JASON GUN SHOW EXPLODES MYTHS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000201560048-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 48
• Publication Date: March 12, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

~Sl Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201560048-9
ARiICL
OiI PAGE /7
S hppD
J.\;SH1NGIOti TIMES
1! March 1985
Jason gun show
explodemyths
s
"Do you like guns? Well, I hope so. Welcome to the
wonderful world of firearms and firepower"
- Alec Jason
Some of of us tend to forget that civil servants
aren't all pasty grey bureaucrats shoving paper
around the office swamp.
Alec Jason hasn't.
He's made a delightful film, "Deadly Weapons,"
for the bureaucrat whose day might include a gun
battle with felons or a close encounter of the worst
kind with one of the Middle East's principal exports
- the terrorist nut.
His video tape has been snapped uP_the CIA,
the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, the
California Department of Justice the U.S. Navy and
the Manila (Philhpmes) Police DePartment~among
others.
Mr. Jason swears that making this film was "hard
work."
Look at it this way. Suppose a friend called you up
and said, "Hey, I'm going out to the range this
afternoon. I think I'll machine gun a car to shreds,
blow up another one with dynamite, test every
handgun caliber for lethality, shoot several people
at point blank range to demonstrate how swell
bullet-proof vests are, and ... oh, I dunno, maybe
assault an innocent engine block with a .357 Mag-
num and try out a few of your basic assassin's tools,
like silencers and brief-case machine guns."
Would you go along to help "work"?
Well, of course you would. Especially if your
friend was the kind of guy who looks up after emp-
tying a full belt of M-60 machine gun ammo, smiles
ruefully and says, "Gee, this is post-ammo let-
down."
Sigh. Not many of us have friends with so many
neat toys, or a place to play with them. Unless, of
course, we're willing to sign up to be-e all that we
can be-e in the Are-are-mee - which is not advis-
able for those of us who already have been all we
were and are now concentrating on keeping what's
left working.
But that neat friend and his firing range are as
near as your videocassette recorder. (You can order
your very own copy of "Deadly Weapons" by send-
ing $69.95 to The Anite Co., P.O. Box 375, Pinole, CA
94564. Specify VHS or Beta format.)
For almost two hours, "Deadly Weapons" walks
through the fundamentals of small arms, demon-
strating in wonderfully vivid ways such concepts
as "stopping power," "penetration" (steady there,
you Freudians) and controlled fire - the clear
superiority for accuracy's sake of firing one round
at a time over "full auto."
In this case, "small arms" includes everything
from handguns through the .50-caliber machine
gun. The dynamite is thrown in at the end of the
film because, Mr. Jason explains, "we had a car left
we had to get rid of
"Deadly Weapons" is not an overly technical film.
Tb show the relative man-stopping ability of various
handgun calibers and types of rounds, Mr. Jason
executes plastic milk jugs filled with water,
shooting through three-quarter-inch pine board
(bone).
The effect of the round on the water in the jug
simulates "hydrostatic shock," the violent rear-
rangement of the mostly liquid human interior
when it is visited by a bullet.
The jugs literally explode when hit with some
rounds - most notably an amazing little device
known as the "Glaser Safety Slug." This means
nearly all of the energy in the bullet stayed in the
target, and there was no danger of the bullet's pass-
ing through to hit innocent bystanders.
Mr. Jason takes the reader through a dozen other
practical exercises, demonstrating which weapons
can and can't be depended on to penetrate a car
door (for example, to stop a Beirut bomber), what
happens when one fires through plate glass or a
windshield, and the merits of the.12-gauge shotgun
for serious work at close range.
Along the way, he obliterates many common
myths. Among them:
? That "silencers" really silence. They don't. At
best, they "suppress" sound, which is why experts
call them "suppressors."
? That the .357 Magnum is so powerful it can
penetrate an engine block. It can't. At eighteen
inches range, the best it can do is dust a little rust
off the block.
Mr. Jason says he's heard the last myth so often
on TV "news" shows that he thinks it's taught in
journalism school.
"If the press can't get this little bit of technical
information straight, you should think more than
twice when they discuss more complex issues like
nuclear energy or the MX missile."
Exactly so.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000201560048-9