Done Fucked Up

I noticed right away that Chief Hagen had not read an important part of 870.044.  That'd be the reference, "pursuant to s. 870.043.

He quotes most of 870.044...

Title XLVI CRIMES

Chapter 870 AFFRAYS; RIOTS; ROUTS; UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLIES

SECTION 044Automatic emergency measures.

---

870.044 Automatic emergency measures.—Whenever the public official declares that a state of emergency exists, pursuant to s. 870.043, the following acts shall be prohibited during the period of said emergency throughout the jurisdiction:

(1) The sale of, or offer to sell, with or without consideration, any ammunition or gun or other firearm of any size or description.

(2) The intentional display, after the emergency is declared, by or in any store or shop of any ammunition or gun or other firearm of any size or description.

(3) The intentional possession in a public place of a firearm by any person, except a duly authorized law enforcement official or person in military service acting in the official performance of her or his duty.

Nothing contained in this chapter shall be construed to authorize the seizure, taking, or confiscation of firearms that are lawfully possessed, unless a person is engaged in a criminal act.

History.—ss. 4, 5, ch. 70-990; s. 1401, ch. 97-102; s. 2, ch. 2006-100.

That part I've highlighted is important (h/t Erin).  But far more important is what 870.043 says about WHEN you can evoke 870.044!

Title XLVI CRIMES

Chapter 870 AFFRAYS; RIOTS; ROUTS; UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLIES

SECTION 043Declaration of emergency.

---

870.043 Declaration of emergency.—Whenever the sheriff or designated city official determines that there has been an act of violence or a flagrant and substantial defiance of, or resistance to, a lawful exercise of public authority and that, on account thereof, there is reason to believe that there exists a clear and present danger of a riot or other general public disorder, widespread disobedience of the law, and substantial injury to persons or to property, all of which constitute an imminent threat to public peace or order and to the general welfare of the jurisdiction affected or a part or parts thereof, he or she may declare that a state of emergency exists within that jurisdiction or any part or parts thereof.

History.—s. 3, ch. 70-990; s. 1400, ch. 97-102.

Where's the riot, Chief?  870.044 isn't for just any emergency, it's for a specific kind of emergency.  More along the lines of reining in the KKK or "mostly peaceful" protesting.

I think Donald has stepped in it here.  GOA-Florida is on it and we have a statute that lets us sue government busybodies who get gun stuff wrong.  They don't even get to hide behind their office.

FFS, I'm not even a lawyer and I keep discovering just how ignorant cops and elected officials are about the law. 

Mystery Prepping

There are things we do to get ready for hurricanes that confuse my father in law.

I, belatedly, bought 100 lb. of ice for our two big coolers.

He was all, "what do we need that for?" when we had Marv's generator charging up the fridges.

He's not getting that the point of laying in this stuff is to have it when you need it.

Getting it before you need it is how you have it when you need it, because everyone else will be realizing they need it at about the same time.

So we get ice.

So we stock up on insulin.

So we have several days of shelf stable grub.

So we have jugs and bottles of potable water.

So we have ammo and loaded magazines.

So we top up all the fuel containers.

You might not get the luxury of getting more indefinitely.

But father in law's disconnect really hit when we tossed the ice, unused.

"Why did you buy all that if you weren't going to use it?"

Well, cooler #1 all melted because you didn't check to see if the lid was secure.

Cooler #2 didn't get cleaned before ice got put into it because my helper just started dumping ice...

I would have used the ice in those coolers to mix drinks if some simple precautions were taken!

Like A Scorpion It's My Nature

I did it again...

A female friend was venting and I was trying to fix the problem.

Ladies.

Don't bring us a problem you don't want solved.

Solving problems is what men do.

We wait for the opportunity, it's the main thing we bring to the partnership.

Don't get mad at us.

Don't say shit like, "now do you see why we're angry all the time from keeping shit bottled up?"

Because I'm going to reply with something like, "I figured you'd be happy getting the problem fixed!"

We are baffled by the idea that you just want to vent about a problem and leave it unresolved as long as someone will listen to the complaint and be sympathetic.

We're showing sympathy, we're offering to fix it.

I know you know how I respond to hearing about the problems of people I dislike.

It's isn't an offer to fix it, is it?

Neat!

I don't shotgun much so this innovation slipped past me.

Interia action:

Nifty.

Simple and elegant.

The place that introduced me to the idea was complaining about the price of such guns, so they must be expensive too.

Another Old West Gunwriter Passes

Phil Spangenberger has left the chat.

2024 has been rough on the people who wrote about cowboy guns.

Mike Venturino was just a bit ago, back in June.

You Can Tell A Democrat Is In Office

Information is trickling out about how bad Helene hit Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina.

Here's some footage from Erwin, TN.

That's pretty bad.

This storm and its effects would be 24/7 front page on all the news web sites if a Republican was president.

I remember Katrina coverage and lack of Ian coverage and now, lack of Helene coverage.

Well, I guess the less the press covers it the faster and more fully the area recovers.

You Only Get Points If It's An Actual Problem

 The GURPS Basic Set Vol 1: Characters, on page 144 says:

Missing Digit  

-2 or -5 points

You are missing a finger or thumb.

Missing Finger: Gives -1 DX with that hand (only). -2 points.

Missing Thumb: Gives -5 DX with that hand (only). -5 points.

I know a couple of people missing a finger who don't appear to be affected by it at all.

Some races are depicted with fewer fingers than humans and aren't given this disad.

It hit me that if it's not affecting you, you don't rate the points even if you don't have a finger where it should be!

Take the -1 for the quirk and make note your left pinky is gone.  No DX penalty, but you might get some social stuff from people going, "where's your pinky?"

I've met a couple of people who are REALLY freaked out by a missing digit too.  They were physically sick from the person who was missing that right ring finger.  <-- That missing finger is a warning about lathes and jewelry, by the way.

Prep Odds

No, we did not have a generator.  Harvey has lived her for 39 years and I for 27, we've never needed one.

We've wanted one, but the odds of NEEDING one were still quite low.

Prolly going to buy my buddy's so he can upgrade though.

I've never owned a rain gauge.  I just never had even idle curiosity about how much it rained.  Plus I'd probably forget to check/reset it making it useless.

We forgot to load up on ice this round, that was a mistake.  Colored by the lack of likely direct effect (accurate forecast) and a history of the power staying on; we got complacent.

Harvey thinks she was awakened by someone trying the front door at 0430 Friday.

I was just settling for bed, so hopefully she was hearing me.

When I was sitting out in Moxie charging phones and USB battery packs between 1200 and 0400 I did see a lot of people walking around the neighborhood.  It didn't look nefarious, mostly looking curious about how the area had fared.

Yes, I had a gun on me.  No, it was not a pistol.

Bless You Mr Carrier!

At 2:30p we had the generator my buddy graciously loaned me hooked up and running the fridge.

At 5:30p we got a notice from the power company to not expect restoration of service until 11:59 Sunday evening.

There had been trucks in our neighborhood all day, so I figured that we wouldn't have to wait that long, but Harvey decided to plan for the worst and knowing that another day of this without power would kill Harvey's mom...  We started looking for hotels that still had vacancies.  None.

We immediately started moving Harvey's mom down here where the power is and moved the unused window AC unit with her.

A couple extra fans and the window unit in the kitchen window made a huge difference in comfort, even if it was small in measurable temperature.  Humidity reduction, YO!

Pretty much the moment we got her situated...  The power came back on.

7:30p today, you will note, is literally days before the expected restoration.

27-1/2 hours without power.

I know people who've gone much longer, but this is our personal record.

It's verra nice to have the electrons flowing again.

The Waiting Is All

Got a buddy coming down from Ocala with his generator! 

Except for the power being out, we're doing great. 

Power will prolly be restored the second he pulls into the driveway.

We got off light. 

I wish I'd thought of throwing my air mattress into the back of Moxie last night instead of this morning!  Would've been a lot cooler.

Sitting In The Dark

Something that comes to mind, sitting here in the dark is how few lumens you really need on your weapon light when your eyes are acclimated to the dark. 

Gunwriters keep telling us we need more, but they're going from a well lit space to dark and back in short order at their gun schools.

I don't think they've really thought this through while listening to law enforcement biased trainers.

This Sucks

It could, of course, be much worse.

Power has been off since 4pm and they have a message about conditions being unsafe for the linemen.

I'll wait, I want them to go home safe.

But it sucks to sit in the dark without so many amenities.

Everyone Knows It's Windy

 

It's kinda brisk out there.  Got a good gust a bit ago and the power cut out for about a minute.

A lot like Irma, in fact.

Huge

 

We're under it already.

Waves of off and on rain until the winds get here tomorrow morning.

That House Rule Is Looking Better.

A while back I decided to change the damage of .40 S&W from 2d+2 pi+ to 2d pi+ because .40 S&W just didn't seem to outperform 9x19 or .45 at all.

Running the numbers for 10mm underscores my wisdom.

3d-1 pi+ of 10mm ACP ball will do 2-17 raw damage with an average of 9 which will become 3-26 points (avg 14) to the target's hit points.  Hollow points get upped to 3d-1(0.5) pi++ which takes the same raw damage to 2-32 points delivered (17 average).

As written, .40 S&W ball does 4-14 raw (avg 9) doing 6-21 (avg 13) once the bullet size mod is applied.  Hollow points up that to 2d+2(0.5) pi++ for 6-26 (avg 16).

As I've modified .40 S&W 2d pi+ does 2-12 raw (avg 7) with ball ammo delivering 3-18 (avg 10) after size mod.  Hollow points do 2d(0.5) pi++ for 2-22 (avg 12).  <-- This is identical to .45 ACP, which is how the ballistics gel and FBI testing looks.

Stalking Turtle

Our favorite local weather personality, Dennis Phillips, calls hurricanes "stalking turtles" because of how slow they come on.

Track is a bit West of last post, which is good for me in SW Pasco.

To show how large this thing is, though, the first rain band just whipped over us.

Helene is going to cover the entire Eastern Gulf and be messing with all of West coast Florida.

Rain predictions are fairly light for this system, which is excellent news because the storm surge is expected to be atrocious.  Going to be a lot of flooding in lower areas than me.  West of US19 is going to be hurting.

When I moved down here... 27 years ago almost to the day, West of 19 was called "the wrong side of 19" because of the flooding issue.  And they let it get built up.

We'll see how they fared in 48 hours.

1700 Update:

I'm Curious

I'm not sure I'm $100 curious, but what's a Pelican case running nowadays?

2nd Amendment Bourbon.

I've never heard of this brand, but the box caught my eye.

Tracking

We're going to get strong tropical storm level gusts most likely.

The local weather guy is going all in on the doom and gloom of losing electricity.

I hope not.  We've been very lucky in that regard with storms, so eyes crossed that it continues.

Non-Subjective

We can quote numbers all day, but they're meaningless unless we have them in GURPS terms!

1911 in .45 ACP does 2d pi+, out to 150/1,600 weighing 2.8/0.5 lb. with 7+1 shots and Rcl 3.

In 10mm it does 3d-1 pi+, out to 290/2,300 weighing 2.8/0.4 lb. with 8+1 shots and Rcl 4.

2d pi+ will do an average of 7 points of raw damage and deal 10 points of damage to the torso.

3d-1 pi+ will average 9 points of raw damage and deal 13 points of damage.

More damage, more range, lighter magazines, more shots... WIN!

But...

Skill 15 shooter, Acc 2, 7 yards.  No aim, so I don't know why I mentioned the acc...

-3 for the range so 12 or less to hit.  Average roll of 10 gives 1 shot hitting out of three for both guns.  10mm still in the lead.

A 9 gives 2 hits with .45 and a 6 gives 3 hits.

10mm needs an 8 for two hits and a 4 for three.

That recoil number be serious, yo.

Both have a 74.07% chance to land the first round.

So a 1911, in this case has a 9.25% chance at all three rounds, and a 37.5% chance for 2.

10mm has 1.38% for all three and just 25.92% for 2.

Three hits with .45 does more damage (30 average) than two hits of 10mm (26 average).

But wait!  There's MORE!

.40 S&W does 2d pi+ too.  It's recoil number is 2.

It's going to hit with one round on a 12 or less (same 74.07%), two rounds on a 10 (50%) or less and all three on an 8 or less (25.92%).  10mm Kurz gets all three rounds for the same die roll as .40 S&W Long gets just two.  3x2d pi+ > 2x3d-1 pi+  Oh, the .40 S&W gun is going to be lighter, usually with the same capacity.

Still more!

9x19mm does 2d+2 pi.  Average hit is 9 raw points and 9 damage.  It's recoil is also 2, so the same chances to hit as .40 S&W but a bit less damage.  9, 18 and 27 for one, two and three rounds respectively.  3x 2d+2 pi > 2x 3d-1 pi+.  9mm guns are even lighter than .40 S&W and usually carry more shots.

And this, at the end of the day, is why 10mm languished while 9mm is in just about everyone's holsters.  The slight edge in damage from .40 S&W is somewhat nullified by the extra number of shots the 9mm gets.

Then there's 9mm being a lot cheaper per shot.

I still WANT a 10mm ACP though.  Just gotta decide how long I wanna save for one and how sexy a beast it will be.  Colt Delta Elite and S&W 1076 lead the pack for sexy.  Rock Island and Glock lead on affordability.  Real insanity happens with finding a SIG P220 in 10mm.  But that way lies madness because I'd want to have a P220 in .38 Super too.  Peak insanity is finding a Bren 10.

I kind of am leaning at a 1911 in 10mm so I can have all three rounds that are "native" to the 1911.

Inducements

"We get the CIB!"

I get to drive the tank.

"We get to wear an infantry blue shoulder cord."

I get to fire the gun.

"We get our branch color in a surround of our branch insignia."

I don't have to walk anywhere.

Just sayin'...

Oh, and we finally got black berets like every other tanker.  Y'all just ticked off the Rangers.

The Paul Harrell Analysis

I believe this is the first of Paul's videos I ever watched and it was searching about the FBI shooting that lead me to it.

His absence is felt every day.

 

 

 

Knowing Exactly What I Want To Do

Making a Sergeant of Mages for Sabers and Sorcerers...

Christopher Harrington.

He's a movement college only mage.

I have to decide if I want to keep going with requiring a soul-jar athame to be a mage or not.

It makes the character a lot more complex using GURPS to keep track of my characters.

In many ways making a complete new system for "Old Magic" was easier than doing what I have in my head.

I have a clear vision.

Just writing it is easy, I want it to work in GURPS too.

I'll figure it out.

A mistake I made with the athame is it might require you to have on your person to keep your magery.  Need to double check and fix that, if so.

Mixed Blessing

We're now outside the cone of confusion now!

But the storm is supposed to be a lot bigger.

Going to be sporty West of US 19 in my AO.  I don't live there...

Already Paid For

The made for TV movie about the FBI shootout in Miami, "In the Line of Duty: The FBI Murders," is available for streaming on Amazon.

At no additional cost because we plunk down for Prime.

It's not a great movie, but might show that shootout as accurately as can be expected from actors and the restrictions of the media.

They, at least, got the FBI's guns right.

Preps Laid In

The only decision left is to buy plywood or not.

Father in law is still new at this, he'll prolly get a couple sheets and grab some for us too.

The current predictions put it off shore from here, so we get some wind and rain, but not too bad.

Fingers crossed that holds.

It Keeps Coming Up

The ammunition used by the FBI in Miami and how it affected ammo development keeps inspiring. 

I love how one of his conclusions mirrors something I've said to Willard.  The new stuff is slightly better than the old stuff.  If you have old stuff, there's no reason to throw it away.

I've mentioned the FBI's ammo selection myself. 

I also realized in this that I was supposed to have deferred to my "better" when they confronted me.

They don't read here any more, I don't think.

PS: Ogive really is pronounced oh-jive.  French loaner word.

Falling Down

I agree with the Graybeard.

It's still fucking Summer here on the Gulf Coast.

Though, once the sun goes down we can tolerate sitting on the back porch under the ceiling fan.  I cannot say we could do that in July.

Maybe once the stalking turtle in The Gulf gets done next week we'll see a real cold front and some cooler temps.

THEY Get To Have Nuke Plants?

Microsoft is going to get to use all of the output from Three Mile Island, but we scumbag unwashed normies have to use wind and solar to recharge our government mandated electric cars?

Why can't we all use nuclear power?

Oh, the same fucking morons who are forcing us to abandon perfectly functional technologies for unreliable boondoggles.

There's nothing wrong with internal combustion cars.

There's nothing wrong with burning coal or natural gas to make steam to spin turbines.

There's never been anything wrong with using fission to boil water to spin turbines.

I cannot shake the idea that the entire impetus behind EV's is control and keeping us within a small circle around where we live.

Even worse, you can disable EV charging remotely where you can't stop someone with a fossil fueled vehicle from storing a meaningful quantity of fuel to escape that small radius.

I stopped feeling paranoid about this watching one paranoid conspiracy theory after another turn out to be valid in 2020.

Have I Mentioned Postmodern Jukebox?

It's hit or miss, but the hit really HITS.

When Americans Get Serious

I love videos of the Sprint missile.

But something that hit me watching these vids...

It's almost getting kinetic kills.  In 1975.

A high-explosive warhead with annular blast fragmentation would suffice.

NOPE!

W-66 nuke warhead!  2kt of airburst hate.

Radar and guidance didn't get worse since 1975.

Every time the Sprint comes back into my consciousnesses I am struck with the conviction that the whole idea of Reagan's "Star Wars" strategic defense initiative was wholly valid and within our technological grasp.

It was treaties, not capability, that killed most of this stuff.

Capabilities which have risen from the ashes of state department interference of late...

Where Do They All Come From?

FuzzyGeff and I speculated about where some "off list" magic items could come from in GURPS.

We started speculating from my wondering how someone without magical aptitude would go about learning a spell.

If you can't cast it, how do you know you learned it?

Learning by rote apparently works, but you've no way to test it.  I can also see people who are learning this way wasting a lot of time as the casting is "telephoned" to death.

Well, you CAN test it.  A high mana zone.  Anyone who knows a spell can cast it in a high mana zone as long as the spell itself doesn't require magery as a prerequisite.

This jogged my memory about very-high mana zones.  In a very high mana zone you don't get charged fatigue for your casting.  It would seem ideal for enchanting as the energy expended is replenished as fast as it is used.  Quick and dirty enchanting for large items for the win!

Except...

A normal failure in a very high mana zone is treated as a critical failure and a critical failure is much, much worse.

Which brings us back to strange and unusual magic items you add to your character sheet with points rather that G$.

They're a by product of these failures, occasionally.

"Where'd you get that neat item?"

"From the magic shop, in a basket labeled, 'contents of crater,' why?

Post Not Found

I came up with a witticism.

It was way funnier in my head than it was in text.

Somethings don't survive translation to words.

And you know it's bad if it doesn't live up to MY standards.

Doing Wrong Because It's Legal

What is it with the left side of the aisle?

Over and over when talking to them about politics I keep bumping into the excuse, "it's not illegal."

 

If whether it's illegal is your only social compass, it's no wonder you cannot understand right and wrong.

 

Unethical and immoral don't always overlap illegal on the Venn diagram.

 

If you won't do right unless someone threatens you with violence, then you aren't a very good member of society. And don't kid yourself, arrest is violence.

 

The worst part is abdicating your morals and ethics to The State to decide. The State is the least trustworthy arbiter of right and wrong ever created!

 

But, just to bring it to Full Godwin levels, no laws were broken when Germany rounded up millions of people and murdered them.

 

No laws were broken when Stalin starved millions of people.

 

No laws were broken when Mao did away with millions of his people.

 

No laws were broken when the Khemer Rouge ran the killing fields.

 

Honestly, if you don't have a healthy mistrust and fear of the government, you're a fool.

 

Don't be a fool.

 

PS: A reason that many people who study the atrocities I listed have a somewhat adversarial relationship with the cops is when push comes to shove: The cops enforce the laws that say to load the box cars to the death camps. This has happened with only one, possible, exception. Denmark.

I Want To See A Comparison

Watching Banana Ballistics and thinking...

I want to see a cost and performance comparison between the new 6.8x51mm XM1186 and old fashioned 7.62x51mm M80A1 and M1158.

The reason I ask is if the $16 a shot round isn't the general issue round, it's not going to be what the troops are going to have in their belts and magazines should war be declared.  It'll be the whatever the ball round is.  I asked around to see how many of my buddies who were still in, or recently got out if they'd seen any M1158 and none of them had.  M80A1 was getting to be common over the older M80.

Everyday .277 Fury (the civilian 6.8x51mm) doesn't really show much, if any, improvement over .308 (civilian 7.62x51mm) in the same way that .270 Winchester doesn't show much over .30-06.

If the ball version of the new round is the everyday issue then we'd have been better off with the exact same rifle using the ammo that's already in the inventory and stocked deep.

Serial Disasters Plus Successes

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a patty-melt after 2pm in and around my AO?

Thursday turned into a three hour ordeal involving places closed for emergencies, fucking karaoke and bingo callers at 95 dB!

Success was ashes in our mouth because the acquired patty melt was merely "meh."  Worse, there was a place blocks from here that has one on their menu.

By the way, restaurants, if you have burgers and a reuben on your menu, you have all the ingredients you need to make a patty melt.  Put one on your menu!

We finally got the Halloween/Christmas LED strings hung and wired.  They look great!  Thanks to a great degree to Marv for the wiring even if I did the mindless labor of hanging the strings.

The Honey-Do's sure cut into blogging time.

It's Funny Because It's True

 X video.

Every Gun

Finally got some reading about the latest on the guy who was staking out Trump's golf course.

The media, as usual, called it an AK.

Sure looks like an SKS in a polymer stock with one of those atrocious 30-round magazines.

Gee, another Democrat supporter with an SKS?

That reminds me to mention the Bernie Bro who shot Representative Scalise with an SKS.

I know the media wants us to forget that the only people using violence for political gain are from the Blue team.  So they want us to forget that it was a Bernie Bro who did the shooting.

Git Er Done

Re-doing our LED Halloween/Christmas light strips.

Hanging them in a better position than last time and making the installation pretty instead of just pragmatic.

82 and humid is still draining.

Doing it one strip at a time.  Using a lot more clips and screws than I originally estimated.

6.8x51mm Special Purpose Is Expensive

$15.70 for the special purpose whiz-bang armor piercing round.

$2.73 for the more conventional ball round.

Uckfay!

By way of comparison 5.56x45mm M855A1 is $0.47 a round.

Prices on 6.8x51mm is expected to get lower as economies of scale kick in.

I'd also like to point out that 113gr at 3,000 fps is NOT 2,700 ft-lb.  It's 2,261.

A1 Reversion

I was looking at the dates and noticed that BAE should not have been able to buy H&K in the T2K timeline because H&K was going gangbusters in that timeline.

Even with the BAE buyout, the L85A2 and L86A2 dont' happen until 2000 or so.

Too late for T2K.

So the Brits go to war with the A1 version.

C'est la guerre.