Bad Shoot

If you ever wonder if it's a good shoot or a bad shoot, just ask yourself if you would be going to prison if you had done the shooting.

I say this, because except for qualified immunity, the cops operate under the same statutes as we do.

Airman Roger Fortson didn't even have his finger on the trigger of the pistol he had in hand pointed at the floor.

That got him ventilated by Deputy Triggerhappy.

Go find the bodycam, Airman Fortson didn't do anything to get shot.  No furtive movement.  He was simply at the door of his domicile with a firearm in his hand.  A prudent response to someone unexpectedly pounding on the door.

This is the kind of police shooting that gets me aligned with the defund the police because Deputy Triggerhappy has already claimed self defense, and I am certain the Okaloosa Sheriff's Department (of shots fired acorn fame) will soon affirm that all relevant training and procedures for the use of deadly force were adhered to.

I'm strongly of the opinion that your home should be sacrosanct from officer safety because, if no other place, you have the most right to be there.

I've also long held that as interchangeable representatives of The State that officers must actually receive fire before shooting, not just feel threatened.

The State came to Airman Fortson's door and had him killed because he was armed.

Be Careful Whom You Force To Care

I trend to supporting LGBT and associated stuff.

Once you're a person, you have rights and I demand that people get their rights.

I don't support one group or another getting more rights than anyone else.

Disclaimer out of the way:

Dear radical trans advocates,

When you sling your accusations at someone for being anti-trans or transphobic; are you sure they're not just responding to people like you being assholes about it?

Because a lot of you ARE being assholes about it.

A decent sized hunk of the "transphobic" aren't against you, per se, they simply don't give a fuck.  Apathy is not opposition or hatred.

Until you demand that they take a side, with the same sort of deal the anti-gun people give gun owners, "admit that you're wrong (and evil) and I'm right (and virtuous) and THEN we will discuss what level of punishment you will receive for being wrong (and evil) all this time."

If you don't accept their entire position as right and virtuous, you will be treated as if you were a mustache twirling villain Klansnazi bent (pun!) on the eradication of all but the cisnormative.

Lots of folks respond to this with, "Shiny, let's be bad guys," and lean into it.  If they're going to be punished for it, might as well commit the crime too.

I'm not talking about the people who were bigoted before you opened your gigantic "heads I win, tails you lose" narrative.

These are people who're nominally on your side, but don't feel they have to actively agitate all day, every day for your rights when you clearly don't give two shits about anyone else.

It's playing with a sleeping dragon's tail and it will be bad to wake it up.

There's lots of, "oh yeah, well fuck you too!" in American politics.  Especially in cases where someone should have taken the win and gone home to enjoy the fruits of their victory; but didn't.

Civil Rights, LGBT and women's rights are such cases.

There's going to be a lot of people who were satisfied with the progress made who might be very fucked if this presses too far.

PS: Phobia comes from the Greek for fear.  They don't fear you, they HATE you.  Transmisia is the word you're searching for.

PPS: I'm friends with several LGBT people who are very concerned with the effect the assholes are having on the everyday straights.

I Have A Wrench

I originally statted a 40mm combination wrench for an Interstellar Wars character.

4 lb., swing +2 cr Damage, Reach 1, Parry 0U, ST 12

I don't have a 40mm wrench myself.

My biggest combination wrench is a mere 32mm.

1.8 lb.  So, sw+1 cr Damage, Reach 1, Parry 0U, ST 8

I should probably reach for my 18" (450mm) pipe wrench if I need to bludgeon someone with a tool.

 

5.5 lb.  sw+2 cr Damage, Reach 1, Parry 0U, ST 12.  I think I'm a point short on ST for it, so -1 skill to my skill level of Axe/Mace; which is at default of DX-5.  I normally give myself a DX of 12, so my Axe/Mace skill is 7; 6 with the pipe wrench.

That's not very good at all.

With my normal ST of 11 I'd do 1d+2 cr with the combination wrench and 2d-1 cr with the pipe wrench.

Upgradin'

The center console in The Beast is from a company called Nenno.

For $250 you, too, can get a console made from particle board with two cup holders that are rarely useful.

The small one perfectly holds a 12oz can.

The large one perfectly holds one particular size of Gatorade bottle.

Nothing else fits well.

I'd mentioned my 3D print idea and someone of a Facebook group suggested getting the cup holder insert from an '07-'14 Silverado.  $12 from Amazon.

First I pried out the useless holders.

Then I removed about 100 staples and peeled back the pleather.

Then I cut away the offending wood and put the pleather back.

Then I had to do some trimming on the Silverado holder and used some RTV to secure it to the pleather.

Nice to have a cup holder that holds most anything I want to put in it again!

Fixin'

The left fog light had ceased to function, so I ordered new bulbs.

This is the bulb in question.

I'd ordered a set of LED bulbs to replace them, which arrived today.

They didn't want to fit in the capsules and I discovered why.  The melting bulbs had distorted the hole for the bulb from the heat!

Some light trimming later and I got the new bulbs in.

They're brighter!

Not yet melted all the way right side halogen bulb:

Spiffy new LED bulb:

Yes, you have to take off the wheels and pull back the fender liners to get at the bulbs.

A test drive to Marv's confirmed they're throwing a lot more light than the older bulbs.  I could drive with them if the headlights failed.

Huzzah!

Questionably Legality

Solid brass turtle defense tool.  The spike is to crack their shell.

For a change, it's heavier than the Basic Set thinks they should be.  0.8 lb. measured against 0.25 lb. in the book.

This gives your punch with Brawling a +1 to damage.

The legality of brass knuckles is, typically, silly in Florida.

You can have them.

You cannot make them or sell them.

You cannot conceal carry them.

They are subject to local ordinances because they are not part of the state preemption on weapons.

They do count as concealed dangerous weapons.

They are not mentioned at all with regards to use as paper weights or meat tenderizers.

The combination weapon that's the M1918 trench knife is more legal for carry.  We're not talking about making sense, we're talking about the law here.

100 Miles North Of Ames

 

FuzzyGeff took this image last night at a rest stop North of Ames.

He said there wasn't anything to see naked eye, but he took some pics anyways.

The Culprit

 

That big sunspot about 3 o'clock is where the impressive aurora came from.

I am actually quite happy to see sunspots, even with coronal mass ejections, because that means that Russian astrophysicist was wrong and we're not going into a Meander Minimum this cycle, at least.

Though an active sun bringing warmer climates will give the globull warmerists more ammunition in their steadfast attempt to reduce us to being envious of Mycenaean technology.

7d Furious

7d pi is 7d pi.

I'm still not seeing the advantage of .277 Fury over .308 Win.

And I say this as someone who likes .270 Win.

My choice of .270 had a lot more to do with it remaining in stock when thirty caliber rounds became unobtanium and my uncle's endless debates over .270 v .280 v .30-06 than any tangible advantage in range or penetration.

Treadmill Pride

Former friend, Anglave, was fascinated with the airplane on a treadmill problem.

Not the problem itself, but the need for people to chime in and stake out their argument; then digging in on their answer to the exclusion of all other things.

I remember when he tried to bring that up, it triggered me to passionately explain MY position.

Well, I would like to think that he'd be proud of me that the airplane on a treadmill problem is making the rounds again on Facebook, and that I am not even clicking on the link to read the comments, let alone making a comment of my own!

For the record, the problem was from a high school teacher attempting to teach the class about how forces work and was trying to show that the propeller didn't act on the ground, yet the plane would still move.

It snowballed from there.

Preliminary

The first draft of my cupholder is exported to .stl and off to JT for printing.

Prototype in PLA and test fitting, then the production model in black ABS.

I omitted the holes for switches and plugs in this iteration because I need to see how it fits against the dash and how much access I have to the cubby and trunk button.

She's Right You Know

I had a particular player, Doug, whose goal in character creation was to use all of the game rules and break the game and/or campaign.

She's also got advice for the GM.  Much of this I noticed on my own, but it's good to keep in mind.

It took me many years to stop treating the players like they were my enemies.  I have never run a session without at least one player treating me, personally, as their enemy.

This led to a realization that all of us were there to have fun.

This will give rise to the temptation to go more story driven and putting the players in the back seat while you spin your narrative with minimal input from them.

I've always been more of a "present the world and sit back while the players explore" style GM; but this can lead to them sitting around doing nothing because...  I don't know why they couldn't self motivate.

The scars from my more adversarial days led them to avoid most of the disadvantages and character traits that I could use to have the adventure come to them.

We were just coming out of it when I upped and moved to Florida.  That's a happier ending than it sounds because I would have become a suicide statistic if I'd stayed in Ames.

Now I have several campaign ideas and a dearth of players to play.

I know, now, to give them something to decide rather than a roll to make.  The dice are there for a reason, but sometimes it's better to play it out than to roll it out.  Role over roll is more satisfying.  I've seen that over and over.

I Wish I'd Said That

Bearing Arms and David Codrea are both concerned that "common use" is excluding a lot of guns because they were made illegal before they could be acquired in sufficient numbers to attain "common use" status.

Welcome to 2014, gentlemen.

But Is It Still 25 Years?

It's an old joke that we'll have fusion power in 25 years.

I've been hearing people say that for 40 years.

It's always 25 years away.  They've been as accurate as the globullwarmering people, actually.

But we keep chipping away at the engineering problem.

Six minutes is significant.

This test did not generate any power, but containment is a critical step if you're going to light a sun in your warehouse.

I'll Buy The Popcorn If This Passes

6 months community service in Gaza for illegal protesting at a college.

OMFG I wanna see those morons deal with Islam unfettered by Western norms and laws.

It will, of course, never pass.

It's also not constitutional at all.

It'd still be hilarious!

Can't Blog Drawing

I'm designing a 3D print to give myself better cup-holders, more charging options and a place to mount the switches for tap-shifting.

Gods I am rusty.

CAD and thinking in 3D takes a lot of smoke, so blogging might be light for a bit.

Related.  The 16 year old Mac Pro chugs along like it was new.  The only thing it can't do is get online and surf the web.

It's a lot like having a computer 30 years ago, actually.

Interesting Vid

 

LA Police Murder Black Man With Tree

Darwin never sleeps.  Unlike this driver at a light.

113 on surface streets and thrown so far from the car he could have been charged with fleeing the scene.

I also note that Lambo's are better at felling trees than Corvettes.

Isn't It Interesting

The FAA won't let you be a commercial pilot after age 65 because at such an advanced age it's not safe to trust their judgement any longer.

Isn't it odd that there's no such restriction on running for office, something that presumably is much more dangerous for someone with poor judgement to do...

Just sayin'.

Seems like some cognitive testing should be implemented.

Two Year Gap

I'm a bit sick of the constant narrative that the US lost in Vietnam.

We'd fought them to a standstill and Linebacker II had them at the table giving favorable terms.

In short, we'd won.  In 1973.

We did not win in such a way that North Vietnam would never try again, and they did so about two years later.  The South was woefully unequipped to deal with it, and never really had the will to resist successfully.

We weren't there any more.

Had we been, the North would have lost spectacularly.

They knew that, that's why they gave us terms, waited for us to leave and invaded at the height of FUCK FORD AND ANYTHING HE MIGHT SUPPORT!!!

But internet historians don't bother actually reading history, they just regurgitate the BS.

All Cylinder Drive Mileage

Back in February I had JT disable 4-cylinder mode.

I feared that it would have a massive, negative, effect on mileage.

It turns out I needn't have worried.

Running 87 octane E10 gas was getting 16.5 mpg before.

Running 89 octane ethanol-free gets 16.2 mpg now.  Running E-Free has a better seat of the pants feel and did before the DOD disable too.

The absolute best mileage I've ever eked out was 28.7 mpg with E-Free on a cold-dry day and sticking to back roads with 55 mph limits.  On average E10 regular would get 26.5 mpg.

E-free on all eight has been getting 25-26 mpg with just being careful with the throttle.

Considering the car is rated for 15/24, I'm not displeased.

You're In The Driver's Seat Dude

Hamas is begging for a ceasefire.

I've mentioned the solution to their problem before.

Hamas can surrender.

It's the only solution that makes sense for Israel.

They've tried all of the other solutions over the years and it always ends with a Groundhog's Day like repetition of hostilities to almost winning then letting Hamas/Hezbolah/PLO off the hook again.

I'm sorry, Hamas, but you've shown for decades that to stop short means Israel has to do it again in a few years.

Rest of the world: Israel has shown nearly insane levels of restraint dealing with this shit.

Look at what the US did after four airliners were hijacked and a few thousand people were killed.  There's an entire region that should be sighing in relief that we get bored easily and have forgotten how to win wars.

Eating Like The Poors

A friend of Harvey's gets a weekly basket of food from the food bank.

Being too good to eat half of it because...  They don't say it, but it's because a lot of the staples are (CENSORED) food.

So we get a weekly quarter basket of (CENSORED) food.

We then, promptly, don't eat any of it, but it's shelf stable and is great for the hurricane prep box.

We're cycling the stocks and I made the beans and rice today.

The flavor packet does nothing.

It's just beans and rice and completely vitamin enriched.  Bland as fuck.

Although it's nutritionally complete, I'd hate to subsist on it for long as it comes.

Happily, I have a cabinet of spices to throw at it!

With some Scezchan sauce and soy it's quite good.

What Day Is It?

 

I'm here all night, don't forget to tip your server.

I Should Test It

According to the default stats, the saber is better at delivering impaling damage than a the pick.

I'm betting that pick punches armor way better than a thrust from the sword.

It's making me think that changing the damage from sw imp to sw (2) pi one-handed.

I need a plausible plate to test on.

My buddies, Ray or Mike used to snag us those heavy duty baking sheets from the places they worked.

We calculated them to be DR 3 or 4 back in the day.

Fine

Medieval hand weapons made after TL7 are automatically upgraded to fine quality at no extra cost in GURPS.

 Everything here is from Cold Steel.

The cavalry saber is, in GURPS terms simply a broadsword with an open frame basket hilt.

It's too light.  2.1 lb. with scabbard instead of 3 lb.  But Damage should be sw +2 cut and thr +2 imp, Reach of 1, Parry 0, ST 10.

The martel de fer is far too light; 2.2 lb. when a combination pick/hammer should be coming in at 3.5 lb.  It's also a bit long, it can readily be wielded two handed.  So I compromised by using the pick stats and reducing damage by 1.

Damage one-handed is sw imp and sw +1 cr, Reach of 1, Parry 0U, ST 10.  Two-handed is sw +1 imp and sw +2 cr, Reach of 1, Parry 0U, ST 9†.

The tomahawk is, again, too light at 1.3 lb.  It's closest to the hatchet's 2 lb.

Damage is sw cut, Reach of 1, Parry 0, ST 8.  Can be thrown!  Damage sw cut, Acc 1, Range x1.5/x2.5, RoF 1, Shots T(1), ST 8, Bulk -2.

You DO have silly larp weapons of your own, don't you?

PS: If you happen to have an M1917 Cutlass sitting on your shelf:

Damage is sw+1 cut and thr +2 imp, Reach 1, Parry 0, ST 8.  It should be about 2 lb. with scabbard, but real world weights are missing the Low Tech stats consistently.

I Should Write About...

Sometimes the long silence is from my brain latching onto a topic I've already written about that I find when I search to make sure I haven't already written about it.

Brain then locks up and says, "I like Santa."

This, in turn, locks up the free ice cream machine for hours or days.

Huzzah

A local tuner shop I've done business with before is willing to try swapping my tires from the steel rims to the Camaro rims.

They're also going to dig into the body control module and activate my domelights so they come on when the doors open.  This is known as a 7Y6 delete after the SPID code.

I'm going to have them check the boxes to shut off the daytime running lights and to activate the remote start option.  Remote start will take more work to get functioning, but the first step is the BCM.

GPMG

What the hell is a GPMG or General Purpose Machine Gun?

I'm reading a debate where they're making it sound like it's impossible to define.

I'd always thought it was a single gun that could be employed as a light and medium gun with light being from a bipod and medium from a tripod.

Light and medium being defined as roles rather than guns.

In this paradigm, a heavy machine gun is one that does sustained fire; which is just more volume than a medium gun is expected to do.

What makes a heavy gun gets blurred considerably by large caliber guns like Ma Deuce.  M2HB doesn't do a lot of volume, really.

In WW2 the US heavy MG was the water-cooled M1917, medium was the M1919A4 and the light role was filled by the BAR.  Notice they're all in .30-06?

That's because the role is caliber independent.

That's why an M60 or M240 at the squad level is an LMG, and so is an M249.

An M249 can be mounted on a tripod and employed as a medium gun too; yet it's in 5.56.

The M249 can be considered a GPMG because of this.

It's slippery.

$215 RDIAS

US vs Kittson is starting in the 9th Circus.

Prolly going nowhere, but it'd be kinda neat if SCOTUS got it and nuked the Hughes Amendment.

Quote from where I found it:

A guy with a felony for attempted murder and manslaughter tried to sell a PPSh-41 to the ATF, and is now appealing to the most liberal circuit in the US.  So this is going to go nowhere.

Since the entire NFA hinges on the conceit that it's legal under Congress' taxing power, refusing to accept the payment of the tax on MG's means they can't ban them.

So they're left with accepting taxes to keep them restricted or seeing them become the same as any other firearm.

With Bruen floating around out there, this could be interesting.

I Don't Feel Scary

The other night I was at a brewery, trying to enjoy my beer, when the sounds of obnoxious tween/teens playing some sort of loud popping clap game started getting on my nerves.

They were there because their parents had decided to have a birthday party in the brewery's tasting room.

They were nowhere near their parents making all this noise.

So I decided to, politely, ask one of the adults if they could, perhaps, get their crotch fruit to play somewhere else, like the outside area of the place.

One parent grabs their kids, says they're sorry, and drags them away.

Another is like, "what the fuck?!"

Marv tries to explain that I have hearing issues and his reply is, "I did two tours in Iraq when I was in the Marines and I'm fine!"

So I replied, "try stepping on a landmine."  Because the sound was reminding me of the pop of a bounder.  I think, now, that he thought I was inviting him to step on a mine immediately.

Mr Marine squares up and... visibly reconsiders.  Then he just leaves with his kid to elsewhere in the bar.

I'm thinking, "well, I'm going to get my ass kicked."  Then it doesn't happen.

This sort of thing has happened to me before and I wonder if I look a lot more frightening than I feel when such things are developing.

I am not actually frightening, but I appear to have mastered an effective defensive display.

You Have To Admit

While something belt fed and water cooled is the most appropriate tool to deal with protesting bigots...

The traditional weapon for use in campus protests is the Garand.

Whether or not using troops on students is appropriate or legal, I will leave up to scholars and historians to debate.

What you have to admit is there's no newsworthy Hamas support protests at Kent State.

Almost as if the lesson stuck.

Just sayin'.

Ship Design

The more I observe, the larger the bullshit flag gets when I look at Traveller deck plans.

The first place it really hit was watching The Caine Mutiny where, "The Caine is the inboard ship," when ensign Keith first arrives.

There are at least two destroyers tied up and they climb up to the deck of the outboard ship and pass over to the Caine.

I started paying attention and noticing that many ships have a passage about amidships that allows for traffic from a ship berthed outboard through ships inboard to the dock.

In Traveller terms that'd mean an airlock on both sides and a passage straight from one to the other to allow this kind of stacking.

One reason this is a design feature of American destroyers is because of our extensive use of destroyer tenders in the Pacific.  One tender would support several destroyers and they tied up alongside each other.

There's a lot of practical considerations that are not reflected on any Traveller deckplan.

Just look at access into the Type-S.  There's a down hatch from the avionics bay, but access from the avionics bay to the bridge is a maintenance hatch.  Maintenance hatches require tools to open and they only open from the inside.  To use this as the ships entrance means unbolting that maintenance hatch and leaving it open.  The aft bulkhead has two iris valves.  One leads into a multipurpose space, the other into the engine room.

There are zero airlocks, unless you count flooding the air-raft bay.

There's more than one design that doesn't keep the passengers separate from the crew with the attendant security problems inherent with such intermixing.

And the limited number of airlocks and hatches would be murdered by liability lawyers.  Though considering the black humor of the low-lottery, perhaps they've all been murdered for the good of humaniti.

At Least It's Not A GURPS Post

Rearranged the Lego to better prevent Shadow from rearranging them.

Not Once

There are no official GURPS stats for the AR-18.  Or the AR-180.

A couple of rifles based on it, like the L85, but not the actual McCoy.

The stats are simple enough.

Now I'm ready for Northern Ireland.

Panic Mode

Right after Harvey and The Boy had finished putting away the groceries, we noticed that we could not find Shadow.

We scoured the house and came to the conclusion she'd slipped out when the door was open from the haul-in from the car.

Much despair was evident.

Since we'd originally found her in the back yard, we tried to be philosophical that she'd visited over several nights before we brought her in and she'd eventually figure out how to get back to the back door.

So we turned on hockey to distract us and we waited.

Three hours after we noticed she was missing, Harvey looks up and sees her between the curtains and the sliding glass door.

She'd been under Harvey's roll-top desk the entire time!

A place we didn't think to check because we didn't know there was enough space under the drawers for her to fit.

We're just happy to have figured out where she'd gone and that's she was safe all along.

It's Like They Don't Want The Business

As feared, finding a place to swap the tires and TPMS from one set of rims to the other is turning into a quest.

The chains will happily sell me new tires and sensors for the Camaro rims.

While having a complete set of spare tires mounted is handy, I don't really have a place to store them.

Never mind the additional $750 for tires and $100 for sensors.  Tire store TPMS sensors are always more expensive than Rock Auto or even Amazon.

The hunt is on, because my tires have life left in them and I don't wanna kill them in storage with a false sense of security I have spares.

One particular chain store had empty bays and an empty parking lot when they turned my business away.

I looked hard at the lack of wealth generation going on and asked, "how's that turning away work doing for you?"  He stammered in reply.

MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY

It's international fucking communist day.

25% off helicopter rentals in Chile.

There is officially no food today...

Wait.

There is no official food for today.  Yes, that is correct Comrade.

Path Of Least Resistance

JFK's brains, famously, went out the back of his skull and all over the trunk of the limo.

This has been used to "prove" that the shot came from the front of the car.  It's been used to justify that the shot came from anywhere BUT where Oswald and his Carcano were.

We've all seen temporary cavities in ballistic gelatin.  In muscle, that doesn't overcome the stretch of the tissue and results in the tissue returning to it's original shape, less the permanent wound channel.

Brain has no stretch, but it's mostly water so it's incompressible.

The bullet dumping energy creates pressure that will seek to escape the vessel containing it.  The skull.

This will follow the path of least resistance and someone recently made a nice hole for it to escape out of.

It's a recurring theme with head wounds.

But don't take my word for it!

Find footage of that shot and note where the blood is coming out.

How Difficult?

Guns/TL (Rifle) is an easy DX based skill.

I don't think it really takes much practice to get good at it.

I can hit a 3.5" circle at 100 yards pretty much at will with Wilma, especially since I adjusted the zero from the picture above.

That's a -8 to hit for size and a -10 for range.

I get +1 for braced.  +1 for All-Out-Attack (Determined).  +5 for Acc and +1 for taking a second to aim through a scope.  +5 for well lit indoor range.

-5 total.

Since I hit this target almost without fail my skill is at least 15.  Because 10 is the average roll and I average hitting this.  A miss by one is still within a 5" circle, which we can see above.

Does the math check out if we move the target to 50 yards?

 The range penalty is -8 now, giving me a 12 to hit the blue circle instead of 10.  The +2 to hit shrinks the average to a 1.5" circle, and this is close.

Cool!  I GURPS with a skill of 15 in rifle.  Same as my Guns/TL8 (Pistol)!

Perhaps even got it up to 17 based on the performance with Willard's M1956A2:

JFK Blown Away

Can we GURPS the Kennedy assassination?

Let's try!

The range was between 175 to 265 feet (58 to 88 yards), -9 to -10 for range.

There's a, give or take, 50' (16 yards) difference in elevation.  This takes 8 yards off the effective range.

So 50 to 80 yards for range penalties of -8 to -10.

The car is going 12-15 miles per hour for worst case penalties of -3 to -4 as it crosses the window.

-11 for the first shot.  The speed of the car matters less as the angle changes, but the range increases, so -12 for the second and subsequent shots.

80 yards is well within the 650 yard half damage range, so he gets the full 5d pi.

-12 is a heck of a penalty, and note he missed his first shot at the "easier" -11.

But he's aiming for the skull, another -7.

So a -18 to -19!

He gets a +1 for All-Out-Attack (Determined).  The situation and timing preclude getting braced or accuracy bonuses.

-17 on the first shot (that missed) and -18 on the two that hit.

Except...  The neck hit is just -5.

I think he was aiming for the skull and missed the first two shots.  First completely, second by just one making the skull hit a body hit and the third round hits.  Since the body and neck are identical in damage performance for piercing, let's just call it body.

Oswald's Guns/TL7 (Rifle) has to be at least 21 to have a chance of hitting at all.  A chance below 3 is always a miss.

A roll of 3 or 4 is always a critical hit and I think we see that reflected in the damage.

The shot is nigh impossible, but I've seen players roll more than one crit hit in a row before...

Considering that the USMC scores for expert require hitting head sized groups at 500 yards (-21 penalty) he probably had enough skill.  Perhaps even Guns/TL7 (Rifle) of 25 meaning he'd need to roll a 7 or less for a skull shot on the fateful day.

Now that we've got the bullets on target.

First round misses.

Second round misses skull and does 5d pi to the neck/body.  Let's stick to average damage and roll a 17.

We'll also give the reasonably fit Kennedy 11 hit points.

17 against the body is a major wound and he rolls to stay conscious; and succeeds as we can tell by his grabbing his throat.

Governor Connolly takes 6 points to a random location (body) after the bullet passes through Kennedy.

Third round hits skull, again doing 17 points of damage.  2 are absorbed by the DR of the skull allowing 15 to penetrate.  This is multiplied by 4 for 60 points of damage, bringing Mr Kennedy to -66 hit points and exactly auto-death.

Ta da!

The Kennedy Assassination GURPS.  What else do I have to say?

The Unpopular Observation

I notice that a garden variety criminal got a 4:1 kill ratio on a warrant service and an 8:1 casualty ratio.

That math does not bode well for a "Mr and Mrs America, turn them all in," confiscation scheme.

There's a considerable number of people who are far better prepared to repel law enforcement than the deceased criminal in question.

Enough that I think that law enforcement organizations should get on our side here rather than maintaining their third side in the debate about gun control.

In truth, they need us on their side in the everyday performance of their jobs.  Note, I don't say, "duty," because the courts have stripped duty from the job description.

The common citizen and the police, in a healthy society, have common cause and are aligned in their wants and needs.

This present, unhealthy, state isn't a good thing.

This Isn't The First Time

The pick's official stats not conforming to a reality check is a situation that's occurred before in GURPS.

In the original rules chainmail (mail to us nerds) was more easily penetrated by impaling weapons.

We reality checked it back in 1986 with people in the SCA.

Arrows went right through several examples of chain that people had lovingly made.

Rules match reality, go!

Except...

While our arrows were historically accurate, our mail wasn't.

All of our examples were butted rings made from mild steel wire.

Genuine mail is made from riveted rings and harder steel because it's heat treated after riveting.

Riveted mail's rings don't part when hit with an arrowhead, thus they provide just as much protection from impaling weapons as cutting.

4th edition reflects this experimental data.

I think that the reality testing wasn't done with picks because they're not sexy like swords or ultra common like bows and mail.

There's also a strong reluctance to make any weapon better at punching armor by default, otherwise the players will arm themselves with APFSDSDU bec de corbin exclusively.

It's Not GURPSing

The martel de fer from Cold Steel is raising issues with the rules as written.

Both sides do the same number of dice.  The beak, doing impaling damage, is only advantageous after it's penetrated the armor.

My, presumably, ST 11 gets 1d+2 cr for the hammer and 1d+2 imp for the beak.  2d-1 if I use both hands.

The beak gets a +2 bonus for targeting chinks in the armor, for a -6 penalty.  Hitting said chink halves the DR from the hit.

Watching people hitting plate armor on YouTube, one gets the impression that either the presenter is very strong and is rolling epically well, OR there's a prominent chink right in the center of every breastplate.

With me, hitting light plate's DR3, the average hit of 5 means that 2 penetrates with either face, but the pick side does 4.  The average roll has no chance against the DR 6 of medium plate, unless I hit at -6.  I don't think I have that skill level.

What I am observing is the pick making a hole in medium plate and the hammer making a dent.

The people who designed weapons like this were looking to punch armor.  The understood that if you made the point of impact much smaller, the same force would be applied to a smaller area and be more likely to penetrate.

I am thinking that a pick is better simulated by making the damage armor piercing.

Halving the DR when coupled with the chance of the pick getting stuck is even somewhat balanced.

I have a new house rule based on a reality check!

It's GURPSing Correctly So Far

I've seen a couple of videos "oohing and ahhhing" over .277 Fury aka 6.8x51mm and its performance.

All is in accord with how any 7d pi projectile will perform.

What I am not seeing is a side by side comparison with a 7.62x51mm NATO rifle with a similar barrel length.

7.62x51mm NATO will also do 7d from 20" barrels and 6d from 16" barrels.

It's a bit of a difference but...

With the 4x damage to the skull, 7d will average 90; 6d will average 76.  Both are auto-death.

The average hit from 7d is 24.5; 6d is 21.  Neither is getting through a level III plate, on average.

Just for the record, 5.56x45mm NATO from a 14.5" or 16" barrel does 4d+2 pi and is averaging 16 per hit, doing 56 to the skull, almost auto death.  It doesn't penetrate the level III plate either.

That Person

I've realized that I am THAT person.

I think I shall, henceforth, avoid the place where I made the realization.

I will miss it, but they will be fine without my patronage.

Score (Hot Rod Edition)

Snagged a set of used Camaro rims today for a song.

5th gen Camaro is a Zeta platform car, just like The Beast.

That means the rims swap!

Test fit, rear.

Test fit, front.

Four rims for $125.  With tires I don't want, and wouldn't trust anyway.  Never mind they're 245/50-18 and I prefer the stock 235/50-18 size.

They're noticeably lighter than the steelies and look a lot better.

This is also the product of lots of back and forth with The Lovely Harvey about what rims we wanted for The Beast.  We both like this rim and getting a set for the price of a single rim was gravy.

I am happy that these clear the big brake mod handily.

Score

Carbine buffers run about $20 each.  Or did last time I shopped.

Today I nabbed two for $10.

A well loved H and an, apparently, unused H2.

I didn't really need them, but...

Spelling Is Important

Getting a letter wrong on your order form can be embarrassing.

When you order 8 of these:

And get 8 of these:

Damsel

I just got done watching Nexflix's Damsel.

It's not what the pundits who hate "The Message" think it was.

It probably wouldn't have garnered any controversy if the dancing monkeys who made it had just let the work stand on its own merit.

It's not what the makers say it was.

It does not subvert the genre.

It's female empowerment in the sense of, "what if the damsel in distress had some damned agency?"

Elodie certainly does.

She gets the shit beaten out of her in the process, it's not a Mary Sue tale.

If you're a D&D geek, give it a whirl.

You will be rewarded by a dragon with the proper four-legs and two-wings.

The dragon is voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo.  I would listen to her read a dictionary.

FIL Update

Looks like our forcing him into the ambulance paid off.

His blood pressure was very bad and the scans showed no damage from the TIA.

The doc stopped the heart monitoring, so the a-fib must have been transitory, but it's something to keep an eye on.

Looks like a diet modification and blood thinners and he's got many more miles to go.

Should be home tomorrow.

Because They Don't Need Us

The reason the RINO GOP in Tallahassee don't advance pro-gun bills is because they don't need gun owners to retain power up there.

I get the impression that the leadership up there doesn't like him much, and a decent part of the blame for that is actually at Marion's feet.

She was definitely an NRA or Florida Sportsman Association or nothing sort.

Her attitude is pervasive up there, and GOA FL is not NRA or FSA and the legislators don't feel that GOA can affect elections.

They further know that we don't wish to commit political suicide by electing Democrats.

Taking Bets

Were Mr Cuz-Choc, and the deceased here legally?

The local Fox affiliate slants liberal, so they'd never mention it.

What About After

In a world where .276 Pederson was adopted to replace .30-06; what happens after WW2?

Pederson is very similar to 7.62x51mm dimensionally, so the push to make it smaller might not be as strong as changing from .30-06 to 7.62 NATO was.

But we'd still have experienced 7.92x33 Kurz and seen the idea of assault rifles.

The British were working on .280 British during the immediate post-war time-frame and it might have gotten more traction as being a bit more compact than .276 Pederson.

In the real world, the UK even adopted it as the 7mm Mk.1Z for the EM-2 rifle (Rifle No.9 Mk.1).

I once made stats for an AR-10 in .280 Brit.  It could have been adopted as the M14...

Not sure where we'd have gone with a LMG since the M5 version of the MG.42 was working fine in .276 Pederson, but having ammo commonality is always nice.

7x43mm NATO has a ring to it...

Family Stuff Going On

Free ice cream might be slow for a bit.

Father-in-law had himself a TIA and has A-Fib.

Dealing with it.

What If Pederson

What if MacArthur had not gotten his way and the US had adopted .276 Pederson instead of staying with .30-06?

The Garand would have gotten a 10 shot clip instead of 8.

The M1918 BAR would have been changed enough for the late updates from Colt to be applied and the Rifle, Automatic, .276 Calibre M2 to replace it.

Later the Garand would be tested with a detachable box magazine and possibly adopted as the M3 rifle in 1946.

The M1919A4, when converted or made new in .276 becomes the M4 machine gun.

The M4A1 machinegun is the same pattern as an M1919A6.

The incompetent drafter who fucked up measuring a captured MG.42 for conversion to American cartridges quit in protest when .30-06 was dropped in 1936 and therefore didn't screw up the .276 conversion into the M5 machine gun, which the US still uses in 2024.

Misapprehension

What are most of my GURPS posts?

Reality checks.

Way back when, Steve Jackson Games put out that if you found something that failed the reality check, go with reality.

Since then I've made a hobby of seeing how many things I could find that passed that check, and answering, "Will it GURPS?" in the affirmative.

So far, just a single well documented death from .25 ACP has failed to GURPS of the things I've checked.

Stats for guns not included with the game or any of the supplements is another portion.

There's probably hardly a group playing GURPS 4e that needs more than you can get with the published stats, but I like the strange stuff.  We were using FG.42 in our 3e game years before GURPS WW2 came out.

But my GURPS posts aren't about how I run my campaigns.

They aren't explanations about the basic concepts of the rules or how they work.

A couple of pushy commenters aren't going to get to comment anymore because they couldn't decipher this.  Good riddance!

That pushiness makes me want to mention the sidebar to the right.

There's topics you can click on that lead you to everything I've marked with that topic since 2005.

There's a search bar at the top left that lets you search for a specific word I've used since 2005.

I use them a lot in a game attempt to keep from repeating myself.

Most galling is the times that I've been asked for an explanation to find the asker didn't even read it; then demands the same explanation again.

If you're not going to bother reading, why are you even here?

The excuse, "I don't visit every day," doesn't fly because you can scroll back to where you left off last visit; and if you don't I make about three posts a day of varying lengths.

You're going to miss something if you don't read regular like!

Like a reply to a question you asked!

Poor Marion

Let us never forget 2011 when she fucked us on open and campus carry.

Despite her denials, she withheld NRA support until it was poison pilled by amendments that had been removed in committee.

Well, she just got her golden parachute taken away.

As others have said, if I had made as much as she was making for as long as she was making it, I wouldn't be worried about making it to the end.

I do worry about the cats.

Packrat Payoff

The DVD drive in the Mac Pro decided to make whirring noises rather than play the disk.

Happily, I had a spare drive in a bin in the garage!

Which is good because this ancient thing uses IDE for the optical drives.

Remember IDE?

FTW

For earth day today I have all the windows open and the AC set to 65.

The Beast is idling in the drive.

I should burn a tire. 

What!?!

It's not like I'm composting my girlfriend.

Implications

Just watched Sound of Freedom.

Considering the implications of what is said at the end about how much slavery and how many slaves are children in the world...

African American race baiters demanding reparations over something that didn't even happen to them sounds like being bitches.

So, bitches, what are you doing to stop slavery?

I know what one white dude did.

That's Odd

I don't have a single character who is sporting a PASGT helmet or vest!

My revision of T2K and the 4e updates of the characters all have ACH and ESAPI.

The PASGT stuff was a staple of so many characters before more information became available via the internet.

I do have a Technomancer version of me who should have the helmet because I have one.

I think I'll make a small revision.

Upside Yah Head

"Sarge, I forgot my helmet!"

2d+2 cr against an unarmored skull still gets DR 2 from the bone, like a small mace or the hammer side of a martel de fer.

An average two-handed hit from a ST 14 dude will, on average, deliver 9 points of raw damage.

Minus 2 for the bones.

Times 4 for hitting the brain.

28 points of damage.

Two death rolls for a HT 10 mook and almost halfway to auto death.

A max damage roll would get 12 past the skill for 48 points of damage and 4 death rolls.

The typical 12 HP PC would fare a bit better.

The average roll will just barely get a death roll.

Max will get three death rolls.

In both cases they're major wounds to the head and bonuses to being knocked over and penalties to not losing consciousness apply.

Kids, remember, wear your helmet! 

Update:

If my much smaller, and weaker, ass swung it one handed at an unprotected noggin...

1d+2 cr will do 3-8 points of raw damage with an average of 5  This will get 4-24, average 12, points against the HP of the target.  On average the victim is looking to roll for consciousness, but not in danger of dying unless they fail that roll.  Getting a death roll is possible, but I'd have to roll well.

Two handed changes the raw damage by just a point, delivering 8-28, average 16.

Medieval For The Win

Kentucky Ballistics wonders how medieval weapons perform against modern armor.

Will it GURPS?

Scott looks like he's running a ST 14.  That's got a thrust damage of 1d and swing damage of 2d.

His helmet appears to be NIJ IIIA rated.  That's DR 12.

The first weapon is a small mace.  He'll do 2d+2 cr with it, averaging 9 damage.  It shouldn't penetrate.

The next weapon is a mace.  He'll do 3d-1 cr with it, averaging 9 damage.  It shouldn't penetrate.

Then the pick.  He'll do 2d+1 imp with it averaging 8 damage.  It shouldn't penetrate.

Using two hands, as he does, is good for an extra point of damage.  Averages are 10, 10 and 9; so they shouldn't penetrate on average.

BUT!

Maximum damage with each weapon, two handed, is 15 cr, 17 cr and 14 imp.  Penetration is possible, and, maybe, he got a good roll with the second hit with the pick.

This GURPS!

He didn't tell us what kind of vest it is.  It looks like NIJ II soft armor.  DR 10/5* (higher DR vs pi and cut).

The sword should do 2d-1 imp for thrusts and 2d+1 cut for swings.  Average hits should be 6 imp and 8 cut respectively.

The DR 10 stops the cut handily, even if the armor takes some damage.  The DR 5 stops the thrust, and his poor technique probably explains a below average damage roll.

The pick, doing 9 impaling with his two-handed swing gets 4 into the dummy.

This GURPS!

I'm not going to bother with the ahistorical morningstars or the idiotically long $1,500 not-so-great sword.  But if I did the morningstar it'd do 3d cr swung two-handed for an average of 10.  It shouldn't get through the helmet, but should get through the vest.  I think it did, but he didn't really show the effects.

His spear should do 2d-1 imp when thrown.  Average of 6 damage.  That should penetrate, and it did, slightly.

Two-handed stabbing with it should do the same damage.

This GURPS!

I don't know how fast he was going on the scooter, so I can't calculate the damage bonus.

He's Right

Willard noticed that the Luger P.08 is slightly bigger in every dimension than the M1911A1.

The Luger looks so much slimmer in profile you don't notice it by itself.

How Long You Need?

Some of the descendants of slaves in the United States claim to still be suffering under the repercussions of their ancestors once being enslaved.

8 generations.

I find that odd.

There's historical examples of nations being conquered, the once free citizens being enslaved and their grandkids being citizens of the conquering nation.

Seems that those folks had a bigger grudge than African Americans, yet...

Two generations to members of society.

Perhaps it was the shorter time of enslavement?

Well, there's a caveat to that two generations deal.  Enslaved grandfather needed to behave, free, but second class subject father needed to behave and free and citizen son needed to behave or right back to slavery because enslavement was a punishment for some crimes.

Some families never did manage to get out of being slaves because grampa never got with the idea that if he toed the line, his descendants would be free.  Or worse, decided that if HE couldn't be free, then NOBODY would!

I wonder if we're seeing some of this psychology at play with race relations today.

I do want to point out that African-Americans had sorted themselves out after the Civil War and, for the most part, had been becoming Americans.

It's true!

There were many places where racist bullshit kept them from completing the task.  This is also true.

There were also many places where there wasn't such bullshit and they settled into the same nuclear American family model that everyone else used.  The experience of a black family was no different from an Irish or Italian one in these places.

But then we put racist bullshit back on the menu.

Redline districts and welfare did more to kill the solid nuclear family than anything Jim Crow conceived of.

Destroyed with "love" as it were.

And it's kept them from succeeding as the little enclaves get more and more isolated from mainstream American culture and norms.

The thing that stands out, from my observations, is every African American I know who's rejected the enclave and the subculture that thrives there to adopt "normal" American culture is successful.

They've jobs, mortgage, family, friends...  And them being black is no more noteworthy than me being Scots/Italian.

In many ways they emigrated from the enclave to America!

It's classic melting pot stuff.

The echoes of other cultures doing this are still there.  Little Italys and Chinatowns are where the Italian and Chinese ghettos used to be.  The places where, if you wanted to skip being an American, you stayed.  Want out?  Adopt our ways and welcome, citizen!

But there's some very rich, racist, bastards with a stake in the status quo of preventing Blacks from being full members of society.  Bastards of every color, but racist nonetheless.

As Predicted By GURPS

In GURPS, .270 Win does 7d pi.  .30-06 does 7d+1 pi.

Essentially identical, with a very slim edge to '06.

I Got It Then

 

What I remember most about the first time I saw this movie was all my friends staring at me and whispering, "Oh, that's exactly how Angus is going to respond to this shit someday."

Martel De Fer

 Do you have a pick with a hammer face?

I do!

2.2 lb. of 1055 steel and American straight grain hickory...  Sold by Midway, marketed by Cold Steel, made by an American Tomahawk Co. manufactured in Taiwan...  It doesn't appear to be THE American Tomahawk Co. either.

Not ATC's logo...

If I had a nickel for every California cancer warning about nickel...

The langettes are sheet metal and installation is DIY.  The included screws are cheap as all fuck.  Pilot holes are your friend.

It's fun, though.  Especially since it was on sale for almost 43% off.  I can feature a $46 mertel de fer, I can't feature an $80 one.

A couple of whacks on our chopping stump shows that it works.  The hammer face leaves an impression, the pick side gets stuck, like it's supposed...

If I have statted myself correctly with a ST of 11...  It should do 1d+2 imp on the pick side and 1d+2 cr on the hammer side.

I Blame Al Gore

Love bug season has been surprisingly light this year.

Good!

There were reports a few years ago that some species of dragonfly had adapted to handle eating the acidic things, that could explain a lot of their absence because they're clearly unused to predation.

With A Cute Little BRRRRRT

The XM214 is a gun from Twilight: 2000 that turned out to be a solution in search of a problem.

Seems an ideal PC weapon, though.

OG T2K included it, but my GURPS conversion doesn't.  But I couldn't resist making the stats.

Troof

 "The most oppressed people in America are the law-abiding individuals."

- sloanmagnum5009

Will It GURPS - Does The M1 shoot Faster Than The M14

When the M14 being a disaster comes up, someone always says that the M1 Garand could akshually fire faster.

Does it GURPS?

Both are semi-automatic.  One by design, one by modification.

The Garand has a magazine capacity of 8 and reload time of 3 (grab, load, ready).  Basic load 104 rounds.  3 seconds of shooting, then 3 seconds of reloading.  3x13 for the shooting and 3x12 for the reloading.  75 seconds.

The M14 has a magazine capacity of 20+1 and a reload time of 3.  Basic load 100 rounds.  7 seconds of shooting, then 3 seconds of reloading.  7x5 for the shooting and 3x4 for the reloading.  47 seconds.

GURPS busted!

Even if we say that the M14's reload time should be longer because you have to drop the magazine before reloading it only adds 4 seconds to the time.  51 is still shorter than 75 seconds.

Ian Sure Can Stir Up The Hornet's Nest

 

Reading about the reaction to the video and it's clear that so many people didn't watch it before they commented. 

Regurgitated is the common refrain that they know someone who carried one in 'Nam and they loved it!

Watch the vid!  Ian covers that.  The issue isn't that the M14 that was issued to the troops was a bad gun.  The issue is only 2/3 of the guns made actually passed inspection to be issued and that all three contractors making them were losing money making them to spec.

It's astonishing that Winchester and H&R both made Garands which are thought of as better than the Springfield made guns.

The design changed enough from the M1 that new processes had to be implemented to make the M14, contrary to what Springfield told the DOD.

It's still embarrassing that Italy and Beretta did what Springfield claimed they'd done, made a 7.62x51mm NATO rifle derived from the Garand that used tooling and processes from the original gun.

Humiliating is they did it in two years, not 17 and did it for far less money.

The BM59 is a better gun in many, perhaps most, ways than the M14.

Another thing that keeps coming up is defenders of the M14 citing their M1A.  They're not the same gun at all.  The detail differences add up fast and do a great deal to explain how Springfield Armory (no relation) can economically make them.

It's A Good Question

Second City Cop asks, where's the outrage?  Here too.

If you're going to have any chance of convincing us that black lives matter, then you're going to have to start acting like they actually matter.

At present, it seems they only matter if they were career criminals who finally came to a predictable end by the hands of an officer attempting to arrest them.

Then we recount all the wonderful things they might have been if they had not been prevented from turning their lives around... by getting killed resisting arrest.

So, race baiters, why don't you get pissed off at a birthday party being sprayed with gunfire and innocent children being murdered?

I'll suggest a real reason, just in case they have a justification to ignore the violence unless it's cops.

Criminals committing violence doesn't lead to a payout to the families of the victims or the race baiters.  Likewise, stopping criminals from committing violence reduces the power the race baiter wields rather than enhancing it.

Much the same way equal rights and meritocracy is anathema to them.

Preliminary Prototype

We have a mock-up of the shift box.

LED to show that it's on.

Momentary switch to turn it on.

Momentary on-off-on switch to change gears.  Up for upshift, down for downshift.

We have a preliminary wiring diagram.

I have parts on the way to measure to make a box that has a useful cupholder in it that will also be able to hold the switches.

Refer To...

Marv and I are researching what it takes to add tap-up/down shifting to The Beast.

We could buy one of three nearly plug-and-play boxes, but they're all the same format and I don't care for how they did it.

In a word, cheaply.

Maybe $15 of components for $125 to $150.

I have the factory service manual and can see how the wiring for the shifter SHOULD run.

These shift box vendors have proven the BCM already has the programming to respond to the inputs once you run a wire between X1-17 and X1-20 on the BCM.

X1-20 shows a voltage drop from X1-17's 12v and that tells the BCM to ask the TCM to shift up or down.

What we've been trying to find is if X1-17 was hot all the time or just when the ignition is on.  We want the shift box we're making to open the switch when the ignition is off.  The factory shifter can't be in manual when you start the car because the switch can't be closed when the car is in Park or Neutral.  The aftermarket boxes are a simple switch you can forget in the 'on' position.  While nobody is reporting any problems, I don't like sending a "I'm in gear AND in park" signal to the, expensive to replace, BCM.

X1-17 also provides 12v to the cruise control switch which sends a voltage drop back to X1-3.

That sentence above took way longer to find than it should have because the table of contents and index don't include the words, "cruise control."

Happily, GM is a creature of habit and my other service manuals show that cruise control troubleshooting is at the beginning of section 9.  The Caprice, Impala SS, Custom Cruiser and Corvette manuals all have "cruise control" in their indices.

Grrrrrrrr.

Pop Smoke

Got me a new travel tumbler!

16oz, but it's held a 20oz coffee already.  Kept it warm until it was gone.

If the 32oz had come with a red cap, I might have upsized.

The lid does something I've never had in a travel tumbler.  It seals.

Good job Mission First!  Amusing and functional!

Bad Joke

If a group of Rabbis supported William III of England, would that make them Orange Jews?

Someone Might Have Gotten Hurt

Australia, famously, put heavy restrictions on who could own and carry a gun and what types of guns could be carried and owned.

Good thing, otherwise someone might have been killed in a massacre in a mall.

Oh... wait...

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's the crazy (or evil) more than the guns what causes shit like this, especially since it was crazy (or evil) with a knife.

It's a pretty beefy limb to say that, if this had happened in Tampa, the stabber would have been ventilated much faster and long before a cop arrived.  With many fewer injuries and deaths.

Another Round

Have you missed out on the four previous rounds of M1911 sales from CMP?

Are you pleased with the gun you'd gotten in one of the first three rounds and want another?

It appears that good news is on the horizon!

M1911 Pistol Options:  A couple of months ago, we received the fiscal year 2024 tranche of surplus M1911s from the Department of the Army – 10,000 of them, which is fantastic. In terms of orders and availability, we are still in the process of filling M1911 orders for Round 4. We expect to announce Round Five this fall, once Round 4 starts winding down. And, I’ll give you a status update on that in October in my next update. While we are still assessing the pistols we just received, it looks like the quality is pretty good.  

From here.

I've got my single example, but I know of a couple of people who didn't already and might just be swayed to get one this time.

I'll Say It Again

May I continue to gush at the effects of modern gun cleaning chemicals and tools?

It's in distinct contrast to the stuff I had to deal back in the Army.

We got paper towels, Break-Free CLP, a well worn toothbrush and a bore brush.

Something I noticed was we needed to clean the guns several times and it was primarily because Break-Free CLP was really good at loosening things up once it had sat, but sucked for immediate effect.

I think we should have soaked them down with the stuff and come back in a few days.

But that's unthinkable to the Army, so we had to clean off all we could, then do it again when they were no longer clean thanks to the CLP dissolving stuff from unseen areas.

The amusing thing is I'm not really using much different equipment, just different chemicals.

My toothbrush gets replaced regularly.

I'm still loving Boresnakes.

Shooter's Choice (or Hoppe's) has an immediate effect on the crud and I sacrifice t-shirts to the cleaning.  Most of the time I use cloth patches to apply the solvent.

There's probably better stuff out there, but I'm happy with what I have.

 

The Pistol I Am Least Likely To Shoot

The pistol I'm least likely to shoot is the one that's in my pocket all the time.

Ironic, isn't it.

The range rules prevent me from pulling it out of my pocket to shoot it, so it tends to stay there, lest I be unarmed to and from the range.

Today I planned better and packed different heat.

Two 13-round and one 10-round magazine at seven yards.

I am reminded that the Shield Plus is louder than the 9-Compact.

It's a little harder to control and shoot fast, but I think that's a decent minute of bad-guy group.

Even better, it fired just fine caked in pocket lint.

Back In Black

Queue AC/DC

I had a black Fencer and Mk IV in my big box.  The Mk I and Mk II came with an earlybird special of a Mk III and Mk V.

Ogre I Through VI

 

With an M1A1 for scale.

I'd intended to do them all in glow-in-the-dark, but SJGames didn't offer I, II and VI in anything but black.

I have a black III and V.

I have a glow in the dark Fencer, but a black Dopplesnolder.

It Wasn't 96

I watched all five of the body cam videos of the officers involved in the shooting of Mr Reed.

Just two reloaded.  One was done shooting when they noticed they were slide locked and put in a fresh magazine.

One officer never fired a shot because he'd dropped his pistol when he reacted to being shot.

Four officers shooting.  One firing more than one magazine's worth.

Assuming the full load of 16 at the start and another 15 in the reload who kept firing.

79 shots, max.

If 96 rounds were fired, 17 belong to Mr Reed.

Two officers spend much of the fight running around not doing much constructive.  One of these is the reload after noticing slide lock after the fight.

The officer who reloaded and kept firing seems most focused on being in the fight.

The fourth firing officer spends a portion of the fight noticing he's down range from his partners, so loses some shooting time deconflicting.

It's likely less than 79 shots fired.  Especially since many cops I've talked to don't top up after chambering a round.  15 in the magazine, drop the slide, 1 in the pipe, 14 in the hole.

We're probably talking 50 shots.  I suppose I could go back and count.

Update:

Hey, there's reports in that big dump CPD put out.  Not the 15+1 Glock 22's that Not-The-Bee says.

Officer 1: Glock 17, 12 shots fired.  17+1 capacity.

Officer 2: Glock 19, 16 shots fired.  15+1 capacity.  This is the slide lock reloader, the video shows the 15 shot magazine clearly during the reload.

Officer 3: Glock 45, 34 shots fired.  17+1 capacity.

Officer 4: Glock 17, 17 shots fired.  17+1 capacity.

Officer 5 (the injured one): No shots fired.

79 rounds!  Yet every single media report is saying 96 rounds.

2011

The 2011 is just another "modern" re-imagining of the Browning Hi Power.

Change my mind!

Plain Clothes

Something alluded to in the Not-The-Bee article is, "why were plain clothes officers doing a traffic stop?"

It seems very odd for plain clothes to be working traffic.

I'm speculating that they were looking for the deceased and the seatbelt violation was the excuse to pull him over and check for what they wanted to look for.

Not that they could see that he wasn't wearing his belt through that tint.

But, let us speculate further about the deceased.

Illegal tint.

I am going to guess that he doesn't have a FOID.

He had prior arrests for weapons charges, he was out on bond for one of them.

Link to all the body cam footage.  Content warning for the squeamish.  Real guns being fired at real people who will be leaking on camera.

Not Even Full RoF

Police fire 96 shots in 41 seconds.

Five cops, each firing one pistol each.  15+1 capacity.

So, five seconds to empty.  3 to reload.  Five more to empty...

41/8 = 5.125 magazines.

Let's call it five each.  15*5 is 75 shots per officer.  Five officers is 375 shots.

So they fired just more than 25% the full rate of fire.

That means that they were pausing to assess or move to and from cover.

It wasn't a panicky mag dump.

Real panic would have been every one of them firing 15 and cowering someplace.

One cop didn't even get off a shot before he was wounded.

So 15*5*4 for 300 shots at max rate.  So about 1/3 the potential ammo dump.

But 96/4 is 24 shots per cop.  Or almost 2 magazines each.

American Society of Magic Negroes

Meh.

It's not a horrible movie, the premise seemed like it could have been fun.

But I did not care about the main character, Aren.

It's a writing fail.

The white dude he's supposed to be magicking up, Jason, is unlikeable; that part succeeded.  He didn't deserve the assistance the ASMN was giving him with his job and certainly didn't deserve to win the heart of the girl.

But the main character didn't really do the needful about earning her love either.

She likes him because the script says she should.

Justice Smith is playing the same basic character he portrayed in D&D Honor Among Thieves.

I dunno if he lacks range or the director said do like you did before.

The big speech that's supposed to evoke white guilt fails to land.  What it really gets me thinking is Aren has been attributing how he's felt about himself to outside forces when it was from within all along.   The way he explains it to Jason underscores it and Jason's reaction to it pounds it home.

In the end, it's not bad, but it's also not good.

I'd skip it; but I already watched it.

Yikes

They don't throw grenades or do land nav anymore?

Even my tanker ass threw two live grenades in the grenade course.

It's an interesting read and I've long held that spending money on ammo in training was superior to gadgets.

The 3-round burst on the M16A2 and M4 was a work-around to teaching the troops how to properly use the happy setting on the rifle.

I said, at the time, and I was a wee young waif then, "full auto is something you don't need in your service rifle very often, but when you need it, you NEED it."

The 3-round burst is an example of where you might NEED full auto, and ain't got it.

I notice it was dropped and all the M4's were converted to M4A1's with the SOCOM heavy barrel.  Really shoulda called that an M4A2.

Looking For The Real Killers In New Places

OJ Simpson has succumbed to age.

I'd forgotten him until Marv mentioned his death.

I watched the moderate speed pursuit live.

I paid attention to the trial.

I listened to conspiracy theories.

I was pissed at our "justice" system essentially trying him twice and was baffled at a civil trial could commence on the question of wrongful death when the criminal trial said, "he didn't kill anyone."

I found out that our system would still hang you with the lower standard of evidence required in a civil suit, where "eh, maybe?" is enough to get a conviction.

Pour A Big Glass Of "Told You So"

Streets fail to run in blood AGAIN after gun laws loosened.

I doubt that this will cause anyone in Tallahassee to change their minds and legalize campus and open carry.

I want campus way more than open because of where The Lovely Harvey works.

Open carry would be nice because then I could stop worrying about accidental exposure in the summer when I have to down-grade my carry gun to survive the heat and humidity.

Open carry would give me what I think of as "mostly" or "partially" conceal carry.

The problem with this method is the chance of the shirt riding up and over the gun.

The police in several jurisdictions have decided that the brief and accidental exposure law doesn't mean what it says and any exposure is illegal open carry.

They tend to be the same places where open carry fishing makes the news.

 

Feline Integration

We have three cats.

Bear, Beeper and Shadow.

Shadow is the newest and we found her just after she'd been kicked out of the nest.

She is terrified of Beeper, who will pounce on her when she runs.

We'd let it sort itself out, but Shadow panic pees when Beeper catches her.

For the past two months we've been doing "prisoner exchanges" and letting Shadow out of my room and locking Beeper in.

For about a week we've been leaving all the doors open and holding Shadow while we watch a movie or Hockey on the back porch in the evenings.

Beeper is becoming less interested in Shadow and Shadow is getting less terrified.

We're making steady, if slow, progress.

At first, when Beeper would "attack" (we think she's just asserting too hard) Shadow would disappear for hours and would have to be coaxed out of hiding.

Now she's good mere moments after we separate them.

Progress!

What's interesting about Shadow is Beeper is the only thing she's afraid of.  She uses Bear like a jungle gym, he's grudgingly tolerant of this.

Bear is also a, belated, protector.  After Beeper goes after Shadow and she screams bloody murder; Bear will go after Beeper.

Bear is a BIG cat.  17 pounds of not much fat.  He's 15 when he's totally slim.  Beeper just barely breaks 10 pounds.

When Bear is done, he's DONE.  He'd knock his brother, the dear departed Dingus, to submission and Dingus was 20 pounds without fat.  Dingus was HUGE.

I've been through cat introductions before and this has been the hardest one I've dealt with, but we're getting there.

Another Day Another Round

It's 4/10!

Bracing, don't you think?

Hold Your Breath

Many of the fundamentals of shooting guns apply to photography.

Like holding steady for 2 seconds while the camera takes an unexpectedly good pic with the sun filter on.

I was expecting just the bright reflections off Moxie, not a sepia tone image.