crashtd said:
carrying a firearm in the trunk of a motorcycle is the most irresponsible thing i've ever heard of in my entire life.
Do you mean this as in "it should be carried on your person" or "having a firearm is irresponsible"? If you think that carrying a firearm in general is irresponsible, you have not had enough learning experiences. Carrying a firearm does not mean that you fully intend on using it. It is more of a deterrant than anything. THere are people out there that use firearms to commit crimes, and the ONLY way to protect yourself from being a statistic is to level the playing field and take away their advantage. If everyone had to carry a weapon, I gaurantee the crime rate would drastically drop. Who's gonna rob you if they know you have a gun? Are they going to take the chance? Most likely, no. Are you going to have to shoot at them? Probably not. There are many other instances that could come up that you may need a firearm. Yes, you can be irresponsible with a firearm, but I don't believe that having one in your trunk is by itself irresponsible.
As for rounds cooking off in the trunk area.......
It is going to be different for every gun, but the standard is going to be the temperature of the gunpowder in the round itself. The gunpower will have to reach a specific temperature in order to cook off. This happens in guns because the chamber/ barrel absorb the heat of the discharges, and then transmits that heat back to the round sitting in the chamber. It takes time for the heat to transfer to the round casing, and then more time for that to transfer powder. This is all a "conductive" heat transfer, meaning the parts are touching, which transfers the heat faster than "convective" heat transfer, (EDIT: it is probably more radiated heat than convective now that I think about it) which is what has to happen to the rounds in the trunk. The heat from the exhaust will have to heat the air between it and the trunk, than that air has to heat the trunk, and if you have the magazine seperate from the gun, the heat has to transfer from the bottom of the trunk to the magazine, then from the sides of the magazine to the individual rounds. Note that in the magazine, the rounds barely have any surface area touching the sides of it, as opposed to a round cooking off in a barrel, where the entire circumference of the round is touching the hot surfaces. If you have the magazine loaded, then that's even more material the heat has to get through to reach the rounds. With all this heat transfer, I'd say it's about impossible to have a round cookoff in the trunk due to the heat from the exhaust or engine. If anyone was still weary of it, a thin layer of any kind of insulating material on the bottom of the inside of the trunk would make it less likely.
Just so you know I speak from experience, I am a door gunner in a SeaHawk helicopter. Our M240 maching gun fires 7.62mm rounds up to 950 rounds a minute. Our manual says shooting 200 rnds in 2 minutes will give us a "hot barrel" , where it will be possible to have a cookoff. We have cans of 200rnds, and on gun shoots, I try to expend the whole can on one pass, usually with it set at 650rnds per minute, however long that takes, but it is way less than 2 minutes. As soon as that can is expended, I retract the charging handle and load another can, and the first couple rounds sit there in the gun (not in the chamber though, but still in contact with the hot parts of the gun becausee it's an open bolt firing weapon) until we come back around for another pass. We usually continue this for 2-3 more cans, and it will get to the point that we can see the barrel glowing with our NVGs on. I have NEVER had a round cook off on this weapon, even though rounds are in constant contact and extremely close to the hot parts of the gun. I promise this is alot hotter than the trunk on a bike will ever get (unless the bike catches on fire, duh)
