Diagoras

Why are gun killings our policy target? It should be homicide, or overall violent crime rate, and neither has been shown to be reduced by gun control. Gun related homicide is reduced with stricter gun laws. Gun related homicide is also largely responsible for mass killings. Do the math But overall homicide is not. There is a substitution effect.

"More accurate than" really isn't a useful measure. More accurate in volley fire? For individual targets? How does the accuracy change with range? Movement? Wind conditions? Matchlocks weren't used for hunting - but the reasons given are never accuracy, but instead the burning slow match both alerting creatures to the hunter and threatening to set the undergrowth ablaze. Indeed, you see shooting competitions in the Imperial city-states all through the 15th century alongside crossbow shooting competitions, with the best shooters being awarded prizes for their accuracy, and that's in the matchlock era. However, by the time of P:E, the wheellock has been invented, meaning that firearms are used in hunting. We have several examples of hunting firearms from the first half of the 16th century, for example. Note that while firearms have higher individual accuracy at range, that does not meant they have higher volley accuracy. And you're right that bows were used alongside firearms, with each weapon filling a particular military niche. But to describe firearms as inaccurate, especially in individual accuracy and irregular use, is not giving them due credit. While both ease of effective use and armor penetration were advantages, and I'd agree that armor penetration at range was one of the key advantages due to the rise of cheaper plate armor and metal armor in general, I'd caution against considering these as the only advantages - and note that the different firearms had different advantages, and different military units used them in different ways. Trying to summarize them all under a single heading is like trying to summarize all polearms. For example, the reason that massed levies of arquebusiers were used was arguably mainly a combination of ease of effective use and armor penetration. However, the era we're in is host to a variety of firearm infantry and cavalry. Mounted knights and men-at-arms use pistols and petronels to rip infantry formations to shreds, before charging home with lance and sword. Pistoliers use the caracole to keep up a sustained, devastating wave of fire against enemy infantry while using their mobility to avoid melee combat. Sharpshooters and irregulars advance under cover and concealment before battles, and pull off long-ranged shots against enemy commanders that lead to them being accused of sorcery due to their unprecedented accuracy. Musketmen use their heavy weapons and rigid discipline to shred heavy infantry with once they've deployed themselves in a good position. Finally, field artillery is used against blocks of enemy troops, and to devastating effect in siege battles on both sides. While the massed arquebusiers are the majority of combatants, the same holds true for peasant levies and polearm weapons. But characterizing all polearms by the effectiveness and tactics of peasant soldiers would be inaccurate, and the same holds true for firearms and arquebus levies.

I would caution against appeals to the middle ground. To use an extreme example, the moderates in the slavery argument of the 1860s were clearly wrong, and the Radical Republicans were in the right, despite being extremists against slavery. Just because a position is in the middle between two extremes is no guarantee that it is the correct one. Assault rifles are tightly regulated to the point of non-existence. They are controlled. Would you mind defining an extended clip? And how controlling it would be helpful, considering that it usually take a max of one second to swap handgun magazines? An assault rifle is a select-fire weapon with an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. That is the definition, and I"m not aware of another one. This is not the relevant policy question. The relevant question is, "Why should people not have a pistol or a rifle?" In the US at least, people are free until the state restricts their liberties, they are not slaves until the state grants them privileges. And the burden of proof is on the increase in state power, people do not have to explain why they should have a right. Why are gun killings our policy target? It should be homicide, or overall violent crime rate, and neither has been shown to be reduced by gun control.

Yeah, I know recent reconstructed longbow testing has really put down the myths surrounding their armor penetration ability, but I didn't know about crossbows. Do you have any links you could toss my way to read up on this? I'd be interested in reading up on this issue. If you're talking about individual accuracy, then I agree - at least with crossbows (to remain cautious). I think we should qualify this though, as it depends on the shooter and the weapon. However, at the upper bound of both, I think you're right here. Dude, if you ever do, please let me know how it does. I'd love to read about it. I read someone's account of test-firing a handgonne (stockless hand cannon from the 14th century), and he was surprised at how accurate he could get. Might be interesting to see what you can do with an arquebus.

Hell yeah. Historically accurate for our period, as well.

From what I can tell, this assertion is very controversial, even among professional historians, and the exact point when it became true is unclear. I prefer the more moderate "better against man-sized targets in armor who are moving" to avoid longbow and crossbow enthusiasts from jumping down my throat.

No, you said that they weren't used for sharpshooting, and they were. Accuracy against man-sized moving target - not formations - at distance, combined with long range armor penetration ability is often given as the reason. ie. The ability to hit a distant figure riding on horseback and penetrate his plate armor. All of those traits together is what lead to the rise of various irregular soldiers/sharpshooters wielding firearms, though their precise battlefield role can be hard to discern outside of accounts of them shooting random important people. The level of recognition and separate use of sharpshooters varied by period and country. The Turks made perhaps the best use of dedicated irregular units and firearm accuracy training, for example. Finally, there's a definite cycle in which during wars the importance of dedicated irregular/sharpshooter units emerges and they are constituted, followed by being dissolved in favor of more dependable and controllable line infantry during peacetime. The same trend occurred with American snipers, in fact, until after Vietnam the Marines finally established a permanent sniper school. Why especially not arquebus? I'd think that a shoulder-fired weapon would be best for that role. Still, this isn't my area of expertise. The fact that the non-existence of the printing press was explicitly mentioned suggests things are in unless we're told they're out. Still, it's possible that all sorts of things are in. I don't think we can assume rifling is non-existent until it's confirmed.

I don't think the democratizing effect of the firearm on violence and warfare is controversial, nor the devastating power of an entrenched civilian insurgency. When exactly that power should be released is more complicated, but that states that usurp the rights of their citizens ought to be dissolved by them is also not controversial. And that the Second Amendment was written with that exact goal in mind is, again, not controversial. That the US is miles away from being a state deserving of such treatment is, I hope, also not controversial. You realize that exact argument applies to the rest of the amendments? The Framers never envisioned the Internet or mass media, yet they're protected by the First Amendment. They never envisioned telephone calls, emails, or computer systems - yet they're protected under the Fourth Amendment. Do those rights only apply to contemporary technology as well? One of my pet peeves, glad you see it too.

Well, the phalanx was an Ancient spear formation, while poleaxes were used in the Late Medieval period. But they were used in pike formations - if two of them locked heads in a "push-of-pike", and the poleaxe's increased versatility could turn the fight one way or another for the side which had more of them. Two handed swords on the flanks were often used for the same purpose, giving your formation an advantage in a "push-of-pike", IIRC.

Good point about the matchlock odor. If you read my incredibly long post on page 2, I go into why an arquebus would have the advantage in accuracy. Long story short, it mainly has to do with the increased projectile drop of the bows and crossbows requiring you to aim significantly above the target, thus breaking your line of sight. Plus, when fire is plunging down it's easier to miss by aiming just a little too high or too low. With the flatter trajectory of a gun you can just aim straight at the person's head and still hit their body over quite a distance. Guns would not be used fot sharpshooting in this time period. While they have flatter trajectories their accuracy was poor due to the fact that the bullet would leave the barrel in an unpredictable direction, meaning that the ball wouldn't head in the direction you were pointing. Thats why they would fire in blocks, since then you don't need to aim. Sharpshooters only came about with the invention of rifling the barrel (where the name rifle comes from) which allowed accurate shots but the early ones had the problem of becoming fouled. They were not common and most people used smoothbores, which could not be used for sharpshooting. You wouldn't use an arquebus for sharpshooting as it was a smoothbore. This is set during the wheellock era, by Word of God. Sharpshooter/irregulars did use smoothbore weapons. And rifling was invented in about 1490, while the wheellock (and thus, P:E) was about 1520-1530. High quality firearms, including smoothbores, could pull off accurate shots. The inaccuracy of fire had more to do with the combined inaccuracy of most levies and the poor quality of their weapons. Applying expectations based on arquebus levies to various elite firearm users is like judging all melee combat by the effectiveness of peasant levies.

Crazy guns of the Late Medieval period:

I wouldn't call poleaxes ineffective, and they're spear/axe/hammer hybrids. How useful would they be in a massed phalanx formation? That extra mass on the head makes them more difficult to hold at length for long periods. They weren't for phalanxes. They were anti-infantry and anti-cavalry weapons used by men-at-arms and knights, and were also included in pike formations to add versatility and an edge in the event of a push-of-pike. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcDCMhyOLAc

I wouldn't call poleaxes ineffective, and they're spear/axe/hammer hybrids. But they both have similar usage/technique with only changing the damage type from thrust and blunt into a mix of both. Guns and swords have a bigger gap. Yeah, but he made a general statement. I was just indicating that you can't blanket dismiss all combined weapons. I have no idea how effective Late Medieval combination firearms were, but it'd be interesting to see. They were never adopted on a large scale, but that's true of a lot of weapons which we see being tactically useful to certain fighters (I'm mainly thinking of the sharpshooter's rifle here) due to cost or other concerns. And it's intriguing how many different models and combinations there were, and how much effort went into them. A wheellock firearm itself was expensive - I shudder to think how much would be spent on combining it with a melee weapon or shield. In the end, the bayonet ended up combining the thrusting pike with the musket - quite successfully too! So there's a combi-weapon we know ended up being effective on a mass scale.

I wouldn't call poleaxes ineffective, and they're spear/axe/hammer hybrids.

What is a reasonable discussion of guns? Because in the '90s, that was a code-word for passing useless, feel-good laws like the Assault Weapon ban.

Is there any evidence of this? I genuinely don't know - I've never read any psychological studies of mass murderers. Are there different kinds, multiple separate motivations, etc. Anyone with knowledge/citations, toss in your two cents.

Why are you restricting the domain to gun deaths? It's overall homicide rate, or violent crime rate we're targeting, not specifically killing people with guns. It's no good reducing the metric if there's a substitution effect.

Anyone who wants to approach the statistics of this issue should, at a minimum, read the 2004 National Academy of Science's Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Or at least skim it. Or at least read the summary, and the headers of each subsection. In a discussion as data-driven as the one around gun control, you really need to be familiar with the statistical consensus to talk about the issue intelligently.

Kevin Hicks is the man, and that poleaxe video is awesome. It inspired me to scour YouTube for some videos demonstrating the operation of the three ages of firearms that will have occurred/are occurring during P:E. Unfortunately, I couldn't embed three YouTube videos, so instead they're directly linked below. First, the handgonne! Pretty much the earliest real firearm, used through the 13th and 14th centuries, though exactly when the earliest one was is controversial. A giant metal tube full of gunpowder that was ignited by actually touching a flame manually to the priming pan - no trigger for you! Inaccurate, low rate of fire, high rate of malfunction, etc. However, it's cheap, easy to make, and easy to use (so long as you don't panic, blow yourself up, drop it, etc.) Finally, a use for peasants. The guy below is "speed shooting" his handgonne as fast as he can. As you can see, it really is just a stick with a barrel. https://www.youtube-...bed/FRsNzTH-xHk Here, Kevin Hicks (from the polearm video) shows us what would be involved in firing a matchlock musket. The matchlock was developed in the late 14th century, and was used all the way up until the 18th century due to its incredibly cheap manufacturing cost. Note that this particular weapon is from almost a 100 years after P:E is set, meaning that the weapon is better in terms of handling than it should be. In fact, a musket in the parlance of the 16th century was a heavy weapon that could only be fired from a braced position or from a rest, while by the time Hicks is in they've gotten light enough that they can be shoulder fired like the 16th century arquebus. Note how ridiculously complicated the reloading process is - including having to constantly blow on and keep alight the slow match! https://www.youtube-...bed/VmZt1tjq8f8 Finally, the latest technology in the P:E setting (excluding the snaplock, which I'll talk about another time): the wheellock, which was invented in the early 16th century and used up until the 18th or even 19th century. This is the technology that enabled all kinds of crazy designs and weapons systems. The first dedicated cavalry weapons were wheellocks (the petronel) as were the first described sharpshooter's guns. All the rifled weapons I've seen from the era were wheellocks, which makes sense as it's a sharpshooter's modification. Revolving weapons, combi-weapons, etc. No longer needing to constantly mind a slow match allowed you to fire with one hand, and the fact that the firing mechanism was always prepared meant you could walk around with a loaded and ready weapon for the first time - giving the wheellock a reputation as an assassin's weapon. Below is a firing of a wheellock pistol in slow motion. It's interesting to note just how much smoke a single firing would make. https://www.youtube-...bed/jFBxWJif8wI And your kicker for this episode: a knight on horseback firing a handgonne. Yeah, that's right.

Was it this baby? And the katana/Tanegashima, a gun with a sword that can be drawn out of it for melee combat:

Firearm dual wielding was part-and-parcel of certain 16th century cavalry tactics, to toss in my two cents. Usually during slow charges against enemy infantry, to soften up the targets before crashing home with sword or lance. As you're headed for an enemy infantry formation, accuracy isn't as relevant, and the ability to draw and fire more shots is important to soften up the target. However, I think it's important to note that both the fantasy elements and the entirely different scale of battles open up a lot of possibilities. Obviously, you can't stray too far from the source material, but the addition of magical enchanting opens up new possibilities in regards to arms and armor tactics. And we should note that adventurers are not engaging in military combat, but irregular skirmish combat, meaning that many of the dictates that hold true due to the limitations and needs of rising national armies might not apply. I know, for instance, that the devs might have quite a bit of leeway regarding firearms in the game, as many of the traits we attribute to 15th and 16th century firearms have much more to do with the user's training and their mass-produced nature for a specific battlefield role than anything innate to the weapon. Just indicating that this might apply to other things as well, like dual wielding, and to keep an open mind.

So, he's explicitly interested in making all armor types useful, disassociating class and armor, and ensuring that different armors can be switched out for different situations. What about that suggests that every class will use one armor because it's the best, each class can essentially be tied to an armor, and you're stuck with that armor for the entire game? If nothing, then why are you saying that's going to be the case with weapons?

I'm just going to point you to Sawyer's update on armor design. I think reading it might show you that the design philosophy being adopted here is a little disconnected from the one you're espousing.

If you just wave your hands and say "Magic!", then yes anything can happen. However, the world of Project: Eternity is very similar to the world of Late Medieval Europe, suggesting that magic is used as a flavoring rather than the main course. Even given a world where magic can do anything, your premise doesn't hold. If magic can do anything - why have mundane weapons systems at all? It seems more likely that we'll see something out of Tolkeinian (sic) fantasy - namely, magic being so unreliable/uncontrollable/rare that economic, social, and military development can mimic our own system. ie. Like the old IE games, excluding Torment which was special. What? Why use anything in the game when it's not the only weapon available? Because you can choose which weapon to use based on class, abilities, the weapon's advantages and disadvantage, etc. Have you played a top-down RPG before?

Well, if you're talking about hand gonnes, then yes. After the invention of the stock (and especially the wheellock, which enabled the rise of irregular military units), however, you see accuracy improvements snowballing. There's a reason that sharpshooters of the 16th century used firearms rather than bows. Really? Longbows, maybe, but otherwise I'd think it'd vary on the weapon. And of course, range and effective range are different. According to Word of God, we're in the wheellock era, which you'd think adventurers would prefer over matchlocks. So, arquebus/musket/pistol/petronel/hackbut being the main subtypes, hackbuts being breech-loaded.