Grrl Power #330 – Action zeroing the needle
I don’t know a ton about guns, but I know enough that a standard car door isn’t going to do much to stop a bullet, especially not something coming out of a rife. Now I don’t know if your standard police cruiser has slightly tougher doors – I assume they’re at least a little bit armored. Every movie and TV show ever has cops popping out of their car and taking cover behind the doors. I guess it’s better than nothing even if it isn’t armored as it kind of hides you, but even if they’re armored like battleship plating it seems like a good way to get shot in the feet.
Most cop/detective/etc show have people being moderately intelligent about using cover, but as soon as you stray anywhere near action hero territory, it seems like the good guy never wins because he uses his environment tactically, he wins merely because the bad guys can’t hit squat. How many times have you seen a hero running down a hallway or across a clearing while multiple people fire automatic weapons at him? Can you think of a single scene like that where the guy even tries to zig zag? No, he runs in a straight line, usually in slow motion cause it looks more dramatic. If no one firing at him had ever handled a gun before, ok, then I’d buy that the hero could escape unscathed, but usually he’s up against mercenaries or soldiers of some sort, and presumably they’re familiar with their weapons.
I may need to tweak Peggy’s dialog a little on this page as “Firearms 101” isn’t the name of an actual course in the military. Also I’m pretty sure “technical manuals and regs” isn’t the right lingo either, but I wasn’t sure how to phrase it. Asking about this stuff on Twitter gets a lot of different answers as it seems every branch does things a little bit differently.
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ON the subject of cover, there is always this tactic to consider –
https://oldschoolfrp.tumblr.com/post/51155045025/a-traitor-receives-positive-modifiers-to-his
Not as likely to work with Max or Achilles but still nice technique.
That would be even worse than shooting the Scraps of Hope Orphanage & Bunny Rehab…
There is Cover and there is Concealment. If it hides you, it’s Concealment. If it SHIELDS you, it’s Cover. Police car doors aren’t any more bullet RESISTANT than the ones on the cars you and I buy in 99.999% of them. Your normal 9mm handgun will go through many areas of a normal vehicle door. There are a few areas that have mechanisms / bracing that can deflect some handgun rounds. Basically, it’s better than nothing.
Proper procedure for using a car door for cover is to open the door, keep half your body INSIDE the car BEHIND the roll cage (the thickest part of the car) , stick the gun out between the door and the frame, and keep (most of) the rest of your body behind the door support framing which is re-enforced to support the weight. Done properly 3/4th to 4/5th of your body is behind framing and (relatively) safe.
The angle of the door can also provide additional deflection angle protection depending on where the fire is coming from. It’s assumed you will park your car facing the target.
Plus, it’s a supported firing position, so you’re going to be more accurate than the guy shooting at you.
Cops will actually get out of the car and get behind the entire car in real life. A car door won’t stop even a .25 caliber pistol bullet. And cop cars are not armored any more than any other car.
Fun fact: Running in a zig-zag is more likely to get you shot by someone with an automatic weapon than running in a straight line, especially if they are firing on full auto. Machine guns are notorious for shaking the sight all over the place, in addition to “muzzle climb”, so the less time you spend in the target area the better. If you zig-zag, you just give the shooter more time to correct his aim. Notice that military troops (American & British, anyway) will run straight from cover to cover, no zig-zagging.
Mercenaries, PMC’s, insurgents and third-world military troops (all common bad guys in movies) actually have a tendency to “spray-and-pray” when using automatic weapons. Exceptions will be high-end mercs & PMCs that have actual ex-military employed. But for the most part, they tend to point the gun in the general direction of the target and hold down the trigger. Middle easterners will often even close their eyes for some reason (again, there are many exceptions). There is a reason that even when the US had troops caught in open ground in an ambush, most of the time they were able to fight their way out of it with minimal casualties.
One of the things that I’ve learned about automatic weapons is that they’re far less for accurately killing people and more for suppression, at least according to someone I knew who was in the Army. You’re suppose to spray bullets mostly to keep people pinned down while others attack from different directions or a bomb hits them.
That said, oddly enough, one of the more accurate depictions of cover I’ve ever seen was in the Mass Effect games. Not saying it was perfect, but most of the time, Shepard is getting behind some pretty solid stuff, and even at that, not everything covers them properly and some stuff is so light it can be punched through.
Yes, in tactical encounters, it’s common to fire squad weapons on full auto for suppression. In some ambushes in Afghanistan, soldiers even used to use M16s for that purpose, although these weapons quickly overheat and jam under such constraints.
Regarding precision, it depends on the weapon. The MG-42 was used as a sprayer. But the good old BAR or the Bren light machine guns are frighteningly accurate. Pop your head out of a foxhole at 100 yards, and a decent Bren servant will lodge a group of 3 in your face.
as has been related to me by quite a few combat vets, these days, they might as well not have burst or full auto on the M16s and M4s. Nobody uses them except in situations where they need suppressing fire and the SAWs and M240s are down.
one of the more accurate depictions of cover I’ve ever seen was in the Mass Effect games.
THAT’S why i always get tense when I approach an area with a bunch of waist-high walls scattered around. I’m instinctively expecting Geth to attack.
In Mass Effect 2 during one mission I stopped, looked around, and said “OK. Guess I’m going to be fighting my way OUT of this particular room later.” And lo! I was completely right.
I played the sniper class on normal difficulty on a PC with a mouse, so when I saw a room full of waist high cover, I thought “Time to kill the shit out of some more Geth”
Give all my enemies brand spanking new holes to breathe through. Really opens up the mind, helps ya think.
*hugs a fellow infiltrator*
I agree, Mass Effect did a decent job of letting the player utilizing cover efficiently. There are a few other games that have surprised me with proper tactics and cover usage, some for small things that you wouldn’t even notice unless you were looking for game play mechanics.
Those are:
Army of two, the trilogy: good cover, accurate portal of firearm mechanics
most bethesda games on hardest difficulty: forcing you to use cover, or die
destiny: providing good cover, while making use of mixed fighting styles efficiently
halo, in story: as surprising as it is, halo’s legendary mode story will screw you up unless you make good use of cover.
ok, i just reread my comment, i should definitely stop replying right after waking up. Sorry for all those grammar errors.
You should have taken your grandma’s advice about ‘early to bed’. If not, you start with counting your chickens before they hatch and end up making one grandma error after another!
I have a friend who served in the British Army in Belfast in the 1970s. He says they used to fill the vehicle doors with cement to make them bullet resistant, and even then if they took heavy fire they were stuffed.
Wonder how much cement they used for that? Had to slightly throw off the car’s balance when making turns.
“Always run in a serpentine fashion!”
Indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2_w-QCWpS0
Engine block is the only remotely bullet resistant part. After the cops got chit in NYC sitting in a parked car there has been some debate about up armoring cop cars but far as I know not much has come of it.
Everything’s bullet resistant, it’s just a matter of how much. I suspect a car door would sufficiently slow or deflect a .22 at decently long range. An engine block won’t necessarily be enough stop an armor piercing .50 BMG.
Anything will stop a .22 at long enough range. Early on in Vietnam before we got better rifles there were reports of enemy soldiers getting shot and getting right back up. Turns out the cold of winter was causing the material of their coats to become stiff enough that by the time the .22 from a Garand reached them it had expended enough velocity for their coats alone to stop the bullet. It still imparted velocity and knocked them down, but no penetration.
So yeah, anything can be stopped from far enough away just like cardboard can deflect a bullet given enough distance and the right angle. It’s all about the angle, speed, and material toughness.
Well, Peggy don’t need to be military accurate. She needs to speak so Sydney understands her. And I do believe she does that admirably, including the excorsizm bit :)
Also with their mix of civilian and military people coming in I wouldn’t be surprised if they had different versions that used different language.
still, regulations [on use of force and carrying the firearm] might be correct, but the term Manual of Arms should replace technical manual. That’s the proper term for what the military uses as a “tech manual” for weapons, and covers not only the technical aspects [parts and assembly], but proper operation of the firearm.
manual of arms in the US military at least refers to an overly complex series of movements in drill and ceremony it is almost never used because people rarely know it.
I’d also guess that, considering where Sydney is coming from, they’d rather start her with Manual of Arm. Singular. Basic safety and how to maintain and use THIS weapon.
Here, it would be SoldFRegMat(RotG). Or Soldiers Field Regulation for Materiel ( Rotary Gun ). And it would be pronounced SoldFRegMat(RotG).
Loving the fact that Peggy has nerd cred too! :D
Given that this is Star Wars we’re talking about, a franchise that transcends nerdery and geekdom and touches upon the annals of pop culture immortality, and that they are a group of ‘Superpowered Law Enforcement’ I should think that not knowing such references would be weirder.
But yeah, Loving the fact that Peggy has nerd cred too! :D
Except it’s not a star wars reference, it’s a dilbert reference.
Oh you mean the last line.
I think it’d be okay to leave out all the gun-safety stuff. I mean, the author obviously thinks guns are a vital part to the whole Archon thing, but the minutiae of it is tedious. For example, being a detective is a vital part of Batman, but we don’t get pages upon pages of fiber-analysis and blood-splatter examination.
Plus, I still don’t buy all the need for guns from supers. Maxima’s explanation still doesn’t ring true to me, and this in-depth analysis of gun safety just magnifies the fact that we’re in a section of the plot that seems to be rather unnecessary.
Besides, why would Sydney ever need a gun? She’s got her Halo. And if she’s ever without her Halo, she perhaps shouldn’t be in a place where she’d need a gun, for that matter.
Math doesn’t use a gun. Achilles doesn’t use a gun. In the last super battle, only Peggy and Dabbler did. So why all this emphasis on guns?
And all this gun safety from the comic where Maxima pointed a gun at someone else? You only point a gun at something you intend to shoot, even if you “know” it is unloaded. (A few comics late, but it still bothers me.)
There are so many other and much more fascinating things this 2ce-weekly comic could be examining, like the skill tree in Sydney’s orbs. But given how we’re proceeding thus far, by 2016 we’re going to get 12 more characters introduced for a few scenes, followed by Sydney learning the value of a thorough filing system.
If you bother to read previous comments, there are well-reasoned responses to all your objections.
Actually, I did read the previous comments, and did not get any sort of answers that I felt were adequate. A lot of conjecture, but I honestly don’t buy into any of it.
Well, I did buy into the notion that Maxima should face disciplinary action for pointing a loaded weapon at Sydney. As Dr. Revenge pointed out:
“Treat a weapon as if it is loaded even if you are 1000% sure it is unloaded.
NEVER point a weapon at another person unless you are ready to kill or injure them.”
Plus, I’m voicing these objections because we’ve now had two weeks of supposed gun safety when (a) I’m still not convinced it’s necessary and (b) we’ve seen the “masters of gun safety” be very unsafe with guns.
But please, don’t let my disappointment interfere with your enjoyment. This is mostly just a headscratcher for me.
So are you just generally a whiner or did you create your account specifically to complain about one comic, Mr. Normally a fan, but…?
Math and the supers don’t typically need weapons to win but weapons provide an intimidation factor that most power can’t always do. (How do you know Budget Cyclops is aiming at you rather tan looking at you. How do you know Max is aiming instead of just pointing. How do you know Math is about to kick your butt rather than showing off.) Also your stone wall types sometimes need them for offensive ability, the overkill set need sothing other than their one hit abilities, and sometimes you just need a good backup (thing like exhaustion can make powers unreliable). It’s often better to have options and not need them then need them and not have them.
Honestly they should really have them taking unarmed combat under Math for similar reasons. As Math noted many super have never really learned to fight because they could win most fights simply relying on their powers. In A Certain Scientific Index & Railgun a character named Accelerator also fell into that trap and got his butt kicked at least a couple times first by a guy whose suppsedly powers he didn’t understand and then later by someone who had studied his powers and figured out how to counter them.
Supposedly weak powers
Those in the know do not underestimate the Right Hand of God.
For a guy who can make His Voice register 8.9 on the Richter Scale, you don’t want to be on the wrong side of His Hand when He uses it…
Again, https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2008-05-24
Just because you have powers and they’re dangerous doesn’t mean that everyone knows that they are. Also, not everyone’s powers are as… scalable as Maxima’s are, which means they might not have the option of dialing back their THOOM enough to not destroy a city block.
Yeah, I’m still not sure I buy it, but it’s not necessary for me to do so. Maxima carrying a gun strikes me as similar to Superman carrying a gun. Given the press she now has, her presence should be intimidating enough. And if it isn’t, a gun isn’t going to enhance it.
Enhance, no that’s not the idea. I think that expressing that threat in a more physical form is closer to the idea. You don’t have to know who Max is, and what she can do, you just have to understand the threat of the gun.
Thegun isn’t something she just picked up. She’s probably had it for years. It may have sentimental value and she uses the other thing as an excuse to keep it around. Who knows. The military may just have said “Every soldier must have a gun.”
Besides which they’re a police force. What do they do when they come up against someone who nullifies powers? Take their toys and go home?
Kamijou Touma (again of Index & Railgun) is an excellent example. He can cancel any supernatural abilities directed at him. If a character with that ability were in the Grrl Power universe Peggy or Math would be more effective against them than Maxima, Halo, Heatwave, or Jiggawatt.
Of course, Touma’s main ability was that whenever his BODY score was reduced to 0 or below, it was automatically set to 1 until he reached the hospital…
Actually, we don’t know if Halo’s orbs are magical, technological, or something else so we don’t know how they’d react to someone who canceled out, say genetic powers or supernatural powers.
A better example is “What do yo do if your alone and For Whom The Tolls shows up?”
Wave at him and blow a raspberry. Then grab the nearest five big guys and have them dogpile him. He’ll be able to counter all 5 at once since they all have the same power, strength, but you can clobber him while he’s busy with them or they can clobber him while he’s busy with you.
Remember, Maxima is a military soldier. There’s two reasons why she might want to carry a gun:
(1) Force of habit. Kind of like the reason why I have my wallet and my car keys with me any time I go outside, even if I’m just mowing the yard. I feel “naked” being outdoors without them.
(2) If there’s some reason for her not to use her powers (too much collateral damage even if she dials it back to minimum), or if there was some way to cancel out her powers. Who knows? We haven’t seen it yet, but maybe there’s a villain out there like the Morlock “Leech”, who can suppress her powers. In such an instance, it would be prudent of her to have a backup weapon.
Heh. Tooce weekly.
I agree that all this obsession about guns is both unnecessary and tedious. Firstly they do have superpowers so they don’t even need them in the first place. I also agree that Max’s explanation was half assed at best. Not only that if all there going to do is use them to try and get a first initial intimidation all they need to do is just point a empty gun there way. Most people don’t even know if a gun is empty so they ether surrender, or start fighting and if they start fighting them they can just go back to superpowers. So there, you get you’re universal intimidation and no need for gun safety with a empty gun.
But they are in the military so there big on tedious training, and being complete gun nuts.
Not everybody who is in ARC is a super (Peggy and Math are both normal humans, just extremely competent ones). The gun training is more about teaching discipline, which is something Halo (as a civilian with ADHD) desperately needs.
For example, being a detective is a vital part of Batman, but we don’t get pages upon pages of fiber-analysis and blood-splatter examination.
You should check out some of theearly Batman. It used to be. And it. Was. GLOORRRRIOUS!
Particularly Detective Comics–that was where they stuck stories where Bats ran around like a buff Sherlock Holmes, analyzing cigarette ash and footprint treads and so forth.
Perhaps it’s just another USAlians and their guns thing. IDK, I’m still happily here for the ride.
Ok. So Max can wax a mouton with her finger so can Halo . As the gun safety thing I think is important you have some one with that much power running around with no safety other than her fear of using it is a liability not an asset . One meager parts of gun safety courses is to get over your fear of the fire arms . If she can handle a gun with confidence and safety then she can handle her powers with the same .
I didn’t get into the whole “why teach her guns” argument in previous comics, so maybe these are duplicates:
1) Conveyance of authority. Police in the US have guns. Without a gun, and without using her powers, she’s a tiny, non-authoritarian person and will not get listened to.
2) Conveyance of the ability and right to use force.* You should read Pratchett’s take on watchmen carrying swords (in Night Watch, I think) – he says that if you have to draw it you are already in trouble, but that having it is necessary.
3) Options. I read commentary from a long-time GM that the most effective groups he encountered weren’t the highest level, but those that approached every situation with creative use of available resources. Options = power, especially to a smart gamer like Halo (for the monster take on that, Google Tucker’s kobolds). Just because I can’t think of a situation where a gun is better than the lighthook or the PPO doesn’t mean Sidney can’t.
4) Her less-offensively powered team mates will be using guns. Any normal going knowingly up against supers is likely to be using BIG guns. So she will be encountering guns and may have to handle them safely.
* Sooner or later, someone is going to try to pass the super version of brandishment laws and it might then be illegal to point a glowing finger at someone.
Oh, and:
5) Teaching Sidney to accept discipline and learn by starting with a topic that a) she wants to learn and b) where it is blatantly obvious why discipline and knowledge are important.
To counter.
1) Lots of people have guns these days, from home owners to gang bangers. There fore it levies one to question who should be listened to when every one is packing heat. And Not all authority have guns, Government officials don’t have guns and were suppose to listen to them. There fore just because you don’t have a gun doesn’t mean you’re authority shouldn’t be respected.
2, 3, &4) They already have plenty of ability’s that can be used for use force and be utilized for other problem solving various situations. And from what Ive seem a majority of her team mates don’t use guns in the first place. Anvil and Math use hand to hand combat, Gigawatt uses electricity, Dabbler and Gwen us spells, Acilies just tosses himself at people, Even Max who is advocating this coarse doesn’t even use a gun in all the time weave seen her in action, and halo has a plethora of ability’s she can utilize! And if Max goes on her hole over macho “look I’m a tactical nuke,” on live TV to every one out there to establish her powers then why the need to carry a gun in the first place? Ether use the scar tactics or the gun but booth seems a little much.
I think you missed the point of Unmaker’s #4 so I will put it more bluntly. Sydney will likely be taking a gun away from a bad guy at some point. It would be nice if she knew how not to accidentally shoot herself or her teammates. This is something every gun owner should learn in a basic gun safety course, but it’s more important when you’re handling someone else’s gun because you don’t know what condition it’s in and it might not have a safety or might have an inobvious one. This is also why you don’t pick up and use an enemy combatant’s weapon unless your back’s against the wall; you don’t know if it’s full of sand and about to jam or explode or if it’s been sitting in a gun locker well oiled.
a firearm is just another tool in the tool box. Hopefully she will never have to even draw it from its holster, but knowing how, and how they work, and how to be effective with one could save her life. Not knowing could also lead her to be complacent. For instance, we know her shield works for explosives, beams, and a few other things, so why wear body armor? What if, per chance, she can’t use it for some reason, OR it becomes in effective? Answer: get her used to body armor just in case. Same thing with the PPO + handgun. That’s why the guy with the grenade launcher also carries a sidearm or a rifle…and knows how to use them
Mayhaps. But if said normal was using a mini gun or any other kind of big f’n gun ageist them and this bean pole of a girl can’t even lift it up them whats the likley hood of her even being useful?
How about something as fundamental as understanding how such weapons work?
There may be times when Sydney needs to work in synch with a teammate or ally armed with a minigun. There also may be times when she has to deal with hostilea armed with a minigun (or more). In either case, knowing how the thing works, its characteristics and capabilities, can only benefit her. It may even save her life, and/or the lives of others.
That’s what a lot of “boring” military training is all about – trying to get everybody to work as a team and to cover contingencies – if such-and-such doesn’t work, then try …. It is well-established that there are a lot of different superpowers out there, and some of these can effectively negate or reduce the effectivenes of others. So if you’re in ARC-SWAT and your powers have suddenly been switched off in a major battle, then sitting down and crying about the unfairness of this is not an option.
Knowing the basics of how a minigun works if her shield was shut off she might be able to jam her lighthook into the mechanism that rotates the barrels and jam it. Or if all her powers were down she might be able to sneak up on him and jam a rock in the ammo feed or if she gets really good even SHOOT the ammo feeder or the battery pack from afar. With that many high speed moving mechanisms it doesn’t take a lot to cause a jam.
It’s like Battletech. You can pound away at another mech for hours till it’s reduced to slag, but knowing where the weak points are will put it down much faster. (HINT: It’s usually the cockpit, but as that’s a small target second best would be to blow off a leg.)
We’re almost done with the guns. :) These scenes are important simply because soldiers and cops both carry guns, and of course they’re nervous about handing Sydney one. Cyclops, Storm and the Flash don’t carry them because they are neither soldiers nor cops. I’ll try to avoid introducing large swaths of new cast members for a while though. :)
Isn’t Flash a CSI and as such a cop by extension? He was is the Justice League Doom movie anyway.
CSI are considered lab jockeys. They are nor cops and are not issued sidearms. No TV show portrays them acurately. CSI, Bones, Rizzoly and Isles, etc. They send them out to do police activities in those shows because they are main characters. In normal police work the only time a CSI tech will EVER see a criminal directly is while giving testimony in a courtroom or while checking them for trace evidence and they are actively discouraged from engaging the person while collecting evidence lest something come out that is inadmissible as evidence because of something the suspect said.
Good point, Crimson. In fact, there’s another reason why a CSI would not carry a sidearm…
If they took a gun onto the crime scene, the scene is considered tainted, and any evidence collected can not be used in a court of law.
What about if a beat cop enters the crime scene? They tend to have guns, having a gun makes any evidence found in a knife fight tainted? o_O
Most CSIs, while not police officers, are still part of the police department (same as the receptionist). The ones who drive the big army trucks may not typically carry or use weapons but they are still considered soldiers and part of the military
Mostly it applies to collecting chemical evidence. For example, at the scene of an arson, they will take samples to determine if an accelerant was used.
(For that matter, most forensic analysts don’t even carry a badge or a gun, and they don’t interrogate the bad guys. Most – but not all – of them are civilians, though they may have a liason with the police department who is their go-to guy when they need to revisit a crime scene or something.)
Plus why would cyclops or storm carry guns? Storm controls the weather and Cyclops eyes are like built in lazier guns.
For that, basically comic book ‘logic’. Heroes with powers don’t ever need guns. Which is, on the fave iof it, illogical.
If one was to actually think it through….. Their powers are more more destructive and flashier than any handgun, but there are STILL things that each can do that the other can’t. Neither powerset has, for example, any option to fire stuff like tranq darts or silver bullets, or have a silencer attached.
Plus, how many times has either been in situations where their powers were either neutralized or simply could NOT be used? Simple answer = Plenty
Storm and Cyclops also are not miltary and aren’t ever going to face your run of the mill crazy guy with a gun or enemy soldier.
I don’t know about other branches of service, but in the Air Force, if the document contained technical data of any sort (breakdowns, parts listings, technical procedures, etc.) it was indeed called a Technical Manual. So, a thumbs up there! From me at least.
‘Firearms 101’ may not be the name of an actual course, but it does sound like a quick and easy nickname for one, so… yeah.
Also I could see Peggy tagging it that for easy search reference.
The one scene that bothered me about the Ben Affleck Daredevil (I know, “one scene”…) was during the big showdown where Daredevil manages to make Bullseye – the guy who can ricochet an airplane peanut into a snoring passenger’s throat, or turn a paperclip into a lethally-aimed dart – he makes Bullseye miss by backflipping in a straight line directly away from him – even if Bullseye can’t handle hitting a moving target suddenly, the guy’s center of mass is moving in a straight line directly away from him…
One of many flaws in Affleck’s really long audition tape to be Batman.
I hope you can spare a few panels for Cooper’s Four Laws of firearms safety:
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Jeff_Cooper#Firearms_safety
And a special shout out to TV shows and movies where people point their guns at the sky for “safety”, often with finger on the trigger, and often with the muzzle drifting over until they are pointing at their own head. One firearms instructor called this “the Sinus Position”. The Charlie’s Angels TV show was notorious for this, but I haven’t watched it so I am not sure how bad it really was.
Then again, I heard about a real-life SWAT team whose actual doctrine was for each person to poke the barrel of his MP-5 into the back of the person walking ahead of him, on the theory that the body armor would stop any accidental discharges and this way they would always know where each person was. This doctrine is not compatible with Cooper’s Four Laws of safety, or with common sense even.
I’ve always found rule one to be a bit… Iffy. A gun that has no magazine and the slide pulled back is not loaded. A gun taken into pieces is not loaded. A gun without a firing pin is not loaded. There are many times in which I would consider a gun to be not loaded.
gun .jpg is not yet loaded…
that rule is simplified for the uninitiated. A more appropriate phrasing would be “Treat all assembled firearms as if loaded until it is verified that it is not”. Even a weapon without a magazine can still have a round in the chamber.
And do not check to to see of the gun is loaded by holding it to your head and pulling the trigger, no matter how drunk you are.
This is true, although most, if not all, modern firearms will not fire without at least an empty magazine properly seated.
anifreik, that is seriously incorrect. While there are guns with that feature (called a magazine safety), they are the minority, and are often sub-models of firearms which are much more widely bought without that feature.
NOT something to find out by doing, for certain.
Also, as proved by Bruce Lee’s son, never fire a gun loaded with blanks against your head either. The gas pressure released by the powder is enough to penetrate human flesh and kill you.
The rule is partly to force you into the habit of never assuming that you are right that the gun is 100% not loaded. The reason you should have that habit is that sometimes you are going to be wrong.
The rule is to always consider a gun to be loaded unless you’ve checked and it hasn’t left your possession since you checked. If you set it down on a table to walk over and get some coffee you’re supposed to consider it might have been loaded by someone when you weren’t looking. Obviously if it’s disassembled it’s not loaded, but the entire point of this rule is that if you obey it you should never be in a position to accidentally shoot someone. Again it’s about respect for the fact that a gun is a lethal weapon. Many people don’t treat them with enough respect and that’s when accidents happen.
Well if you have enough local police departments, each with their own way of doing things, eventually something stupid like that will come up. (how many monkeys does it take to hammer out hamlet?)
Most likely someone was pulling someones leg and its too good of a story to pass up spreading around.
If you think about it all the (sometimes criminally) stoopid things that cops do on video are what happens when someone like Favre gets hired.
…
I think I am going to to go into a corner now and quietly weep for the future. :(
One thing I can’t tell is whether Varia is wearing ear protection. Firing guns indoors (or anywhere) can get really loud. We don’t need anyone else on the team suffering hearing loss.
She is. I know it’s tiny but she has earmuffs on, or whatever they’re called.
ear muffs. You got it. There are also ear plugs. Generally muffs are better for indoors, but some of the newer plugs are just as good and don’t get in the way of properly shouldering a rifle [like some ear muffs do].
The best are like hearing aids, with an automatic cut out when the decibel level spikes over 140 [hearing safe]. Those come in both “plug” and “muff” style.
Of course, suppressors [silencers] are even better because you don’t need ear protection [gets the report down below 140 db] and they help with muzzle control, BUT they add length and weight to the firearm. Still, an advanced suppressor would be a good idea unless standard gear includes the hearing aid/ear plug/comm units and the batteries are ALWAYS reliable, because you never know when you are going to have to use a firearm for self defense indoors [some countries require them like a muffler on a car unlike here where they are highly regulated and cost a $200 tax stamp and are registered with the BATFE]
every indoor range i’ve ever been on required both. because there is no overkill when it comes to liability insurance.
Those earplugs cost somewhere around $15-30 and they’re not like a heaing aid. They use no elctricity but have a series of soft rubber rings on the outside and a hollow chamber down the middle. The shockwave of any sound over a certain decibel level causes the material to compress and block out sound as well as any earplugs out there, but you can still hear people talking at normal volume. My dad got us some years ago for hunting and they’re actually amazing materials science, right up there with the coating they came up with for gas tanks in Iraq that seals up bullet holes before the gas can leak out.
The last panel is extra funny to me because of the last page: While everybody was pointing out that Syd should use her LH orb to lift the minigun my first thought was she should do it while addressing the gun with the line – Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not. For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is.
But then I noticed the old painless ref. and went with something better.
A car door, at least, gives you some concealment in a gun fight.
What you want is the engine block and the front tire set, or at least the back tire.
Of course, the car door’s better than nothing even against rifles because at least it does slow the bullet down and possibly deflect it away from you, and the factor of not being able to see exactly where your target is at can make it hard to hit them.
Cars are concealment, not cover. Concrete is cover…unless you are being shot at by Peggy’s Barrett. Then its concealment.
https://www.theboxotruth.com/the-buick-o-truth-1-windshields-insideout/
A little further down Subether posted this lonk to a series of short articles on how protective the various parts of a car are vs bullets. It turns out not very for anything but the absolute thickest places like behind the engine block and then it only briefly provides cover. Anywhere inside the car is a killbox. There are random bits of harder materials all over the car that could stop or deflect bullets but it’s like shooting at a chainlink fence, a lot more hole than metal. Even worse most of the materials can shear off bits of bullet or shatter and become shrapnel making it more likely you’lll be injured and multiply injured than if they were shooting at you while you sat in a lawn chair. Also it turns out rifles will shatter concrete blocks in a couple shots so most BUILDINGS are really only temporary cover.
The good news is very few people are trained soldiers. Most bad guys don’t put in enough time at the range to hit the broad side of a barn. In a real nonmilitary gun fight the effective dangerous range of a pistol is 11ft. Anything beyond that and your average person is more likely than not to miss what they’re aiming at. You have to keep that in mind and consider what’s behind you in such a situation.
Even trained police officers only have somewhere between a 10% and 14% chance to hit what they are shooting at with their service weapon, but some police departments are incredibly lax with training and not all departments report, so statistics can be skewed any which way.
The accuracy rates of soldiers are not worth discussing since they rely on volume of fire in all but the most close quarter situations, but I bet a soldier could probably out aim a cop at the range, at least.
The good news is that cops and soldiers carry high capacity weapons so they have plenty of bullets to get a hit with, like every last one of us should if we ever carry weapons for our own defense.
The other trick, regardless of whether you stay in your car or run for your life on foot (you should stay in your car if it’s still mobile), is to stay moving and do what you have to to survive. A lot of lives have been saved by just being too much of a pain in the ass to hit, and sometimes would-be killers often don’t expect to need to reload more than once. (it doesn’t hurt that a lot of guns only come with two mags or even just one!)
I wish I could remember what movie it was in, but I can’t. But the scene was that two guys were in a gunfight, and ended up taking cover on opposite sides of the same car, the smart one (the good guy) lay down, shot the other guy in the ankles, the gave him a head shot after he hit the ground. Don’t know exactly why I felt compelled to share this, but here it is. Maybe somebody can remind me what it was in.
Any number of shows. I think once in the Rockford Files.
I don’t know if it is the same movie, but in a movie depiction of the North Hollywood Shootout, something similar happens when the heavily armored bank robber and the SWAT team members take cover on the opposite sides of a car.
They’re unable to hit him because he keeps spraying a lot of bullets at them, but one guy finally sees him under the car and starts shooting him in the (unarmored) legs.
He doesn’t get taken out by a headshot, but they shoot him in the legs so many times that he dies soon after being taken into custody.
I know it’s not what you were looking for, but it is similar.
I watched John Wick recently and while it does have plenty of over the top action movie moments it also manages to do a good job of portraying John as less of a superhuman who doesn’t make mistakes and more as someone who takes advantage of the mistakes made by others. Guy is hiding behind a pillar? Shoot his visible foot. Someone else is going to come out of cover and shoot you? Duck and shoot up at where he appears.
The first hollywood gunfight I always think of is this one from “Police Squad!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOr-1OVHNac
and then this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr2GeWiDrdY
and then the episode with Florence Henderson
You’re welcome.
https://youtu.be/iwU9M9sjrDk
Last I heard, best protection from incoming fire is the engine block of the vehicle. Of course, I date to the days of muscle cars with huge engines. I don’t know if the current ones provide much defense. And three cheers for Coopers Four Laws! I’ve been nearly shot with empty guns several times!
And that’s only against small rifles. A .40 or .50 cal will go through a hummer engine block if you’re not lucky (and the smaller rifles will go in far enough to kill the engine).
I remember a big violation of rule 4 in the original King Kong movie.
(Identify your target, and what is behind it. Never shoot at anything that you have not positively identified)
A group of the explorers are walking through the jungle (OK, a sound stage with ferns) and one of them hears something rustling in the bushes. He instantly raises his rifle and shoots off a round in the direction of the noise. His line immediately afterwards is “Hmm. I wonder what that was?” and keeps walking.
actually, they just did a vid of a guy with a Barrett 82/m107 shooting an engine block with API [armor piercing incendiary] and not a single round made it through both sides of the engine, and that’s without the rest of the car around it. Just remember, though, that engine is a foot or two off the ground as well
Fine, she got the action movie part. But what about all those combat shooter video games?
They at least usually use cover and flanking.
Yeah, but what about the hole portrayal of guns thing?
I think she’ll be ok on the gun front getting the movies and TV knocked out of her. Peggy is definitely going to have to whack her again to get the video game knifing from 5 yards away out though.
but…but…but…gun-kata is so cool…
Yeah, I too want to defend the anchant art of gun fu.
handgun fighting IS an art, but the gunkata is just nuts.
and let us not forget the fine art of “pistol whipping”
Still combining guns with kung fu seems like a incredible combo.
How sane is it to smack a super in the face?
Just saying, Peggy got herselfs some b… golfballs.
I fail to see why most of these people who get military lingo remotely correct. They didn’t join up particularly to be military and they haven’t really been through the kind of military indoctrination that would make them want to conform or see the value (a good deal of military language is about clarity) -not unless their experience has been *radically* different from Sydney’s..
Even the ones who have been proper military may well consider the audience more important.
gun nut here- I can recommend an excellent practical answer for concealment vs. cover, which is the Box O truth, which took an old 70’s/80’s vintage buick out to the range and did some of the classic tests (windshields, car doors, etc.) It’s educational and amusing at the same time.
Most indoor ranges will not let you enter the sound trap without hearing protection of some form, either the foam ear plugs or full on earmuffs. Vision protection too, now that I’m thinking about it. (safety glasses or prescription polycarbonate lens)
A bullet will go through a door: it’s still going to be slower on the other side.
Feet are a smaller target and a *comparatively* good place to be hit. Most people the police deal with (especially in countries which ridiculously allow anyone who feels like it to carry guns around) are not very bright and not very skilled: they won’t think of shooting at feet and couldn’t hit them anyway.
I must object to this point on either way it can be interpreted. The more provocative of which is it it taken as meaning ‘people in those countries are dumber, to follow that policy, therefore the criminals, will also be dumber”.
Firstly, for some (most notably the USA), it is an integral part of their culture and also their sense of national identity. Choosing to uphold those, in preference to other social and political models, does not make them of lower IQ.
Secondly those countries which have liberal gun control often do so because, at the present time, they have serious problems (not necessarily related to guns in any way, albeit arguably aggravated by them) which they feel guns are a solution to. The more lawless a society is, and the less the authorities are able to protect them adequately, the more justified their contentions become.
But such social decisions do not change the IQ of individual members of society.
But, although I felt that the above deserved pointing out (as your comment could be interpreted that way), I do not think that was your intent. Contextually I think it more likely you meant something along the lines of:
“Choosing to carry guns is dumb, and choosing to be a criminal is also dumb. So they have to be really stupid”
Dealing with the first part, I do not believe that to be the case. If you believe yourself to live in a dangerous area, it is rational to take steps to protect yourself. Not everyone’s personal circumstances would readily allow them to take other options, such as moving away.
For the second part, note that it is rational for criminals, who are operating in an area where the populace and police are armed, to do so likewise. The greater the percentage of victims who are likely to be armed, the greater the risk of any enterprise, where a confrontation is possible, or likely. In fact, if 100% of them are armed (and the criminal is not deterred by that, for whatever reason), then it is irrational for a criminal not to use firearms.
As for the thought that criminals in general are stupid, please, for your own sake, stop thinking that! Underestimating criminals is likely to put yourself, and those who rely on your judgement, at risk. Not to mention your property. Sure, some criminals are dumb and many are poorly educated (not the same thing).
But equally others are intelligent or even very intelligent. They are criminals because they are lacking in morals, not intelligence. And even that is a generalisation, as some will have ended up in that state due to the vagaries of life. As per the statement ‘there but of the grace of God, go I”.
Not only that but, as with any other people, they study their trade. Learning from many sources (prison is a great school), not least of which is TV. They watch Mythbusters too. So they know that car doors only provide concealment. If they can see your feet, they can easily estimate where your body is.
Underestimating criminals can get you killed!
If you were considering having the next few strips accurately depict how to handle firearms, you might want to re-think that plan. There are people here crazy enough to try it; you don’t want to encourage them.
If there are people crazy enough to do that, then it is better that the gun safety lessons be accurate. No point making it deliberately flawed, that will only be endangering lives. Even making it wholly unbelievable does not stop them from trying.
Just look at the talk about trying to replicate curving bullet trajectories, through swinging their firearm, elsewhere in these comments. Fortunately they were citing entertainment shows, which do that debunking safely. But you can bet some dopey folk have actually tried that themselves!
I remember in Burn Notice, they used phone books and stuffed the car’s interior with them to resist bullets.
better than nothing, at least for pistol bullets. Sand bags are much better [think of sand as a macro sized non Newtonian fluid
reference tremors “dirt the best god d… bullet stop there is”
Surprise, surprise. Mythbusters tried that one – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWtT4D71qA4
“Every movie and TV show ever has cops popping out of their car and taking cover behind the doors. I guess it’s better than nothing even if it isn’t armored as it kind of hides you,” this is true. And it’s also how they train at the police academies across the US. The reasoning isn’t that the doors are armored (they’re not), but rather that people aim at what they can see. If they can’t see your body they won’t aim there/ And trying to aim for someone’s head in a fire fight is damned near impossible IRL. (snipers get away with it because they have all the time in the world to aim, but even then it’s only head shot kills in the movies).
“As soon as you stray anywhere near action hero territory, it seems like the good guy never wins because he uses his environment tactically, he wins merely because the bad guys can’t hit squat. How many times have you seen a hero running down a hallway or across a clearing while multiple people fire automatic weapons at him? Can you think of a single scene like that where the guy even tries to zig zag? No, he runs in a straight line,” In the military they tell you running in a zig-zag is a great way to get killed by your own people. You run in a straight line from cover to cover. In a grassy field? you’re lying on the ground and if you move you say in your head “I’m up, he sees me, I’m down,” and you best be on your belly when you finish “I’m down” or you’re taking enemy fire in your face. Because of moving with your fellow soldiers/Marines/whatever they’re firing too and bullets travel in a straight line. Zig-zagging will take you into your buddy’s line of fire and get you shot in the back by your own people.
“Technical manuals and regs” is close enough that it doesn’t matter if some knucklehead tries to say it’s wrong.
That’s all I have to say about that. Sorry for the long post
To be fair, soldiers in real life don’t necessarily zig and zag. If anyone’s familiar with Generation Kill, there was a bit about that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szcviFDt9xM
The soldiers themselves verified that he reported them accurately.
I think the person that really needs to read the gun safety manual is the one mentioned in the news last week.
The strangest part is not that he shot himself in the foot ‘just to see what it felt like”. It is that he shoot his own foot TWICE to see how it felt (one with boot, one without). A possible clue may be that this was in Colorado, the place where pot is now legal.
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/colo-man-shoots-foot-feels-article-1.2258389
My experience is that a lot supposedly-responsible gun owners, including ones who know about gun safety, still don’t practice it as much as they should. It doesn’t take a lot of hunting to find videos of idiots with guns or stories about people who are accidentally shot and killed.
Using a cop car for cover should work well enough against pistols; they don’t do too well against metal. Most shotgun loads would also get poor to moderate penetration. Further, part of cover is concealment; if you’re using something that can get through a cop car, it has no spread, which means that you have to hit your target without seeing it. And, finally, any metal cover–such as a cop car–will deflect any shot it doesn’t stop, unless it goes through a previous hole on *both* sides, giving you a very good chance your shooter will miss anyway, even if he knows exactly where you are.
All of these factors apply to someone hiding on the far side of a cop car; if you’re actually hiding *inside* one, it’s all mitigated by the facts that you can’t move around and the shooters generally do know exactly where you are. Stay in the car, you’re fish in a barrel. Get out and hide on the other side of it, and you actually have decent, if not perfect, cover–and you don’t have to run out into the open to get to it. Which means that while a cop car is not going to stop every bullet–or even most bullets–it’s definitely worth something as cover, usually the best you’ve got without taking a big risk, and much, much better than nothing.
with regards using car doors as cover, they won’t do much, but it IS better than standing out in the middle of the road like a dumbass. ( you’re better off using the entire car, however- and if there is anything that provides better cover, use it.)
Since every branch does it differently, there’s no reason why your superhero branch can’t have it titled “Firearms 101”. All up to you, of course, though it seems like a minor concern.
Peggy is talking to a recruit who does not know the proper terms but is smart enough to get more common references. That is how a good instructor starts. As Sydney gets into those manuals she will use the jargon more. and expect Sydney to use it appropriately. At least during training, joking after work also happens.
They could probably go a long way towards making squad car doors extremely resistant to handguns with carbon fiber panels these days.
there is a reason cop cars aren’t really made more armored than they are, and the point behind it, would be, that, if the car gets stolen, the police can still fire on the thief, and not just sit back and go ‘well, nothing we can do about it now, he/she is in the equivalent of a high-speed tank’.
Adding resistant/armor plates add weight. And cost money. That said, carbon fiber seem a good way to save on weight though it would have a higher cost hrm. If you want to make the police car useless to a hijacker, you could always put in a kill switch. Something that only a cop can provide to active the car/prevent kill switch from going off.
Yeah, but there’s always the possibility of failure, either mechanical or otherwise.
Why I don’t trust smart guns, the damn things are useless if even the slightest thing goes wrong.
That mentality sounds like what is about to happen to an entire grove of 90 year old trees: because of the potential for a branch to fall and land on a person or a horse, the entire lot of them are being cut down (there has been no injuries or even falling branches, but you can’t be sure it won’t happen, right?)
Not at all. When you need a gun, you need a gun that works. Adding electronics and batteries and dinickynsensors doesn’t make it more reliable, it adds failure modes that didn’t previously exist.
Think of it this way, would you want a fire extinguisher that wouldn’t work unless your hands were clean and properly positioned, or would you prefer a fire extinguisher that relied on a simple mechanical trigger.
Don’t forget the cops are armored these days. From discreet to full dress. Between the door and a trauma plate they are as protected as possible while allowing concealment of the armor as needed.
best cover is no cover…as in not needing cover not just jump in front of a gun that’s just stupid
If it’s a .doc file, then they can rename the files to “Firearms 101” for the civilian newbies to grasp which one to read first, even if the course material has a much more technically accurate title.
As for the car door thing, I can confirm it. In the mid ’70s, my father went to visit his father, who had taken in, shall we say, “halfway-house gentlemen”…and being a bit afraid for his safety, my father had taken a gun with him. In handling said gun…it went off, went through his hand, and went through the steel-plated door of his 1960s VW bug. (Ahh, German engineering, built in an era where car doors were actually made out of a decent amount of steel, and not some sort of composite BS.)
It wasn’t a powerful gun (I was like 4 or 5, so don’t ask me what type; I just saw it was some sort of small revolver), yet the steel door steel peeled open like one of those star-shaped holes on one of those grater-things for zesting, only magnified by about ten, twenty times. And yeah, my dad learned his lesson about gun safety. So did I, of course, even though I hadn’t been there at the time, and just heard (at a very tender and easily distracted age–why was the car door shaped so funny? Why was Daddy’s hand bandaged? When is dinner?) what had happened.
Car doors aren’t very good bullet-stoppers. Try hiding behind the engine block…but only if you don’t plan on driving that car anymore.
Yeah, because trying to get rid of Sydney’s internal demons is totally a tactic that is going to work :D :P
Though I suppose if she’s smart she will be able to direct them around in a useful manner.
wapsi square reference?
I can’t believe I never noticed it before. Peggy’s collar does not have an insignia. At least Gwen has a little cameo stone set in hers (but that may be just decorative).
Jeez, what does it take to get a code name in this outfit?
Peggy doesn’t need an insignia or a code name, she is a ‘normal’, but damn good at what she does
Arianna: Peggy, you need to choose an official call sign.
Peggy: I have, it is “Peggy”.
Arianna: What? That is ridiculous! We want more than just girls called Peggy to buy it! That call-sign will not help sales of your action figure!
Peggy: The regs say we get to choose our own callsigns. You can make suggestions, but I do not have to accept them. I am happy with “Peggy”.
Arianna: Customising those chokers costs a lot of money. I will not authorise you getting one until you choose a proper name!
Peggy: Fine by me. (walks off smiling)
Arianna: … (seething and glaring, grasps her pencil in both hands and snaps it in two)
Can totally see that happening :D
And then later Peggy and Maxi having a good chuckle over a round of drinks, with Ari still fuming in the corner glaring daggers at both of them :D
Totally works for me, if ony because of Arianna;s reaction.
See Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket for Some very good examples of Marines using two by wto cover correctly in movies.
Two by two cover is when two guys behind cover take up firing position to provide covering fire, as the next two guys run past them to the next bit of cover and take up firing position. then the first group runs past them to the next cover, etc.
Well, this comic is largely about deconstructing common tropes, though. Mostly superhero tropes, but the military stuff gets rolled into that because part of the deconstruction of superhero teams is the reality that many/most of them would be military operations.
As for superheros using guns, I refer you to the knife-throwing scene in Starship Troopers. The enemy cannot zap you with his laser eyes if you disable his eyes.
Plus, marksmanship and gunhandling in general is a skill that applies regardless of what weapon you’re using. To quote another superhero-deconstruction webcomic, “Super-accuracy is not one of my anomalies!” Learning to shoot a gun is a safe(r) way to teach Sydney and other supers with ranged abilities how to hit a target without, for instance, risking the massive damage that might result from practicing with the PPO. As well, learning to use guns is one of the better ways to learn their capabilities and limitations—very useful if you expect guns to be pointed at you with any significant frequency.
For most troops, the M16A2 they’re issued won’t fire full-auto; they’re restricted to 3-round bursts. Only a few soldiers in a platoon get a full-auto-capable weapon, and have to pass special qualification before they get one, so they won’t just be ‘spraying and praying’ unless that’s what’s specifically needed (i.e., suppression fire as you describe).
Hot Fuzz!! Anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, go watch it!! It will do you good :D
“Out! Out! Demons of stupidity!” – Dogbert.
Now if only Dogbert could exorcise his own creator in regards to Intelligent Design.
As far as I know (and I am sure I will find out if wrong), Scott Adams does not advocate Intelligent Design.
The most he has done is lightly question current evolutionary theory in one of his books. As I read it, that was not a debunking effort at all – more making the point that even when we THINK something is absolutely beyond question, there may be significant aspects of it we remain unaware of. That’s all.
Even Dogbert should recognize that about 1/3 of the human race has been mass-possessed by the Demons of Stupidity…There’s plenty of proof of that at the Darwin Awards website.
only 1/3? I thought it was at least 3/4.
dang early post I failed to include even intelligent people can be caught and act dumb as rocks at times
Don’t change the lingo. Even though the course and books she has to get through (and they probably only gave her a “core” curriculum of regs and the UCMJ) naming them like that gets the point across to recruits.
Oh, you need to read up on the Uniform Code of Militry Justice if you haven’t. It applies to all services.