Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've made my living writing articles for gun magazines since 1992, so obviously I was intrigued by the idea of a writer's manual for gun facts. I knew I was in trouble when I found two out-and-out errors and one seriously debatable before I was even through the Introduction. STATEMENT: "In fact, the .44 - and every other large revolver - holds a maximum of six rounds; only .22 and automatics offer the increased capacity." FACT: Okay, I note the book's 1990 publication date, and at that time this was true. However this "fact" is very out of date. Today we have 7 and 8-shot large-frame .357 Magnum revolvers, available from the factory, from companies like Taurus and Smith & Wesson. STATEMENT: "Stephen King, in Cycle of the Werewolf, drops his furry fiend with silver bullets from a nonexistent ".45 Magnum," proving once and for all that he knows more about werewolves than firearms." FACT: The .45 Winchester Magnum auto pistol cartridge was introduced in 1979. Ammunition, and guns to fire it, have been in continuous production ever since. STATEMENT: "King also plays fast and loose with his hardware in The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three. In the space of five pages, he...introduces a nonexistent "Llama .38 automatic," and discourses at length on the uncontrollable recoil of the M-16 rifle - a weapon specifically designed for minimal kick." FACT: Llama has been producing auto pistols chambered for the .38 Super cartridge since the 1930s. As for the M16, while it's true it was designed for minimal recoil, this assumes (1) it's being fired on semi-, not full-auto, and (2) a decent amount of skill on the firer's part. If I remember the scene in The Dark Tower II correctly, the M16 in question was being fired (a) on full-auto and (b) by someone with only the most casual familiarity with firearms. In such a situation it's not at all unbelievable the shooter might find the gun getting away from him. Don't get me wrong, Stephen King doesn't know jack about firearms, and rather than do his research he just fakes it, but the author of Armed & Dangerous has chosen to criticize King primarily in areas where, through sheer luck I'm sure, he got it right. And this was only in the Introduction. Out of curiosity, I flipped to the back cover to see what credentials this guy has to put himself forward as a firearms expert. Uh-oh, he's written books in The Executioner series - which have a very bad reputation among gun people for their lack of technical accuracy, vis-a-vis guns. Continuing on, we find: STATEMENT: "In spite of countless problems, Civil War rifles were more lethal than ever before, thanks to the introduction of the Minie ball...designed to expand in the grooves of a barrel on firing, the Minie ball increased effective range from 100 to 500 yards..." FACT: Actually, the Minie ball was considerably LESS accurate than the round ball that preceded it. The Minie ball was a conical projectile, solid at front, with a hollow "skirt" at the rear. When the rifle was fired, gas pressure, flowing up into the Minie ball's hollow base, pressed the thin skirt out into the rifling. Since the Minie ball lacked the structural consistency of a round ball, it wasn't as accurate. However, surprisingly, it was accurate ENOUGH. What really made the Minie ball work was that it was UNDERSIZED for the rifle's bore, so instead of having to execute the time consuming process of shoving an OVERSIZED ball down the rifle's bore with a rod after dropping the powder charge, with the same gun you could simply drop a Minie ball down the barrel on top of the powder, a far faster process. A well-trained shooter with a muzzleloader firing conventional round balls could only fire one shot per minute - the same soldier firing Minie balls could fire 12 shots per minute, a quantum leap in performance. The Minie ball didn't increase the lethality of rifles in the Civil War by increasing their range, it did it by increasing their firepower. STATEMENT: "His [Sam Colt's] Colt Model 1860, a .44 caliber cap-fired percussion piece, became the principal side arm during the [Civil] war..." FACT: No. The 1860 was the principal issue sidearm of the UNION forces, however, the number of Starrs, Remingtons, and other types of Colts easily bury the 1860 for total numbers used in the war. In fact the most popular Colt percussion revolver was the .36 caliber Model 1851. This gun was so popular among Confederate troops that after the outbreak of the war its production was continued in numerous Confederate arms factories (all in Georgia, BTW, one reason Sherman had such a hard-on for the state - that's where the Confederacy's arms production capability came from). STATEMENT: Referring on about percussion Colts, Newton says, "Regardless of their innovations, early Colts - and most other revolvers - were still muzzleloaders..." FACT: Jesus wept. Colt's Models 1851, 1860, 1861, etc. are NOT muzzleloaders. They load through the front of the cylinder. This is a basic fact about one of the most famous marque/classes of weapons in history. And that only took me up to page 12. I can only weep with pity for the writer using this book as reference material for gun facts.