Firearms Technology Research Articles

Review of The Security Check Process at The Passenger Security Checkpoint (PSCP) to Improve Flight Security at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport

Threats to aviation security have increased, firearms technology has developedrapidly, including the existence of firearms using a magazine in which there are 4 (four) rounds of ammunition and firearms with revolver type with titanium material which is light, strong and can store 5 (five) rounds of ammunition so that it can shoot with a certain amount of ammunition contained in it. In addition to thedevelopment of firearms, there are also sharp weapons that are not made of metal (non-metallic knife) where the developmentof this sharp weapon is in stark contrast to the technology of security equipment used at terminal 3 Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, the majority of which still use metal detectors. With the development of weapons technology, both firearms and sharp weapons, it is this equipment, procedures and capabilities of aviation security personnel, especially at Terminal 3 of Soekarno- Hatta Airport, that can be improved to anticipate technologicaldevelopments in aviation crimes, so that aviation security and safety is the goal. in aviationin Indonesia can be realized. The Ministry of Transportation seeks to assist every airport operator in determining standards for each personel, equipment and procedures to anticipate increasing aviation security threats through the Regulation of the Minister of Transportation of the Republic of Indonesia Number PM 28 of 2021 concerning the National Aviation Security Education and Training Program.

Guns of the Khoe-San: the firearms used by indigenes for the first two hundred years of colonisation at the Cape

The Cape Khoe-San experienced a significant change in weapons technology when Europeans began colonising the Cape in the seventeenth century. Khoe-San first adapted their military tactics to counter the firearms used by Dutch settlers in conflicts over land possession. With colonisation, many Khoe-San found themselves being incorporated into the colony as hunting and military, both formal and informal, assistants. Deemed sufficiently colonised by the Europeans, there was now an effort to arm Khoe-San with guns. The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw great developments in firearm technology. In tracking these developments alongside historical accounts of Khoe-San with firearms, it is noticed that by the first half of the nineteenth century, Khoe-San fighting for the colony were being supplied with the most ideal firearms for colonial warfare in the Cape. This was a marked contrast to the policies of the seventeenth century which sought to keep firearms out of indigenous hands.

Validation of the use of firearms for euthanising stranded cetaceans

Efforts to euthanise stranded cetaceans remain highly variable in their outcomes, with few field tested operational procedures available. This study sought to validate the efficacy of using modern firearms technology to euthanise small (<6m length) stranded cetaceans. Post-mortem evidence was gathered from the standardised shooting of cetacean cadavers (n = 10), representing six species, using .30 caliber (7.62mm) firearms and blunt solid copper-alloy non-deforming projectiles, in southwestern Australia. The six species studied were Risso’s dolphin, common dolphin, bottlenosed dolphin, pygmy sperm whale, Cuvier’s beaked whale, and humpback whale. Post-mortem data revealed that 100% of bullet wound tracts fully penetrated the skulls of shot animals, with associated indirect skull fracturing, secondary bone missiles and brain parenchyma laceration. The results suggest that appropriate firearms technology is fully capable of inducing instantaneous fatal pathology to the central nervous system of these species. In comparison to alternative methods for the euthanasia of stranded cetaceans, the use of firearms is associated with superior animal welfare outcomes, public safety levels and accessibility. This paper provides a template for the safe, humane and repeatable use of this technique to euthanise <6m length stranded cetaceans.

Gunshot Wounds: Ballistics, Pathology, and Treatment Recommendations, with a Focus on Retained Bullets.

As the epidemic of gunshot injuries and firearm fatalities continues to proliferate in the United States, knowledge regarding gunshot wound (GSW) injury and management is increasingly relevant to health-care providers. Unfortunately, existing guidelines are largely outdated, written in a time that high-velocity weapons and deforming bullets were chiefly restricted to military use. Advances in firearm technology and increased accessibility of military grade firearms to civilians has exacerbated the nature of domestic GSW injury and complicated clinical decision-making, as these weapons are associated with increased tissue damage and often result in retained bullets. Currently, there is a lack of literature addressing recent advances in the field of projectile-related trauma, specifically injuries with retained bullets. This review aims to aggregate the available yet dispersed findings regarding ballistics, GSW etiology, and treatment, particularly for cases involving retained projectiles.

Jenks carbines in the Royal Armouries collection

Among the firearms in the extensive Royal Armouries collection are three unusual carbines based on the patent of William Jenks. The story of how they entered the Armouries collection highlights an important time in the development of firearms technology. The tale of these three carbines is the story of two men, William Jenks and Doctor Alexander Jones.

Regulating 3D-Printed Guns PostHeller: Why Two Steps Are Better Than One.

This article describes why a constitutional test that relies exclusively on history and tradition for deciding modern firearm regulations is woefully inadequate when applied to modern technologies. It explains the unique advancements in firearm technology - specifically, ghost guns - that challenge the viability of a purely historical test, even if legal scholars or judges attempt to reason by analogy. This article argues that the prevailing, two-step approach, which incorporates both history and tradition, and requires a judicial examination of the purposes and methods supporting a challenged firearm regulation, should apply nationwide. That a dissenting faction of conservative judges seeks to ignore the prevailing approach presents a potentially dangerous path for Second Amendment jurisprudence. This article draws from certain historical gun laws to illustrate the difficult legwork that analogies must do under a purely historical test. It uses the advent of ghost guns as a case study to offer guidance for judges in their rulemaking practices regarding Second Amendment cases.

Revisionist History? Responding to Gun Violence Under Historical Limitations.

In the D.C. Circuit case Heller v. District of Columbia (Heller II), Judge Kavanaugh wrote that “Heller and McDonald leave little doubt that courts are to assess gun bans and regulations based on text, history, and tradition, not by a balancing test such as strict or intermediate scrutiny.” Now Justice Kavanaugh, will he find support on the highest court for what was then a dissenting view? Chief Justice Roberts, during oral arguments for Heller I, asked “Isn’t it enough to…look at the various regulations that were available at the time…and determine how these—how this restriction and the scope of this right looks in relation to those?” Justice Thomas, in cert denial dissents for recent Second Amendment cases, has referenced the importance of history in determining what the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect. There is an open question as to what role history should play in evaluating gun control regulations and, given present circuit splits, it is only a matter of time before this debate finds its way to the highest court. Absent in these debates on history, and Second Amendment discussions more generally, is police power doctrine in the area of public health. The judiciary must recognize that police power enables the state to recognize the changes in firearm technology and the continued growth of gun violence plaguing this country. Looking to relevant public health law cases, particularly Jacobson v. Massachusetts, helps to illustrate that history has not, and cannot, be the sole focus in determining the scope of the state’s ability to tackle public health problems, including gun violence.

The Lords of Muskets

When firearms first arrived on the island of Madagascar at the beginning of the 16th century, they soon became a very much sought-after commodity for the local population. This contribution traces for the first time the history of firearm technology on Madagascar during precolonial times, until the French colonization in 1896, in a systematic perspective. A case study on the use of firearms around 1710 shows that firearms became integrated into an already long-established logic of intensive war. On the political level, the firearms gave rise to a new form of chieftaincy that has endured for more than three centuries: the “lords of muskets.”

The Right to Arms in Nineteenth Century Colorado

This Article examines the Colorado right to keep and bear arms, in the nineteenth century. Part I describes one the arms of early Coloradans, including Indians, mountain men, and gold rush immigrants. Part I also covers the dramatic improvements in firearms technology that took place in the quarter-century before 1876. Part I then explains some of the conditions that made Colorado’s arms culture different from neighboring territories. Because settlers were remote from any functioning government, they initially had to make their own governments. They created a Colorado tradition of popular self-government that still thrives today. Collectively, the settlers used their arms to defend Colorado from Confederate aggression during the Civil War. Soon after, war with the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes wiped out trade routes from the states, leaving Coloradans near starvation. The settlers survived because they had the arms to fight for survival. The pre-statehood period is one reason the 1876 Colorado Constitution affirms the importance of the individual right to arms for personal defense and for collective defense. Finally, Part I surveys some of the leading firearms businesses of early Colorado — businesses that helped make Denver the “emporium” of the Rocky Mountains. Part II examines the structure of the Colorado Constitution. It begins with the 1875-76 Colorado Convention. It then examines structure of the Colorado Constitution that relate to the right to arms, including the principles of government at the beginning of the Constitution: that inherent rights precede government; that the people have the right to alter the government; and that fundamental human rights, including self-defense, are inalienable. Part III analyzes the arms rights language chosen by the Convention and then adopted by the people. Each phrase in Colorado provision is examined, showing how Colorado sometimes followed or differed from other states. Coloradans chose the strongest language available to secure the right to arms. Immigrant-friendly, Colorado specified that the right belongs to every “person,” not solely to the “citizen.” Personal defense and collective defense were both of fundamental importance, and each was expressly included in the constitutional right. The most important means of collective self-defense are the state militia (article XVII) and the posse comitatus of able-bodied males, who may be summoned by elected County Sheriffs or other appropriate officials (article XIV). Notwithstanding the broad general language, Coloradans did favor one type of gun control — restricting the concealed carrying of arms. That was the only gun control expressly authorized by the constitutional text, which removed concealed carry from the right to bear arms. Part IV examines several interpretive issues. First, what types of arms are implicated by the text of the Colorado guarantee? Second, should this understanding by modified by an idea in the personal notes of Territorial Justice E.T. Wells, a distinguished Colorado Founder? Third, how did arms change in the years following the 1876 Colorado Constitution, and did the changes affect Coloradans’ views of what types of arms laws were permissible? Finally, what types of gun control laws were enacted in Colorado in the nineteenth century?

From Goose Drops to Spec Ops: A Pinfire Shotgun Shell from Fort York

In 2011, during a salvage excavation at the Fort York National Historic Site, Archaeological Services Inc. (ASI) recovered a pinfire shotgun shell cartridge. This unique small find tells a story of the ebb and flow of the firearms technology used by armed forces around the world. It also shows how the pinfire shotgun was likely brought to Fort York in response to the Trent Affair. This international incident during the American Civil War risked a return to hostilities between Britain and the United States and sparked a defensive rearmament across the colony of Canada. This artifact also highlights the military evolution of the shotgun from a hunting tool brought to the battlefield by ragtag militia, to cutting edge weaponry used by military special forces around the world.

Early Modern Military Architecture in the Ottoman Empire

Strongholds with firearms remained significant in the Ottoman frontier from the fifteenth until the nineteenth century. The employment of firearms technology resulted in military strongholds at strategic passages. That Sultan Mehmed II employed large cannons effectively during the siege of Constantinople was reported by many eyewitnesses. Sultan personally inspected firearms, from the foundry and ballistic calculations, to topographic position and related administration. There existed various European experts and craftsmen in the Ottoman palace who also contributed to the Ottomans’ use of cannons. Fortifications in the third quarter of the fifteenth century were equipped with cannons and other firearms, and architecture as well was created according to the new technology. This article discusses how Kilid-ul Bahir and other fortifications arrived at their unique geometry in the fifteenth century by taking historical accounts and illustrations as documentary evidence. It shows that fifteenth-century Ottoman military architecture follows a clear path where logical translation from firearms technology to the architecture can be observed.

Firearms and Military Adaptation: The Ottomans and the European Military Revolution, 1450–1800

The mass adoption of firearms as a tool of warfare dramatically changed the nature of military conflict from the mid fifteenth century onward, prompting historians of early modern Europe to describe the changes as a “gunpowder revolution” or “Military Revolution”—a thesis that provoked a spirited scholarly debate in the 1990s. Although the original concept, as set forth by Michael Roberts in 1955, did not single out firearms technology, in the influential elaboration of the thesis by Geoffrey Parker (1988), firearms and artillery fortifications ( trace italienne , which were developed in response to artillery firepower) became the main building blocks of the thesis. According to the thesis, the new fortresses required much larger armies to successfully besiege them, leading to a dramatic increase in the size of European armies. To build and main-tain artillery fortifications, large artillery trains, and ever-larger armies in turn required a more centralized government. Thus, the introduction of firearms led to the rise of centralized states in Europe—and, on a global scale, to the “rise of the West.”

Warfare on the Deccan Plateau, 1450–1600: A Military Revolution in Early Modern India?

According to conventional understandings of the Military Revolution, the introduction of firearms in early modern European warfare yielded wide-ranging consequences that were by no means confined to the realm of military affairs. This essay examines the earliest known introduction of firearms technology in India, with a view to evaluating how its consequences there compared or contrasted with those claimed to have occurred in early modern Europe. We further ask: Why did cannon appear in the dry, upland plateau of peninsular India, Known as the Deccan, before anywhere else in India? Within the Deccan, how can we explain the different responses to the advent of gunpowder technologies? What effects did new military technologies have on the Deccan’s architectural landscape, and on its society at large?

A Consideration of a Series of X-rays of Asian Pivoted Matchlock Mechanisms

A series of x-rays of pivoted matchlock mechanisms from across Asia, ranging from the 17th to the 19th centuries, is examined to assess whether studying the internal components of these lock mechanisms can help with the classification of weaponry and further our understanding of how firearms technology was disseminated within Asia. Some discernible pattern of regional variation indicates that many Asian pivoted matchlocks may have progressed beyond the Turkish lock popularised in the 16th and 17th centuries; such developments may offer at least a partial explanation for why matchlocks remained in use as viable weapons until the 19th century in areas such as Arabia and India. Possibilities for establishing a broad typological classification of matchlock mechanisms are explored.

An Early Industrial Application for Malleable Platinum

For a period in the early nineteenth century, when malleable platinum was first available commercially, the high temperature and corrosion resistant properties of the metal were utilised for the manufacture of the touch-holes and pans of flintlock pistols, guns and rifles by English gunmakers, who also used it for some simple decorative purposes. Advances in firearms technology resulted in the effective disappearance of this application round about 1820, although by then platinum was used in various forms of percussion gun. This article considers some aspects of the flintlock use, including the claim made by Joseph Manton that he was the inventor of platinum touch-holes.