are astounding to me...

My friend says, most of the news just are taking any old pictures of guns and bullets, to "fluff up the story". I have no idea if that's true, but quite believable.

So here in Taiwan, it's either Conspiracy by the government, or faithless reporting by the media.. Hey, Taiwan is fast becoming like the US!
:scrutiny:

I wanted to know if "crimp" matching is possible if you have the bullet and the casing? The problem I see is the bullet looks completely unfired..

[griz]

Do you have a link to the pictures? Source?

In this country a major television network printed or obtained fake documents to back up their story, so I am careful about trusting the source.

[Werewolf]

Not only does it appear that the Taiwanese government is lying to it's people on the face of it they figure the people are total morons incapable of putting 2 and 2 together and getting 4.

Kinda makes me wonder how Taiwan became such an economic powerhouse what with all the dummies there?

[Jim K]

Well, our TV networks showed a machinegun firing and said it was the type of "assault rifle" that would be legal if the AWB expired. And most people believed it.

And most of the press still describes those fake Bush National Guard documents as "disputed", when every investigator who knows anything about office equipment and computers knows they are total fabrications.

The Taiwan incident sounds like one more case where a crime will be used as an excuse for further restriction of civil liberties. Or one might wonder whether the "crime" was in fact created for that purpose. FWIW, there are suspicions that the "Beltway snipers" were hired to literally shoot Kathleen Kennedy Townsend into the MD governor's office on an anti-gun platform.

Jim

[Standing Wolf]

I wanted to know if "crimp" matching is possible if you have the bullet and the casing?

I'd be extremely skeptical, especially once the bullet has been fired. I think it's possible to match the rifling marks on a largely undamaged bullet to the rifling in a given barrel, but properly done crimping leaves virtually no mark on a bullet.

[Ryder]

So they know who manufactured the bullet. So what? Doesn't mean they are the one's who pulled the trigger or caused it to be pulled.

A cannelure on the bullet would leave marks on the inside of the case which could possibly be used to verify to some degree of probability that they were once a single unit. Again, so what? That doesn't get them any closer to who pulled the trigger.

Sounds to me they are trying to take people's mind off the fact that they haven't done or can't do their jobs.

[7.62FullMetalJacket]

When your society knows nothing of the gun, then it is easy to hide the truth.

[nemesis]

When your society knows nothing of the gun, then it is easy to hide the truth.

You got that one right!

Those Taiwanese bullets could have come from the same factory as the bullet that went through President Kennedy, changed direction a half dozen times, passed through the seatback and hit Governor Connolly before changing course again and rocketing away, only to be found later on a hospital stretcher.

Completely undeformed and undamaged.

[griz]

Completely undeformed and undamaged.

Just not true. It was bent and the base was squished. It was also an FMJ that had a reputation for great penetration.

[twoblink]

The problem they said was, nobody would believe a "bloomed" bullet, as most expect to see a bullet as ... a bullet..

A lot of my friends are fulltime soldiers in taiwan, and I can tell you, they fire 6 (yes, thats 6, one more than 5) bullets every 6 months.

So in a 10 year tour, they fire 120 rounds.. which isn't even warmup. Also, they have never seen what happens to a bullet AFTER it's been fired..

The guy who was caught, has said that he has manufactured thousands of boxes of bullets. He looks like he was using a (I know I'm going to screw up the terminology) but it looks like those Lee presses, where there's 4 stations, and can do 4 bullets at a time, where you press and the little platform turns.. (Someone I'm sure will tell me what that's called)..

What's somewhat interesting is that of course, the "timing" of it all. The DDP lost the election by a wide margain, got only about 41% I think instead of the 50%+ they expected, and so they pulled this out. The other side, just dug up some police records showing the guy was actually arrested a month or two before.. and so I assume the footage is the re-releasing and recapturing of the criminal for the media's sake.. :barf:

If you want to know what election buying looks like, come to Taiwan. It makes the elections in Africa and Iraq look clean.

The only people who are making inroads are the knife people. They got CCWing a knife legalized in 2001. I was fortunate enough to talk to one of the original drafters of the knife CCW bill. Of course, there was the usual "the streets will be filled with blood" rants and rave, but absolutely no change in crime level after the bill.

As for guns, imagine a culture that learned 100% about guns through Counter-Strike..

Yeah...

:banghead:

I know from the lead roundnose I've handled.. I can press really hard with my nail and leave a mark.. I don't know how a bullet can go through a winshield, a leg, body panel of a car, across the street and into a concrete pillar and be 100% undeformed. Magic bullets, who says there aren't any?

They showed a modified UZI, and the media hinted that the gun used might be an UZI. What a joke. BTW.. There is no rifling on the bullet..

[twoblink]

Two articles..



http://www.taipeitimes.com/images/2004/12/14/thumbs/20041213194413.jpeg

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2004/12/14/2003215001/print

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/news_images/20041214/p1b.jpg

http://www.chinapost.com.tw/..%5Cp_detail.asp?id=55573&GRP=A&onNews=

[griz]

You need to edit the first "http://" out of those links.

My impression of the articles is that there were indeed two guns used in the shootings. What it sounds like is this guy cast bullets in a homemade mold that was designed to not look like a bullet mold instead of being the best design for a bullet. He also converted some sort of toy or air gun to fire his homemade round. The police didn't want to release pictures of the actual bullets because it would give the suspect a hint to destroy the evidence.

This is based only on my reading of the articles. I still haven't seen any pictures and certainly have no special information. I also don't know about reporting in that country, but I suspect that translation problems are having some effect here.

$0.02

[nemesis]

Just not true. It was bent and the base was squished. It was also an FMJ that had a reputation for great penetration.

Yeah, after I thought about it I changed my mind. It was pretty well trashed.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ce399.jpg

[7.62FullMetalJacket]

That is one amazing bullet. Who needs HPBT premium bullets? Any round-nose, flat point fodder will work magic.

[griz]

Sigh. Here is the end view. What do you think it should look like?

[Jonathan]

That is one heck of a bearing surface on that bullet.