[iapetus]

I saw a program about guns a couple of days ago on BBC2 ("Jeremy Clarkson's 'Inventions that changed the World'").

At one point Clarkson fired an AK-47 from the hip, on full-auto, at a van (side on), from about 20 yards away.

And failed to hit it once.


I know I've read websites claiming that "Accurately sprayfiring from the hip" (ala Brady et al) is a contradiction of terms, but I didn't think it would be that bad.

Is it really? Or is Clarkson just a really bad shot?

[Ukraine Train]

I have no experience with it but I would expect it to be pretty bad. You can eyeball the left-right aim but getting the up-down aim would be tough because you'd be looking straight down on the gun. Then there's the issue of keeping the gun on target after the first shot.

What's a British channel doing making a show about guns? lol

[Stand_Watie]

What's a British channel doing making a show about guns? lol

Yeah and where did they make it? If they made it in country, maybe the problem was that he was firing a blank firing replica
:D :D

I'm sure they're difficult to control, but you'd figure you should be able to hit a van with the first few rounds. Didn't they say "machine gun kelly" could write his name in full auto mode? Never fired anything but 3 round burst myself.

[Waitone]

Next time you are at the range try it out with a handgun if range rules permit. Left right control is easy, range is difficult under the best of circumstances. Your best hope of obtaining accuracy is to walk the fire in to the target.

Waist firing is a waste of ammo.

[tyme]

Theoretically if you aim low initially and have marginal horizontal accuracy, you should be able to hit a target like that at least once or twice. At 20m, one degree of angle is about 13 inches.

[Fly320s]

Yes, it is that inaccurate. Or more correctly, difficult to do without many hours of practice.

I've tried it a few times using my Ruger 10/22. I shot at plastic bottles and aluminum cans while holding the rifle at my hip. With 25 rounds in a magazine I could hit the bottle a few times but only because I "walked" my rounds into the target. I would just watch where my shots hit the dirt and adjust fire based on that result. I'm sure I could get many more hits on a man-size target, but why bother? I can get all my shots on target just by using the factory installed sights. Isn't that why they are there?

I've also tried using my pistol to shoot USPSA silhouttes from the hip at a distance of five feet. I was lucky to get one of ten shots on paper.

But with practice one could become quite adept at hitting any target. The exhibition shooter on American Shooter is very good at shooting accurately from the hip. I forget his name, but I'm sure he puts in many hundreds of hours of practice each year.

[boofus]

I've tried shooting from the hip while bump firing my AR15 and with a full-auto Thompson, Uzi, and MP5 and it's terribly inaccurate after the first 2 or 3 shots. At 7 yards it's practically impossible to keep any kind of group, the holes were all over the target. Hip firing is probably of no use except in extreme CQB. I'm in no way an expert, so take what you want and leave the rest. :neener:

[Skunkabilly]

Writing your name on full auto? How many mags does that take?

[armoredman]

Find the old movie "Deadly Weapons", and watch that myth, along with others, debunked in style. Just suffer through the first half of blowing away water jugs to get to the good stuff....

[Baba Louie]

Spray and pray fire? In a "for TV" audience? Who's putting the show on for what audience and what type of editing did they do? How far from the van were they? Kinda like blasting a CMU block in full auto mode while the actual gun is pointed elsewhere or making a Chevy truck blow up via one or two well placed incindiary devices...

TV. I believe everything I watch too.

"Nope. See? Its a waste of time ladies and gentlemen, and thats why you shouldn't really worry about these evil guns but we should ban them anyway... just in case the criminals who own them get lucky and mow down a busload of nuns on their way to the orphanage or decide to take out a squad of Cops doing their jobs whilst being all bunched up with no protective cover around."

The whole point of the BAR as envisioned by Browning was what? Walking fire and trench cleaning while fired from the what? Hip? (Didn't they actually make belt mounted hip attachment devices for them?) I think the bi-pod came later. Someone correct me here as my mind gets feeble with advancing years.

Nobody's done the old soda can dancing down the dusty trail using a single action cowboy shooter from the waist? Nobody's read Applegates point shooting from the crouch technique?

I mean, whats the point of buying scads of ammunition if you can't have a little fun now and then? :D

Practice practice practice. The ammunition companies will love you for it!

I love taking the old 10/22 out and loading those 25 rd magazines over and over and over. Sometimes I actually get lucky and hit something. Sometimes its one of the cans I set out to use as a reference point (I wouldn't really call them targets in the true sense of the word).

Never having shot a fully automatic anything in that fashion tho' I couldn't tell you. But I'd like to try a Thompson M1 once or twice with about 500 rds just to, you know, "feel the agony of defeat". ;)

[stevelyn]

'Spray firing' from the hip is a Brady Bunch/VPC:barf: myth based on Rambo movies. :rolleyes: Yes you might get one or two rounds on target out of a full mag. Most will go flying about addressed to "whom it may concern" wide of where they're intended to go. That's one of the reasons why the military and police agencies that have them teach full auto fire control by firing short 3-5 round bursts.......and USE OF THE SIGHTS. The other reason is it fries barrels.

[Moparmike]

Its only accurate if you have a camera pointed at you. Like when Sam Beckett leaped into Vietnam and hip-fired the M-60, or Rambo, same weapon.:D

[simon]

Sam Beckett I loved that show!
Its been said before, but I can "walk" rounds into my target bumping, but its better to do it in bursts.

[Dave R]

It is that inaccurate when I try it. With practice, maybe, or if you are able to "walk" fire to the target?

[foghornl]

I've tried that with a pistol-grip shotgun, and let's just say i had trouble even hitting the ground....

:neener:

[memorex]

Was in Vegas a couple of years ago taking the free uzi course- and saw a demo with a full mag (30rds more or less?) at ~10 feet among 4-5 targets and they were hit, but spraying it back and forth like a garden hose- it was clear that wasn't a good way to do it.

It'd have been better to be more controlled and to move and shoot 2 shots to the chest and another to the head in each of them.

You could have done that, with some practice, in roughly the time it took to empty the mag and spray back and forth.

[Mr. Bombastic]

What's a British channel doing making a show about guns?

It was a show about 'inventions that changed the world'. This week it's the computer.

[Ryder]

Ask the Iraquis how their most recent war went. Remember those training videos of them shooting their rifles one handed while running?

I used to put BBs into a coffee can from across the basement without missing a shot using a lever action rifle but it just isn't the same with a real gun. Had a deer try to run me over when I was young in a thick brushy swamp. Didn't raise the gun (scoped 30-06). I got got the critter turned away from it's collision course at least :). I think recoil is the mitigating factor cause I am not all that bad with a long heavy 9mm at a reasonable distance as long as I can see where the bullets are hitting.

[4v50 Gary]

Forgot which book I read it in but there was one Lt. who practiced and became very good at it. The key is that he practiced. That's easy to do when you have your personal issue SMG and someone else is footing the ammo bill.

BTW, there was also an Army Lt. who loved the M-1 Carbine and the grenade launcher attachment. He became so proficient with it that he never used sights. He just looked and leaned and pop!. Bye bye Jerry.

[Psssniper]

I saw the same spay and pray demo as Memorex. What was really impressive was the second part of that demo where the Instructor put 2 precise shots into each of four target centers and then tossed the gun and drew his Glock and the put 1 round in each of the targets heads, all this in literally two blinks of an eye.

[Marko Kloos]

In the Army, I went through a rifle course that included a stage where you shoot the G3 in full-auto mode at a pop-up target seven yards away. I emptied the 20-round magazine in one burst, and I hit the target precisely once...nicked it in the upper left shoulder. It is extremely difficult to index a rifle properly from the hip even at short range.

Shooting from the hip is a waste of ammo. It doesn't take much longer to bring the rifle up to your shoulder and use controlled SA fire, and it yields a much higher hit rate.

[Harry Tuttle]

Sex, scandal and smoking guns

by Steve Pratt



Inventions That Changed The World (BBC2): Flesh And The Devil (C4): The Alan Clark Diaries (BBC Four): AT times it seemed the opening instalment of Inventions That Changed The World had been made purely to give Jeremy Clarkson the opportunity to play with guns.

He even donned combat gear and joined soldiers on an Army exercise, only to be shot within one minute.

In between firing blanks, the Top Gear presenter gave us the history of the gun, a weapon that has devastating effects and has changed the course of history in a truly horrific way.

Clarkson's approach was much the same as when road testing a car - enthusiastic and opinionated. He admitted to the sense of power that handling a gun gives, and that power is an aphrodisiac. The gun may be an "instrument of Satan" but is "unbelievably sexy".

The rise in gun crime doesn't surprise on learning America has more gun shops than petrol stations and you can buy a Kalishnikov for £60. While others get rich using the weapon he developed, Mr Kalishnikov himself lives on a state pension. Royalties could come from the German company wanting to put his name on its product - umbrellas.

Worryingly, Clarkson did a Blue Peter and showed how to make a gun using plumber's pipe and hairspray. It fired potatoes not bullets, but still looked a pretty lethal weapon.

http://www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/the_north_east/entertainment/LASTNIGHT2.html

[Wanderer]

Yes, it's that innaccurate.

[ceetee]

Dang! Where can I buy an AK for 60 pounds? What's the exchange rate, anyway?

today's exchange rate (http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic)


This here says 1 British Pound (GBP) = 1.81970 US Dollar (USD)...

At that rate (according to those penny-wise, pound-foolish Brits), I should be able to buy an AK for



$109.18.

Plus tax. Where can I find that one...?

[Stand_Watie]

"Dang! Where can I buy an AK for 60 pounds? What's the exchange rate, anyway?"

I'd take anything reported by the BBC about crime in America, guns in America etc with a huge grain of salt. I saw a BBC article the other day that reported we have 30,000 annual homicides in the U.S. Somebody probably confused an AK with and SKS and chose the most battered used SKS in the gun shop to sensationalize how cheap guns are in America.

[Bruddah_Al]

Didn't Paladin Press put out a reprint of an Army Special Forces manual on hip-shooting with various weapons?

[BHPshooter]

I've got a friend with a nice AK-47 (semi). He let me bump fire it a couple times, and yes, it is that inaccurate. I was lucky enough to hit the can once or twice in about 3- thirty round mags.

Just another one of those things that if people really thought about, they could figure out... but until then, they remain trusting sheep. If they only knew, maybe they'd realize that most of the stuff they are force-fed are lies, plain and simple.

Wes

[itgoesboom]

Tried it a couple times while bump firing my SKS jus to have fun. We had a box with 4 targets pinned on and out of ten shots, if I was bump firing I was able to hit maybe once or twice, three times at the most. If I was firing single shots, I could hit the box about 50% of the time, but not the individual targets.

The distance was about 20 yards.

I think I will stick to aimed fire, even out of an SKS its more accurate.

I.G.B.

[Greybeard]

Hunting buddy is alive today due to Iraqi hip firing rifle during first gulf war. He got surprised by a teenager advancing and unloading an AK at him from 40 to 50 yards out. All that he had within reach was 9mm, which shot to slide lock before AK blaster ran out of ammo and went down about the same time. (He hates 9mm FMJ to this day.) He said while bullets were whizzing all around him, when he took inventory of the damages, only one round had nicked his collar. And then he sat down and cried.

[nero45acp]

Ever since I saw the movie "Saving Private Ryan" I've wondered....... how accurately could an experienced soldier shoot a Thompson sub-machine gun?

[larry_minn]

Ever since I saw the movie "Saving Private Ryan" I've wondered....... how accurately could an experienced soldier shoot a Thompson sub-machine gun?

While I will take a H&K MP-5 anyday over Thompson they can be shot. I have a target (first time with full auto Thompson) I did couple singles (all at 50' mind you) then doubles and finally @10 rd bursts. This was sighted of course. Anyway by rd 10 I was high on shoulder/or off target. The instructor thought I must have practice with full auto. (it was second full auto I had shot)
That said I keep going back to orig post. " AK-47 from the hip, on full-auto, at a van (side on), from about 20 yards away" A van is LARGE target and 60' is not far. FOr MN pistol permit class we had to do @ 21' with gun low (no sights allowed) and most had groups of @8" for 30rds with few flyers. I was shocked but realize we all shot first rd and ajusted from then then empty mag into center.
I have always said if POS is going to shoot at me from over 50' I want him to have full auto UZI rather then shotgun. I can hit him at 50' but if he has no training and misses me with first 3rds I should be fairly safe.
BTW the Thompson fired from a open bolt. I.E. you pull trigger and a (wild guess) 1lb steel bolt flys forward/strips/chambers rd and fires/ejects it. LONG lag time from trigger pull till rd leaves barrel. IMO really messes up aim. Some added danger (also IMO) if you have bad rds/other problems.
The MP-5 (SD please) :) is another thing. Groups on target full auto. WOW cut the price @3 grand and I would try to buy a personal one. :)

[SnWnMe]

Obviously Clarkson does not have the mental maturity required to be a responsible gun owner. I handle guns and never get the feeling of power over anything nor do I find it unbelievably sexy. If anything, I feel that I should be resposible and diligent with my gunhandling. I guess it's the portrayal of guns as forbidden fruit that gives him this "feeling".