Mark,
Re your question below:
> White refers to a cop's riot gun.
> What is this? I thought it was a pump
action
> shotgun, but it shoots
> bullets not buckshot. If this is the case, did
cops
> really shoot
> bullets into crowds of rioters as late as the
1950s
> (seems to me there
> would have been a lot more death in the civil
rights
> movement if they
> did), or did it just retain the name from an
earlier
> time?
"Riot gun" was a common term for a police shotgun.
Ocassionally you still hear it. A hotgun is an amazingly
versatile weapon. In riots, it can be used to shoot rubber
bullets, or it can have an attachment affixed to it that that
allows it to be used as a tear gas grenade launcher. I
believe in days gone by (and, as you surmise, in days that
had already gone by as early as the '50s), birdshot might be
fired into a riotous crowd to force it to disperse, which is
how police shotguns came to be referred to as "riot
guns."
Though shotguns are usually loaded with some kind of multiple
projectile buckshot, there is a single bullet, called a
rifled slug, that is designed specifically for use in a
shotgun. Since a shotgun is a smooth-bore weapon, rifled
slugs have twisty ridges cut into the side of the projectile
to give it some spin as it exits the weapon, thus
theoretically enhancing accuracy. In a regular rifle, of
course, this spin is accomplished by the rifling in the
interior of the barrel itself.
The amount of spin you actually get with a rifled slug is,
I'm told, actually rather negligible, but a shotgun loaded
with slugs, while not exactly the last word on pinpoint
accuracy, is a hellacious medium-range carbine-style
weapon.
JIM DOHERTY
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