Firearms of note and ridicule

[Chris Werb]

Punt guns are still made and used in the UK (and I believe Eire) on wildfowl. Market hunting (of many duck species, but no geese other than Canadas) is still legal here. They are legal on a shotgun certificate, so easier to own than an air rifle putting out 13ft/lb.

Edited October 25, 2011 by Chris Werb

[shep854]

Today I saw a Croat pistol that looked like a P.38 with slide rails and dust cover that extended to the muzzle. I couldn't see a designation; any ideas?

[Typhoid Maxx]

Today I saw a Croat pistol that looked like a P.38 with slide rails and dust cover that extended to the muzzle. I couldn't see a designation; any ideas?

 

POSSIBLY the PHP (Prvi Hrvatski Pistolj, First Croat Pistol). An awful, woeful piece of crap if it is - You could trade 3 of those for a TT33(copy) during the war.

 

Got pictures?

 

 

 

[shep854]

POSSIBLY the PHP (Prvi Hrvatski Pistolj, First Croat Pistol). An awful, woeful piece of crap if it is - You could trade 3 of those for a TT33(copy) during the war.

 

Got pictures?

I'm kicking myself for not getting one while at the shop. Next time I'm by there, I'll try to remember, IF the pistol is still there.

[Typhoid Maxx]

Dood, you want a fine Croat pistol, get a Springfield XD.

 

I'm serious, the PHP was a pile of crap. Never had a pistol fail to fire with regularity before.

[bojan]

shep, this one?

or this?

 

Otherwise, what Maxx noted about it's performances. I talked to a man who preferred to carry Walther PP in .32 ACP as his only alternative was this abomination - "PP will at least fire".

[shep854]

Bojan, the first one; though I only saw the right side.

----

Maxx, not to worry. It just caught my eye in the used display case. There are already plenty of guns on my want list. As for the XD, I've shot one and while it's an excellent pistol, I just don't care for it. HOWEVER, if it's a choice between an XD or get eaten by a zombie, I'll gladly take the pistol (and try not to get eaten anyway).

[WRW]

Punt guns are still made and used in the UK (and I believe Eire) on wildfowl. Market hunting (of many duck species, but no geese other than Canadas) is still legal here. They are legal on a shotgun certificate, so easier to own than an air rifle putting out 13ft/lb.

 

Saw a punt guns about 20 years ago - about 20 feet long - a monster - would love to see one in use

[mnm]

This would make a fine punt gun too.

 

 

[rmgill]

This would make a fine punt gun too.

 

 

 

Kind of hard on the meat isn't it?

 

Isn't a Mtn Howitzer more appropriate...?

 

I love the build for that....

[shep854]

Not sure if posted, the Punt gun

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg85k28b_dM

In a slightly different context, it would make a dandy swivel gun.

[pikachu]

Kind of hard on the meat isn't it?

 

Isn't a Mtn Howitzer more appropriate...?

 

I love the build for that....

`

Didn't they actually do that during colonial times? I remember reading in The Pioneers (James Fenimore Cooper) a scene where Leatherstocking looked on in disgust as a bunch of colonists loaded up a cannon with birdshot and blasted a swarm of passenger pigeons out of the sky like it was a festival.

[thekirk]

I'm pretty sure the market hunters of yore would have happily integrated the odd Claymore into their hunting techniques, had such things been available.

 

I can only shudder, imagining what the laws for civilian ownership of weapons would look like, were we to still share the planet with the various megafauna that have gone extinct. There's some paleobiologist out there who wrote a paper postulating that one reason we don't have land-based megafauna is that human beings have been exerting pressure since prehistory on all the big "jackpot" animals, which is why everything like the Giant Sloth is long gone. We're too damn successful as hunters, and one of the side effects is that species only survive that fit a certain profile--And, that profile pretty much precludes anything like a megatherium or a T-rex.

 

In the paper, he said he started writing the thing as a bit of a joke, and then gradually came to the conclusion it wasn't so jokey, after all. A corollary he came up with, as an explanation for the extinction of the dinosaur-era megafauna, is that a possible explanation for the extinction of the dinos is that a "fast burn" small species with similarity to H. Sap showed up, drove the megafauna into extinction, and then died out itself without leaving much sign in the fossil record. Last part of the article set out some possible features to look for, if such a sequence of events had happened, and postulated that we weren't looking in the right places with current paleontology techniques.

[rmgill]

Anyone want some pocket artillery?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEvlNDczJ2g

[Guest JamesG123]

I'll be more impressed when someone turns high tensile steel 1/35th gun tubes that really shoot.

[pikachu]

I'm pretty sure the market hunters of yore would have happily integrated the odd Claymore into their hunting techniques, had such things been available.

 

But they were!

 

Claymore

 

I can only shudder, imagining what the laws for civilian ownership of weapons would look like, were we to still share the planet with the various megafauna that have gone extinct. There's some paleobiologist out there who wrote a paper postulating that one reason we don't have land-based megafauna is that human beings have been exerting pressure since prehistory on all the big "jackpot" animals, which is why everything like the Giant Sloth is long gone. We're too damn successful as hunters, and one of the side effects is that species only survive that fit a certain profile--And, that profile pretty much precludes anything like a megatherium or a T-rex.

 

That's a bit homo-centric, though. In actual fact, megafauna of the same scale as giant sloth are still extant in Africa and Asia. Just look at gorillas, rhinos, hippos, crocs, and elephants. It wasn't until the last 3 centuries that these animals have actually become seriously endangered by humans, thanks to gunpowder. Considering the extinction times of ancient megafauna and the kinds of tools available to humans at the time, it is much more likely for natural events or simple evolutionary shift (elephants are just bald mammoths, for instance) to have caused their extinction, just like with the dinosaurs. Otherwise, native Africans would have hunted elephants to extinction ages ago. It's usually the smaller animals that go extinct directly by human hands. It's not a coincidence too that mostly they've been birds (passenger pigeons and dodos being the posterboys). Birds generally act as pests to human crop cultivation. It's not the brave nomadic hunters who wipe out entire species, but the cowardly, sedentary farmers.

[DougRichards]

But they were!

 

Claymore

 

 

 

That's a bit homo-centric, though. In actual fact, megafauna of the same scale as giant sloth are still extant in Africa and Asia. Just look at gorillas, rhinos, hippos, crocs, and elephants. It wasn't until the last 3 centuries that these animals have actually become seriously endangered by humans, thanks to gunpowder. Considering the extinction times of ancient megafauna and the kinds of tools available to humans at the time, it is much more likely for natural events or simple evolutionary shift (elephants are just bald mammoths, for instance) to have caused their extinction, just like with the dinosaurs. Otherwise, native Africans would have hunted elephants to extinction ages ago. It's usually the smaller animals that go extinct directly by human hands. It's not a coincidence too that mostly they've been birds (passenger pigeons and dodos being the posterboys). Birds generally act as pests to human crop cultivation. It's not the brave nomadic hunters who wipe out entire species, but the cowardly, sedentary farmers.

 

Regarding elephants. We all know about "African" and Indian elephants, don't we? African elephants have not been domesticated, Indian elephants have.

 

So where did the Carthaginians, Romans etc get their elephants?

 

The 'western' war elephants were North African Forest Elephants, a species that is now extinct from over-exploitation in such things as wars, well before firearms came into use.

Edited October 27, 2011 by DougRichards

[pikachu]

Regarding elephants. We all know about "African" and Indian elephants, don't we? African elephants have not been domesticated, Indian elephants have.

 

So where did the Carthaginians, Romans etc get their elephants?

 

The 'western' war elephants were North African Forest Elephants, a species that is now extinct from over-exploitation in such things as wars, well before firearms came into use.

 

I'm disputing the assertion that cavemen wiped out Pleistocene megafauna. Yes, it doesn't take firearms to wipe out specific megafaunal populations, but the extinction of the North African forest elephant is minor compared to the endangerment of the rest of the elephant population in the past three centuries, and it still took encroachment by advanced Mediterranean civilization to wipe out the forest elephants. For that matter, there's still debate whether it's really a separate species or became distinguishable as such from the bush elephant simply because they got domesticated. Humans did wipe out individual species of megafauna by doing stupid things like sending them to circuses (in the case of North African elephants and lions) or using their hides for armor (in the case of the Chinese rhino). However, the human civilizations actually capable of pulling this off did not exist in the Pleistocene era.

[Archie Pellagio]

Regarding elephants. We all know about "African" and Indian elephants, don't we? African elephants have not been domesticated, Indian elephants have.

 

So where did the Carthaginians, Romans etc get their elephants?

 

The 'western' war elephants were North African Forest Elephants, a species that is now extinct from over-exploitation in such things as wars, well before firearms came into use.

 

Extinct now:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_elephant

 

Interesting I'd never heard the term North African Elephant before, only African Forest Elephant which is in fact a different species native to the Congo basin.

[mnm]

We're too damn successful as hunters, and one of the side effects is that species only survive that fit a certain profile--And, that profile pretty much precludes anything like a megatherium or a T-rex.

 

Such as this one?

[swerve]

Dunno what that was, but it wasn't a T. rex. Proportions are wrong - unless juveniles (& that's a baby, from its size) looked very different from adults.

 

Where did they get the time machine from? Must be a good one, to put together creatures from 65 million years apart.

[swerve]

I'm disputing the assertion that cavemen wiped out Pleistocene megafauna. Yes, it doesn't take firearms to wipe out specific megafaunal populations, but the extinction of the North African forest elephant is minor compared to the endangerment of the rest of the elephant population in the past three centuries, and it still took encroachment by advanced Mediterranean civilization to wipe out the forest elephants. For that matter, there's still debate whether it's really a separate species or became distinguishable as such from the bush elephant simply because they got domesticated. Humans did wipe out individual species of megafauna by doing stupid things like sending them to circuses (in the case of North African elephants and lions) or using their hides for armor (in the case of the Chinese rhino). However, the human civilizations actually capable of pulling this off did not exist in the Pleistocene era.

Elephants evolved alongside humans, & had a long time to adapt to human predation. Other megafauna didn't. The timing of the extinction of the megafauna of Australia & the Americas is extremely suspicious, & we have the well-dated extinctions on Madagascar & New Zealand as additional evidence.

 

Biggest beasts go first for obvious reasons.

 

Outside Africa, big animals disappeared or were domesticated everywhere long before there were civilisations, except in places where few people lived. Bears hung on in mountains, Asian rhinos in dense forests, along with tigers, etc.

 

To explain all these extinctions any other way, you have to think of a lot of separate causes, which by some wonder of synchronicity occurred soon after people arrived, or when human populations became significant. Ockham's razor applies.

[Guest JamesG123]

A bit of causality there. The prehistoric humanoid (to include all the late tool using hominids) population was far to small and inefficient to be solely responsible for the die off of mega fauna. Also humans didn't evolve along side them and migrate across continents with the big beasties and then all of a sudden decide to go on a mass killing spree, globally. It would have taken a single minded industrialized process for them to attrit otherwise healthy populations down to extinction. Humans probably didn't help, but to pin the blame on cavemen is a bit of hubris IMO. We really weren't that good of a predator.

 

Gigantism is a natural "arms race" between the hunter and hunted, and in particular its an advantage during cold climactic periods, which we just came out of (if not still doing so). But it also probably works in the opposite direction. Climate change (oh noes!!!!) is probably more responsible for the disappearance of all the big shaggy critters. They either evolved "down" or got out-adapted by smaller, faster species. Diseases that took advantage of their overdress and overstress might be a big factor too.

[swerve]

A bit of causality there. The prehistoric humanoid (to include all the late tool using hominids) population was far to small and inefficient to be solely responsible for the die off of mega fauna. Also humans didn't evolve along side them and migrate across continents with the big beasties and then all of a sudden decide to go on a mass killing spree, globally. It would have taken a single minded industrialized process for them to attrit otherwise healthy populations down to extinction. Humans probably didn't help, but to pin the blame on cavemen is a bit of hubris IMO. We really weren't that good of a predator.

In Australia & the Americas, humans didn't evolve alongside the big beasties then migrate with them. Humans with fire, spears, spear throwers, high-quality stone tools & weapons, etc. arrived on continents with big beasties which had no exposure whatsoever to humans.

 

You're making the same mistake as Pikachu & assuming that humans wiped out big animals only by sticking spears in them. Too simplistic. In a fauna-rich environment, prehistoric humans could be incredibly wasteful. Anything for an easy life. Burning down a forest to kill a few big animals in it was no big deal, when you thought there were plenty more forests to go round. Note that this is not hyperbole: this hunting method was used by Maoris to kill moas until they ran out of suitable forests with big moas, & there's plenty of evidence of it being used long before that, in Australia & the Americas.

 

Elsewhere, much the same, though less sudden. Homo sapiens erupted onto the scene from Africa tens of thousands of years ago, into regions where earlier, less capable humans had lived, with much better weapons, & almost certainly much better organisation. Want some meat & a hide or two? No problem! Stampede a herd over a cliff, or into a swamp. 90% of the meat rots before you can eat it? So what? Plenty more out there - until there isn't. The beasts are too big to kill easily & safely with a spear? Harry 'em with fire & prick 'em into staked pits.

 

Meanwhile, the carrying capacity of the land for the very big beasts is diminishing. The smaller ones are breeding up unchecked, all those fires are degrading the vegetation, specialist big predators are running short of prey . . . Populations are becoming vulnerable. Environmental stresses such as droughts, cold spells - whatever - can push a population over the edge, or reduce it to a point where, combined with the new predators (us), it's no longer viable.

 

Upper palaeolithic man was a very good predator indeed of big, relatively uncommon, animals, particularly those that live in places we find comfortable. Sometimes, we might have competed with them, e.g. cave bears, where it's known (archaeology) that humans both killed hibernating bears, & took over caves previously occupied by bears. Could have combined the two. Even a very big bear won't argue with a gang of fire-using people with pointy things: it'll skedaddle.

 

Alternative theories all fail to explain the very close correlation between the late palaeolithic extinctions & the spread of modern humans, e.g. the late survival of megafauna on islands where humans were late to arrive, such as the last mammoth populations.

 

Nobody doubts that Maoris wiped out moas & Haast's eagles (from the arrival of a few hundred or even dozen people to wipeout in a couple of hundred years), or Madagascans wiped out elephant birds. Why doubt that something similar happened elsewhere?

 

We don't have to postulate humans as the cause of all extinctions, & many may have been due to combinations of factors, e.g. many of the European & Asian extinctions may have been the result of populations reduced by natural climate change being vulnerable to predators which were improving their effectiveness at an unprecedentedly rapid rate (because not constrained by biological evolution). For example, one would expect cold climate specialists such as mammoths to have a diminishing range as the weather warmed. That would make them vulnerable to extinction by our ancestors.

 

We have paintings of people hunting woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, etc. They were prime candidates for extinction by humans, being very big, & living in cold climates with relatively low biological productivity, hence limited in numbers. Correlation isn't causation, but nobody has yet come up with another plausible explanation.

 

The pattern of extinctions is entirely consistent with the anthropogenic hypothesis. Regions never previously inhabited by humans had the highest extinction rates, & appear to have had the most rapid extinctions. The timing matches. There are the survivals of isolated populations previously mentioned - until humans arrived on their islands. We have archaeological evidence of large-scale kills & very wasteful hunting methods. The animals which went extinct are exactly those which we would expect if human activity was the cause.

 

Against this, the argument is "humans weren't good enough hunters". That's not a very good argument.

 

There's no need to posit an industrial scale organised killing spree. Killing spree yes, but see the examples already cited, e.g. New Zealand. We know the mechanism, we know the outcome, & we have a pretty good idea of the timescale. A very small human population arrived, found the game plentiful & easy to kill - and exterminated all the big creatures in an astonishingly short time, with spears, traps & fire.

 

You don't seem to see the difference between big & small animals, or the difference between humans & other predators. We really were that good at predation, vastly better than anything else had ever been. We'd lost the constraints of biological evolution rates & dependence on the survival of prey species, so unlike any other predator, we could wipe out entire classes of prey & continue to thrive.

Edited October 28, 2011 by swerve

[Guest JamesG123]

Forest and grassland fires are a natural phenomenon.

 

It is debated wether the mass kills were human instigated or were natural occurrences that have happened long before there were humans around but whom took advantage of the situation.

 

Isolated oddball species on islands with limited populations aren't the same as large populations across continents.

 

It took modern man with firearms and industrial process a decade of concerted effort to annihilate the American Buffalo. That capacity simply did not exist to paleolithic man.

 

A lot of the "we did it" school of thought is modern projection.

 

etc.