Do 24th century Federation (Earth) citizens have the right to bear arms?

[Timo]

In-universe, we have to wonder why the redshirts would fail to obey this ambiguous command when they did think it was appropriate for them to set their phasers on Kirk's two previous commands. Also, what possible reason would there be not to fire on all of the people within sight? At least they then couldn't tell Landru where the heroes went, not with their eyes closed or at least aimed at the ground, even if stun wouldn't cut their perceived telepathic hotline to the mysterious boss.

Out-universe, the firing poses present a variety of interpretations...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Timo]

Phaser fights almost looks regressed, like back in the 19th century or something when they used musket rifles.

With muskets, you have to fight following musket rules. If you fire away as if you were holding a Garand, you die.

Perhaps the rules with phasers are similar to the rules with muskets?

The Siege of Ar558 the enemy is charging and screaming towards the Fed troops and they're just firing one phaser shot at a time and eventually got overrun. When you're thinking, none of that had to happened. The enemy had no helmets, or armor and are just charging right at them. Something with a rapid fire setting, grenades, or a simple 21st century era assault rifle would have saved more lives than what they were doing.

Except not. If the Starfleet team had assault rifles, they would have run out of ammo long ago. With extreme firing discipline, a modern force might be able to retain a clip of ammo per man after two days of fighting; these guys had been down there for five months. Any USMC unit and even Chuck Norris would be dead many times over.

No doubt the last grenades would have been expended months ago, too. Which is why the heroes had to make use of scavenged enemy mines instead, and did.

But firing at this enemy charge with the last of the energy remaining in the phaser clips is not a valid tactical option. The previous such charge had been a holographic feint: firing would be tantamount to surrendering, if it merely deprived the heroes of ammo before the real charge came.

Notably, all the heroes check their phasers for remaining ammo at the start of the battle. Nobody ever does that in Star Trek; these folks must be desperately low on energy there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Henoch]

Yang battle tactics of charging with spears in an open terrain probably attributed to their high losses.

TRACEY: The Yangs must've been warned. They sacrificed hundreds just to draw us out in the open. And then they came, and they came. We drained four of our phasers, and they still came. We killed thousands and they still came.

So, five phasers (Tracey's still had his last one with him) is able to kill thousands in this scenario.

KIRK: Where is everybody?
TRACEY: Dead or in hiding. Now let's see how eager you are to die. Call your ship. I need your help, Kirk. They're going to attack the village. My phaser's almost drained. We need new, fresh ones. You're not just going to stand there and let them kill you, are you? If I put a weapon in your hand you'll fight, won't you?
KIRK: We can beam up, Tracey. All of us.
TRACEY: I want five phasers. No, ten. With three extra power packs each.

Tracey estimates that 10 guys with phasers and three reloads (40 total loads) will be able to defeat the entire Yang army which probably consists of tens of thousands of primitive warriors.

KIRK: If I brought down a hundred of them armed with phasers
CLAUDIUS: you could probably defeat the combined armies of our entire empire

And 100 guys with phasers can defeat an entire world at 20th Century WWII technology.
TOS hand phasers were truly awesome. I wonder what happened to them?

 

[Skipper]

I gather you refer to TNG "Gambit". In the first part of the two-parter, Riker's team engages in a planetside firefight with the mercenaries that are unknowingly employing Picard as part of their team. We get a lot of hiding-behind-rocks, firing-and-missing, failing-to-creatively-route-the-opponent action there. A yellowshirt gets gunned down without warning; Riker dodges a beam fired at him; the villains fire surprisingly little and the heroes essentially only twice or thrice; and the confused fight concludes with the bad guys beaming out with the unconscious Riker, his team failing to protect him in any way. Not their greatest hour.

The two-parter shows quite a few action scenes, including one aboard the hero ship, but at least the combat incompetence of the hero team there is part of a setup where they fool the villains. We never quite learn how these two-bit mercs managed to surprise the heroes so badly in the first fight; all we get is a vague reference to their ship being moderately stealthy.

Timo Saloniemi

Thank you, just rewatched! From a cinematography point of view, well, it was shot like your average 50s western (shot-reverse shot/fire-duck-repeat). Even a 60s spaghetti western's shootout was more exciting than that. And I really think that an engagement with phasers should be quite different from a traditional one because:

1. considering that the ray is visible, you can perfectly see where you're shooting.
2. a phaser should travel at light speed, so, no dodging sorry.
3. you can fire a phaser continuously. Eck, just wave your hand while firing.
4. a rock shouldn't be a refuge against phasers. Just. Evaporate. Them.

Now, I can understand the difficulties of shooting a battle with phasers in a creative way, but they didn't even try!

 

[Timo]

Technically, there's no need for phaser beams to be lightspeed. Not when we so clearly see that they are not. We even get slow motion confirmation in "Wink of an Eye"!

The phaser beam being the perfect tracer cuts both ways: the enemy can see exactly where you are firing from. Possibly a rationale for occasionally firing pulses instead of beams?

But there's something funny going on with sweeping a beam. It seems this just plain can't be done, for some unknown in-universe reason. Take for example Sisko slapping away the assassin's gunhand in "In the Hands of the Prophets": the kill shot leaves barely a mark when going wild. Possibly a phaser beam has to cut a path through reality, and if it's forced to take a different path, it loses power. Might be as simple as cutting through air: sweeping beams are common in vacuum fights. Might be more complicated than that. But it's a tradeoff: you get a superb death ray as long as you don't sweep.

So, five phasers (Tracey's still had his last one with him) is able to kill thousands in this scenario.

...Leaving the battlefield littered with corpses. Indicative of a low setting?

(Or of phaser fire support to a more conventionally killing Kohm army?)

TOS hand phasers were truly awesome. I wonder what happened to them?

I hope we meet them again in DSC. The stun setting there is awesome, unerringly dropping burly Klingons who might not go down even from the third kill shot. And cutting through walls with both beams and bolts is an option once again. But for some reason you fight a cloud of nanites by firing bolts?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Skipper]

Just rewatched the shootout in "What's Past Is Prologue". At least they tried to do something different.

 

[Timo]

...Automated pop-out wall phasers is something we've really been missing. Deliciously evil aka rational. And also a good way to say Star Wars and the Evil Empire without saying Star Wars and the Evil Empire. Well, without yelling too loud, anyway.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Skipper]

By the way I've always found phasers-fights somewhat unrealistic (something that even the authors of the shows have admitted).

Found it. Moore said in the 1997

<<As a writer, do you ever feel the weapons in Trek are *too* powerful? A
hand phaser could probably punch a hole in a boulder -- ducking behind a rock
or tree for cover wouldn't help much.>>

I agree. The weapons are way too powerful to present them in any realistic
kind of way. Given the real power of a hand phaser, we shouldn't be able to
show ANY firefights on camera where the opponents are even in sight of each
other, much less around the corner! It's annoying, but just one of those
things that we tend to slide by in order to concentrate on telling a dramatic
and interesting story.

 

[Ocanain]

I seriously doubt that in a Federation future civil arms rights exist. Some have made references to episodes in which characters have access to weapons after their tenure or even references to Guinan and her phaser rifle but these seem plot driven outliers.

Federation earth is a socialist world and so weaponisation is a matter of delegation not individual rights of defence. Paradise Lost reinforces this view where the population is at the whim and submission of martial law.

Independent rights seem long gone.

 

[valkyrie013]

Well, lets take the Phaser out, and give it todays tech, a 20 person squad with plentiful ammo could also defeat the entire army.. because all they have is spears..
I give you an example, look up the anime Gate..
A dimentianal gate opens to a medieval world, and the Japanese army against roman era swords etc. they die.. by alot. .and thats even before the atellary and air power..

Well, Ocanaian Star Trek Is a kind of Socialist paradise, but not a 1984, type of all knowing all seeing state that disapears there populace..

 

[Henoch]

Found it. Moore said in the 1997

<<As a writer, do you ever feel the weapons in Trek are *too* powerful? A
hand phaser could probably punch a hole in a boulder -- ducking behind a rock
or tree for cover wouldn't help much.>>

Example of even an old phaser punching a hole through a boulder:

 

[Skipper]

I give you an example, look up the anime Gate..

Is it the anime which glorifies the Japanese Defence Force, the nerd and social outcast protagonist ends up with a harem and an ancient Goddess of Death inexplicably wears lingerie with garter belts in a world where the fashion and technology is at "Ancient Rome" level? And at one point me meet an house populated by French Maids? That anime?

 

[at Quark's]

And 100 guys with phasers can defeat an entire world at 20th Century WWII technology.

I don't know that. Can simple hand-held phasers we usually see Our Heroes with (I'm assuming that's the type we are talking about here) be used to defend against bombardments coming from over the horizon? Because that's what I think would be needed should the WW2-era countries choose to deploy long-range artillery units (or battleships if they're in a coastal area) against them.

Sure, ultimately they would have to come up close but such a tactic could be used to thin out the original 100 considerably ... (that's of course assuming they're generally all in the same area).

(Of course, carpet bombing of the area would probably be more precise, but going with the assumption they could hit high-flying airplanes with those hand-held phasers)

(I edited this post to be a bit more precise before I saw Timo already had replied to it).

 

[Timo]

I seriously doubt that in a Federation future civil arms rights exist. Some have made references to episodes in which characters have access to weapons after their tenure or even references to Guinan and her phaser rifle but these seem plot driven outliers.

Federation earth is a socialist world and so weaponisation is a matter of delegation not individual rights of defence. Paradise Lost reinforces this view where the population is at the whim and submission of martial law.

Independent rights seem long gone.

Earth is an East Coast city. Most of Trek is the Wild West.

How is it an outlier that a character has guns? There is no contrary example anywhere, of a character who would not have a gun. That is, we never heard of one - even the single one who said he would not wield one had his wife possess one, or have access to one.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[The Wormhole]

Is it the anime which glorifies the Japanese Defence Force, the nerd and social outcast protagonist ends up with a harem and an ancient Goddess of Death inexplicably wears lingerie with garter belts in a world where the fashion and technology is at "Ancient Rome" level? And at one point me meet an house populated by French Maids? That anime?

Hot damn, I think I need to look this show up.

 

[Timo]

I don't know that. Can simple hand-held phasers we usually see Our Heroes with (I'm assuming that's the type we are talking about here) be used to "bombard" over the horizon?

Probably not. But we have seen curved phaser beam paths...

Because that's what would be needed to defend against heavy naval bombardments such as the one on the German defense coastal batteries before D-Day started... or against heavy long-range landbased artillery ....

Why? Somebody fires shells at you; you point your phasers skyward and vaporize the shells. You don't even need to target, because you can vaporize the sky. That is, the phaser effect is selective, and usually does nothing to air when vaporizing stuff within air. Although no doubt you can toggle for vaporizing the air, which turns the phaser into an even nastier weapon.

Unfortunately, marksmanship in Trek is selective, too. Oftentimes, our heroes succeed with shots that would have no hope of connecting without the apparent autotargeting feature in their guns: it suffices to wave the barrel roughly in the direction of the enemy, after which a trigger press will result in a beam hitting the enemy square in the chest. Yet at other times, the beams miss easy targets altogether...

The nature of the targeting system that must be there is unknown. It's (occasionally) very good at targeting live bodies and even telling friend from foe. It is not seen in use across great ranges, though. Even across medium ranges, additional scope-like devices are seen used. Could an anti-projectile targeting doodad be latched to the gun, too? So far we have seen no story need for one...

An army of 100 redshirts might fight like Iron Men. If failing to don their rocket boots, they would walk through the Wehrmacht untouchable and unstoppable. Or row or swim through the Royal Navy if it came to that. However:

Sure, ultimately they would have to come up close but such a tactic could be used to thin out the original 100 considerably ... (that's of course assuming they'r generally all in the same area).

Redshirts are based on the assumption that they operate in the Trek environment, though. Subjugating a planet with phaser pistols might be expected to involve transporter use, another method of offense against which 21st century armies would be helpless.

But redshirts in Trek fight in dissimilar combat, against natives wielding sharpened avocados and against gods throwing lightning bolts. Infantry pitted against peers might be utterly different and has so far remained off screen.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[at Quark's]

Probably not. But we have seen curved phaser beam paths...

Where? (I believe you but I'm curious now).

Why? Somebody fires shells at you; you point your phasers skyward and vaporize the shells. You don't even need to target, because you can vaporize the sky. That is, the phaser effect is selective, and usually does nothing to air when vaporizing stuff within air. Although no doubt you can toggle for vaporizing the air, which turns the phaser into an even nastier weapon.

Again, I believe that's true, but at what cost to power consumption? Sounds like this would cost a lot more than the regular 'stun the enemy at 10m distance' setting. We almost never see those phasers deplete but they ultimately would be. So all you'd need to do as the bombarding party is keep them trapped there - which I'll admit might be impossible with those phasers. So those redshirts would need to be on the move, while continuously blanketing the region of the air those incoming shells are coming from with those phaser shots to defend against the supposedly saturation fire of their WW2 foes. Not saying it's undoable but even with their phasers it might be kind of hard to keep it up all the time while they're running towards the enemy that's supposedly at least 10km distant.

Unfortunately, marksmanship in Trek is selective, too. Oftentimes, our heroes succeed with shots that would have no hope of connecting without the apparent autotargeting feature in their guns: it suffices to wave the barrel roughly in the direction of the enemy, after which a trigger press will result in a beam hitting the enemy square in the chest. Yet at other times, the beams miss easy targets altogether...

The nature of the targeting system that must be there is unknown. It's (occasionally) very good at targeting live bodies and even telling friend from foe. It is not seen in use across great ranges, though. Even across medium ranges, additional scope-like devices are seen used. Could an anti-projectile targeting doodad be latched to the gun, too? So far we have seen no story need for one...

It would have given them a lot of tactical advantage in countless direct person-to-person phaserfights we have seen but we rarely see it there. Unless of course, those 23rd/24th century soldiers carry some nullification devices that essentially eliminates this autotargeting so they'll have to resort to hand based aiming again. If that is true, then yes, they would have another huge advantage on the WW2 party.

An army of 100 redshirts might fight like Iron Men. If failing to don their rocket boots, they would walk through the Wehrmacht untouchable and unstoppable. Or row or swim through the Royal Navy if it came to that. However:

Redshirts are based on the assumption that they operate in the Trek environment, though. Subjugating a planet with phaser pistols might be expected to involve transporter use, another method of offense against which 21st century armies would be helpless.

But redshirts in Trek fight in dissimilar combat, against natives wielding sharpened avocados and against gods throwing lightning bolts. Infantry pitted against peers might be utterly different and has so far remained off screen.
Timo Saloniemi

Well yes, if they actually decided to subjugate a WW2-era planet for some reason they of course would be having the additional advantages of transporters, shuttles, and probably a Starship with photon torpedoes for orbital bombardments, too, and anything more they could have at their disposal. But here, I'm just reacting to the statement where it was said that 100 guys armed with phasers (and presumably nothing else) could defeat an entire WW2-era world.

It reminds me a bit of that famous internet debate about what would happen if a US marine unit (of about 2000 men) got sent back to Roman times. Could they defeat the entire Roman empire? I believe the general verdict of that was that sure, in the short run they could plow their way through some Roman legions as through butter, and incapacitate or kill a hundred times their own numbers, but in the long run they would still lose without alliances of contemporary parties because as an isolated unit without support, they wouldn't be able to maintain their 21st century weapons or produce new ammunition for it...

 

[Timo]

Where? (I believe you but I'm curious now).

Basically only in ST:ID, in the starship duel both in and out of warp. But arguably also when strange powers made the raygun beams go astray in TNG, such as in "The Last Outpost"... Whether this would be a controllable option for hand phasers is unknown.

Again, I believe that's true, but at what cost to power consumption? Sounds like this would cost a lot more than the regular 'stun the enemy at 10m distance' setting. We almost never see those phasers deplete but they ultimately would be. So all you'd need to do as the bombarding party is keep them trapped there - which I'll admit might be impossible with those phasers. So those redshirts would need to be on the move, while continuously blanketing the region of the air those incoming shells are coming from with those phaser shots to defend against the supposedly saturation fire of their WW2 foes. Not saying it's undoable but even with their phasers it might be kind of hard to keep it up all the time while they're running towards the enemy that's supposedly at least 10km distant.

I gather the superpowers of this supertech would need to be utilized creatively there. The redshirts could close the distance by walking underground, say...

A lot depends on when the power runs out. "Armed with a phaser" might involve looking like Pancho Villa, with fifty power clips in bandoliers across you chest.

It would have given them a lot of tactical advantage in countless direct person-to-person phaserfights we have seen but we rarely see it there. Unless of course, those 23rd/24th century soldiers carry some nullification devices that essentially eliminates this autotargeting so they'll have to resort to hand based aiming again. If that is true, then yes, they would have another huge advantage on the WW2 party.

From what we see, the phaser sidearm is the ultimate quick-draw weapon: typically minimally holstered, frequently fired from the hip, and unerringly dropping the foe at twenty paces. This would more or less call for autotargeting, or then Arvo Ojala level superskills for each operator.

But perhaps the weapon is optimized for this use? Its shortcomings vs. WWII slugthrowers are obvious: low rate of fire, required dwell time, the bright line pointing straight at your firing position. Fighting against WWII troops would be a type of dissimilar combat all right, but the advantage might not so obviously go to the redshirts after all.

Well yes, if they actually decided to subjugate a WW2-era planet for some reason they of course would be having the additional advantages of transporters, shuttles, and probably a Starship with photon torpedoes for orbital bombardments, too, and anything more they could have at their disposal. But here, I'm just reacting to the statement where it was said that 100 guys armed with phasers (and presumably nothing else) could defeat an entire WW2-era world.

Hmm. Defeating the world would probably be easier than defeating its armies, when you possess the ultimate stun guns...

A hundred guys with concealed sidearms would be a big threat if not pretending to be an opposing battlefield army. Instead, they could walk into cities and then stun tens of thousands long before any sort of a response could be mounted, take control of institutions and assets, and dig into undefeatable positions behind human shields millions thick.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Skipper]

Hot damn, I think I need to look this show up.

Really, in this fantasy world people usually dress like this:

(well this is the nobility, but let's say that the predominant style, even with the plebs, is "Ancient Rome".)

Than you have THIS

(she is supposed to be a demigoddess and an apostle of Emroy, the god of darkness, war, violence and death. Even the main character at one point asks her why she is dressed like a gothic lolita and she has no idea what he is talking about).

And the THIS!!!

Yes, in this world there has been some bizzarre sociological evolution where people wear clothes that on earth are 2,000 years apart.

Edit: If any of you wanted to see in detail what would happen if a modern army attacked an infantry armed with spears and arrows, this would be the anime for you. In all its bloody and gory details.

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[Timo]

And ears that are 2,000,000 years apart at the very least?

(What about tails? Asking for a friend, of course.)

That insane halberd reminds me: what sort of weapons do the civilians have access to? Just the harmless rayguns being discussed here? Or true WMDs, too? Where and how do you draw the line? I mean, it probably doesn't take much of a child genius to turn a replicator into a Genesis Device.

Timo Saloniemi