El Chup appears to have passed away

well Paladin I don't want to nit-pick but a bullet to the brain is no guarantee of mission success. You can't half-ass it! Shot placement/angle is still very important. This is why taking head shots (at bad guys or deer hunting for example) is very risky.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com...-20110110_1_basal-ganglia-brain-neurosurgeons

A lot of folks end up going blind, going deaf, and horribly disfiguring themselves when they botch the job. If they weren't depressed before shooting themselves, they sure are now!

That's why special forces snipers do two head shots to guarantee the head is destroyed.
Hmm....like Lee Harvey Oswald.

I get that....but if you are trying to kill yourself with a head shot you will likely be incapacitated (unconscious or severely disoriented) and unable to shoot yourself a second time. I would say using a weapon like a real-deal military M16 with a three round "burst" capability would be your best option.
Granted that weapon is illegal to possess for the average gun enthusiast, but that wouldn't be a concern if you don't plan on living to face the legal ramifications anyway.

One "old school" suicide option would be to sin a lot and hope god himself "smites" you, but that is very unreliable.

Lee Harvey was never Special Forces. And unless tactics/doctrine have changed very recently, snipers and soldiers in general still shoot "center mass" of the upper torso in nearly all situations, especially with a moving target. That said JFK only provided a head shot opportunity if I remember correctly. And a moving target too? And stress & adrenaline? That would have been some tough shooting for one person unless they practiced that specific shooting scenario a few times..............just sayin'

Shotgun on wide spread should solve the brain issue?

Wasn't there a CSI episode where someone used a low-cal bullet that wouldn't have enough power to exit the skull and would just ricochet around inside?

google it - there are people who have attempted to kill themselves with a shotgun and tore their faces up but still survived. BTW shotguns are not "wide spread" coming right out of the barrel - they need some distance to open up the shot pellet pattern. To cover an area the diameter of a human brain you would have to be 10 meters or so away depending on the length of the barrel, choke (full, modified, etc) and shot pellet size.

If you have the barrel next to your head a deer slug (a solid piece of lead versus many individual pellets) would deliver the most brain-busting energy.

Actually, a few years ago I was in Dallas on business and we went to the infamous Texas Book Depository and the JFK/Oswald museum that's now there. I got to look out of the window next to the one from which Oswald fired (the actual one is blocked off from the public, tho you can see it) and I don't think that would have been a particularly difficult shot for anyone with a moderate level of skill.

Oswald must have been very cool under pressure I guess. You know how it is - in those last few seconds suddenly that target seems to shrink!
As for the "magic bullet" theories nothing a bullet can do is that unbelievable - they can do some crazy, unpredictable things!

Yep.

Now this was 8ish years ago and I didn't go through the actual Sniper Course, only the Long Range Marksman Course, but Army Sniper School doctrine then was center mass. In fact they taught you to hedge low, not high. Aim belly button. As Shakira and anyone who played football can tell you 'The hips don't lie'.

Shotguns don't work like that when using shot.

When the shot comes out of the barrel it's still together as a group. It spreads out over distance. Depending of course on the shotgun, shot, and choke.

Still a shotgun blast to the head will usually do the trick. Kurt Cobain used one.

A .22LR might do it but again it's a gamble because instead of bouncing around it could just go out the back of the head or bounce in a way that doesn't kill you but leaves you a cripple for life.

the hips don't lie but they break (when hit with a high velocity rifle round). I don't think Shakira included that in her video but it would have been EPIC!

my stepdad had a buddy that tried to himself with .22LR - he recovered with no ill effects. Hopefully he learned his lesson and never finished the job at a later date.

Wait I almost forgot - my grandfather tried to kill himself (allegedly, I think it was a cry for attention) with a .32 or .25 or some other weak round by shooting himself in the gut. Who knows maybe he was aiming at his heart but flinched or his eyes were closed or whatever. The round didn't hit anything important just his ample belly fat. Needless to say he bled like a stuffed pig! He walked to the ambulance though when it pulled up. I was there when it happened - total dick move/classless move to do something like that with an 8 (or so) year old present.

The more I think about the more it seems like a "drama queen" cry for attention. He shot himself just as my dad was coming up the front steps (my grandfather was in a chair at a desk right near the front door) so my dad grabbed him & wrestled the gun out of his hand. I was about ten feet away in the living room watching TV. My grandmother, mom, and I think some other adults (my grandmother was having a birthday get-together) grabbed my sister & myself and took us over to the next door neighbor's house (it happened to be my aunt's house) immediately. It was pretty chaotic!

The most vivid moment was after the dust settled my sister & myself came back to the house but weren't allowed into the room where gramps went ape-shit of course. But I remember a cop coming into the dining room, holding up my grandfather's wife-beater T-shirt. It was soaked in blood with a big (to my 8 year old eyes) hole in the center of the bloody area.
Now that's a real Norman Rockwell "feel good" painting right there!

And true to form the "official" story was that he accidentally shot himself cleaning his gun.

I'm sure @El Chup appreciates, in an ironic way, how you've managed to turn his obituary into yet another WF ALL GUNZ ALL THE TIME thread.

If he doesn’t like that than he can come back and let us know.

All evidence is that Oswald missed the first shot, though the evidence--he didn't even hit the car, there was a slight injury to James Tague who was well out of the line of fire but was hit by bullet fragments--is that an intervening tree branch caused the bullet to ricochet.

Despite efforts to make Oswald's feat seem impressive, he was neither all that fast (3 shots in a little less than 9 seconds, with the first shot already chambered) nor especially accurate (if the target was JFK's head, he only hit it once out of three tries). He was a capable but not stellar rifleman with serviceable weapon and telescopic sight.

Yep. And, what the "magic bullet" did was not very magical at all. Using simulated targets, people have been able to virtually duplicate the track that bullet took. The 6.5mm Mauser round has a very strong yawing tendency that makes it follow curved paths through soft tissues.

didn't we have a ghost hunter on WF at one time? Black Glove or something was their name.

And people ignore that Oswald wasn't shooting at a fast moving target. JFK was in a car that was moving slowly in a straight line away from Oswald's position. JFK himself was stationary in the car.

"Be careful what you wish for."

Oswald should have done his homework! A dress rehearsal wouldn't have been a bad idea either, but it might be hard to not draw attention to it. Still, considering all the variables, it's an "easier said than done" mission without a lot of prep time.

still if they were taking bets I would bet against Oswald pulling it off successfully.

*Drives out to the high school to steal some chemistry equipment*

We had gturner who may have been a Paranormal Investigator.

@Black Dove actually

Maybe our dearly departed WFers have gotten Haven BBS up and going in the afterlife after all.

gturner was not anything approaching normal, para or no. Oldfella is correct, it was Black Dove who was our ghost hunter. Like an unfunny Venkman.

Also, while it's improbable I'll go before most of you given my age, when I go, I'd love for one of you to snark my Anna Yolei fanfics in my honor. Especially that long ass Archer/T'Pol one. I recommend using the copy I posted for posterity on AO3, cuz it's way more readable than the ff.net site

Maybe rename the workshop as the Shirogayne Memorial Yaoi Forum for Shiro/Keith Fandom too, while you're at it

But yeah, especially that first thing

Cylon?

Yes. It was Black Glove.

Oh, sorry.....it was Black Dove, not Black Glove. A very common mistake but it will cost you.......everything.

Unless you have a good lawyer.