How Many Of These Force Myths Do You Believe?

[Checkman]

I'm a cop and I get the Force Science newsletter sent to me via e-mail. It's interesting and usually save the articles since they apply to my extra duty task of firearms instructor. However this group does have an agenda and I don't always agree with everything it says.

It's been my experience that the average private citizen wants to know what really happens and is fairly open to us (the cops). Most folks realize that the TV and movies are not the real thing, but they don't know what the reality is. I found this article to be a little condescending towards John Q. Citizen.

I've been on the witness stand several times over the past seven years and I am usually given the chance to explain how things work - even by defense attorneys.

So I guess you might say this article is presenting it's own reality. Not untruthful, but like all things read with a discriminating eye.

Whew that's alot of deep thinking for this old street cop.

 

[zookrider]

There are some interesting points, but I'm suspicious of any source that tries to divide the world between cops and "civilians."

The reality is that the cops are held to a different standard than you or I. If confronted with a dangerous situation I have the choice to avoid it, a cop does not, they are bound to respond. That being said, I believe that justifiable force is justifiable regardless of who exercised it. All of the points the article makes regarding LEOs is equally applicable to the citizenry at large when they are required to use force in the protection of life or property.

 

[thexrayboy]

What's needed, Johnson believes, is for the policing profession to work more diligently to educate the public--and itself--about force truths, while simultaneously reasserting its rightful role as interpreter and arbiter of
what constitutes reasonable force applications.

I have a real problem with the above paragraph. Essentially the author is stating that the police should be the ones to decide what is considered reasonable force. That is wrong. The public through lawfully elected legislators write laws that define reasonable force and those laws are applied
through the judicial system. The police are to be held accountable to those laws. To allow the people who use force to make the rules about what is considered reasonable or not is an invitation to abuse. There is to be no
"interpreting or arbiting" by the police. They need to learn what the law is,
formulate policy and procedure to obey that law and then institute an effective system of review and meaningful punishment of those that violate those laws and policies. Anything else garners rightful suspicion of the police.

 

[Sharps-shooter]

bunk

The official weight for a baseball is 5 ounces. That's not even close to a pound. It's not even one third of a pound.

so, going on someone's earlier computation of 65 ft/lbs for a one pound weight dropped 6 feet, an baseball dropped 6 feet would have less than twenty foot-pounds of force.

That's nothing like what a 9mm luger gives at the muzzle. Even a .22 short at a hundred yards gives more than twice that (42 ft/lbs).

This might be a part of the reson that a baseball dropped from six feet doesn't kill you, but a 9mm muzzle discharged against your body often does.

A foot pound of energy is about what it takes to move a weight of one pound over a distance of one foot. If a 9mm luger round puts out 350 foot-pounds, that's potentially enough to move move the center of mass of a 175 lb. man backwards by two feet. This would result in falling down.

It is more likely that not all of this energy would get transferred to the 175 lb man. The bullet could come out the other side, retaining half its original energy, and only move him backwards a foot. It's still hard to keep your balace when COM is moved backwards a foot, and you have a hole through you.

Or less energy could get transferred.

My point is, that it is far from impossible for a bullet to knock someone down.

When hunting, I have seen an animal take a bullet and keep going, and I've seen a big buck tumble end over end when shot (hit between the shoulders running downhill; kinetic energy did not all come from the bullet). It all depends on what the bullet hits, how the target reacts to the bullet,
and what other physical forces are at play at the time.

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with all the opinions of the original article. But the facts aren't straight, and that does something, for me, to the writer's credibility. It makes it seem like they're giving precedence to their opinions, regardless of the facts.

 

[Feanaro]

The official weight for a baseball is 5 ounces.

He specified a baseball that weighs a pound. It's an example. He could have said brick, though I'm sure someone would have come along to explain that according to the Masonite Brothers Twenty-Seven B Stroke Six standards, a brick weighs .573334579852kgs.

If a 9mm luger round puts out 350 foot-pounds, that's potentially enough to move move the center of mass of a 175 lb. man backwards by two feet.

But we are talking about an inelastic collision, the kinetic energy will not be conserved. On the other hand, the momentum will. The momentum of a 124 grain 9mm bullet going 1125 FPS(close enough to 350 footpounds) is 0.62 lb-secs. IF A BASEBALL WEIGHED A POUND! and you threw it a mere 20 feet per second, it would have the same (or near enough) momentum. 0.62 lb-secs according to my calculator. If I am converting everything right, that's 2.7 kg m/s. This is Not Very Much. Should the object being struck have zero momentum(for the sake of example), the momentum after the collision will(barring other forces) be the same for the combined masses of the two(conservation of momentum). If you want to figure out what 0.62 lb-secs of momentum ends up being after you add 175 pounds, be my guest. It won't be much.

Let's not forget the conservation of momentum. Whatever momentum the gun and bullet have, they must have afterwards. If the bullet has 0.62 lbs-secs momentum after firing, the gun must have the same amount in the opposite direction(cancelling each other out). If it would knock him over, it would knock you over. This momentum will probably not be fully transferred anyways. If it is, it won't be like knocking two billiard balls together. Poke yourself in the gut; most of you is pretty soft. Bullets don't push people, bullets make holes in them.