Gun vs Katana

[DemonArchangel]

Nice... still, i prefer european or chinese swords because they can be bent side to side more easily and not snap.

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Actually the info I had on teflon said that it would penetrate armor due to the teflon being slippery non-stick or what not. I believe I heard this from my forensics teacher. That is why they are illegal... (in US)
I could be wrong, seeing as I have not seen a study or a copy of any laws but this is what I have heard from someone I trust.

[Irinami]

You are misinformed about the way they work. I understand the train of thought, but if it pierced armor due to not "sticking" to it, then it wouldn't stick enough to bite into the armor in the first place--it would slide off (ricochet), defeating the purpose. My sources are military, law-enforcement, and paralegal friends. Some of the military and L.E. ones have been involved in the testing of munitions including teflon-coated armor-piercing rounds, others in the procurement of supplies in general, including armor-piercing rounds. In some jurisdictions they are illegal, in some they are perfectly legal.

So what about armor-piercing in Sengoku-Jidai? It's kind of irrelevant really. You can fire a standard ball (lead) .22LR at 100 yards against authentic heavy-gauge steel armor and it will penetrate within 3 rounds. This is not a particularly powerful round, and neither is it heavy nor fast. The muskets of the day tended to be around .60 to .80 calibre. At the speeds and ranges encountered in the era, all but a direct hit would penetrate. Even without penetration you have the possibility of injury from shearing or blunt force trauma. And even failing that, the energy is still transferred. Any of you gents been thrown violently from a horse before? I haven't, but if I remember right there's this guy we all know who was: Christopher Reeve. We all know how that turned out.

[Togakure]

"... a much-decorated former police lieutenant from the New York Police Department, Representative Mario Biaggi (who was to wind up in prison as a result of the Wedtech scandal and thereby probably to confirm the suspicions of the NRA about its opponents), introduced what was generally regarded as creampuff legislation to ban Teflon-coated bullets, whose only real purpose seemed to be to penetrate the sort of body armor normally worn by cops. (How clearly I remember the gratitude I felt on learning, on October 4, 1986, that Minneapolis police officer Thomas Sawina was wearing a bullet-proof vest when he was shot in the chest with his own gun; it was the finest birthday present I ever got. A "copkiller bullet" would have penetrated his armor and probably would have killed him.) ..."

Link: http://www.pnews.org/PhpWiki/index.p...2487fa567f637c

Comments? I'm not trying to start a controversy here, just asking. I'd like to know more about this side topic (and I'm in the process of finding out, as you can see).

[Shambles]

its not that the teflon makes the bullet any harder or sharper,
it just allows you to use a harder bullet and still get the projectile to spin,

its either hard bulet no spin from barrel rifeling so less acuracy and velocity.
or soft bullet exelent spin and velocity but poor penitration,

with a teflon coating on a hard bullet the bullet can now utilize the rifeling on the barrel to better effect which in turn increase stabilaty and velocity.

so teflon dosent make it armour piercing, it just makes armour piercing bullets better

[Togakure]

That very clear and concise explanation makes sense to me, Shambles. Thanks. If I find anything interesting in my virtual-digging I'll start a thread on the subject in the Tavern.

[Irinami]

Thanks Shambles. That's what I try to say, but I just don't STFU. As you can tell.