Quote Originally Posted by nihil
Shells? My S&W K-38 (Model 14) never spewed them out at any time?
Good point, nihil ;-)
jmho, guys, but any real pro will not take the time to look around for ejected casings; he'll shoot and scoot then change the firing pin and barrel (or modify them) or ditch the piece over the next bridge, depending on his time crunch. A pro making a hit is not on a budget that makes him need to retain the piece; only wannabes and foolywood authors play that game. The one thing the pro (or anyone else) can't control are the rifling marks on the lead still in the victims which can ID the piece as well as, or better than, the chamber/firing pin marks on the ejected brass, so why take time to go looking all over the floor for empty brass. But then, this is a whole 'nuther realm of discussion.
No matter if it's a Chinese restaraunt in Germany, or Luby's in Texas, or Home Depot in boogaloosa, or a hundred other incidents i can remember right now if the innocent, honest citizens are not armed they are targets with few places to go when the perps show up.
If you think that gathering up ejected brass from an autoloading pistol can be done in a restauaunt with tables, chairs, and slick floors where brass can slide for thirty feet in any direction, take just one afternoon and go burn a couple magazines standing in one place at the range or wherever you do your targets. If you wait until both magazines are empty, and then start looking for *all* your brass (remember, in the cafe the perps were not shooting at one stationary target from one place with both feet firmly planted) start the stopwatch again. By the time you find all your brass in the field the polizi from the next country could have made it to the cafe. The point i'm making is that gathering up brass would only be worth the time for wannabes, or someone who knows for a fact that he (they) have all the time in the world, or someone so cheap they have to reload their used brass, in which case they really should find another field of endeavor...
Of course, this is all jmho.