In article , OzOne wrote:
On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 14:11:02 +1000, Peter Wiley
scribbled thusly:
In article , OzOne wrote:
On 3 Jun 2004 15:51:41 -0700, (Joe) scribbled
thusly:
. No one will raid my boat, unless they do it
over my dead body. .
Joe
That indeed will be the most likely scenario.
I do like the picture of you as John Wayne taking on a 20 or so
equally or better armed men.
Assumption on your part, Oz. 20 poorly armed men won't have any
problems taking over an unarmed vessel if they can catch it. Different
scenario if they're tackling a vessel where one or more people have a
good heavy calibre rifle and the skill/will to use it. I don't have any
real doubts as to my ability to seriously ruin someone's day if I had a
7.62 Nato and all they had was AK-47 type rifles or shotguns. Esp if I
still had some of the tracer ammo we used to use when spotlighting
years ago.
If they have better arms and numbers, you're toast. Best scenario is to
be somewhere else. That's my plan.
Now as to the wisdom, appropriateness and grit to do it - that's
another matter entirely and most people wouldn't, likely including me.
Problem as I see it is that by the time you've decided you're in deep
enough **** to start shooting, it's probably too late to do any good.
OTOH I'd have no qualms about putting a round over the wheelhouse if I
thought it necessary. No person/boat with innocent intent is going to
keep chasing you after that unless they're officials in which case
you're gonna get a personal introduction to their jail system. Better
hope it's a *lot* better than the USA one.
PDW
Sure, an assumption, but the reports of various incidents worldwide
seem to indicate that the majority of pirates are very heavily armed.
Reports also seem to indicate that resistance quite often results in
the most dire of circumstances for those involved.
I recall an acquaintance of mine who was a piracy victim. He was armed
but decided that he would not resist as it was evident that the
pirates were much better equipped. They boarded and looted the vessel.
He protested when one of the pirates groped a woman passenger and
promptly lost his forearm to a machete. He was tossed overboard and
was lucky enough to grab a trailing line, stem the blood flow and
reboard after they had left.
Philippines?
He still sails but now states taht he will never show any sign of non
compliance if in the same situation..and that even showing a weapon
would have resulted in almost certain death.
Yeah, look, I don't disagree. If you resist, you'd better win because
if you shoot a couple and then lose, you & everyone else is probably
going to get killed. It's a very high risk strategy. Like firing a
warning shot - pointless unless the next one is aimed at the wheelhouse
and the one after at the helmsman.
I was on a Taiwanese fishing boat back in the 80's which had got held
up by Indonesian pirates on the way down to the Australian Fishing
Zone. They had a line of 50 cal holes through the wheelhouse because
they didn't stop fast enough. They reckoned the Indonesian Navy did it
- 'one day Navy, next day pirates' and I don't doubt that was possible
too. There's nothing anyone on a small boat can do against a 50 cal (or
even a 30 cal) machine gun.
As I said my strategy is to be somewhere else.
PDW
If the bad guys have heavy automatic weapons, there's little point in
firing a rifle at them.