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1. Dogmatics of the Gun Religion
Just as I thought that the ages old argumentative style of “discussing” (with more cussing than discourse) of what it is that kills an animal when it is shot with a rifle has been forgiven and forgotten, when a new dogmatic approach and new argumentative beliefs that I have not heard of before come to the surface. We can be thankful for small blessings though: it finally seems that at least the myth of “hydrostatic shock” has had a quiet, unattended burial. Having said that - one may never know how the resurrection of myths can be awakened within the minds of the believers in the various dogmatics of the gun religion.
In physics – exactly like in the religious-cultural world of human influence (control) over the minds of other humans - the style is that “if you do not believe WHAT I believe about MY perceptions, and if you do not believe in those perceptions exactly HOW I believe in them, then I need to cast you out with a number of baseless terms and arguments. ‘Understanding’ and ‘facts’ have no place in my beliefs - so I shall oppose your lecture by re-imagining ages-old laws of physics and re-state them as if they were facts. I can not allow you to confuse me and my gun religion beliefs with real facts”.
Recently I read such a to and fro argument between a proponent of the kinetic energy myth and a proponent of the half-truth momentum argument – and both sides transgressed an important law of physical facts: You are allowed to have your own beliefs and opinions but you are not allowed to use your biased, maybe incomplete understanding of physics (or medical, or geography, or climate or whatever) principles to write a new dictionary for known principles and terminology and words by re-imagining their definitions and meanings.
Over time I have come to understand why silly arguments about this issue have developed and evolved into circular references, analogous to: “we built this high tower to put a light on top of it so that pilots can see the light and do not fly into the tower at night”. The bottom-line reason for most of the silly arguments of what actually kills an animal when it is shot is that one, and often both of the sides do not understand the properties of a vector quantity and that of a scalar quantity. If the reader who has an in depth knowledge of the qualities and abilities and non-abilities of vector and scalar quantities are confronted by an argumentative individual who does not have that foundational understanding then terminate the debate immediately and buy him a beer and talk about pretty sunsets or whatever.
Because it is aimed at hunting in South Africa the mission of this blog is not to be a class for grade 10 physics - but we may be excused if we touch on those physics concepts that are too interesting to be ignored due to their relativity to hunting. It may even inspire readers to go back and study school physics. At least it may inspire them to at least understand that there is a new, false dictionary in the gun media. It contains words that have immoveable meanings in physics but which have been adopted into the gun religion narrative at a very simplistic (at best) or mostly incorrect level of application. All with incorrect meanings. A few come immediately to mind: ‘energy’ / kinetic energy / ‘transferring energy’ / momentum / ‘harmonics’ / ‘over-stabilised’ / ‘killing power’ / ‘flat shootin’ / ‘oomph’ (uggh..) / ‘snap shootin’ in the brush’ / ‘brush busting caliber’ / ‘threading’ a bullet through the brush / ‘it exceeds its paper ballistics’ / ‘hydrostatic shock’ / ‘ felt recoil’ / ‘long distance hunting’, etc. (sure – if you come from Montana to hunt with me in South Africa that IS long distance hunting).
In the posts following this introduction the very basics of what kills an animal will be presented in order to hopefully be sufficiently toxic to kill one or two more misconceptions – particularly the mythical energy dogma which some followers of the gun religion so passionately believe in. First off, please bear with the next post as it consists of some very boring explanations - but which is stuff that needs to be said and understood before we examine the killing mechanisms.