Grrl Power #821 – Sydney falls on her brass
“Sydney’s been… downed by a gun.”
“You mean she’s been shot?”
“…No.”
I’m sure some people will ding Seneca for not being a lot stricter about range safety. The truth is Seneca is probably a bit too far removed from the basics to be instructing recruits. She cares about them hitting the targets and not each other. She’s also concerned about someone like Varia being able to shoot a supervillain in case there’s no useful gestalts around, so she’s prioritizing accuracy.
It turns out that most supervillains make for bad silhouettes. A few of them work well, like Galactus, but a lot of the ones that seem obvious are obscured by capes. Dr. Doom in silhouette is just a cloak. Magneto has a cape and a dome helmet. The quasi-Spartan cutout for the face is distinctive, but his outline looks the same as a dozen other guys.
For those wondering, Sydney’s lineup there is Darkseid (another guy with a dome helmet), Lady Doc Oc from Into the Spiderverse, (that one should be obvious hopefully) and Thanos… yet another dome head, though his minor redesign for the movies gave him a bit of a teardrop swoop on the back. I mean honestly, the silhouette of Darkseid and Thanos is basically the same. Granted, about 70% of both DC and Marvel’s major players were either designed by Jack Kirby, or people who were hugely influenced him.
I was going to have Sydney’s flip over the shelf thing include a flailing foot that caught the divider support and the whole thing to collapse, thereby earning an 8.5 from Varia. But I ran out of space.
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I hadn’t thought about Mokepon in years until the moment I recognized that as a curly wurly bar.
Can’t it? *DM Voice ‘Are you sure?’
You win!
A player of mine requested something recently after I said that I was using the honor system to limit characters…
*GM smile*
I mean at least they’re learning to anticipate the Sydney moments.
… It’s a trick, you can never truly anticipate the Sydney.
Both my friends and coworkers that have known me for a long time know when to say something to me that they wouldn’t have to say to someone without ADD. So DaveB isn’t making that up. I have mixed feelings about it. I indignantly say “I know I shouldn’t do (the thing)” LOL
How often do you do the thing, though?
If they’re anything like the rest of us ADD-ridden flea-bit mortals….yes.
Instructor! Permission to retrieve Sidney shaped casing?
Uh yeah, They’re going to need a truck and a 5-ton winch to pull Maxima’s boot out of Seneca’s rear-end.
Too far up the CoC… It’s going to be surgical removal of Peggy’s prosthetic… …provided the straps can still be unfastened…
Don’t worry, prosthetic limbs are designed to detach under extreme stress, to prevent further injury to the wearer
or in this case- the recipient.
Comedy aside… isn’t her (proposed) sidearm one of the only things that can *hurt* Sydney in the field?
Halo wants precisely ZERO bad habits regarding the safety of her intimidation device.
This is a case of “experience” vs “training” and I think she is being given so much rope because they are situations where she is only hanging herself from short distances…they made sure she cleared her gun before she spun it, just because they knew she would slam herself anyways, or try it with something else and build the habit out of their sight.
Obviously this wouldn’t slide if Peggy or Max were teaching because they are showing that they are “serious” about training, letting her do stupid stuff of this magnitude would put the wrong precedent during other training, but having it done with Seneca still allows them to remain in actual control. Its the case of Pavlov’s dog. You want the same signal repeated along specific people because then they are able to anticipate the results they need to be seeing.
She does a one-legged backjump high enough to get the counter from about top-of-kidney to just above the knee, with enough force to only hang the trailing boot instead of landing flat-on-her-back on the counter; and it’s only a 7.5?
Man, the judge’s standards are HIGH! I realize she’s probably allowing for supers, but no normal (and Orbs aside, Sydney IS a normal) is ever going to exceed an 8.5 and survive. …at which point it’s a Darwin Award instead…
She didn’t even give extra points for Sydney managing to hit herself 3 times while moving violently away from the gun…
Clearly they’re not using the McManus Fall Scoring System, which awards points for making a droll comment. It’s a variant of the North Idaho system, which also gives points for arm-waving – which isn’t applicable because Sydney didn’t execute on that maneuver.
East-German judges….
Actually, Boston judge.
I enjoy how Syd is also aiming at Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet.
She’s hyperactive, not stupid, lol.
What’s IMPORTANT is that the silhouette is properly marked with little circles where each of the Infinity Gems would be located, for sharpshooters-in-training to aim at.
Now, Thanos I recognised due to the movie helmet shape… Lady Doc Oc was a little harder but since I just watched “Into the Spiderverse” no problem…
Darkseid was a different story…. I was asking myself why would Sidney be shooting He-Man….
Question should be: why wouldn’t Sydney shoot at He-Man? :P
Wrong collar though
I thought it was Skeletor.
I’m pretty sure it’s Cobra Commander.
And shell casings from the wrong angle are _REAAALLY_ sharp!
If guns are a viable method for engagement, then why wouldn’t everyone carry them without regard to their powers. Hiro could crush a mugger like a can-press but that same mugger might instantly surrender at the sight of a firearm without Hiro having to break any part of him.
Its like arresting them with literal fire or through massive internal trauma is preferable to producing a verifiable source of lethal force visible BEFORE the perp is dead.
But then maybe ARC doesn’t do arrests.
And if THAT’S so, then I wonder when Sydney will get her first kill.
They *do* all carry guns for that exact reason and have done arrests from the start; read the comic please
You not counting the Space Squidwards? o_O
One confirmed kill (unless they can regenerate from slices) with a possible second (depending on if the ‘seat of power’ was behind the tractor beam), not to mention the literal hundreds of ships (which most readers have dismissed as empty drones, to spare Sydney’s feelings of slaughtering that many individuals)
Beat me to it.
They also provide a short medium ranged attack for people like Duke and Stalwart who otherwise lack ranged attacks.
I’m new to this comic but I am loving it. Also I binge read this in about a day and a half. It’s such a fun comic
Glad to have you, our comments section isn’t as bad as you think!
Keep your bugger hook off the bang switch.
Now that’s language some people understand!
Weird – I saw Judge Dredd on the far left, not Darkseid.
Ah well…
Nah, not a Mega-City Judge: no shoulderpads, unless you mean the Urban Dredd (still waiting for the second movie)
you know how there is that bingo game for making Max say certain words?
I’m thinking there is one like that for Syd’s pratfalls
If there ^isn’t^, there should be!
Moo the manocracy in the knickers, oscillate the diaper’s camel toe, and penetrate the excelsior through the fart.
https://grrl-power.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Make_Maxima_Say
Who can picture Seneca chewing tobacco!?
She’s always chewing SOMETHING, so why not?
Although, so far, she’s shown a tendency for sweets, so maybe chewing gum?
Not to be a downer, but Sydney is gonna pay for that hubris if she ever finds herself in a situation where she needs to shoot something and her glasses are busted. She’s not actually learning anything if she half-asses it and relies on a crutch.
Then again, I feel like this is the sort of comic where that very situation would happen, so maybe I’m just predicting the future here.
Hard to picture a situation where Sydney would ‘need’ to shoot something where turtling with her orb wouldn’t be an immediately better solution for all involved. Also glasses are already a thing people shouldn’t be shooting things without. Frankly, a gun so much ‘at best a prop’ for Sydney that they could just issue her a demilled piece.
depends if the glasses don’t recognize the ppo as a weapon it cant help her aim after all the ppo has no tech discernable well anything if dabbler from way back it to be believed and all she could tell it that they floated and they glowed other then that they needed to be activated and seen in action first for her to even begin to theorize on what they were
The PPO isn’t really a weapon that needs cybernetic assistance to aim… it’s pretty much point, shoot, and hope nothing important was in the blast radius. Which is probably why the hentacle seems to be her actual weapon of choice… it’s got range, it can be used from inside the shield, and can be used with relative precision.
I thought they tested a low-power shot from the PPO(?) – perhaps it could be precise ?
But I think expanding on this, I would frankly assume that it is significantly more point and shoot than the glasses enhancement. By a large several-orders-of-magnitude margin in fact. Being linked mentally to Sydney, the orb-system as a whole would “know” exactly what she is considering to be a threat, so it would not have to rely upon calibration like the glasses. It would be able to not only use SEVEN independent physical points in space to sept-angulate a more precise position for the target than the glasses (neglecting its apparent ability to project an observation point at the behest of the user), but could also probably use all her senses and intelligence if there was any benefit to doing that, beyond selecting a target.
It also aims the energy blast projection itself, instead of relying upon Sydney’s motor cortex and sense-analysis-response feedback loop to control an external weapon. Once activated, it’s a self-contained sensor/ordinance system that requires minimal expertise to be extremely effective
As I recall, when she used it on that tank, the beam wandered all over the place. I suspect you’d be right as long as she was focused, but if she’s startled by anything, all bets are off.
All of ArcSWAT are required to have side-arm training, for situations where super-powers are N/A.
See the previous episode for a topical and probable scenario.
There is a reason why non-supers are typically described as “squishy” :[ And in almost every case, there is an absolute need to make every possible effort to arrest perpetrators rather than terminally immobilise them.
I am sure there is a reason why people tell me I should learn to proof-read BEFORE posting, rather than rely on an EDIT BUTTON… :(
Especially if there isn’t one…
Which is why I said bubble. She also has the Light hook. Flight. Teleportation.
Also if Dabbler would provide Arc-Swat with a few bondage guns it would cover a multitude of sins. Shooting guns in a crowded building is a bad idea for the same reason punching bad-guys through walls in a a building is a bad idea.
Which is why the safe usage of firearms includes when and where not to use them
One: Dabbler has point-blank refused utterly to supply anybody with “her” tech if they don’t already have it;
Two: Assuming you have at least looked at the topical and probable scenario, I am amazed you headed straight for the “shooting guns in a crowded building” rather than at least trying to improvise a strategic and tactical response. (No I will NOT offer a starting point.)
Kudos to Guesticus who at least saw it coming.
Your provided scenario was a terrible situation in which to use guns is all I was saying. “A target rich environment” of “squishy” non-super civilians against opponents potentially not even vulnerable to gun fire. You want a Sydney appropriate strategic response to possibly super-powered idiots with guns in a crowded place.
– Call for backup. Unless immediate action is needed to prevent loss of life, more good guys is good.
– Conceal/Cover. Bubble, or move to step two and then immediately bubble as required.
– Negotiate where possible.
If action is required to prevent loss of life
– Get in range, either by teleporting behind or above them, or rushing them with the flight orb.
– Disarm or disable them with the light hook.
– Restrain them until backup arrives.
Also @Guesticus – I won’t (and didn’t) say that training Sydney in the use of firearms is a bad idea. It’s a good skill to learn either way, but she inherently has better options available to her in most situations.
As far as Dabbler goes, yeah she’s not going to hand them phaser plans, but a tool that’s basically a portable net gun? Even if she isn’t beneficent enough share out a few tamper-protected copies of that one I’m betting Arcon could get a Deus brand knockoff. Maybe something in foam.
Thank you.
I actually didn’t want a Sydney-specific strategic response, I was hoping somebody would come up with what I consider would be universal even today in the non-Grrl Power Universe.
– Evacuate, quietly, from the outer edge. Organise appropriate detours for the cinema crowds. Police are GOOD at this, hopefully trained for it. Then move unobtrusively into the mall, getting non-coms out.
– Simultaneously or VERY soon after, get drones in, we need intel, exact numbers, descriptions &etc.
– It gets a bit fuzzy here, I’m not sure of Harem/Daphne’s capabilities: can she carry Arc-SWAT members to specific locations? Like up personal but not too close to the suspects? Right now I don’t have a Plan B :(
– On my signal, restrain and immobilise. And this is probably where bullets might have to exit the guns, or super-powers displayed.
– Sydney may or may not be in the hit-squad. If things go poo-poo, she may be better deployed up in the ceiling as in the car-park brawl, doing battle intel.
Why no supers at the beginning? Imagine a little joey staring up at the ceiling: “MU_U_U_UMMMMM! IS THAT HALO???????”
Something in foam… Good idea. Like these, maybe :) I’m pretty sure that can be developed right there in downtown Dallas!
No, Daphne can’t carry another person (other than Vahriah), she has a weight limit for a start
Mega-City Judges had riot foam in the 70’s: it acted like normal foam to encase perps, and then set so they could be cut out and processed at leisure (fairly sure it didn’t suffocate anyone, would have to dig up that issue to check)
Oh. Ah. Erm. Ummmm. ::scratch head:: oooooh…
Plan B anyone? It’s about getting people from A to B very very VERY quickly, one at a time. Perhaps two? :)
Maxima?
Isn’t Deus employing the portal lady in Galytn to move cargo across the continent? He contracts with Archon, seems like she could be kept on retainer, and could (potentially) drop the entire team into place at once. Or even better, just port the perp away to the bottom of an everything-proof pit in Archon’s back yard for containment and processing.
Thank you, I’d forgotten that. Seems like a reasonable project.
Do you really want to trust SmugD? o_O
In fact, Sydney shouldn’t even carry a sidearm for that very reason. Her PPO automatically creates it’s firing aperture outside her shield when her shield is up (as does her skyhook/hentorb). A gun very much does not. It’s been demonstrated (by shrapnel, testing the limits of her bullet-resistant uniform) that objects moving at high speed inside the shield can ricochet off it. She is impulsive enough to potentially, momentarily forget that under sufficient stress, and insufficient medication. An unloaded (or blank-loaded) firearm is a perfectly useful tool for intimidating people to slow or uninformed to realize that Sydney can shoot holes in building-sized opponents with her PPO.
Training her muscle memory in crisis situations should definitely be aimed at having her grab and activate her shield and atmosphere orbs at the first hint of danger (shield for defense, atmo in case the first hint of danger is a whiff of gas, tear gas grenade, etc.).
TL;dr: Under no rational circumstances is Sydney or anyone else well-served by giving Sydney firearm-based self-defense training, nor by assigning Sydney a loaded sidearm.
As a person brought up in the UK law-enforcement mindset, I can see no rational benefit to arming beat-cops, period.
As a sprog, I learnt early the mechanics of the arms-race, and I didn’t even need the US examples. Kids do it all the time.
And even in my current home, we have a sad example of why NOT to emulate the US.
There was a farmer down in a not-too-far-from town farm house,and he had depression problems. The local cops were assigned to deliver a summons. This is an area that barely had phone coverage at the time, and police were not yet equipped with decent radio, although the Army in Korea and other places had demonstrated its availability and benefits. The farmer saw them coming around lunch-ish, grabbed his guns and hid in a room beside the entrance hall, covering the police car, at a distance of about 200m. He opened fire and killed the lead cop at about 100m. He was able to wound the second cop. The cops lay there all afternoon, pinned down, unable to call for help. They were rescued in the evening when it was realised they had not reported in.
In the beatup (the news media went berserk) the Police Minister surrendered to the Police Union and agreed to supply all Police with S&W .38 revolvers. In the years immediately following, the numbers of shot suspects sky-rocketed, almost all carrying only knives or nullanullas. But that soon changed, with more than a few carrying their own firearms (the news media was not going berserk). And most of the bikie gangs were being consistently raided, with major arsenals being confiscated. And the security industry successfully lobbied to carry their own weapons in case of armoured truck holdups.
So why should Syd carry and maybe use a gun? Mostly, because she’s not quite the stupid galah you and others make her out to be. And also because you don’t deploy the Atlantic Fleet in Lake Michigan. Sydney’s weapon set cannot (at the monment) be down-scaled, and she is still a liability with them. With the FN, any mistakes are probably manageable.
Amazed they allow her in the field at all. She belongs in a padded cell where she can’t hurt herself or others.
In a world of superheroes and supervillains, checking that the chamber is empty doesn’t seem to me to be very effective.
I mean, the way I was taught is if you remove the magazine, empty the chamber, hand the gun to someone, they should then check the chamber just in case you did some slight of hand, and vice versa.
NEVER assume the chamber is empty if it’s left your hands or anyone other than you has touched it… NEVER…
And in a world of super powers, that line of thinking ought to be extended to NEVER assume it’s still empty at ANY point, EVEN if you can SEE that it’s empty because you don’t know that there’s not some joker whose power is to make objects turn invisible… I mean heck, we already know Krona can reload a gun by editing a few bytes in the runtime memory of the universe. She could easily flick a switch that changes her hair color AND loads a round into your gun, with the hair color being a plausible deniability thing.
Point is… going full pedant by showing that she’s made sure the chamber is empty is kinda meaningless in the context of this comic.
Sydney herself imagined a super who could ‘port a round into the chamber
The context of this comic (page) is to show Sydney being Sydney and falling on her brass because she’s being a cocky spaz
Yeah and I’m saying that this ain’t a world of non-supers anymore, so the rules of gun safety have to be modified a bit…
I think we can trust DaveB to limit the Universal Chaos Quotient to Sydney’s immediate vicinity, and ensure the Chaotic Decay Rate is always Maxim
aized. With these measures in place, we can trust that Krona and any “new” mages/supers will find it very difficult or impossibly expensive to insert/remove projectiles into /from their launchers.Yes, but what about in the field? I’m talking about gun safety as an ingrained habit, not gun safety as a singular instance. If you’re in the habit of making assumptions about something like this, that’s not gun safety.
Teaching people to check for a round in the chamber and then assume there isn’t one just because they didn’t see one in a world where that doesn’t actually mean anything… especialy with a goofball spaz like Sydney around… it’s a recipe for disaster.
And I’m not saying Krona would, I’m saying if she could, it’s not outside of the realm of possibility that someone else could, even if with an entirely different method.
Like someone would can teleport stuff with pinpoint accuracy, for example.
As I just said, our Author gets to set Universal Physical and Chaotic Quotients, aka The Rules.
Krona can only do what our Author says she can do, which will be (according to His Discretion) only what others of her type can do.
For the most part.
There are a few other writers here (besides me) who might want to chime in-
Sometimes you write a character and they decide what they can and can’t do, and you as the writer (and their creator) aren’t able to argue with it.
Heck, Sarah Kerrigan was like that. She was originally thought up to be a joke character because of the Tanya Harding / Nancy Kerrigan thing. But that wasn’t who Sarah agreed to be. We all know her now as The Queen of Blades. Writers didn’t do that. She did.
I was intrigued. So I looked. OK, I did not use Google, simply because I don’t like Google using me.
But, on DDG I found:
Back in the 1990’s, Blizzard’s main rival in the RTS space was Westwood Studios, who produced the popular Command and Conquer series. Command and Conquer: Red Alert, released in 1996, featured a female commando by the name of Tonya. Also around this time, Chris Metzen explains, the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan story was breaking. They joked Starcraft’s answer to Tonya should be Kerrigan. But the name stuck and the rest, as they say, is history.
Kerrigan also was not originally conceived of as a villain. Instead, Metzen found her transformation into the Queen of Blades as a natural evolution of two narrative demands. …
at
IGN: Kerrigan’s Surprising Origins
Joke character?
You’re still not getting it… It’s not about is it going to come back and bite them in the butt. It’s about the mentality behind gun safety rules.
REAL WORLD… you hand a gun to someone, they look at it and hand it back. You never take your eyes off of it. What are the chances they have slipped a round in the chamber? So low as to make the rule that you check it anyway seem absolutely silly…
GRRLPOWER WORLD… if you apply the SAME mentality the military has to gun safety to the GrrlPower world, then the military would change the rule from “Always check even if it left your hands or your eyesight for even a moment” to “you don’t even need to check, always assume there’s a round in the chamber unless the gun is disassembled and cannot fire”.
I’m not talking about the feasibility or chances or “universal physical and chaotic quotient”, because the chances of a super doing that is about the same as the chance of a normal person doing it in the real world. It’s not about that, it’s about the mentality of gun control…
Then it’s Dave is making a point to show that Sydney is following the usual rules… except those rules she’s following are designed for a pre-super world. And the reason he’s showing her doing that is because of people out there who complain if see a lack of gun safety…
Again, I’m not talking about the likelihood, feasibility, etc of something ACTUALLY occurring. The rules of gun safety aren’t concerned with the likelihood of someone pulling a fast one and loading a round in the chamber when you aren’t looking or with slight of hand. The rules of gun safety are concerned with what would happen if someone did. Which means you have to ask the question “can a super do it?” and if the answer is yes, then the rules of gun safety need to change… not because of probability, but because of potential consequence.
The consequence of not following a rule is literally the only criteria for gun safety rules to exist, not the probability of something going wrong if the rule is not followed.
Another point to be made here: the later it is before the others learn about Sydney’s hack-specs, the more respect they have for her will be lost
They respect her now because they believe she has done it herself, how much respect will they have once they learn she had assistance?
There’s a good chance they would never trust her again, even if she didn’t wear any eye-protection (and then they would lose respect for her for not wearing basic eye-protection)
I pointed out my suspicion about the glasses when Cora was making them.
If I was correct, the software that we have seen is the software that the Archon goggles (which were all destroyed in the restaurant fight) had replicated into a smaller and more durable model. So Leon should know that the software has connected to the system and Cora probably told Xuriel. I expect to see Leon spill the beans.
How would Cora know about the Archon Goggles? This was her first visit ‘home’ (so to speak), and Sydney was never issued those goggles (even if they hadn’t all been destroyed, she would not still have a pair)
No, do not believe the Cora-Specs have any connection to the Arc-Specs, so Leon won’t be the one doing the bean spilling
Because the Goggles interface with the chokers and communication back to the command center at Archon HQ. Go back and reread where the goggles were in use during the opening stages of the restaurant fight.
It would be absolute child’s play for someone with the advanced technology and engineering background which Cora has to reverse engineer the entire system from the hardware and software hooks in the Choker (which Sydney took off while Frix was stitching her up) and her knowledge of Xuriel’s choker on which the Archon system was probably loosely based.
So I believe that Cora made that as a surprise…to Sydney but probably told Xuriel.
Assuming it’s like the old system it communicates with Leon’s system and he was probably alerted when Sydney’s ballistics software came online.
Again, how would Cora know that the Goggles interface with the chokers? Sydney was never issued the goggles, and she wasn’t wearing them on Cora’s ship
Also to be noting what Sydney is not wearing on this page: her choker. None of them are, because there is no reason to be wearing them on base
So, no, do not believe the Cora-specs would be interfacing with anything other than Sydney’s eyeballs
And note also that the only gun Syd’s Cora-specs lights up for is the FN Five-seveN issued to… OUR SIDDLES!!!
This info can only be gleaned from the Archon haystack.
Given the tech glasses could they also
1. Bablefish: auto translate for her but not slow her to auto translate to others
2. Vision enhance: when she wants to see it will let her zoom/nightvision/anti flash/thermal/(se)x-ray, I know the last one was described away as part of the showers scene but predictive algorithms that could give her a cross hairs good enough for feild work might be able to predict what’s under people’s clothes, provided the adult filter settings aren’t on.
3. Data transfer: pull/send info from optical cables via light pulse.
4. Target/threat/loot/sexy/nerd/spicy acquisition: if it can already give her a hud why can’t it find the things she needs.
Just a few thoughts.
Considering that Cora, who have both naughty habits and very advanced technology, designed the tech glasses it sounds plausible that they would have a functional (se)x ray.
I’m not even sure Sydney having a lethal weapon is s good idea. Since she spends so much time inside her force field, and we know how ricocheting objects do in that.
It’s mostly for show — a visible weapon serving as a deterrent — but she still needs to know how to use it safely.
Obviously if things have turned into an actual combat situation, she’s going to be using the orbs as her primary weapon. Mostly the hentacle, since that’s a precise and non-lethal option… there aren’t many situations where the PPO is an appropriate choice.
Three questions:
1.) I understand that all guns should be treated as if loaded. But how do the people who CAN twirl their guns practice?
2.) If something is flying at me, I’ll bring an arm up to block it without thinking. Wouldn’t Sydney bring an orb up to block as well.
3.) I can picture a scenario where Sydney is behind bulletproof cover, uses her telepresence orb to see over the cover, sticking just her arm above cover and shoot using her duplicate to aim. She should probably be practicing this way as well.
I’ve wondered about point #1 myself. I suspect what has happened over the years, is that as mass shootings and our government’s lack of response to them has become an international embarrassment more and more, responsible gun owners have kind of… I don’t want to say “overcorrected” but have become increasingly vocal about gun safety?
I don’t mean that in a bad way. If more people treated guns like live bombs and not part of their macho identity, there’d probably be a few less accidents. But I can’t help but wonder if when those people see a cowboy in an old western showboating with some gun twirling, if they’re not shaking their heads and thinking “That guy should have his guns taken away!”
I think a lot of the comments on the last couple comic pages really reflect that. Gun enthusiasts have become very concerned about how gun owners are perceived, out of fear that the government will eventually do something. It’s too bad they don’t seem to be all that interested in addressing the problem themselves, however. They seek to categorize gun owners as either “law-abiding” or “criminals”, and they believe the proper solution to gun violence is that the former shoot the latter. It should be obvious that isn’t a solution, but the perpetuation of the problem itself. Exceptions to those categories, whether they be irresponsible gun owners or non-owners, are classified as “idiots”, to be disregarded as irrelevant.
I would think if the gun enthusiasts were really interested in addressing the problem, they would be in favor of taking the guns away from the “criminals” and “idiots”, particularly since they seem to believe it’s obvious who falls into which category. But rather than try to prevent the incidents which hurt their public imagine, they just repeat the lie that gun owners are all “law-abiding”, responsible, disciplined, good citizens, who would never horse around with their weapons or use them to threaten others. Guns represent power to a lot of otherwise powerless people, and they’re loathe to give it up, even though nobody rightfully has power over anyone else.
Big things you’re missing, but most people do:
1. People can make their own guns.
I’ll explain this below because it ties in with
2. Taking guns away from those who illegally acquired them.
This isn’t possible because
Think about it. Actually think. Okay, so how would you know whether someone has an illegally acquired or personally manufactured firearm? You’d need 360 degree 24 hour surveillance on every single person, over every single inch of everything everywhere, and the ability to go “Nuh uh uh.” or “Can’t touch this*” at all times and places.
You think that someone who really wanted to shoot somebody for no reason** wouldn’t have someone else do a dead drop for later stealthy pickup? You really think that a pertinent teen hasn’t stolen a legally owned and safely stored firearm from a parent? Also, you can make your own. Some prisoners have made lethal single-shot weapons from rubber bands and old bread.
* Copyright, MC Hammer
** No valid reason
No, the problem is that law-abiding gun owners are being treated like criminals simply because they have a gun
As you said, those who plan on using the firearm(s) for illegal purposes will still be able to get their hands on a firearm, they already do, they always have, and that won’t ever change, so yes, let’s turn even law-abiding people into criminals and make the world less-safe
There is an old saying, from the 1960’s.” If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
Zack Tilly
They are? People are being arrested, jailed, charged with crimes, simply because they have a gun?
Or are they just treated with suspicion, because they have a weapon and a hostile attitude?
Actually most officers I know say they have more trust for someone they stop if they are discovered they have a concealed carry permit. At least if they state it up front before they get frisked, at which point it’s more about the hostile attitude.
I think you’re mistaken. Gun enthusiasts (of which, believe it or not, I’m not really one – I grew up with guns and generally have similar views on gun rights as most gun enthusiasts, but I don’t actually own a gun) have always been a bit rabid regarding gun safety. I can assure you that gun enthusiasts are no more vocal about gun safety today than they were 30 years ago. I’d feel safe in saying that they’re probably no more vocal about it today than they were 70 years ago, but I wasn’t around back then. I think it more likely that people are just paying more attention to what gun enthusiasts are saying these days.
Stereotyped generalizations about gun owners and their positions aside, let’s say we do pass a law prohibiting guns from being owned by “criminals and idiots”. Exactly what criteria do you plan to use to enforce that law?
Everyone (gun owner or not) is law abiding until they’re not, and there’s no (meaningful and reliable) way to determine beforehand that someone is about to break the law and stop them. You can’t ban an adult from owning a car or a knife or even an icicle on the basis that they could potentially hurt someone with it – at least not in any society I’d care to live in.
Requiring safety training on the other hand makes all kinds of sense. Some countries require militia membership or a short full-time period of military service, both of which include firearms training. In the US a driver training course is required before getting a license (I think all states?), and it’s at least highly recommended to take additional courses before driving a motorcycle. I have no problem with a gun safety course being pre-requisite to owning a gun, or advanced training required to own assault weapons. Nearly all gun owners I’ve ever met take them anyways.
Thing is, it’s already law that criminals are not allowed to posses a firearm, doesn’t stop them of course
Ok, what would stop them? Why do our options stop at some ineffective “make it illegal” approach? There’s a lot more to government and society than a binary “legal” or “illegal”. And if simply making things illegal is so ineffective, then why do people advocate for that approach in other contexts, such as drugs?
I live in NH, to hunt at the age of 16, you are required to take a Hunters Safety course.
I put “law-abiding” in quotes because I think it’s an utterly meaningless phrase, but it’s one that gun-rights people trot out all the time as if it had meaning. If they believe it’s so easy to distinguish between the “good guys” and “bad guys”, then they should support taking guns away from the “bad guys”. But they don’t, so I’m saying the whole thing is a sham.
We already “ban” adults from driving cars without a permit, and I’m in favor of something similar for guns. Training, licensing, and the ability to revoke that license if the person misuses it. If you display a tendency to use violence and the threat of violence to get your way, we take your ability to harm others away from you.
You can twirl the **** out a single-action revolver, which will not and cannot fire until you manually cock back the hammer. No amount of trigger pulling will draw back the hammer, it only releases the catch that holds back once it’s already cocked. That’s the kind of firearm that was most common when fancy twirling of guns was a thing — closed trigger guard, single-action. Before that, trigger guards were uncommon (and before that, triggers were often long bars that were squeezed with the whole hand, copied from crossbows). After, it was a colossally bad idea to twirl a gun that could be cocked and fired if you did it wrong. With self-reloading magazine-fed pistols, the balance is weird and variable, and it’s easy to **** it up, easy to miss whether the safety is on or off, and possible to fire a chambered round if the gun is dropped, depending on the safety design.
TL;dr: Twirling the gun was safe when it was invented, and isn’t now.
Twirling a revolver is still a bad idea. Dropped guns behave unpredictably.
1) are there really gun shows with real guns in the States, where people twirl them?
2) I don’t think that controlling the orbs is already as intuitive for her.
3) Can she see through the glasses and use the sight while in telepresence? We already know that telepresence doesn’t allow truesight, iirc. (in #109)
Yes, there are performances for tourists out West with people in costume with non-historic, Hollywood style staged gunfights. I’m sure some of them still include the gun twirling. Apparently there are also competitions.
Howard Darby (fair warning, it has a cheesy opening)
Which is probably just as well. When Hollywood wants to make another Western they need somebody to teach the actors and stunt people. I came across this comment from someone on a shooter’s forum:
“I met and talked to Arvo Ojala several times at the Seattle World’s Fair. At the time he was THE person teaching Hollywood actors gun handling. Quick draw, spinning and shooting that looked real. He said they used real guns and unless it was something that was super fancy, the actor usually did their own spinning and shooting.”
Inspired by the “old west” genre of movie. Someone isn’t badass or hero unless they twirl their pistol after firing, before putting it into the holster.
Are there really gun shows with real guns where people twirl them? Gun shows with real guns, yes. People twirl them, no. I mean sometimes people TRY, but then someone with a brain takes the gun from them and escorts them out. Occasionally after kicking their ass. As I’ve said numerous times, that shit is not tolerated by gun enthusiasts.
Practice with a fake gun until they stop shooting their face off
The mass distribution in a revolver usually plays in the shootist’s favour to start with. The gun will almost always hang from your finger by its trigger-guard.
The, er… “accidents”* happen when the twirling starts, when the twirling is interrupted, and when the twirling is ending, which are all points when the gun can fall trigger-first onto the finger. We shoud note that self-harm in this manner is much less likely to happen with DA-only models.
* By definition, an accident is a “reasonably UNforeseeable incident“
That’s not even close to being the definition of an accident.
Actual definitions of an accident include:
“an undesirable or unfortunate happening that occurs unexpectedly and unintentionally”
“an event that happens without being planned”
“an unplanned and unexpected (not purposefully caused) event which occurs suddenly”
“an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance”
NOTE: Unforeseen is not the same as unforeseeable.
Driver of truck, explaining why his truck ran over the car going through the Green Light: “I did not forsee there would be a car coming through the green. It was a total accident.”
Young adult defending himself: “It was an accident! I did not forsee the hot oil vapours would ignite on the gas stove.”
Senior ex-policeman after starting a major bushfire on a declared no-fire* day: “I didn’t think the sparks would ignite the grass.”
* In my part of the world, Local Councils have the right to declare no-fire days if temperature and winds reach certain conditions, usually 35°C or higher and winds at 15Km/H or higher, especially after a run of high temperatures (e.g. 30°C+). This is usually done after consultation with other affected Councils, but can be done alone if felt necessary.
You are quite correct, Unforeseen is not the same as unforeseeable.
Unforeseen means that it could have been anticipated had somebody thought about it — “not anticipated or expected : not foreseen : unexpected”(Merriam-Webster);
Unforeseeable means “impossible to know about or expect” (Merriam-Webster).
A Sorry. I did not address the root word “accident”.
From Webster’s Online Dictionary,
n .1. Literally, a befalling; an event that takes place without one’s foresight or expectation; an undesigned, sudden, and unexpected event; chance; contingency; often, an undesigned and unforeseen occurrence of an afflictive or unfortunate character; a casualty; a mishap; as, to die by an accident.
And…
Legal Dictionary:
ACCIDENT. The happening of an event without the concurrence of the will of the person by whose agency it was caused or the happening of an event without any human agency; the burning of a house in consequence of a fire being made for the ordinary purpose of cooking or warming the house, which is an accident of the first kind; the burning of the same house by lightning would have been an accident of the second kind.
Also…
From Online Etymology, … From late 15c. as “the operations of chance.” …
Unfortunately, too many people — out of kindness and a wish to be not seen as unduly accusative — are willing to accept the excuse “I did not know…”. I have seen a person accused of killing another as a result of drunk driving use that very excuse. (The judge did not accept it.) “I didn’t know it was loaded.” “Everybody could see to not use that particular step {in a staircase}.”
True accidents are very, very uncommon. I have seen a couple, both of them from lightning, but no mammalian creature was harmed. In one, the claim could be made that the house owner should have installed a lightning rod. (But I know of no ordinary house with such a contraption.) The other, the bolt hit a power pole outside, on the road verge. And then there was the church in a small town in medieval Germany (Bavaria I believe), where the town’s gunpowder was stored, in the belief that God would not permit His building to be destroyed… Until He did. Of the three, which one was not an accident?
“Of the three, which one was not an accident?”
That is a trick question since ALL of the examples provided ARE accidents, (although in the case of lightning strikes, they are more specifically referred to as Acts of God rather than just accidents.)
True accidents are very common and occur daily even in a small community.
Just because someone can be held liable for something does not mean it wasn’t an accident. Responsibility can be apportioned based on the degree of risk that was accepted, but a high risk of an event does not mean an occurrence is not an accident.
Nik Wallenda recently walked 1800 feet across a volcano’s lava lake. If he had fallen, it would have been an accident. The harness and the gas mask that he wore were reasonable efforts to mitigate the risk and could have prevented a tragedy. But even with the harness (displaying that he knew beforehand that he might fail to maintain his balance), if he had fallen it would have been an accident. Unless he jumped.
Concerning the 737 MAX, Boeing took on what I believe an informed and reasonable person would consider to be an unacceptable level of risk. Mistakes were made. I consider their decision to solely rely on one of the two sensors that were on the aircraft to be unconscionable. Even so, the loss of two aircraft were accidents.
With 20 years of working front-line troubleshooting and repair, 8 years as a shop supervisor, 3 years as a technical school instructor, 3 years as a safety & compliance officer, 4 years as a quality engineer, and 8 years as an aerospace safety & reliability engineer, I am quite familiar with evaluating hazards, accidents, their causes, and their effects.
It was indeed a trick question.
If Nick Wallender had fallen, it would maybe have been an accident, depending if the gas mask had had a reasonably undetectable fault, or a sudden severe wind event: simple loss of balance can be attributable to momentary inattention. If he had fallen into the lava, THAT would have been an accident, as no reasonable prestart could have revealed a systemic fault in his harness. Wallender’s harness is similar to the carriage-raising chains of a forklift: even if these are kept factory-clean, some faults cannot be detected by the “once-over looksee” shift-start inspection.
I am not with you on the 737 Max. It’s worth following Juan Browne on the blancolirio channel for a full coverage. Suffice it to say that IM(NotSo)HO, no part of that sorry saga was “an accident”, since it was all down to poor decision-making by Boeing. From the pilots’ perspectives, yes they were accidents, being reasonably UNforeseeable at the time, as well as requiring an emergency recovery knowlege those pilots did not have.
The big problem with the word “accident” is — as I have said, maybe not explicitly — that it is so often used as an excuse. This is compounded by the fact that where one party is doing everything right and by-the-book, the second party is simply sloppy. The one party suffers in a true accident, the second party could have prevented the poor performance that led to the disaster.
FWIW, I have recently retired (to prevent “accidents” due to my increasingly poor attitude behind the wheel) from 15 years in Road Traffic Control, a job in which I was delivering safety to not just the client, but everyone within cooee of the site. In all weathers, at any time of night or day.
Your basic premise is incorrect.
Regardless of equipment, weather, or anything else; if Wallenda had simply stepped wrong or lost his balance, or for any reason other than he jumped or been sabotaged, it would have been an accident. For it not to be an accident, a person would have to have the intention for the bad effect to occur and taken action to make it happen. By every definition, if there is no intent for an event to happen, then it happening is an accident.
Likewise, no amount or degree of bad decision making by Boeing would be possible of making the loss of aircraft anything other than an accident. Unless someone decided they wanted planes to crash and did something to make it happen, those are accidents. Boeing can be faulted for making poor and even reckless choices, it still doesn’t change that any aircraft losses that result are accidents.
Of recent aviation disasters, the few that were not accidents were the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 which was intentionally shot down by Russians/Ukrainian Rebels, and possibly Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 if it’s confirmed to be a case of murder-suicide.
There is no amount of sloppiness or anything else other than intent that can make an event anything other than an accident. Even if someone could have or even did foresee that an action could have an unfortunate effect, if they take the action and do not want the effect to occur, and then it does occur, it is an accident.
If someone uses a power tool without required safety goggles and suffers an eye injury, that is an accident. If someone on the highway takes both hands off the wheel to take something out of a brief case and crashes, that is an accident.
You seem to be equating no-fault accidents as being the only kind of accident, and that is false.
Really we should refer to them as mishaps, which is an unfortunate accident, to distinguish them from fortuitous accidents and happy accidents.
I will agree to totally disagree.
“The mass distribution in a revolver usually plays in the shootist’s favour to start with. The gun will almost always hang from your finger by its trigger-guard.”
The big rule here, is never put your finger into the trigger guard, until you are ready to shoot, to prevent just that. Watch a few gun videos on YouTube.
“less likely to happen with DA-only models.”
Oops. Should have said SA-only.
No one with half a brain does that with real guns. If you see someone doing it rest assured that either the gun is a prop incapable of actually firing bullets (usually the case, since this kind of thing is almost always dramatic) or the person doing it is a complete moron who probably has practiced it with real guns well out of sight of any responsible gun owners.
Why is she eating a jerky/chocolate chain? Or just a brown chain. Actually juat. What even IS that chain?
Curly Wurly / Marathon candy bar.
NEVER underestimate the power of a clutz to do unintentional damage…
I want to see Stalwart come in for his gun practice. Carrying a weapon that is heavier than Sydney.
Soooo, what, a Red Ryder BB Gun? This is Sydney we’re talking about here.. The pistol she was spinning in her hand just knocked her over. Stalwart could be armed with a Six-Sydney Minigun and still not break a sweat. XD
Whoa, six? That would make the galaxy tremble and Nth Technology civilisations flee to to the furthest reaches of the universe!
On this page of comments, and on others, people have mentioned that Syd keeps flailing her arms at times when she should be using her orbs.
I’ve been thinking about this. As much as she’s “good” with them, she still doesn’t see them as being part of herself. She needs to (perhaps under orders from Maxima) spend an entire day using her orbs for *everything* – every task, no matter how mundane – until she reaches the point where grabbing an orange and peeling it with her lighthook comes as naturally as using her hands. Once she’s done that, she’ll instinctively use them during combat, also.
As a follow-up, I can imagine Maxima giving Sydney the challenge of stealing a soda from the vending machine in the break room. Yes, stealing – because the cost of a lost soda would be worth it to get an agent with thief abilities.
not sure if mentioned, on the silhouette thing. Many comics and merchandise also rely on a pose for the characters. Thanos’ famous hand lifted slightly to the side fist pose, Dark Side’s head tilted upwards and arms crossed, and Magneto’s slightly to the side, one arm stretched out and fingers stretched out pose.
Not good for range target practice I’d imagine, but its one half of making them instantly recognizable.
What I’m worried about is her coming to rely on that tech, and having to relearn everything when she has to go back to using regular safety goggles, or whatever Archon comes up with for field use.
‘face-related activities’
I love Sydney’s lines XD.
Saying ‘now it can’t hurt anyone’ was an obvious prelude to attack.