Ooh... very comprehensive and a nice job...  Well, since I used to be a
D&D freak, i was also somewhat into firearms... let's see how much I can
remember ;)

2. Firefights aren't as common in fanfiction (unless it's a BGC 'fic),
but I'll talk about them anyways... 

The average gun battle take place at ranges of less than 7 meters and
last less than 6 seconds. With this in mind, it is easy to see why a
realistic gun fight should be even quicker and more brutal than a fist
fight. 

Most gunfights involve handguns or submachineguns which use pistol
ammunition. 9mm and .38 Special rounds have very high muzzle energies

Actually the 10mm has the highest muzzle energy I've seen in a handgun ;)

for pistol ammunition, combined with small caliber and poor expansion
characteristics -and as such will frequently overpenetrate a soft target
(like a man) unless they strike a good sized bone. Rounds that
overpenetrate waste much of their energy, and thus may not immediately
affect the target. (The ability to affect a target directly and
immediately is known as stopping power.) 

Actually get some Winchester Silvertips or Hydrashoks and overpenetration
will never happen again ;)  Of course, it is somewhat debatable what is
better...  Over penetrate and give the person 2 holes to bleed out of, or
to mash up organs and insides with a hollowpoint... 

Pistol rounds with high stopping power are the .357 Magnum, .45 ACP, .45
Long Colt, .44 Remington Magnum, and any other really large caliber
round you feel like using. (The .44 Automag is really a chopped down
rifle cartridge, and is obviously quite brutal.) Even hits to limbs are
quite likely to spin the target around and incapacitate him. (The .45
ACP round was created to replace the .38 Special round for this reason.)

For you crazies out there...  try the .50AE (action express ;) )  Or the
.41 Action express...  These things are quite powerful...

Hey... if you really are crazy try the 12.7x99mm round used in the
Browning Heavy Machine gunv...  The M82 sniper rifle can be used to take
out armored vehicles, aircraft, cars, ;)  

The Desert Eagle and Baby Eagle come in nice to use these rounds. ;)
(Just to let you all know...)

This means if your character goes to guns with a bad guy and gets the
first shot in with his trusty 9mm Glock, unless it hits an immediately

Yeah... nice choice of handgun...  I've tried one of these...  But I sort
of like 10mm... weird caliber, ne?  So sue me...

vital location such as the head, heart, or center of the throat, the bad
guy will likely get in at least one shot before he realizes he's hurt
and falls over. 

Rifle and machine gun rounds do far more damage and have far more
stopping power. Most "bullet proof" body armors don't have a hope in
hell of stopping these rounds. We won't even go into the effects of

Class III or IV ( I forget... too much Electrical engineering in my head)
has a metal plate guaranteed to stop a standard NATO 7.62 round (standard
in battle rifles and machine guns)  Of course, I think in most cases, the
target will still get a broken rib or two...

cannon shells. And just remember, a modern hand grenade is a quarter
pound of high explosive wrapped up with several miles of thin
prestressed steel wire. Eeeeeeewwwww....

Oh yeah... frag's always give me the willies...  Of course, try white
phosphorous grenades... they scare me silly...  I'd hate to burn to death,
even under water... :/

If you are really feeling visceral, nothing does cruel brutal damage to
living tissue like a quarter ounce of jacketed lead hollowpoint moving

Actually jacketed vs. hollow point doesn't make a difference or much of
one.  If I recall, jacketed hollowpoints are used to make the feeding
easier for guns, like the Colt .45, which were never designed to load
hp's, to load themeffectively.

at 1400 feet per second. Bullets are extremely violent ways of
inflicting harm, capable of breaking heavy bones and blowing large holes
out of someone's backside. This can get pretty overpowering to the 

Not
 quite...  The point of a hollowpoint... errr... is not to go through the
 body, and instead mushroom inside the body to transfer all of it's
 energy into the body.... Ripping out gaping holes in the torso, is
 asking too much...  especially when using a 9mm round... 

reader, so you may wish to save the extravagantly gory injuries/deaths
for important characters. 

Another constant of realistic firefights is that people tend to take
cover and stay there when they get shot at. This is a perfectly natural

Well some people....  Others like to subscribe to the "spray and pray"
theory...  Pump out enough lead... you're guaranteed to hit something...

defense mechanism probably passed on down to you from your father,
grandfather or other direct descendent fortunate enough to survive a
war. In writing, this means the rank and file will find a good spot to
duck behind and return fire only when the heat isn't directly on them.
Heroes and Villians may feel free to stand bolt upright and stride
confidantly towards their opponents if that is what the author deems

Well, another funny thing about villians...  They get the nicest guns... 
:( Like in Armitage III, that screwy person got his hands on a Calico 960a
machine pistol...  A gun with a 50 or 100 round capacity!  Or like in Gun
Smith Cats, Radinov had a VP70... very very nice handgun with 3 round
burst...  Hell, in broken arrow, Travolta got his hands on a Berretta
93R.. 26 rnd extended mag w/ 3 shot burst...  Geesh, the villians always
get the good hardware... :/ The problem with these implements of death are
that they tend to run out of ammunition really really quickly.. ;)  EG. 
Calico 960 will dump all 50 rounds in under 3 seconds... 

appropriate, but as a genral rule, anyone who doesn't have ice water
running in their veins or have anything else better to do than die will
probably take cover.

Yeah...  Just point something remotely harmful to me and you'll see me
duck and hide ;)