I just realized, that as a European, I never even heard an actual gunshot.
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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As an American, how do y’all know to up the intensity on your cardio then? Nothing gets the blood pumping like being out on a bike ride and hearing that crack
I live in rural Europe and I hear them when there's hunting and on my town's patron saint day.
Apparently it's a lot like what fireworks sound like
They do. In fact, guns were initially invented by modifying fireworks. Obviously some guns and some fireworks are very distinctive, but generally they sound very similar
I would assume they sound similar because they both use quantities of what is commonly referred to as "gun powder" as an accelerant. Aka "black powder, aka saltpeter+sulfur+charcoal.
It's just a highly combustible material combined with an oxidizer.... Same as per much anything we burn, just in powder form. Give it a spark and kaboom!
I'm pretty sure that's very similar in nature to TNT, though different chemicals are used in a different process. Black powder is really very simple by comparison. The big thing with TNT is that there's quite a lot of it in a single tube of the explosive. With black powder, it's simply combining the dry ingredients carefully, until thoroughly mixed, not dissimilar to how you would mix flour, sugar, and baking powder to make a cake.... Though, if your cake explodes, you probably did it wrong.
Volatile substances are fascinating!
Fun fact for you. Modern firearms haven't used black powder for a very long time, that's why when people fire rifles you don't see huge clouds of smoke
There are also many kinds of gunpowder, rifles use different powders to say shotguns or pistols. Although often times shotgun and pistol ammunition uses the same class of powder (slower burn rate iirc)
When I was in Basic Training, one guy quoted a movie constantly; and the relevant line was like "IT MAKES A DISTINCTIVE SOUND."
I'm surprised that many Europeans don't have compulsory service in their 'gap' year.
We don’t tend to have wars every checks notes 1 years.
I do occasionally hear gun shots, but it's a hunter getting s wild boar or something.
Out in the country in the UK you definitely hear them, the only reason the meme wouldn't apply here is because there would never be shooting at night so I wouldn't confuse it with fireworks, instead they start really early on both Saturday and Sunday mornings (there is a place within earshot that does clay pigeon shooting and I'm pretty sure hunting too, most weekends). I hate it.
You have never heard hunters shooting at deer?
I don't think hunting is nearly as prevalent in Europe as it is in North America, or Australia
I live in a village in Hungary and gunshots can be heard every month.
I didn't say it didn't exist. It's just that here in North America, it's actually difficult to find a place that you won't hear gunshots at all, unless you move 50 to 100 miles into the middle of nowhere in the large western states.
You have to go to the woods for that
Yeah... From NZ and realising I've never thought "is that a gunshot"?
The funniest thing is watching British footage of people using guns to commit crimes because it's almost always grandad's Webley service revolver
IIRC the audible difference is supposed to be that fireworks have more of an echoey boom because they are up in the air while gunshots are a sharper sound
Exception: firecrackers. God I hate firecrackers. Absolute PTSD nightmare.
It's definitely both.
Also "Is that shitty truck just backfiring down the road or are they doing a drive-by?
My favorite was when I woke up to what I was sure were gunshots, and called out to my roommate if he heard them. He assured me they were fireworks even though it wasn’t a holiday or anything so I went back to sleep.
Next morning I go out to walk the dog and there’s a crime scene van marking bullet holes in the building across the street from our unit. 🙃
when I forget that they do a 21-gun salute 300 yards from my house every memorial day
I don't know how people live like that, I'd be putting bulletproof glass in my windows, and reinforcing the walls with inch thick steel plates to keep from getting killed on the toilet while reading the times by a stray bullet.
Nobody has the money to do that
The cognitive dissonance over guns isn't the worst one, though -- it's the part where a traffic accident on the parkway could leave you in the hospital through no fault of your own, and bankrupt soon after; and that this could happen any time during your car-based commute, morning and night, even if you had a good third-party insurance carrier who didn't wriggle out of paying for care.
Sure and if you've got the choice you do things to prevent that like getting a modern car that's safe instead of daily driving an 80s Hyundai Excel...
Meanwhile getting shot by someone (accidently or not)... Not much you can do about it...
I'm pretty sure a body armor costs less than a new car
You'll wear body armor in your sleep? Also, even if I probably won't die from it, getting shot in the leg probably isn't fun either
... Or the head.
However unlikely, it is possible.
It's really kinda the same -- yokels going 'POW-ahhhh' a lot.
Definitely LA
I lived in NJ for a few years and I'd beg to debate that point :-D
Stayed at my wife's parents place in East LA over Christmas, yup. All night.
Both. It's both. Explosives equivalent to grenades from the niños and full auto gun fire from the adults.