Stargate SG1 + Gun Fans?

[Rigil Kent]

Well personally, I'd prefer accuracy to rate of fire any day. Spray and pray never works. Unless you're lucky or using a mini-gun...

Totally unrelated, I can't help but to laugh at the Pip-Boy icon there, Elessar, since I dragged out "Fallout 2" the other day and started goofing around with it...

[Navigator]

I'd agree, but don't you think the FN P90 is still a superior close quarters weapon to the MP5, specifically against armored, but also unarmored, personnel? 9mm Parabellum wouldn't do shit to Jaffe armor if it has any sort of ballistic protection properties at all... 5.7 might actually penetrate it, at least. Against unarmored personnel, I believe the P90 is more inherently accurate and has a higher rate of fire than the MP5 and it definitely has a higher magazine capacity.

I agree for the Glock 20/29 in 10mm.

No, I really don't. The 5.7 may get through the armor but it has no knockdown. With the 5.7 you are basically talking a centerfire .22 Winchester Magnum. The Jaffe may eventually bleed to death but in the meantime SG1 is dead meat. Remember these guys (SG1) should have access to all sorts of special weapons, so I am thinking they would have access to 9MM or 10 MM AP such as the old KTW round. Remember the Teflon "cop-killer" bullets. That was a mound of cow manure but there is AP out there. Of course, since Star Gate was done in Canada, anything that caused serious damage would have offended their sensibilities, eh.

Also you don't have to go through armor to cause damage. Gross story time. A friend of mine was a Federal Park Ranger - Law Enforcement type in his younger days. They had a guy go nuts and shoot one of his fellow rangers with a .45-70. The guy was wearing a vest. The .45-70 did not fully penetrate the vest. It just sort of dragged the vest with it about 2/3 the way through his body. There is no substitute for throw weight.

But then I'm not a spray and pray guy either.

[Elessar]

Right, I said the P90 is more inherently accurate than the MP5 in addition to having a higher rate of fire, so we're not talking about weighing accuracy versus rate of fire, we're talking about both being better in the P90 than in the MP5. The only thing one might argue the MP5 having going for it is the mass of the 9mm parabellum projectile, which is in the 115-145 gr range. The 5.7mm round may not be a .45ACP manstopper, but the ".22 mag" comparison is a myth. There is an endless debate about mass vs. velocity with regard to stopping power and no clear answer. But to get back to the core of the debate, it is well known that supersonic projectiles do much more internal damage through the destructive force of a supersonic projectile due to the cavitation around the projectile ripping and tearing at internal tissue. Most 9mm rounds are subsonic at the muzzle, with a few superlight +P+ JHP loads as excpetions - and those aren't going to as significantly benefit from this "mass" issue because the projectiles get down to like 100 gr, whereas you're still talking about a muzzle velocity difference of about 1400 fps max for the 9mm Parabellum +P+ loads and around 2400 FPS for the better 5.7 loads out of the P90 PDW.

In a closer quarters engagement, "knockdown power" is important, but with a weapon that can put 15 rounds on target in the same place in 1.5 seconds, the standard for measurement shifts, because the reason for the significance of one shot's knockdown power in the past was that it was usually coming out of an automatic rifle that wouldn't be reliably putting the next 14 in the same place, it'd be putting them all over the place, so you didn't want to have to depend on successive body shots to bring down the enemy because it wasn't likely. With an SMG that consistently puts every round of a burst on target, we're suddenly working within a different metric for considering "knockdown power".

[JadziaKathryn]

I think I should've realized the "+ Gun" was going to be important to this. Honestly, what that brings to mind is the silly S8 ep with Joe the Barber and Jack keeps a handgun in his kitchen drawer. Ugh. That episode had two problems for me: the part where he's been seeing Joe's life for years and the part where the commander of the top-secret very important military base doesn't lock his door.

Anyway, with the gun, I always thought that was a little weird after what happened with his son. Maybe he thought he had nothing left to lose. Maybe he decided he needed one in case the NID came after him, and he knew they could just pick the lock.

[Rigil Kent]

Anyway, with the gun, I always thought that was a little weird after what happened with his son.

His son is dead at this point, though, and he doesn't have kids around the house. I keep my pistol loaded all the time since there are never any kids around. It isn't like the pistol is just going to spontaneously fire.

Remember: guns don't kill people. People kill people.

[Elessar]

Anyway, with the gun, I always thought that was a little weird after what happened with his son.

His son is dead at this point, though, and he doesn't have kids around the house. I keep my pistol loaded all the time since there are never any kids around. It isn't like the pistol is just going to spontaneously fire.

Remember: guns don't kill people. People kill people.

It's very common for people who go through what he did, though, to never want to own a gun again. I can think of a few scenarios that would just make it hard for me to justify even having one around (assuming there continued to be a risk of it happening again). I mean I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments that people kill people, but I just think that kind of traumatic tragedy defies logic for awhile.

I would argue he'd just eventually gotten past it... it was something like 10 or 12 years later.

[Elessar]

Like I said I've been watching a lot more SG1 and I don't know how I didn't notice before, but they actually do a lot to expand the variety in Seasons 5-7. I actually DID NOTICE a guy in patrol formation walking with the group, out of the gate, part of a 2-3 SG team task force, with what was definitely a .50 cal Barrett.

I've also noticed Carter often carrying some kind of SBR (short barreled rifle - rifles with 14.5/12/11 inch barrels) variant of what *looks* like an HK 416 but that's admittedly a guess. It's some kind of AR-like SBR with forward rails and a telescopic buttstock.

Naturally, seen Teal'c and O'Neill with SPAS-12's when they fight the replicators -- saw a guy with a full blown M240 medium machine gun when they were ambushing one of the Kull warriors (although why they didn't have a stationary .50 emplacement or a Mk19 automatic grenade launcher knowing what the Kulls could withstand is behind me).

Oh that reminds me - when they realized that pure kinetic energy could kill the Kull warriors (the self destruct at the Alpha Site killed several) they should have just started outfitting squads with several SMAWs. I bet that'd do some damage. They could have also fit 88mm mortars through the gate... possibly even a 105 howitzer if they broke it down. Not sure what they'd tow it with, though....

Course you see several M249's... Oh, a mistake I noticed of late -- they seemed to decide to just use stock sound clips of the P90 firing and use it for everything, or almost everything. Not weapons they distinctly want to distinguish from other guns for effect (like the M249) but they had the P90 sound coming out of an AK, and also once out of several MP5's. It may sound like an academic distinction but the rate of fire and power of the projectile mean that those 3 weapons all make very different sounds.

I'm eager to start up Atlantis again soon because they pay more homage to Marines and to your standard M4's and even full length M16's.

[WarpGirl]

Hi Boss! Well for the past 3 days I've been on Hulu watching SG-1 and thanks to you noticing the fire power. And here are a few things... In Nemesis O'Neill uses a gun against the replicators that looks a lot like a modern tommy gun. Can you tell me what type that might be and why the "air force" would use it?

In Seth O'Niell makes a comment on how well Seth's followers are armed and makes a VERY snarky comment on "if they waited the mandatory 15 day waiting period" while holding his P-90. Which was hysterically funny and had me flashing back to MacGyver.

And wasn't it kind of weird that they needed so many shots to take down Martuf but Sam Killed him with a Zat in Divide and Conquer? And Lantesh his symbiote appeared to be dead but turns up alive in another episode. But I didn't get there yet.

I'd really like to know about that tommy gun. And you're supposed to tell us your best trek experience on that thread. You're holding out!

[Cogito]

I'd really like to know about that tommy gun.

Well I know naff-all about guns, but the only thing I remember seeing on SG1 that looked vaguely like a tommy gun seemed to me like a shotgun with a circular magazine. I guess that would be a semi-automatic shotgun, then.

[WarpGirl]

Well there was a shotgun type gun but it's not the one I mean. O'Niell had quite the selection that episode. Normally it's the P-90 a few barettas Zats, and of course T's Staff weapon.

Oh! Boys remember when you were talking about a sniper position??? Well in Metamorphesis O'Niell played sniper with Nirti's Jaffa. The gun didn't look like a P-90 to me, however I am awful at this. It might have looked different because of the scope on it. Or it might be another gun entirely. But I can't be sure.

I was too busy cooing over Sam resting on O'Niell's shoulder truth be told. Okay I think everyone should stop complaining about TnT Jack and Sam have it so much worse. 15 years 15! And not one canonical kiss that wasn't due to AU's, Alien influences, timeline distortions, or mind control. To quote Jack, "For cryin' out loud!" that's worse than dealing with *the_abomination*. And one deleted scene in SGA does not count as confirmation.

[Distracted]

A couple of peripherally related questions for the original novel I'm working on...

If you were going to assume that large caliber projectile weapons are a bad idea on board a starship due to issues related to atmospheric containment and smaller caliber weapons are equally problematic because of the risk of ricochet, what currently available weapons (or reasonably possible future developments) would you choose for repelling boarders in vacuum? CO2 powered flechette pistols? Some type of taser? ("Phasers" are not an available option. This story is not Star Trek.)

Would unmodified projectile weapons even operate without atmosphere? Doesn't there have to be some oxygen for them to fire? If not, what modifications would need to be made to existing weapons to allow them to operate in vacuum?

[WarpGirl]

Boys we need help!

[enterprikayak]

C'mon girls! Our resident projectile physicist is really swamped at school right now!

[WarpGirl]

He's not the ONLY gun guy here ek you know that.

You know what? Forget the guns, hand devices are so much more efficant, and they are multipurpose. Hail Dorothy!

[Cogito]

A couple of peripherally related questions for the original novel I'm working on...

If you were going to assume that large caliber projectile weapons are a bad idea on board a starship due to issues related to atmospheric containment and smaller caliber weapons are equally problematic because of the risk of ricochet, what currently available weapons (or reasonably possible future developments) would you choose for repelling boarders in vacuum? CO2 powered flechette pistols? Some type of taser? ("Phasers" are not an available option. This story is not Star Trek.)

Would unmodified projectile weapons even operate without atmosphere? Doesn't there have to be some oxygen for them to fire? If not, what modifications would need to be made to existing weapons to allow them to operate in vacuum?

Explosives work just fine in a vacuum. The only munitions that I can see being affected are the thermobaric over-pressure type of device which takes oxygen from the surrounding air.

Whether you can afford to use projectile weapons I guess depends what sort of hull you assume. If you take our current spaceships as an example, the hulls are basically metal bags designed to hold the air in and have very little strength. But a starship would need to be designed to deal with extremely high speeds which probably implies very high speed impacts. If it was designed to deal with that, I imagine that ordinary bullets would bounce off with no significant damage. In that case bullets would still be very effective, but you'd probably want a recoil-less gun.