From:	Gurth <gurth@******.NL>
Subject:	Re: Firearms, etc.
Date:	Sat, 7 Dec 1996 12:54:01 +0100

Sight Unseen said on 6:54/ 7 Dec 96...

> >Nope, unless you lock the action too. Otherwise you have the quite loud
> >(in some circumstances) clackety-clack of the action cycling.
>
> OK, for those of us for whom the concept of guns doesn't go much
> beyond the "Bang-bang, you're dead!" games of youth, what exactly does
> "locking the action" mean?

Self-loading weapons have lots of stuff moving around inside them when a
shot gets fired, to remove the empty casing from the gun, put an unfired
round into the chamber (or in reverse order), and generally make the gun
ready to fire again. Locking the action means all this won't happen,
because the firer applies a catch that prevents the whole lot from moving.
As a result, there is very little mechanical noise: the clacks of pieces
of metal hitting other pieces of metal is elminated, so the weapon is very
hard to hear even at close range.

Naturally, there's no point in doing this unless you also prevent the
round itself from making noise (by means of sound suppresser and possibly
silenced ammo).

--
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-> NERPS Project Leader & Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
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