The Wandering Minstrel

Posted by Minstrel on 28 Feb 2010

I was looking for a miniature gun and this image of a gun-shaped computer mouse came up in the search results. I thought it was kind of funny.

I found what I was looking for, though, in a site called mouseguns.com. There, you can find a link to a catalog of diminutive weapons. The guns are listed with details as to their attributes:

Lethality
Volume
Manufacturer
Model
Caliber
Capacity
Type
Action
Length
Height
Width
Weight

According to the website, “Lethality” is derived from capacity and power:

Lethality = log (capacity) * power

I had not seen a lethality index before, but I found it very intriguing. A table on the page lists ammunition power from 1 for .22 short to 14 for 12 gauge. I attempted to work up lethality for a couple of our favorite guns, but ran into problems when I tried the above equation and got different results. I could get into the same order of magnitude by substituting natural log (initially assumed log base 10) but the results are still off.

Example: The listing for a Glock 26 lethality is 32.26; when using natural log, I calculate 21.58. The capacity is 11 rounds (10+1) and the power listed in the table for 9mm is 9.

Ln(11) = 2.397 * 9 = 21.58

The error between my calculation and that listed is off by about 30 percent. I may try and email the author of the table to see where I’m going wrong (or where he did). I’ll post any findings if and when I get feedback.

I saw an abstract of a study that listed body armor threat level for various firearms, but was not interested in paying to see it. Has anyone else seen a firearms lethality index?

At any rate, I would be inclined to change “Lethality Index” to “Self Defense Potential Index” when it comes to scoring firearms with regard to caliber and capacity. I would also score the projectile type (HP vs. ball, shot vs. slug).

4 Responses to “Mouse Gun”

Linoge on 28 Feb 2010 at 1921 #

The gentleman running that webpage (a priest, by way of random trivia) is a very stand-up individual, and very active on the TGO forums… he even used to link to a spreadsheet I put together when looking for a carry piece (not sure if he still does - the webpage format seems to have changed slightly).

In any case, he is very responsive to feedback, and if there are errors, something tells me he will be eager to correct them - to say he is enthusiastic about mouseguns would be putting it mildly.

That said, I would point out that there is a difference between “log” and “ln”. Granted, if I use the normal “log”, the math does not work out either, but just saying.

Minstrel on 28 Feb 2010 at 1950 #

I initially assumed that “LOG” meant log to the base 10 since that was the notation used in his equation. I only tried natural log (log to the base ‘e’) when the numbers weren’t close.

It seems to me that ‘e’ could influence the effects of a linear progression when the more rounds you have your chances improve in a non-linear manner.

Thanks for the information on the author. I believe the author of the list at http://www.smallestguns.com/ may be a different person than the author of http://www.mouseguns.com/. I’ll check it out.

Linoge on 01 Mar 2010 at 1816 #

Whoops, sorry about the webpage shift. Cannot say as though I know much about Smallest Guns, but Mouse Guns is a good place :).

And… yeah… ln seems like it would do peculiar things to the equation. Oh well - any metric is potentially better than no metric.

Minstrel on 01 Mar 2010 at 1832 #

The Better Half and I were discussing “lethality” earlier - we decided that there must be other factors besides power and quantity - like shooter proficiency, target environment and a bunch of other things that come to mind.

But power and quantity does seem to address basic “lethality capability” of a firearm.

Interesting stuff to think about.