Teach Me: Guns & Firearms.

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Also the military has these special guazes that speed up coagulation. For wounds to the armpit or groin (Or any area where a tourniquet is impossible and a pressure bandage cannot be secured) you pack that guaze into the wound until the bleeding stops.
 
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Triple post, but fuck it.

I thought I'd share a little about Urban Operations since I feel like I have some experience through training that you might find useful.

I won't go over tactical movements in much depth, just know that your options are: Column, Overwatch, Bounding Overwatch, and the Wedge. The wedge is probably the most versatile and is useful for moving an entire squad (or section as it's called within the army) forward. The column is useful for travel, then Overwatch is where some soldiers move ahead to a certain point while the rest of the section stays back and provides cover fire. After the soldiers who move forward are in position, they provide cover fire while the soldiers who had stayed back now catch up. Bounding over watch is essentially the same, except in bounding overwatch the soldiers who stayed back not only catch up to the forward soldiers, but pass them and find positions further ahead. It's essentially like leap frog if that makes any sense, with each group of soldiers taking turns covering fire then moving.

Roads, Fields, and other open spaces are known as Linear Danger Areas for the lack of cover they provide while moving through. Now on to urban assaults, a breaching team typically consists of four soldiers. The soldiers will line up on a wall adjacent to the door and will have some kind of 'go' singal. Then the fourth man will move up and kick in the door or open it. He will then immediately turn around and provide rear security as the rest of his team enter the room.

Doors are typically known as The Fatal Funnel, because needless to say if an enemy is expecting you then it's going to be hard as hell getting your entire team through that door unscathed. Statistically, the second man to enter the room is most likely to be shot, as the enemy should still be in some kind of shock as the first man pushes through.

So you have four soldiers, the fourth soldier opens the door and pulls rear security and the first soldier is the first to enter the room. Upon entering a room you are trained to follow the wall to either your right or left. So if the first soldier goes left, the second soldier to enter the room will go right, the third will go left, and the fourth will back into the room and keep pulling rear security (keep his eye on the door you just passed through). You're also trained to keep your eyes in your sector. So for example, if you go right, but you see a baddy to your left, you ignore him and keep your focus on your sector until your 100% positive it is clear. You have to rely on your battle-buds to do thier job and take him out. The reason for this is simple. If you take your eyes off your sector and shoot him, and if by some chance someone who had been hiding behind a couch jumps out and shoots you guess what? No one is watching your sector now. You were responsible for clearing it but instead you moved your focus across the room. Now you're down and the guy you should've been able to spot and react to is now free to wipe the rest of your team.

The army also issues a few explosive charges to assist in breaching operations, but on wide scale assaults its doubtful every team will be issued this equipment. Last year we got to run through a building with sim rounds (essentially paintballs) with pop-up targets painted to be either hostile or civilians. It was fucking fun as shit, and kind of scary too. Because once entering a room you have a fraction of a second to identify combative from civilians and make a judgement call on who to shoot.

Also a random fact, the army never engages (in most circumstances of course) in a firefight unless they have 3 to 1 numerical superiority.

When turning corners in a building you typically do something called "Cutting The Pie" which is where you swing in an arc around the corner, moving super fucking slow so that way your turning the corner fractions at a time. I don't know if I explained that well but you could probably google it.

Finally, fuck stairs. If you encounter stairs and hostile soldiers, someone is probably going to die.
 
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Is there any particular fiction (novel, film, game, et cetera) that has depicted firearms accurately? If so, which one do you think is the most accessible example? (Not everybody has easy access to firearms. Might not hurt to have a cheaper facsimile to try and have a better visual/narrative understanding.)
It may not be what you're looking for, but Quinten Tarantino's recent movies have (based on my experience) accurately portrayed what it's like for someone to get shot. In the recent Hateful Eight, the gore and effects were some of the best I've ever seen; but it leads me to an interesting point about firearms.

Bullets are fickle bitches. Sometimes they make bloody messes, and sometimes you don't even notice someone's taken one.

This works in roleplay well, because the ambiguity of how hard a bullet will hit you can be used for storytelling purposes. You wanna freak your squad out? An NPC sticks his head out from the trenches and it's summarily caved in by a machine gunner. You want to add suspense to a story? Someone takes a hit during a firefight, but doesn't notice his or her vital organs have been punctured until far after the fight had finished.

Firearms are fucking scary-- mostly 'cause of how fast and brutal they are when hitting things. Imagine a "Drama Slider," with the left side being a heavy "thump" when someone gets shot without noticing, and a solid "sploosh" on the right for when someone takes a high calibur round to the chest and proceeds to no longer have a chest.
 
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