Monday, July 14, 2014

The PRC decided to arm more police,

and instead of any of the existing stuff out there, they design a new revolver and cartridge

Cartridge is based on the .38S&W.  The pistol has a safety. 

And apparently the weapon and cartridge choice is based on 'Let's use a hardware solution to a software problem' thinking:
An article in the Wall Street Journal posits that "Chinese ballistics engineers specifically designed the weapon to minimize risks associated with introducing handguns into a society that has little experience with firearms."
If so, bad idea; the solution to that problem is training, not 'let's complicate the tool itself a bit'. 

From one of the links in the post, this on the ammunition:
The jacketed bullet is interesting. It has a copper jacket covering a block of high-density polyethylene at the front and a lead disc at the base. The lead base looks like it makes up around 40% of the total volume of the bullet.

According to the specifications also published in Chinese forums, the bullets weighs 123 gr and has a muzzle velocity of 721 fps. This works out to a muzzle energy of just 142 ft.lbs. This is the same muzzle energy as a high velocity .22 LR and less than a hyper velocity .22 LR. Penetration would be a lot worse than a .22 LR owing to the larger caliber and expansion of the polymer components.

"Let's make a holster that requires extra motions if you do need to draw, and throw on a safety, and make a cartridge that can't be counted on to stop an attacker(especially a worked-up Uiger with a knife bound on glory for Allah) so that if they screw up and shoot when they shouldn't it'll be less likely to kill an innocent.  And if they do hit the bad guy overpenetration won't be a problem!"

I foresee problems with this.

3 comments:

Toastrider said...

Heh, I thought Firehand was referring to the People's Republic of California, not China...

Wow, I have no idea why China would kneecap its cops this way unless they're REALLY concerned about their reliability.

Anonymous said...

Got it in one, Toastrider.

Norinco exports vast quantities of everything from small arms to antiarmor missiles to SAMs to armored vehicles to rocket artillery to anyone and everyone worldwide who can pay in cash. Why aren't they willing to issue the same AK copies to their cops that their army uses and that they export by the million? Or sixty-year-old pistol-caliber SMGs, if AKs are judged to be excessive? Because the Cantonese hate the Han, and the Han hate the Hokkien, and the Hokkien hate the Fujien, and everybody hates the Uighurs, that's why. China is one good shove away from turning into the next Syria, and the people at the top are beginning to grasp this, about thirty years too late, that's why.

Windy Wilson said...

they should have just bought a bunch of Airsoft guns. Doubtless cheaper, and no worse for arming people you're hesitant to arm anyway.