[ Ask Ian: Guns for the Elbonian Resistance ... ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another "Ask Ian" Q&A on Forgotten Weapons.
I'm Ian, and today's question is Elbonian themed, so I broke out the Elbonia hoodie.
This comes from Jon on Patreon, who says,
"Elbonia has been occupied by an enemy force.
Do you sabotage their resistance by air dropping them
Liberator pistols or Cobray Terminator shotguns?"
That's a good question, and you're clearly quite the sadist Jon,
those are both really pretty awful guns.
So if you're not familiar with Elbonia, it's a theme that
started off here and became a running thing on both Forgotten Weapons
and a couple of other channels, which is really cool.
And the core concept is how can you present something as very good, that is actually very bad.
So, like there can be a lot to this sort of question, it's not just a goofy "what if".
So when it comes to resistance forces, the two guns that we're considering here
would be the Liberator, which is a single-shot compact pistol.
And the Terminator, which is a single-shot largish shotgun.
That by the way, is an example for later in this discussion, that's not a Terminator.
... Well, the Liberator is pretty reliable, it's totally reliable frankly.
I've never actually had a Liberator misfire on me, they're just awful to shoot.
The Terminator is in my experience unreliable,
but it might not be as bad as people are led to believe.
So I filmed a video on the Terminator quite a while back,
and when I did I was using a camera that really limited the sound of gunshots.
Now the Terminator is an open-bolt single shot.
So when you pull the trigger the [barrel] is going to slam [backward],
chamber the round and fire it.
But it makes a big noise just closing the bolt,
like you would get from dropping the bolt on any other large firearm.
And the difference in sound between the bolt slamming and then failing to fire,
and the gun actually firing in that video of mine is pretty hard to discern.
So I think there may be some people out there that think that the thing literally never fired.
It did. As I recall, it ran about half of the time, maybe two thirds of the time.
So I want to make sure that's a bit clear: the Terminator was unreliable, but not 100% so.
So, when it comes to these guns for a resistance organisation, "guerrillas in the forest",
I think the pistol is the substantially more effective firearm, because largely it's concealable.
... Well it's concealable, and it's a pistol cartridge.
The problem with a shotgun is most of the time ... in this sort of situation,
your guys are probably going to end up with bird shot to use in it,
because that's the most commonly available type of shotgun ammunition.
And birdshot's not particularly effective as an anti-personnel thing.
Talk to the guy that Rumsfeld shot in the face with a load of birdshot, who came away from it OK.
Lots of people get shot with birdshot by the way, go to the hospital,
spend a while getting birdshot picked out of them, and then walk away just fine.
So if I were in a resistance organisation I would rather have the pistol.
It's going to be, generally speaking with the available ammo, more powerful.
It's also something that I can easily conceal. Which means you can use it for its original purpose,
which is basically sneak up on the enemy soldier, shoot them, and take their proper real gun.
Now when it comes to the question of specifically sabotaging Elbonia
there's a second reason that I would go for the pistol.
And that's because it's a lot easier to make a shotgun
than it is to make something like a Liberator.
And that's why I have this guy here, this is my Richardson Guerrilla gun.
Which was literally made as a commercial copy to sell
of a tube slam-fire shotgun, developed and manufactured in the Philippines
by a US Navy lieutenant who spent two years fighting with the Philippine guerrillas.
So I mean this thing is just a ... piece of pipe
that happens to be shotgun 12 gauge size and a slightly larger piece of pipe that holds it.
And you just put a shell there, slam them together, and it fires.
The Elbonian resistance can build this.
So if I send them Terminators, I'm sending them something that's pretty terrible
and is also not really any better than something they can build themselves.
If I were to send them Liberator pistols I'd be giving them
a capability that they're going to have a harder time creating for themselves.
So Jon, that is my answer to the question:
I would keep the Liberator for myself, and I would sabotage the Elbonian resistance
by dropping them crate load upon crate load of Cobray Terminators.
Hopefully that was a fun one.
We have some other Elbonia videos in the backlog and answers to Q&A questions.
So I'll link to those down in the description text below if you want to dig them out.
Thanks for watching. If you'd like to have your own question answered in video format like this,
head on over to Utreon or Patreon, sign up to help support Forgotten Weapons.
And I have threads running on both of those platforms each month
soliciting Q&A questions for videos like this.
Thanks for watching.