JsARCLIGHT

Keep in mind though the only ammo available to the public for the Five seveN pistol is the NON armor piercing kind... the AP ammo is still heavily controlled. Just because they make something for a gun does not mean everyone can get it... sort of like the whole "an AR-15 is a machinegun because they make them like that" thing.

Oh well that is different then... I have only seen WXIII alone or with MiniPato on DVD.

My preferred shotty of choice will actually not let you rack it unless it has food in the tube. Edit: and if someone can name that make of shotty I'll post some pics of her! (to my immediate knowledge only three 12 gauge tube feed shotguns on the market will not allow you to rack them if they are dry)

That is what I meant, MiniPato was bundled with WXIII to get people to watch the movie/buy the movie/rent the movie. WXIII by itself is not worth the ticket/DVD/rental price.

IMHO they bundled WXIII with MiniPato for just that reason... a prize in the box of nasty tasting cereal to get people to buy it. I had no clue that plotline was from the manga... I guess then it makes more sense now, as if it was just a one-off standalone movie it is a little deceptive.

Damn, who is charging you that much for Paraord mags? Are they P14's? You can get factory Paraords for $40 at a few spots I know and MecGar repro mags for about $20. I have a slew of MecGars for a few of my pistols and they seem to work just fine.

To sum it up in a nutshell, WXIII focuses on the cast of Patlabor about as much as Macross 7 focuses on DYRL... meaning the movie is very light on actual Patlabor and very heavy on things that are not Patlabor. IMHO WXIII is a story "from the Patlabor world", not necessarily a movie about the Special Vehicle Section 2 or it's characters. Sure they make a brief cameo in the movie but the focus of the third movie are the detectives and their case. Imagine the first two Patlabor movies with almost all of the SVS2 stuff cut out.

Just a BIT? Well... there is triggerhappy and then there is uncontrollable. At least his accuracy with a labor weapon makes up for his brash willingness to use them to solve all of life's problems. If you had a pilot with Noa's piloting skills and Ota's marksmanship with the Captain's cool head you'd have one fine labor driver.

Because an 88mm artillery shell would cause massive collateral damage. After all, these are police and not military or special forces. They only need weapons capable of subduing or incapacitating the offending labors... not blow them into pieces. Almost all of the labors Special Vehicle Section 1 and 2 encounter are rogue construction units and the like... nothing armored or specially modified for combat. Moat labors are akin to today's cars, meaning their coverings are made of thin metal or plastic and the weapons the SVT units have are more than enough to take down those sort of units. If you do some looking you'd see that the military units in Patlabor have all those big guns... just not the cops. The biggest thing the police would need is the 90mm riot gun (shotgun) which is for labor "riot" interdiction. (sort of like a real riot gun the Patlabor one shoots massive "buckshot" intended to damage multiple aggressive targets while not being too powerfully damaging to the surrounding elements) Also the SVT units adhere to the same "rules" that most foot officers do... namely they are not supposed to shoot a labor that is not immediately threatening them with harm. Ota is just a bit triggerhappy.

The common misconception I'm seeing most people have here is that the 37mm round used by police and sportsman is not an actual round but rather is a special low-pressue grenade. These grenades do not use powder propellant like a normal bullet or artillery round but rather use gas pressure to propel the grenade. These 37mm grenade rounds are known as "blooper" rounds because when fired they make a distinctive "PHUNT!" noise, like someone kicking a football really hard rather than a loud CRACK that you would associate with a powder propelled bullet or shell. These 37mm police canister rounds are mainly used to shoot flares and gas, not lethal grenade rounds like their deadly military 40mm brothers. Shown here for context are two military 40mm grenades: Each of these can fit in a man's hand and are slightly smaller than a can of soda, imagine a can of soda missing about an inch from the top and about half an inch in diameter. They are quite light but very deadly to soft targets. They also come in "shotgun" rounds that let the user fire a shotgun style flechette round. But the main point is these are rifle grenades and not suited for armor piercing. Most likely what the patlabor folks had in mind were the original 37mm artillery shells These babies are large shells used in antiaircraft cannons and in a few armored vehicle mounted anti-vehicle cannons. These suckers weigh about 6 to 8 pounds each, are slightly more than a foot long and can easly penetrate most vehicle armor, outside of the heaviest tank plating. In a very large robot-sized revolver these shells would go through walls or vehicle metal, doing a nice amount of damage. If I remember the shot correctly, there is a shot in Patlabor 1 (the first movie) when Noa is on a frieght elevator headed to the Ark' command tower and she gets out and reloads her labor's revolver. The shells she holds she cradles in her arms and for all accounts they appear to be about the size shown in the second photo... keeping in mind Noa is a japanese woman of slight stature the shells she holds appear larger than they might actually be.

Gentlemen and Ladies... let me present: eBay in action. Idiots bid things up into space, others make money off of said idiots. Idiots who bid sometimes don't even read the item descriptions. How many of us here have had an auction in which people ask questions that are answered in the first two lines of the auction listing description? I consider the MPC price phenomenon on eBay to be in the same ballpark as the Ghost Canes and Hitler Death Cars of the world... fools will bid on anything.

Racking the slide on a shotgun is one of the most distinct and easily recognisable sounds in the world. Almost everyone knows that Ka-Chunk-Chunk noise when they hear it. It's also good if possible to yell out a "Dirty Harry" phrase ("I've got a 12 gauge loaded with doube oh magnum buck! This thing will cut you in half! I don't want that stain on my carpet so please leave now!") when racking the slide from behind a door to put the fear into them even more. Most criminals are cowards and usually want nothing to do with a determined homeowner with a loaded shotgun. Just remember what Opus said though, in most states your ability to defend your property and home can sometimes be quite limited.

All I can tell you about Cali law is make sure the guns you intend to own are on the DOJ "approved" list. Also make sure the apartment you rent at does not have some sort of "no guns allowed" clause in it's lease agreement. As long as your weapon is legal to own in that state and your landlord does not have some sort of restrictions in place on ownership you should be free and clear to have it in the apartment. Quick question: if you friend is too weak to cycle an automatic what makes you think the kick from a shotgun will not knock them down? I had an older middle aged woman who was reffered to me for handgun training and she also was too weak to cock the slide on most small autos. She wound up with one of those new Smith titanium jobs in if I remember right .38. She could handle it well enough but the recoil still was a tad much for her. She was a very "slight" woman with no upper body strength. I could not see her racking a shotgun in my life. I'd advise taking your friend to some gun shops and have them try out the rack on some shotties and see if they have the mustard to cycle them. Remember that shotties need to be cycled quite fast in order to not jam... then again you could always get a semiauto shotty. Edit: it should also be added that shotguns are the tank cannons of the personal weapon world. Unless you go with a 20 ga. youth model the kick on most shotties is fair to moderate. Sure they have the benefit of not really needing to "aim" at close range but most of them tend to be quite large, unwieldy things in tight spaces. Most combat shotguns are intended for breaching doorways and not defending homes.

Not only does the federal barrel length limit require 16" from breach to muzzle but the overall length cannot be less than 27"... Just by looking at the civvie P90 in that picture makes me want to get out my yardstick. It looks a tad short.

A "Squib" load could have caused that same malfunciton as squibs occasionally do not have enough "oomf" to push the bullet down the barrel and if the shooter did not realize their last shot did not escape the barrel and they pull the trigger again on a normal load that bullet with contact the other one still in the barrel... resulting in an elmer fudd.

Ah the sweet smell of malfunciton. As for what exactly caused that malfunction I'd put my guess on one of two things... either a dangerous overloaded handload in a weak casing or the first bullet lodged in the barrel just inside the forcing cone and the second struck the first and "Elmer Fudded" the cyllinder. I saw something similair happen to a Kimber 1911 once on a range... guy must have been shooting hot handloads and one had a weak case and blew up in chamber. It sent the magazine flying out the bottom of the gun and froze the entire action. Just more reason to shoot quality ammo... and always expect the unexpected.

Yes. 5.7mm ammo is flooding the country (well... the US that is) as we speak. Mostly because they mass dumped a ton of their new FN Five seveN pistols chambered in that caliber on us.

As we were speaking about bullpups and "other" type feed guns a few pages back here is a pic from Shot Show showing the soon to be made CIVILIAN legal P90 and F2000.

No budget numbers on Super Mario Brothers, but it did make over $20 mil in the US box office. If it's budget was not much higher then it would have broken even. Street Fighter the movie also has no budget numbers and made just over $33 mil in the US market. Once again, without budget numbers we don't know if it broke even or tanked. Double Dragon barely made $2 mil domestic... no matter what the budget was that was abysmal and I'll give you that one. Tomb Raider 2 had a production budget of over $90 mil and barely turned just over a $65 mil US box office take. Did not break even at the theaters but might have broke even with rentals and DVD purchases... hell, even flops like Gigli broke even thanks to rentals and DVD sales. Even that being said, $65 mil is no "failure"... Final Fantasy Spirits Within and it's initial box office loss of almost $100+ million, now THAT was a failure.

That depends on your definition of "successful"... a "successful" movie to hollywood is one that, when it is all said and done, the movie breaks even. No loss, no real profit, just breaking even. It means all the bills are paid, no one is left holding the bag and production can start on the next piece. Boffo is when the movie turns a profit above and beyond production costs. If your definition of success is the same as hollywoods then yes, several video game movies have been successful. Give me a minute and I'll pull some numbers. EDIT TO ADD: Just some numbers from some video game movies to put this in perspective... (all numbers source: "the numbers") Mortal Kombat 1 cost an est. $20 mil to make, it made over $70 mil at the box office. Lara Croft Tomb Raider cost an est. $90 mil to make and grossed well into $270 mil worldwide box office. Resident Evil 1 cost $35 mil to make at had a worldwide box office take of just under $60 mil. Resident Evil Apocalypse had a budget of $50 mil and made about a $78 mil worldwide box office take. And the new "Alone in the Dark" movie has a $20 mil budget... it will earn that back in the first two weeks of release I bet. The only real notable video game movie "flops" are Final Fantasy: Spirits within which suffered a whopping $60 mil loss worldwide and doomed Square's movie division to death... and the abysmal Wing Commander movie which had a budget of $30 mil and barely squeeked an $11 mil domestic box office take. So, by rule of the hard figures (only box office numbers mind you), Video game movies are good business for hollywood. Their successes outweigh their failures.

This might be a longshot but you might think about putting an ad in Shotgun News looking for investors or fabricators. SGN is read by just about every firearm market retailer and gun manufacturer in the US... you don't need to show much of anything in the ad, just put out a feeler. Like I said, when it comes to capital networking, networking, networking. Get in there and hang your shingle out. Someone will bite eventually.

Hmm... just how far away from a working prototype are you? Is it a money thing or a "find someone who can build the prototype" thing? Finding a gunsmith capable of building something high tech in his workshed may be a long throw. I myself know a lot of people down here that can cast metals and resins and polymers and the like but none have the ability to proof a new barrel. I can furnish you some leads to some people I know who actually make their own firearms (class II dealers mostly but one guy I know is actually the sole rights holder to the Cobray line (aka the Ingram/SWD/RPB "Mac" family) and I know he makes his own replacement parts all the time on a CNC machine. This may be a case of the old "catch 22"... you need a working prototype to prove it works so people will build it but you need someone who can build it first to make the working prototype. The actual financial cost may be a distant second to the construction and proofing of a new weapon.

The Canadian boarder has always been "our friend to the north" but at the same time a lot of things that cross that boarder really are not supposed to... but they do anyway. The whole "Grey Market" that has drawn up from Canada is impressive... all those vehicles, prescription drugs, clothes, cigarettes, you name it. Lots of stuff that is (according to uncle sam) not supposed to cross that boarder does anyway. Of course when it comes to illegal firearms they are usually already breaking the law, what is one more added to the pile? Opus is correct that when it comes to weapon design the best bet is to shop your design around to the manufacturers. If you find an interested party try to retain the rights and have them just build and distribute the weapon... using someone else's network is much better than trying to build your own. The two main downsides to that sort of agreement are that 1) usually your profit from said transaction is quite small... most companies prefer to "buy" rights rather than license products. and 2) your name will most likely be replaced with one of their choosing... your "Capt. America Gun" will become the Kimber Pro Defense or some nonsense like that. When it comes to getting things done a good spot of networking will usually pay for itself. Go to shot show with your proto and work the room, sometimes you could get a right name to follow or a lead that pans out. You never know who will overhear your pitch, see you flash that prototype or catch a whisper of your conversation to someone else. Guns are big business and people are always looking for the next "fad" (even if this is not a fad) to get behind. First in the door makes the most money after all.

Just for anyone who wants to know. American gun laws are not as restrictive as people think (or like to complain about). The real downside to Cap's situation is if he wants to export his product into the US. Two words for that: good luck. Unless he is a large corporation with money to waste and time on his hands to deal with the BATF and the Federal government getting his wares out of Canada and into the single largest firearm consumer base in the world will take some doing.

Chiming in on gun law in reguard to "manufacture", i.e. making a functioning firearm from "scratch" (meaning a weapon that has not been registered with the BATF): ... to the best of my knowledge, in all 50 states (and according to BATF law) it is 100% legal for any man or woman who is a citizen of the USA to build their own weapon for personal use with no real paperwork needed. The only downsides are that the weapon MUST conform to ALL on the books firearm laws, be ingraved with the builder's name and cannot under any circomstances be transferred to anyone else. Even if you die the weapon must either be destroyed or transfered into the custody of the BATF for disposal. They are not legal to sell, give, will or even loan to another shooter. Another serious downside to this is the safety issue... I'm not talking mechanical safeties, just plain safe design and construction. I've seen some guys make zip guns out of lengths of pipe and bedsprings before that could blow your fingers off. Building a weapon is a serious thing that requires serious skill... not just any joe sixpack with a blowtorch can make a firearm and expect it to work. And to turn out a really nice firearm you would need extensive plans/blueprints that you follow to the letter to ensure a safe funcitoning weapon... and most people with those skills are already holding a Class II permit and making weapons. That is the next level of "firearm manufacturing" are the Class licences to make and repair firearms. Contact the BATF for all forms needed to legally license yourself to make "saleable" firearms that can be sold to other people legally. ... as for the whole "venture capital" thing, nothing impresses people like protoypes, working or not. CNC or Rapidpro some mock up guns and shop them around to potential investors or other companies looking to "buy into a new market". I can name several "mom and pop" firearms makers that have cropped up in the last 5 years or so making either their own design firearms or "knock-off" designs and they appear to be making a killing. Heck, perhaps even a bank would float a loan to you if you gather enough data to support your product, the field you are entering and find a nice open minded bank willing to listen to you.