Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Water jug tests

Call it what you will but when flesh and bone are accelerated beyond the limits of their elasticity, permanent damage occurs - just as happened with the sawhorse and the plastic jugs.

Formidilosis is exactly right. This is test is useless.

That's what they are. Tools are used to make a living. JJ and Phil can legitimately call guns tools. For me a hoe is a toy I use in my garden. A farmer might call it a tool.

Is a man's entertainment useless? If that's the case hunting is useless.

Why??? I'm surprised anyone who purports to have been around guns for any length of time would ask that question. The answer is very simple, and very basic:

Guns are not toys.

I spend a few evenings each month explaining this to 8 and 10 year-olds. They all get it.

I prefer to end the statement "guns are not toys" with a period. Not a "comma, however."

It is when it's passed off as a test that validates something.
I could care less if CH shoots water jugs, but let's be honest what it is. Screwing around and nothing else.

So a hoe is the same as a gun? If you come to my garden and I point my hoe at you and you can't tell whether it's loaded or not, would that be OK with you?

Get over yourself.

I've often admitted that water jugs are not flesh and blood and that the results will vary depending on the target medium, and I've done so again in this thread. That fact, however, does not invalidate the results. How the resulting data is used may be appropriate or inappropriate, just as any person could choose a sledge hammer to roof a house or a strip dragster for daily commuting.

It is apparent you are neither an engineer or a scientist or you would know that the use of proxies for testing is valid and very common. The reasons for using proxies are many but usually include availability, practicality, repeatability and cost - the same reasons I choose water jugs and other materials for testing as opposed to flesh and blood. Proxies have been used since cave men first picked up a rock and determined by smashing something with it that the rock would make a good weapon. If scientists and engineers were unable to use proxies in their investigations we would live in a very different world - one where our knowledge of the world around us, be it in the realm of sub-nuclear, astrophysical, medical or whatever, would be greatly diminished. Mankind might, in fact, still be living in caves.

Ballistic gelatin might be a better medium for collecting information but it fails the availability, practicality and cost tests for my use. And, frankly, while the results (such as penetration) might be to a different scale, the relative results are not all that much different from those obtained using water. Bullets with high penetration or weight retention in one tend to have the same in the other, etc.

I don't begin to claim my tests are very scientific - they are more for fun than anything else and rarely produce unexpected results. Being an engineer though, I do apply to various degrees some of the same methods I apply in my work. This includes using the 'Scientific Method' whereby I formulate a question, come up with an educated guess (hypothesis), perform the test, collect and analyze the results and come up with a general conclusion. What I have found over and over is that while the results may not be identical to those obtained in flesh and blood testing, there is, as expected, a great deal of correlation.

For example, bullets which have great expansion but poor penetration in animals often perform the same in water jugs. Bullets which will travel end-to-end in mule deer tend to penetrate more water jugs than bullets that can't penetrate half that amount in flesh and blood. Non-expanding wide-meplat hardcast bullets are known for their penetration through flesh and blood at relatively low velocities and this behavior is replicated in water jugs. Increase the velocity and penetration decreases in both mediums. Bullets that display high weight retention when recovered from animals tend to have high weight retention when recovered from water jugs as well. The similarities between water jug and flesh and blood results go on and on and on...

Here are some of the results from my testing. Sorry if the formatting sux, this is a cut/paste from Excel. If anyone is really interested I can send them the spreadsheet.

[Edited to remove spreadsheet as it mage this page hard to read.]

Need a magnifying glass too read the second page.. might be a good thing this thread will now die and be 20 pages back by tomorrow afternoon

Would you point a gun at someone when you didn't intend to use it, loaded or not?

Merriam-Wesbster provides this as one definition of a 'toy'"



Your more restrictive definition is not the only one. Being a 'tool' and a 'toy' are not mutually exclusive and firearms can be both at the same time.

Tools and toys are often very dangerous when used improperly or without safety precautions, whether they are firearms or something else. The problem is not when people derive enjoyment and entertainment using a firearm but when safety precautions are ignored.

You have noticed, perhaps, that ignoring safety precautions is not restricted to one one class of firearms users and that a lot or law enforcement people have shot themselves with their tool?

You can mince words, or parse it any way you like. Hell, you and Ringman can even use your decoder rings to send each other secret messages.

A gun is still not a toy. Period. Anyone who tries to make the case that a gun is a toy is an idiot.




Of course I wouldn't, thanks for making my point. Pointing a toy or a hoe at someone has no consequences, hence, they are not the same as a gun.

I can't believe we're even having this conversation.

There is a reason I offered to send the spreadsheet to interested parties.

smokepole,



Then why are you?

To correct a couple of morons who want to call guns "toys."

Anyone who fails to recognize that a firearm can be a toy is an idiot. Most of mine serve little purpose but to provide enjoyment and entertainment, one of the primary definitions of being a toy. That doesn't mean they aren't dangerous if misused.






If I had to bet, I'd bet that people have been killed with hoes and toys of various types. Granted, using a firearm is easier. Is a baseball bat a toy or an instrument of murder? Been more than one person killed with them.

What something is depends on how and why it is being used.

Are paintball guns toys? I see them used for all kinds of games, yet serious injury or death can occur if misused.

Remember those famous toys.......Yard Jarts?

They were also toys that 'could-be' dangerous.



Perhaps smokepole was top-lopped by a Yard Jart and wants to dictate safety standards for all toys now.

Preserved for posterity.

You can't make this stuff up.

Or perhaps I just object to idiots like you calling guns toys and comparing them to yard darts. Or hoes, or baseball bats.

Keep digging, this is getting good now.