Grrl Power #819 – Pew 101
As most of you predicted, Sydney did not bust the range record. Her HUD glasses did help though. Quite a bit, actually. Her previous record was hitting the paper 11 out of 21 times. Now she’s hitting the page with nearly every shot. She just has to dial it in a bit more to hit the actual target.
I’m not sure why I decided to write a page about shooting basics. I myself am far from an expert, and Peggy would have definitely covered this stuff with Sydney. Still, there’s something to be said for repetition, especially with someone who might not have absorbed it the first time. Possibly because she was busy picturing herself as the next John Wick or something.
Apparently Peggy has impressed upon the other “normal” super elite soldier that walking around with a bit more stopping power on their hips is important. I’m not sure .454 Casull is where it’s at, but, those guns can be chambered with specialized buckshot in addition to a variety of slugs, and when it comes to fighting supers, variety can be important.
Speaking of stormtroopers… it would be interesting to see a movie or some long form TV show where the rank and file soldiers aren’t laughably incompetent and are actually crack shots. I don’t know if it could actually be done. You’d have to either write any encounter with them where the heroes have some amazing tactical or technological advantage that lets them pull a victory out of their ass, or the heroes would have to be so good that they would have to be that universe’s equivalent of superheroes. I guess that could be done, but then what’s the point of having the canon fodder all be marksmen if the heroes are immune to gunfire?
You ever notice that stormtroopers are all amazing shots when they’re shooting at a Jedi who is holding a lightsaber? It would be harder to deflect shots if every other shot was coming at your legs, or just barely close enough to your side that you’d risk a scorched elbow, but when a Jedi is holding a lightsaber, every stormtrooper in the world can hit center mass every time. But if the Jedi holsters his saber, the troopers all automatically shoot wide. I guess they like aiming at the bright thing.
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Episode 8 of the Mandalorian lampooned Stormtrooper accuracy. Blamed poor results on poor equipment. It was one of the best bits of that episode.
To be fair, it was sort of lampooned in the Star Wars games. In Dark Forces, Dark Forces II, and Jedi Outcast, the stormtrooper rifle (the BlasTech E-11) is THE most inaccurate piece of crap in the game. I ended up using Kyle’s default Bryar pistol or the Tenloss Disruptor Rifle because I prefer not to waste ammo with “spray and pray” tactics.
Yeah, it was pretty bad past 20 feet. My favorite in Dark Forces was the Imperial Repeater Gun. That thing was sniper accurate.
…are inline images a thing we can do in the comments now? Guessing not, but going to try it anyways:
The original movies had a lot of the Cold War in them, the E-11 was basically the AKM of blasters.
Many people seem to forget Obi-wan’s line during the original Star Wars, of stormtroopers having the best aim in the galaxy. It should be noted that on the death star, where their lack thereof was shown, the empire was allowing the heroes to escape. Can’t escape if you’re dead, and can’t pull off what they wanted to if it was obvious that they let you escape. (They came dangerously close to making it obvious–Leia even WARNED Han that they let them escape.)
It should also be noted that Luke, Leia, and Han are all force-sensitive at least to SOME degree (how force sensitive depends on the story), and they were the main people being shot at. People who’re force-sensitive are harder to hit, even if they aren’t Jedi. (Basically, subconscious use of the force subtly aids them.)
The original film’s opening showed how accurate storm troopers could be, too–when the storm troopers stormed the rebel ship, the rebels hit almost none of them, whereas the stormtroopers killed every single one of the defending rebel soldiers. If stormtroopers were truly inaccurate, then the rebels should’ve been winning there.
The Empire Strikes Back showed similar things, in fact. On Hoth, the stormtroopers WERE hitting people. But on the Cloud City, where Vader wanted them all captured alive (to torture them so Luke would come to him), the stormtroopers were again missing.
In Return of the Jedi, stormtroopers even land a hit on Leia!
Granted, that doesn’t excuse the lack of accuracy otherwise, aside from the “Leia, Han, and Luke are force sensitive and thus, harder to hit”, but the original films’ accuracy isn’t as low as people seem to give them credit for. The stormtroopers do plenty to mow down rebels in many cases (see also, how imperial tie fighters wipe out the vast majority of the rebel’s fighters in every single appearance they make), but we remember the times that they didn’t, and then as things progress, they are cemented as being inaccurate.
Of course, I favor a theory which more or less went, “The stormtroopers WERE renown for their accuracy…until the best imperial troops, stationed on the death star, were wiped out by the destruction of it, and thus, with their elite killed at Yavin, newer troops were more poorly trained”. In short, the longer and longer the war against the rebellion went, the poorer and poorer the quality of their troops, their equipment, etc. due to the losses they had been sustaining over time.
Also as time went on their best officers and trainers defected to the rebellion, especially after the emperor died.
Shouldn’t the glasses have compensated for her aiming problems during calibration?
The aiming program can only tell her where she’ll hit with the gun pointing at any given spot. If she purposely aims low to compensate for an imaginary kick and pulls the trigger funny, then she won’t hit her target.
Typically, it’s not so much a matter of purposefully aiming low, as it is of preemptively flinching in anticipation of the kick.
That’s why a gradual trigger pull where you’re surprised when the gun goes off can help improve your accuracy. You can’t flinch fast enough to throw off your aim, if you don’t know when it’s going to go off until it does.
Its kinda like how in Rainbow Siege 6 people kinda hate Finka because if you are pulling your aim down while firing and then you get a boost that reduces your recoil suddenly you are shooting someones toes off instead of their eyebrows.
“Squeeze the trigger. Don’t yank it. It’s not your dick.”
~ The Marlboro Man
– Chapter 13, Gust Front, John Ringo
Awesome book, one of my favorites, John Ringo forever.
Now there’s a movie I’ve not seen in years, I wonder which streaming service has it.
I also liked how Harley kept counting the bullet cost as he was reloading later in the film after Marlboro pointed out that they were $2 a shot.
Improper trigger pull and pushing down while firing is to say the least not exactly consistent and just can’t be compensated for. The human element has to be trained for repeatability, everything else can be predicted and compensated for. Heck with those glasses I bet the system is able to compensate for variances in slug mass and powder load. In the hands of a sniper it would make any rifle a sniper rifle.
No. Perhaps a lot of bolt action rifles. But any semiautomatic rifle is either built for loads of precision, or not. As (semi)automatic weapons have actions that rumbles around inside the weapon, so repeatability will be harmed. And you can compensate for that by overengineering, throwing money at the design and manufacture of the weapon. But … A weapon thats twice-thrice or more expensive than the weapon built by the lowest bidder, isn’t ever going to be “any rifle”. But it’s true that if you can compensate for projectile mass and powder load variations, you will gain quite a bit of accuracy with a somewhat decent weapon.
I could argue a properly designed semi auto doesn’t “rumble around” and once its in battery, it SHOULD be as accurate as a similarly well built bolt action. Example, a new m110 properly assembled from “blue printed” parts [Meaning that all the tolerances are EXACTLY where you want them] and a new M24 properly bedded and blueprinted. Much of that “bouncing around” does happen, but only while it is cycling a new round in, just like the M24 does while you are HAND CYCLING a new round in, and is done when you settle in for the next shot.
Nothing that soldiers have had for more than ten minutes is still in spec unless the spec includes phrases like “rumbles around” and “full of mud”.
Only if she is consistently wrong in the same way.
Isn’t that kind of the point of the above comic? She’s rather consistently down and to the left.
If the gun calibrated up and to the right a bit more, then those would have been around the bull’s-eye.
Big gun, bent elbows… someone’s getting a gun to the face when that thing kicks… hopefully it isn’t Sidney. :)
SOmebody’s getting a Smith&Wesson tikka dot…
yeah, you think they would correct her shooting posture.
Better than locked elbows & a broken wrist!
nah, the recoil of the gun wants to go up and back, if your wrists and elbows are locked the recoil just points your arms straight up over your head.
if your elbows are bent the barrel hits you square in the face.
… you sure you want to give a fully loaded casull to sydney? cause i’d be a little worried that it goes flying out of her hands and decides it needs to shoot again for the insult of being dropped
That revolver will never go off just from being dropped from people holding height.
There are a few YouTube videos of women double firing Smith & Wesson 500 pistols. Their attempt to control the recoil causes them to fire a second round almost instantly, and straight up. A woman actually killed herself by doing this a few years ago. The saddest thing about it was that those YouTube videos pre-dated the woman’s death, and if the owner of the firearm was more aware, they could have just had one round in the cylinder.
oh no KICK bye bye new fancy glasses XD
I hope not, but yeah thats likely
The glasses might very likely be sturdier than they look. Cora dumped a lot of engineering in there, and she has a pretty good read on Sydney’s habits. Suspect they’ll handle a lot worse stuff than simple hammer-smash level impacts.
If they were engineered to withstand the explosion-propelled debris that cracked the original pair (which is a fair bet for the level of durability Cora was intending), then getting thwacked by a Taurus pistol propelled by the partly-resisted recoil of a .454 Casull round probably won’t even scratch the lens.
Regarding Storm-trooper aim and lightsabres… I’m pretty sure the weird-science that’s holding a rod of plasma like a stick actually sucks the bolts towards the “blade”. They’re not actually hitting center-mass, they’re chucking bolts at a telekinetic with a magnetic bounce shield-stick thing who decides what direction they get reflected to, who is holding the stick at center-mass.
Regarding repetition and Sydney… you’ve established some precedent for showing us things not so much as they happen, but as they sink in for Syd. :D
Dammit, now I want a churro.
You SICK MONKEYS! If she fires that thing, she’s likely to knock herself into the wall behind her!!!
Physics would disagree, any gun with enough recoil to knock even a slight person back more than a step would break their limbs to fire… that said this is a comic so the odds of a Sydney shaped hole in the back wall may be better than even.
‘Kick’ isn’t just the physics measurement, the gun design can make it feel better or worse to the user. I have fired 0.32s that kicked worse than a competition-grade 0.45.
Oh boy, your in for it now. I’ve fired one of those things… the kick is REALLY unexpected.
Here’s hoping she doesn’t sprain her wrist. The text at the bottom should be more like pew…pew….pew…BOOOOM!
Ah, the .454 Casull. Alucard’s semiautomatic model is one sexy, sexy gun.
Alucard’s guns are custom weapons made by Walter C. Dornez and probably too heavy for human to wield. Granted, the .454 Casull Auto is smaller, while the Jackal has length 39cm (16 in) and weight 16kg (35lbs).
Re: the .454 Casull; just watched a “Hollywood Weapons” rerun, in which Terry Schappert fires a .454 short barrel revolver *under water*. He only fired 1 of 3 planned, because the “thump was really thumpy”.
Thank you for the storntrooper commentary. I have noticed this.
Why doesn’t the instructor have her hearing protection on in the last panel? 2 demerits!
My best guess is Seneca is planning for Sydney to be less intimidated by her own rounds once she has a bigger recoil to compare it to.
Does not work that way, in my experience. Start a new shooter off with something too big and they get SUPER flinchy, remembering the bad surprise / pain on each shot. Seems to work much better to start them small and let them acclimate, and slowly work upwards from there.
This is a middle-of-the-road approach. Sydney’s already gone through some shooting practice, and is at least aware of how the smaller gun kicks. So at this stage, having a point of comparison might boost her confidence in what is likely to be her standard weapon going forward.
Jeez Syd, don’t be such a girl. The rubber grip and muzzle porting dampen the recoil quite a bit. I myself was surprised by the, comparatively, mild recoil of my .460 S&W.
I need to look that up. Never saw that caliber before.
Just for funzies, compare it to the 5.56 NATO.
Not that I disagree about the kick, but the comic is called Grrl Power and is full of superheroines so I’m not sure ‘don’t be such a girl’ means anything in this context XD.
Fairly sure Alan was just having a joke, because, obviously, Sydney is a girl
Rather sexist, at the least.
How is it sexist, when Sydney is, literally, a girl? o_O
Regardless of whether it’s directed at a boy or a girl, the sexist part is the implication that a girl is a bad thing to be, along with the bundling of stereotypical traits as intrinsic, universal properties.
Physical strength is a difference.
Differences between persons or things are not intrinsically “Good” or “bad”.
Universal properties do exist. Iron is heavier than chalk. A stick of hickory is stronger than a stick of balsa.
And you yourself just indicated acknowledging the existence of differences is inherently “sexist” but failed to present any reason why that might be so. If difference being wrongis an intrinsic, universal standard then doesn’t that make your argument wrong?
Why is any of that so?
Under what rules is that “sexist”?
If acknowledging differences is bad in and of itself…the acknowledging some ever changing target called sexism against some ever changing standard is also bad.
I think that hypocrisy, condescension, and pretentiousness are not universal traits, so it is probably not “sexism” to point out that your specious virtue signaling is composed of those things and nothing else.
It is interesting to cantrast the cogent writing of an actual long standing feminist like Camille Paglia against the poseurs who run around looking for someone to castigate under an ever changing wave of indefensible presuppositions.
Stereotypes can have a basis in truth. The problem is the jump from “statistically likely” to “universally, inherently true”. Men are, on average, stronger than women. But there are plenty of women who are stronger than plenty of men. To assume that a woman must be weaker than a man, in spite of evidence to the contrary, is sexist.
Gotta agree with ‘implications’ and Guesticus.
It’s not sexist. It’s jokey, because Sydney IS a girl. And when she fires a gun, she eeks each time, which is pretty girly. Most guys don’t squeak each time they fire a gun. :) I’m not sure if I eeked the one time I fired a gun, but I did start laughing maniacally afterwards out of nervousness. And I’m pretty girly admittedly as well.
And it’s not implying that being a girl is a bad thing. Just that certain actions are more likely to be seen as something girl would do, and other actions are things more likely for a guy to do. Squeaking when you fire a gun and being nervous about the kickback are more likely to happen when the person holding the gun is a girl. Especailly a girl who isnt a sporty sport like Sydney, tomboy or not.
PS. I’m a girl (yes yes, woman. But I prefer saying ‘girl’ to ‘gal’ as the counter to ‘guy’- flows of the tongue more readily). I also don’t have internalized misogyny, and I’m in a largely male field (a field of law that requires a LOT of scientific education, including a science degree in either biology, physics, chemistry or organic chemistry)
What makes something “girly”? Why is a girl more likely than a guy to squeak each time they fire a gun? Is that learned, or inherent? Doesn’t the degree of variation suggest that the behaviors are more likely learned than inherent, even though there may be an inherent bias towards some behaviors?
The problem is that we teach girls to behave a certain way, and then chastise them for it.
“Jeez Syd, don’t be such a girl.” That is sexist!
You still haven’t explained how nor why it is ‘sexist’
Can remember “Mythbusters” doing an episode showing the difference between how a male throws a ball, and how a female throws a ball, and how, if a female tries to throw ‘like a man’, she is more likely to miss than if she threw ‘like a girl’
Same as with boxing: men and women punch differently based on physicality (which is also why people don’t like transgender competitors: not because of sexism or any sort of phobia, because they are still physically the other gender, unless part of the surgery involved altering the bone structure)
And based on that information, girls should “throw like girls” in order to throw more accurately, and shouldn’t be told not to throw like a girl.
And yet girls are made fun of for doing things a) the way they’re told to, and b) the way that will be most successful for them. Do you not see the problem with that?
Yeah, people are idiots, no real surprise there, well, no surprise for most people anyway…
If you are experienced in shooting, you don’t flinch. So you are never surprised by the recoil.
Guess what? Sydney isn’t experienced in shooting
Even experienced shooters flinch sometimes. Usually if they anticipate that the gun is in some way unpleasant to shoot. It’s not just recoil. Some guns will bite if you hold them wrong or they don’t fit your hand.
Can confirm, some pistols don’t have a good grip design that keeps the web of your thumb completely below the slide and will remove skin, especially if you have big hands on the wrong compact model.
More so, this is a double action revolver. It needs to have the hammer come back then drop onto the transfer bar to fire.
If the weapon was just fired, the chamber lined up would have a just fired case in it. Without moving the hammer fully back (by the double action trigger or manually hauling it back), a new round isn’t moved into position to fire.
Man, I tell you what, the first time I fired a double-action pistol without having the trigger properly explained to me? Felt like it took forever and way too much force to get the first shot off, then I about crapped my pants when the slightest tap sent another round into the target. Stopped there for three seconds like “… oh, I get it. Double action… ahhhh.”
What you describe sounds like a DA/SA autoloader
For a true DA to fire a second time, the trigger must be allowed to return forward to reengage the sear, then it has to be pulled all the way to the rear again cocking the hammer and then acting on the sear to release it.
For a revolver, the rearward pressure on the trigger also rotates the cylinder to bring a fresh cartridge in line with the hammer/transfer bar/firing pin.
Most revolvers, but not all, can also be fired in SA for which you release the trigger then manually cock the hammer which also acts on the internal mechanism to rotate the cylinder as it is drawn back and then is held back by the sear until you press the trigger again.
SA gives a lighter trigger pull since the cylinder has already been rotated and that force is not needed any longer.
There are a few ‘semi automatic’ revolvers which I don’t foresee being used here and aren’t applicable to the discussion.
Some autoloaders are DA/SA where the first trigger pull has to cock the hammer and then drop it, for subsequent shots, the action extracts/ejects the empty casing, feeds a new round and cocks the hammer to be held by the sear meaning that the trigger is ‘lighter’ for remaining shots since the hammer is already cocked.
Some autoloaders are ‘DA only’ meaning the trigger pull doesn’t change from shot to shot since the hammer remains in the ‘down’ position after firing, like a revolver, even with the action cycling over it, most ‘DA only’ actions don’t even allow the hammer to be cocked for SA.
This is the closest thing to ‘idiot proof’ you can make an autoloader, it functions very similar to a revolver and is, in my mind, the safest action.
I have yet to see, in almost fifty years on the range, military, civilian and LEO, a DA revolver ‘doubling’.
It’s not impossible I suppose, nothing is, but for that second shot to fire, the trigger has to be released far enough to engage the action and then be pulled back with enough force to rotate the cylinder and drop the hammer. A SA only (usually ‘cowboy style’)revolver just wouldn’t do it, you have to manually cock the hammer for each shot.
It is possible to work the trigger in a SA auto with a light trigger weight in just the right manner to get a second shot off by ‘riding the recoil’ and some people try to do that deliberately but it’s not all that easy.
What is easy, is to pull the trigger again without thinking, usually by snatching and then releasing the trigger too soon or by keeping the finger on the trigger when it shouldn’t be there.
As someone who has fired .45acp, .50cal magnum, .44, and even two .454 Casul… Yeah. Its more then a hiccup. Oddly enough, I have yet to try .357magnum…
My favorite is still .45 cause I have my nice little two-shot derringer for safety reasons. Permitted and I attend a safety class every 3 months cause I don’t always remember everything and I need the refresher. And I did that sort of fist firing for YEARS before I adjusted my technique…Dave, you are doing brilliantly…and now I want a churro…
I’ve never seen a S&W chambered in 454, that looks a lot like the S&W model 500 in 500 S&W Magnum, which is actually a bit stouter caliber than the 454. The only 454’s I’ve seen have all been Single Action revolvers.
All that said and having actually fired a 500 S&W Magnum Sydney’s likely to have the gun go flying out of her hands, the thing’s a beast to control for an experienced shooter much less a novice.
Sure is fun to fire, ain’t it? The .500. I was able to rent one at a local pro gun range. And initially laughed when he said one cylinder was $20. But I paid the price. Could barely lift that monster. So…worth…it.
BuwaHAHAHAHAHAHHAH!!!!!!!
OK, I am laughing harder than I should at this comic today. However, it so fits. YEARS ago, my brother-in-law was teaching his daughter-in-law to shoot a little .22 automatic. He had a firing range in his side yard. After her turn with the .22, I stepped up with my single action wheel gun in .357 mag. We went from “pop pop pop” to “The earth shattering kaboom!” and everyone was leaping for cover. I know it’s no .454 Casull, but the leap in both fire power and acoustic footprint was , , , , , dramatic… All I can do is imagine where Sydney is headed for when she pulls that trigger.
good thing the Archon medical team has a superpowered healer
Curses! Galactus will live to threaten the Earth another day.
The shot to the brain, and the one to the throat might say otherwise.
Then again, we’re talking Galactus…
hmmm just wondering if she got handed a weapon loaded with drill rounds to see how her trigger pull is ?
It’s one technique to detect a ‘flinch’ or other area that needs correction.
Sometimes you can see the trainee close their eyes and even turn their head a little and jerk the trigger and consequently the sights way off line when they think they’re about to fire a live round.
Honestly, I could see Seneca pulling either option.
The dummy load would be a good laugh.
But a bigger, albeit more predictable, laugh would be to see Sydney fly back like Isobelle.
https://i.redd.it/5fltde46z6k41.gif
Calling it now.
Sydney breaks her wrist with the kickback and has to go see the Doc (for a long overdue check-up). Seriously, they never did finish her first physical.
As for the kickback, it happens with people who are “smaller framed” especially with higher caliber pistols. Unlike rifles (and some simi-automatic pistols), all the kick from a revolver goes strait into the arm and you have to know how to recoil from it. (not the best of explanations.)
PS: also calling it that someone in one of the previous 225 comments already commented about her breaking her wrist.
I’d just like to commend DaveB for taking the time to prove that a supernatural sight does not automatically give you skills. I feel so vindicated right now…my head won’t fit through the door.
*gets a sharp pin to help*
LOL.. thanks! I really needed to go pee.
With all the Star Wars comments today the only thing I can add about Sydney’s future is “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
That’s what the doctor said when she was born :P
︶‿︶ → ;-þ → (ツ)
Can we take a moment.
To appreciate the text on the bottom of the page.
Or… better yet… you buck the “good guys always win” dichotomy, and stand closer to reality in your tv show. :-)
I.O.W. You build a set of good guys AND bad guys who all vary in expertise and strength of skill, and then pit them against each other. YOu lose some minor characters on both sides and your main characters tend to have insane levels of both skill and luck, which helps them persevere and live on to fight another day. When you need to dump a character… their luck simply runs out… and they’re dead or mortally wounded… and they leave the show, to be replaced by a new character and a new actor.
Technological advances, new weapons and gadgets, and newer training all equal into the survival of the characters. And for the gut punch every now and again… kill off or horribly maim the beloved “eternal” character that everyone loves, and then have the characters hold a touching funeral in their honor that yanks so hard on the heart strings of the viewers, that they BEG your characters to take vengeance on the other side. :-) ;-)
NCIS did this somewhat.
I would love to see a scene in a movie where the established canon fodder soldiers are shooting at the good guys, and Trooper #187 stands up and nails all 5 main characters in the leg in 5 shots and the whole movie just… stops for like 5 seconds while everyone absorbs what happened.
Then that trooper gets promoted and sort of becomes the Wedge of the bad guys or something.
or the movie changes and the trooper becomes the protagonist, The life of the evil overlords only competent underling.
That would be an amazing intro to a bad-guy protagonist story.
Star Wars, but Vader is just Misunderstood…Yoda is Evil…and Princess Leia actually falls in love with Jabba The Hutt.
Sauron is just trying to overthrow the oppressive immortal Hegemony of the elves and bring free-market economics to land controlled by guilds and aristocracy.
Venture Brothers already had that. Henchman 21 and Henchman 24 (although Henchman 24 eventually did die after several seasons). Henchman 21 eventually became Henchman 1 in season 1, and both of them used to rag on other henchmen with their genry savvy natures of knowing that it was unusual that the two of them constantly lived, even when stuff happened like 24 getting hit with a car by Brock Samson, who kills Henchmen like flies. Or moths, in their case. Even the Monarch mentioned that the reason he kept sending those two on missions was they had the perfect mix of ineptitude and invulnerability. 21 eventually becomes sort of a badass admittedly.
Also there was a webcomic by Ian B called RPG World that had a minion that also kept surviving and was basically the Wedge of the bad guys. Unfortunately that comic ended in the middle when the creator just quit on it.
Ian J, not Ian B. Sorry Dave B!
And I meant butterflies, not moths.
Not quite the same, but I do recall one scene in Marvel comics, years ago, where Dr. Doom is standing there shouting, “Attack, my mindless minions!”, and there’s a thought balloon coming off of one of the minions: “Wait, “mindless?””
Incoming Casullty!
icwutudidthar!
I don’t think handing Sydney a Super Blackhawk was the brightest of ideas.
Damn if that thing kicks like a mule!
Sydney didn’t get handed a Blackhawk, that’s a double action revolver in her hand not a SA.
A Blackhawk, even a Super Blackhawk would be a better choice, although they tend to ‘spin’ in the hand rather than recoil straight back…(unless you have Pachmayer grips, mine does ;) )
Reminds me of an incident a lot of years ago when I had some cadets on the range, with ages ranging from 12-17 and corresponding sizes.
We’d finished the ‘official’ .22 portion of the training and I had my pistol case with me so we ended up with my Blackhawk and some .38 wadcutters on the line.
One of the more obnoxious older ones was particulary ignorant with a very small very young girl who was a little nervous but very willing to learn.
She was pleasantly surprised that the .38’s weren’t nearly as much as she ‘d expected and thoroughly enjoyed shooting the whole cylinder.
Bigmouth got the hottest .357Mag 158gr flatpoints I had with me…and took home a souvenir above the eyebrow when he flat out refused to listen and tried to fire it like he was Clint Eastwood…
Didn’t have the Pachmayers on it that day, just the smooth wood plowhandles ;)
I did see a YouTube video where the stormtrooper thing was debunked… they took an average 3 shits per kill in the storming the ship in ep 4… real world bullets, modern militaries reckon it’s about 150/180 or so… so yeah, they are actually pretty darned good
i don’t think any Star Wars movie showed characters answering the call of nature, especially not in the middle of a firefight
You don’t know how those weapons generate their energy. Methane lasers! :)
Catheters.
Do not underestimate the power of the Force.
To be fair, modern military weapons are presumably being fired full-auto, spray-n-pray style, whereas star wars blasters are semi-auto and inherently have a lower fire rate–plus, modern weapons have a kick to them absent from blasters, meaning your last shot will be in a different location than your previous shot, again, something absent from blasters.
Butstill, the point more or less still stands. Imperial Stormtroopers were shown on multiple occasions to have REMARKABLY good aim. Storming the rebel ship in episode 4, storming the rebel base in episode 5, being notable stormtrooper examples.
If you extend it to Imperial troops in general, you can also add in TIE fighters in Episode 4 and the mounted turrets (the rebels launched something like 30-60 fighters/bombers in an effort to destroy the death star–of those, I believe the total survivors were four? And of those four, one of them had to pull away from the fight), the AT-ATs (might be getting the name wrong there) from Episode 5 shooting down almost every rebel snow speeder, and the TIE fighters in Episode 6 DECIMATING the rebel fleet.
Plus, the storm troopers were very good at killing Ewoks (I vividly remember this in large part due to childhood disdain of the Ewoks with the empire’s killing them off as a highlight of the film for childhood-me).
The Emperor, it should be noted, almost WON that day, and you don’t almost-win if you have inferior troops with inferior equipment with an inferior plan. The Rebels were in fact, for the vast majority of that battle, LOSING. It was mostly only through desperation tactics that, in a lucky series of coincidences after coincidences, along with some clever thinking on their feet, that they pulled through.
If the empire’s troops were as bad as we think of them being, then the rebels would never have been in any danger of losing.
To be fair, we are looking at two completely different battle philosophies. By the ’70s, most militaries around the world had figured out it is not necessary to kill the opposing infantry, since it costs more to rescue and treat wounded soldiers. To that end, it is better to lay down a lead-storm (aka “suppressive fire”) forcing the opposition to keep their heads well down. And a good lead-storm is perfectly achievable with lighter calibers, .22x being popular, since cheaper.
In the Star Wars universe, it would appear the only good rebel is a dead rebel… They don’t carry a rescue/medical cost to their own side, and the Empire needs only to shovel them in a ditch. Of course, if the storm-troopers were to merely wound the rebels, then when the Empire wins the day it has a costly prisoner management system to think about…
This is EXACTLY how a “laid back” range master should react. That “Yes.” at the end hurt my face from grinning eeevilly.
–Also, churros!!
Man, I want churros so badly now, but nobody sells the really good ones at midnight, dammit…
Overtraining syndrome. Stormtroopers all learned to shoot on that VirtuaCop game with the glowy circles around all the enemies, so the whole time they were shooting at the bright light that just appeared. When they burst into that blockade runner and the crew shot at them, they were shooting at the incoming blaster shots and accidentally hitting the crewmen behind them. Then when Han Solo went running after two of them without shooting there was no coloured circle around him and they didn’t know what to do.
So…she plans on shooting galactus in the future?
No, believe she plans on shooting him in the forehead >.>
All sorts of comments here – haven’t time to read them all – but anyone think the pistol may not be loaded? A beginner who flinches will flinch from anticipation of the kick and maybe even drop the weapon! A good, safe object lesson!
Yes, several mentions of possibly blanks
Personally, don’t think they are blanks, Seneca wants Sydney to know what a real kick is to show that her regular handgun is nothing to be afraid of (have been known to be wrong many times)
Definitely not blanks, you can clearly see the ‘hollow point’ projectiles in the chambers.
Very possibly drill rounds though.
Sydney’s been clamouring to use something ‘bigger’.
Now, Senaca nonchalantly hands her a weapon she’s never used before without the slightest briefing.
No pointing out of the operating features, expected performance or IA’s in case of a mechanical problem.
To me, that just screams either incompetence as an instructor, which I don’t think we’re seeing,
or a nefarious trick in the offing…still not the best of ideas but possibly ordered from above.
The more I think about it, the more I think we’re seeing a setup, not that one isn’t expected anyway ;)
Sydney may well have seen Seneca firing her sidearm off-camera, or Peggy or someone else, even Maxima’s pocket artillery piece…and perhaps the classroom portions of the training included a general familiarization with most types of weapons systems likely to be encountered so Senaca assumes Sydney knows what to expect, but assuming usually “makes an ass out of u and me” and I doubt an instructor of the quality needed for this lot would make an assumption like that, or be permitted to do it twice.
The only question is ?: “is it a ‘loud bang’ setup or a ‘no bang’ setup ?”
Safety implications first in mind, I tend to go with the ‘no bang’ setup but when dealing with ‘supers’ that might be allowed to slip by the wayside and we could see Sydney in the next frame with her glasses on sideways and the muzzle flipped straight up in her hand…or not ;)
Still expecting, before Sydney actually pulls the trigger, Seneca will step forward and correct her
It has only, what, a minute at the most since she was handed the weapon? At the moment, she’s just ‘getting the feel’ of the weight in her hands
Just a minor distraction on this page… the drawing of the gun is more detailed than anything else in the comic. It breaks with the style – looks almost photorealistic.
Sometimes Dave experiments with art.
I’m sure he’ll use the skills from the gun somewhere else.
Anyone else notice that she apparently shot the paper in someone else’s lane? She was queued up on Darth Vader in the last page.
No, but now you mention it I see.
She’s switching targets out when she empties out each magazine.
Or, she just beat her own personal best, but on the next lane!
Kinda like the Loony Toons episode where Bugs painted what he thought was a masterpiece, and tried to sell it to a passer-by, whom then proceeded to pay him a crap-load for his “brush cleaning canvas,” which turned out to be a near masterpiece level landscape! lol
The FN 5.7 has a very low recoil due to the small caliber bullet. According to what I have read, it has less felt recoil than 9mm. The Casull has a muzzle energy of about 3 times the 5.7 and according to Wikipedia, has a felt recoil “about 75% more recoil energy than the .44 Magnum”. In other words, Sydney is probably going to hurt herself, especially if she doesn’t get better about holding the pistol. That recoil is going to smack that gun into her forehead.
To be fair, for being a non shooter, Sydney’s groupings aren’t that bad.
IF she takes Seneca’s advice, those groupings would be Galactus centered!
Sydney: These new glasses are great. Too bad the folks that made them left and I can’t get a spare set.
Seneca: Here, try my Casull…
(Blam)
Sydney: Gee, it’s too bad the alien technology in these glasses can’t stand a revolver smashing into them. Medic?
The gun shoots so fast, human reflexes can’t fix the kick mid shot.
I hope Seneca points it out next page, if the shot is off about as much as the ‘hiccup’ gun.
After this she gets to try shooting Maxima’s sidearm.
(emphasis on ‘try’. I think it has a 50 lb trigger pull weight)
Maxima’s gun would be an interesting gunsmithing project, but I wouldn’t want to fire it any way but clamped in a vise.
If you think the .454 has a kick, see if you have a buddy with a 20mm rifle.