Grrl Power #922 – After action flippancy
Cora and Dabbler obviously have some shared history and sense of humor. Dabbler tries to not fly her “I’m an alien sex demon intergalactic woman of mystery and mayhem” TOO high while she’s on Earth, but sometimes it slips out. And if you’re thinking “Really? Cause she does lots of sex stuff.” Remember that she doesn’t orgy the team comatose every night, so yeah, she’s keeping herself pretty reigned in. That’s only possible because she gets herself some Super-grade tantric good good every so often.
You know how in cop shows, when a cop is involved in a fatal shooting, they make them go see the police psychologist just to make sure they’re doing okay and/or not reveling in the kill? That conversation was difficult with Dabbler because she didn’t have any sense of weight for the event. Not in a psychopathic way, which is definitely a flag in itself, just in a “I’m used to a more wild wild west system of justice where I’m a freelance bounty hunter and it’s accepted that killing inveterate recidivist felons objectively makes the universe a better place.” and eventually they were like “Look, just don’t kill anyone unless there’s no alternative or you can’t work with us.” and Dabbler’s like “Ug. Whatever, it’s your planet.”
If you think that attitude should disqualify her from law enforcement, well, that’s certainly arguable, but keep in mind that someone high up probably had the thought that if she hangs out on Earth for a while, maybe she’d share the thing that’s better than integrated circuits, or she’d leave her Astro-Phone laying on her dresser while she’s out on a mission, so who cares if a few criminals experience some space justice?
Cora… has not been through any of that screening stuff. She was just asked to try and not kill anyone.
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Max is REALLY not in the mood right now.
He DID need killing though…
Why, what did he do deserve (near) instant death without trial?
Well he was literally about to kill a federal agent. Deadly force is justified when the perp is threatening to kill someone.
well true. Americans seem to forget its preferable to capture and question so you can also sop other crimes he knows about. and don’t forget syd had to watch. poor syd
Dr. Frost: So Sydney, how was your weekend?
Sydney: Well, we went to New York to deal with some aliens that had landed in Times Square. It was going okay, until some of the aliens tried to kidnap Max. We managed to stop that (well Max did most of the work), and then Dabbler asked me to hide some of the stuff the aliens tried to use on Max, so I went down to a building under construction in Brooklyn and that’s when things went south.
Dr. Frost: Oh, do you want to tell me more?
S: No. No, I do not.
DF: Ah, well in th-
S: BUT I’M GONNA
*fifteen minutes later*
S: Thanks, Doc! I feel loads better after talking about it. See you around! *leaves*
*Doc Frost reaches up from under her desk, grabs phone, dials*
DF: Doc Whittaker? F-Frost. Yeah. Soon as possible, please. Tonight works. I’ll bring the Vermouth. *hangs up, curls up fetal under the desk* SO MUCH DETAIL…
Guys, please do go on. =D
“Doc, subscribe me a pill that makes me able to eat lasagna again.”
(I want lasagna now. Guess I had enough distance from the gore, unlike Sydney.)
What Wellington said (re: imminent threat), and also, he not only was torturing Concretia to force her to commit crimes on his behalf, he was forcing her to thank him for inflicting pain on her (the sadistic pseudo-sexual rape vibe of that should not be under-emphasized). So: torturer, sadist, holding a federal agent and a civilian hostage, has a device on his person that can kill one of the hostages remotely, pointing a gun at the other hostage = valid target for deadly force.
In re: questioning someone about the criminal enterprise (as L0wten mentions): Cora left his two cohorts alive, and whoever is on the yacht they were using as a base of operations was still alive to be questioned as well. Mr. Thank-me-for-hurting-you Smol-pp-energy (“we have a PR department and you don’t, so we get to name you”) just kept putting his thumb on the “value of killing me” side of the scale while bumping weights off the “value of keeping me alive” side of the scale.
While “justified police shooting” isn’t exactly the gold standard, it is a legal standard, and lasgana-fication round aside, Cora’s actions would have met that standard. That said, “He was bad” isn’t probably going to cut it as a justification all by itself.
Would it be considered justified, though? The bullet she used was designed to ensure that the target is killed and using it could be considered excessive force.
If she used a normal bullet that ended up killing the target, she could claim and unlucky hit, while still claiming reasonable force to prevent the death of a federal agent. Are they federal agents, as I thought ArcSwat were military?
90% of all bullets produced are “designed to ensure that the target is killed” hers just guarantees it.
Archon is both federal and military, depending on the department. swat is military trained federal agents, like NCIS.
However Cora is “just visiting” and would be a “Civilian” that got involved in the attempted kidnapping and ensuing brawl. If max and the rest of the team didn’t already know that she could handle herself they would have removed her from the situation like any other diplomat at a crime scene.
When you fire a gun, you should intend to kill the target. Anything less than that is intending to fail in your duty. Trying to shoot their legs or shoot the gun out of their hands is from watching too much television.
If there is a reason to fire, then there is a reason to make sure they don’t get up. Once they are DOWN, ands everyone else is safe, then you can render aid if it’s appropriate.
Sorry, this idea that absolutely nothing a criminal does can warrant death in the field is BS. Even in superhero comics, the heroes have limitations. Not every character in the comic is capable of going into quicksilver time, and casually walking through a 2% speed version of the scene and capture everyone non-lethally.
Here’s a little dose of realism for you; Human beings are very, very easy to kill. Non-lethal takedowns are usually much riskier for the officer using them, and for bystanders because of this fact. In certain situations, such as in this comic where he was pointing a gun at Sydney and indicated his intention to kill her, trying to take him down non-lethally would only endanger his victim’s life needlessly for the sake of being nice to him.
If you’re threatening a person’s life though, you don’t deserve to be treated nicely.
At this point, I think very few people are arguing against death in this situation. What IS up for debate, however, is the method.
It’s one thing to shoot somebody. Cora chose to use his body to turn the room into a Jackson Polluck exhibition.
I know there’s no such thing as “overkill”, but that does scream “a wee bit excessive” to me.
If someone else , like Dabbler, was involved, I would completely agree. However, with Cora, we don’t know what her armament is. As to using such a high powered ordinance on the target? She could have been taking a page out of Ender Wiggin’s book, and trying to win all the following fights as well. The gruesome method of death could have been a very clear message to the two others in the room that they REALLY didn’t want to go against her.
Not “could have been”. It WAS a message, and it worked, and everyone splitting hairs because of the carnage is missing the effectiveness of that carnage in preventing any other violence.
Cora stopped the fight with one round.
If the boss had merely fallen to a plain bullet, or merely been winged, would that have happened?
And remember, the Tall Goon had access to a fucking assault rifle that he can pull out of his literal arsehole!
And we saw how quick he was able to pull it out already
You don’t get much more dead than dead. Overkill isn’t really a “thing” outside of roleplaying games or when discussing collateral damage. In a practical sense, he probably suffered less pain than if he were to have been shot with a normal bullet and bled out; the brain can’t possibly process what being instantly liquified feels like.
When you think about it, this really isn’t much different from a phaser set to kill in star trek. Phasers can basically just erase a person. The only difference is that the unwinder shot leaves behind a horrifically gross scene rather than having the person just melt away into sparkles. Though, perhaps you could consider the horrific results of the unwinder shot a benefit in a way. Star Trek phasers feel relatively tame, safe, and clean, in spite of having literally the exact same effect. The unwinder makes sure you know exactly what just happened.
The challenge is killing somebody promptly. Short of a CNS hit, fatal wounds don’t normally instantly incapacitate. Sure, your average person shot through the heart is going to be so shocked that they just lie there for the 30 seconds or so it takes them to die, but then you’ll run into the one guy who actually USES their remaining seconds to unload his magazine into every available target.
Instant stops require either really good luck with shot placement, or serious overkill.
Problem is Cora didnt go for an instant kill at all.
Her shot definately guaranteed the death of the target but its insanely good luck that stopped Sydney getting her face blown inside out by the gun already pointed at it.IMO Cora was extremely in the wrong. Specially if the matter of escalation comes into play. Imagine if word got out that Archon casually turns criminals into meat confetti on whims? Potential criminals-specially of the superpowered variety would flip out and sacrifice every innocent in immediate grabbing range just to save themselves. Or to explain it by using an extreme as an example as possible-If everycrime is punished by death you may as well go for broke and maybe save your life though killing innocents rather than surrender.
Cora has the excuse that he tried to kill Sydney. Poppin’ a cap in his ass with regular ammo(or something else that’s good at instant stopping, as opposed to the second-wind-ammo(“you’re dead, but you have a few seconds left to wreak havoc”)) would have been perfectly justified. So on the outside it just looks like a would-be cop killer stopped in defense of others. There’s no indication the same happens to bank robbers, so there’s no incentive to go broke, rather to surrender because it suggest that if you try to fight the cops the gloves come off.
As part of studying bicycle wrecks I also looked at other ways of killing people. Guns are terrible at killing people, if you hit someone there is a 9% chance of killing them, and shooting only gets 20% of the rounds on a human-size target so from the pull of the trigger in most firefights you have less than 1% chance of a fatality. Unless you use rounds that do much more damage than just “a bullet” like Cora’s.
Killing isn’t the point of shooting, stopping the threat is. The Unwinder is good at killing the target, but comparably bad at stopping the immediate threat, which makes it a bad choice for self defence.
Cora clearly was confident in her marksmanship to pull off a guaranteed one-shot stop, or she wouldn’t have stood around waiting for the Unwinder to go off. And if she wasn’t, a double tap with regular ammo would have been a better choice on all levels.
Gonna call BS here.
Killing the target is ABSOLUTELY the point of shooting. You should *NEVER* clear leather unless you have made the decision that the target has become a threat that lethal force is justified in being used to counter, that you are willing to pull the trigger knowing that your intent is to kill that individual, and that you are prepared to deal with the consequences of that decision.
If that is not the case, you should not clear leather in the first place. If you do not feel capable of pulling a firearm under those conditions, you should not be issued one. Full stop.
Guns have one purpose and one purpose only: to kill. Sometimes they incapacitate instead of kill, but the intent is, and always *should be* to kill.
You sound like you sat through a lot of the “killology” pseudo science lectures that cops do.
No, your intent is stop the threat. You’re willing to kill to stop, or more precisely, you’re willing to accept killing in order to stop. Killing is only a means to an end. Imagine two scenarios:
1. A man pulls out a knife and charges at you. Feeling threatened enough to use lethal force, you draw your gun and shoot. You miss, but realizing you’re serious, the man stops, drops his knife and raises his hands.
Do you keep shooting? After all, your intent was to kill him and he isn’t dead. Or do you realize that there’s no need to keep shooting, because your actual goal, to stop him, was fulfilled?
2. A man pulls out a knife and charges at you. Feeling threatened enough to use lethal force, you draw your gun and shoot. You hit, but fueled by adrenaline he keeps coming, reaches you and stabs you before going down. Both of you bleed to death.
Are you satisfied with that outcome? After all, your intent was to kill him, and he’s dead. Or might your intent actually have been to stop him from killing you, and failing that, there’s no benefit to him being dead?
People are told to only shoot if they’re willing to kill to teach them respect of guns’ deadlyness. You should not take this to mean that you have to be a murderous sociopath to be allowed to shoot in self-defense.
This is false. Recreational and competition shooting is obvious. Using guns as a threat is not only possible, but legally mandated police doctrine in Germany. Fleeing cars can be stopped by shooting the tires. Police snipers sometimes successfully shoot extremities.
The use of non-standard ammo is the most relevant to our case. A shotgun loaded with beanbag or tear gas is intended to stop, not kill. Contrast this with Cora’s use of the Unwinder, which killed, but didn’t help stop(compared to using regular ammo).
^ ditto everything Voyager said.
Every gun owner I’ve ever discussed it with (quite a few, officers included) that has or carries a gun knows the “only draw if you’re willing to kill” lecture. And the majoring of them have said that given a bad situation, they’d prefer to start with a warning shot and/or lower leg shot, provided it appears feasible without creating more risk for themselves / innocent parties. Drawn gun being waved over hostages’ heads? Put them down. But the lone nut with a knife approaching from clear across the parking lot gets a chance to drop it and lie down to wait until the 911-dispatched cops arrive.
Voyager’s deus-ex-machina sleight-of-hand was that she made you stop shooting so you die. No, that’s not a good outcome.
Which is why you use a caliber that will physically stop the guy, and you keep shooting if he keeps coming.
@Ms Pedantic: Your pedantry is entirely unjustified.
-He could be too close for you to get more than one shot off
-Your gun could jam
-You could have fire several shots, but most of them missed
-There are no handgun calibers that can guarantee a physical stop
-There have been instances wheres perpetrators have been hit dozens of times without going down immediately.
And aside from that, nitpicking the realism of a thought experiment, even when warranted, is bad form and unlikely to lead to enlightenment.
Oh dear lord, shooting at the tires on a fleeing car?
For GODS SAKE.
Really?
That sentence was in the middle of what Voyager proposed as rational discussion, and therefore I’m unlikely to ever take anything that Voyager says seriously again.
Voyager is completely ignorant of real life physics of weaponry and automobiles, and human skill levels in using hand held weapons.
Britchens, did you MISS that sentence?
Wow. You find one thing you consider a false, as an item in a list of otherwise true things, in a comment section where I’m quite prolific, and use that as a justification to dismiss me entirely as a person?
Also, it isn’t even false. German police do it from time to time, only in extreme situations because they recognize the danger. But that doesn’t detract from my point that killing isn’t the only purpose of guns.
If you want an even clearer example, consider an entry shotgun or anti-materiel rifle.
She chose her ammo, chose how to use it, chose how to move the kidnapper’s attention onto her. It captured Boss Tartare’s attention and made the kidnappers all focus on her, then took the fight completely out of the henchmen when they saw what happened to their boss.
She properly calibrated her actions to the people in the room, and they reacted within the parameters she expected them to follow. Therefore, there was no mistake in her selection.
“It could have gone wrong” is also true of every other thing that she may have chosen to do.
This tactic worked flawlessly.
It was just icky to American morals.
The goons didn’t want to fight to begin with – or they would have returned fire as soon as they saw her. There’s no indication Cora’s show made them even less willing. Her success was entirely incidental to her choice of actions.
Insta-killing him would have been safer. Shoulder-shooting and not killing him would have been as safe, and tactically advantageous because then he can be arrested and questioned, also makes the goons more likely to surrender instead of run away.
The same goon who pulled an assault rifle out of his arse ‘didn’t want to fight to begin with’?
No, the goon who didn’t do that, even though he had demonstrated the ability beforehand. Instead he can be seen standing passively, sharing a side-look with his colleague, after his boss was shot.
They were probably deciding whether to take the initiative and shoot the hostages (Sydney and Cree) and the new player, up until their boss exploded
Isn’t wild speculating fun?
If they were going to act, they would have done it immediately, before the sniper can reaim. The time to take initiative had already passed.
They were previously extremely opposed to the idea of shooting Sydney, and shooting Concretia in her rock form only serves to mildly annoy her, and Cora had a gun already pointed at them.
They were willing to shoot whoever came through the doorway
Yes, but that’s not the scene we’re talking about, and circumstances had changed since. Note how there was no hesitation to draw – if the goons had been considering fighting Cora, they would have drawn.
They were waiting on their boss for direction, which is what Cora was counting on: the delay and banter prevented Lord Lasagne from telling them to attack, and after he splattered… well, they weren’t interested in hanging around
Them shooting in all directions is what would have happened if Cora had put Lord Lasagne down instantly, specially seeing how she didn’t reveal herself (and her position) until after he was hit
Direction by the same boss they had just been physically trying to stop from acting? After they had previously demonstrated they had no problem with acting quickly and on their own accord? They were either going to act quickly or not at all.
Similarly, when Bitch Lasagna doesn’t act immediately, Cora’s in control of the situation – if he tries to do anything, she can just shoot him again.
And the goons running away is actually not the optimal outcome, it’s better to have them surrender.
“If it’s a daft idea and it works, it’s still a daft idea and you got lucky”
On this occasion, all three goons allowed themselves to be baited into Cora’s grandstanding for long enough for the unwinder to activate. Another time, she’s liable to get goons who shoot back, either at her or at the hostage. How do you tell which set of goons you’ve got today?
“Problem is Cora didn’t go for an instant kill at all.”
Basically the only excuse she’s got would be, “I loaded the unwinder round because it’s the only thing I was carrying that would take down the sort of people I’d seen I might be facing. Then I didn’t have time to reload, even assuming I’d had reason to believe Mr. Lasagna didn’t have super powers.”
I expect Cora has pretty much 100% shot placement. Remember, her arms aren’t flesh and blood, they’re solid light constructs. Controlled by her CNS, sure, but through electronics. And not dumb electronics that just mimic a real nervous system, either, or else she couldn’t control such a wide range of exotic bodies. The electronics are monitoring higher level mental activity, so they can respond to intent.
It’s quite likely there’s a routine buried in her software that tweaks her aim to always hit exactly where she intends. That’s what I would do in her position.
Of course, it’s quite possible the unwinder round doesn’t detonate on a timer, but is instead remotely controlled, so she could claim that the delay was just to give him time to surrender, and she detonated it the instant he continued to be aggressive.
Except Cora clearly demonstrated that she never intended to let him live, no matter his response. She paused specifically to taunt him with “oops, you’re gonna die now”, and Sydney will have to so state in her debriefing.
Sydney might choose not to elaborate that point unless specifically asked for it – telling the truth, but not volunteering the whole truth – which would give Cora a bit of wiggle room for constructive phrasing. After all, ‘giving Mr. Lasagne time to surrender’ does not necessarily mean that Cora explicitly invited him to surrender (as opposed to leaving it implicit and reliant on his own initiative), that she warned him of the consequences should he not do so and the timescale involved, nor that she intended to accept his surrender if offered.
She doesn’t NEED an excuse, Brett.
The only relevant question was, was that unwinder round, in her professional opinion art the time she fired it, the load that was most likely to minimize harm to the hostage.
That’s all.
People who back-propagate a false necessity to use a different load from KNOWING WHAT ALL THE PARTICIPANTS DID WHEN SHE USED THAT LOAD are engaging in complete fantasy.
She chose that load, fired, grabbed everyone’s attention and kept it on her until the load demonstrated that any further violence by the henchmen would result in their grisly deaths.
We have NO objective idea how kidnapper, slaver and would-be-murderer Boss Lasagna and his agents/henchmen would have responded to any other tactical situation.
Cora removed Boss l from the picture, and decimated the motivation of the henches. She may have had other loadouts that also would have worked, but if that was the one IN CORA’S OPINION most likely to result in a safe Sydney, then her choice was valid and cannot be proven wrong.
The issue is that Cora has made it clear to… pretty much everyone (audience, friends, enemies, etc.) that she chose based on what she would find most satisfying, rather than necessarily what would maximize Sydney’s safety. She hasn’t even tried to justify that it was the best strategy. She probably doesn’t see any need to. I don’t see why you’re so hung up on it either.
Not for nothing, mate, but you sure seem to be taking this personally.
Something you’d like to share with the rest of the class?
Deserve? No.
Warrant? Yes.
“Deserve” is a value judgement on his person, which is not required to make a combat decision.
The situation warranted killing him, without regard to whether or not he was a waste of skin.
That’s it.
I wonder how long it would take to eat a human sized lasagna
About the same as anything else human sized I’d imagine. At that scale it all evens out. Unless it’s gotten candy or something.
Yeah you don’t eat it you feed it to the overweight Monday hating felines.
Tears well up in Garfield’s eyes as he begins the feast.
“I’m sorry Jon.”
Man this thread got dark fast lol.
Garfield Gameboy’d
Could they use a modified round to accurately distribute the lasagna in a resturaunt?
The average lasagna is ~350 cubic inches, the average human is ~3800 cubic inches so only about 10x as long as it takes you to eat a normal lasagna (so 30-50 meals or so).
I’m curious if Max noticed how even *Sydney* was bothered by the level of gore :)
She’s got that 1000 yard stare going on right now, i’d say she’s a bit bothered.
Considering the thousand-yard stare Sydney has right now, I’d be more surprised if Max didn’t notice it.
Why would Sydney not be bothered by gore? The last time there was gore (falling into Sciona’s portal) she was quite bothered. Unlike veterans like Maxima, she’s still a recruit with a quite civilian mindset.
Since then Sydney has blasted her way through multiple Calamarians and on Fracture Station was on the scene where Cora used heavy weapons on a gang that tried to mug the both of them, leaving gore everywhere and wasn’t any more worse for wear over it.
Of course, this time, she was at ground zero and totally helpless, but Max doesn’t know that, yet.
Maxima doesn’t know how Sydney reacted to the fracture station incident either – at most she got a dry, fact-based report days afterwards.
And as the birds-eye-view goes, despite not getting any gore on herself, Sydney was still noticably bothered, if not quite traumatized.
“wasn’t any worse for wear over it” well uh, the first part with the Calamarians was traumatic for her, so at the very least it’s heavily associated with a source of recurring nightmares. And she was really, really put off by the mugger shower, too. This time she puked a lot – all I’m saying is she’s definitely not desensitised to gore.
You clearly don’t remember that scene correctly: she’s clearly disturbed
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-696-shes-specular-modular-interactive-odular/
The kaiju on Alari Prime didn’t seem to have any internal organs, or Sydney’s PPO beams just cauterized the wounds like a lightsaber.
On Fracture, there was less gore and more “melted bones”.
yes she was bugged by the gore used there but this is Sydney comic and gamer girl… the “people” on fracture were aliens to her not humans, it would have been less traumatic to her because she could choc it up to killing covenant grunts for the UNSC…
I’m sure Max has see that same look on lots if recruits faces after their first major action. Considering that Sydney too on 3 planet killers without that reaction, she has to figure this was really bad. Sydney had no orbs, no powers, no backup. I doubt she’ll be calling Sydney ‘recruit’ after this.
The thing is ,Cora didn’t actually overreact.
OK, spreading a guy around the scene might be seen as a little overreaction, but he had a weapon pointed at a law officer and a clear intention to kill that officer. In just about every jurisdiction on Earth that would be justification for a kill shot.
Well, no. It’s not sufficient as a justification. In a hostage situation like this one, lethal force for a “final rescue shot” (yes, that’s an euphemism) has to be authorized before. Just a bad guy pointing a gun at someone is not enough to justify deadly force. Only if it’s the last possible solution to deal with the situation.
At least that’s the case where I live. We all know that it’s different in the USA.
Well, go ahead. Point a gun at a cop in Russia/Germany/Sweden/Switzerland/Japan/etc… Please.
See what happens if another cop is nearby. Your next of kin might get the hint.
I dunno where you live, but around here pointing a gun at someone does definitely justify police use of deadly force. This is the USA. We have massive unrest right now about whether or not pointing a cell phone or a comb at someone justifies police use of deadly force, a gun is right out.
Yeah, the problem is the KIND of ammunition she used, not the killing. Unwinder Round are just gratuitous with the gore. A headshot with a normal bullet would have been more then enough and a lot less traumatizing for Sydney.
That is true. I have no problem with her firing, even with little grandstanding. WHAT she fired was extreme.
Only cosmeticaly. And increased the time for clean up afterwards. Its not like there was an artillary round used causing collateral damage. Dead is dead. Were you worried in case they were an organ donor? Incresed gore would be an issue if they had potential to survive which isnt the case with this round.
This more fits the point that some people are squeamish hence more lethal injection deaths over firing squad or hanging. Then again people voluntarily watch gore based films.
Perhapse the official stance is they dont want sued for someone needing nonphysical treatment.
I don’t really have a problem with it. No more painful than a small-caliber round like a .22LR that probably wouldn’t even be lethal, and that only for a couple of seconds. No apparent collateral damage (other than psychological) to structures or people standing close by. If you’ve decided to kill someone, this doesn’t look like a particularly awful way to do it. Just messy.
I dunno why people tend to confuse ‘messy’ with ‘awful.’ Just, no. Awful is that kid who died of hunger and thirst, in the cold, after old rotten stairs collapsed under her leaving her with two broken legs in the basement of a ruined house in Japan a few months ago. This wasn’t awful at all.
The only problem in my mind is that three-second delay Syd mentioned. Who knows what the guy is going to do in three seconds?
OTOH, if the end of the ‘waiting period’ was entirely at Cora’s choice, then you’re looking at a munition that is VERY WELL designed to motivate immediate surrender on the part of the target – a ‘drop it now or you splatter’ ultimatum. Of course, if Cora triggered the end of the ‘waiting period’ after three seconds, I could argue that under the circumstances she gave the guy too much time and waited longer than he deserved.
My observation is that Cora’s round deployed at the moment when Boss Tartare was no longer threatening anyone but her — not even her, really — and the everyone’s attention was on Cora and not the hostage, so that they were highly unlikely to take any action against Sydney, even if they were not incapacitated by shock.
He was effectively dead the moment she shot, taking his ability to create tactical problems off the table. Her speech and garnering of his attention (and that of his henches) controlled the remainder of the potential tactical downside.
So she executed him when he wasn’t a threat? That would be cold-blooded murder.
And no, he wasn’t “effectively” dead. Tactically, he was very much alive, capable of, for example, ordering his goons to attack. He could have opened with “shoot the bitch!” as soon as he saw her, before she gets a word out.
No, she executed him when she fired, and yes, he was effectively dead, he just didn’t know it.
Yes, she had to keep his attention for three seconds until it unwound. She did that expertly, and in predictable accordance with his nasty personality.
In case you haven’t gone back and reviewed what Cora did, Cora shot him then immediately strode in and announced a mystery, ending in “…but…”
Everyone’s attention was focused on her. Boss could have ordered them to shoot Cora, but… then he wouldn’t know what the end of her sentence was. (Oops)
The admittedly excessive gore from the unwinding completely eviscerated the henches’ will to fight, thus ending any potential violence.
It was a PERFECT tactical choice.
Cora miscalculated the psychological effect on Sydney, but the effect on the hences was a feature and a bit of tactical genius.
Having to keep him from acting for three more seconds is an entirely avoidable risk if you’re willing to kill anyway, and if they had reacted, they likely would have done so immediately, before she could get a word out.
They didn’t because they didn’t have the will to fight anyway. If they did, they would have reacted immediately, and then been committed to fighting.
A ‘surrender or splatter’ ultimatum is all very well – if that ultimatum is actually delivered. Cora chose to show off instead. The target had no reason to know that the ‘wounding’ shot would have a lethal secondary effect, thus robbing it of its potential motivational power.
Yeah. That would be a case of a round very well designed for motivating immediate surrender and a shooter absolutely not interested in that particular usage of the round.
Police using ‘unwinders’ would be trained to deliver the ultimatum and not splatter the guy who surrenders. Cora is not what we normally think of as police.
I’d wager the people who made shells for my dad’s shotgun designed them very well to do things other than competing to see who could keep trash cans airborne for the longest time, but they didn’t stop to ask him what he’d be using them for.
Your assumption that Cora cared about the ultimatum effect on the target is unwarranted and a little weird. She made no effort to use it that way.
As an ultimatum on the henches, it was phenomenal.
You and I appear to be using different meanings of the word ‘ultimatum’. As far as I’m concerned, that word describes a final, specific and conditional, demand – do [X] or I will do [Y]. If no demand is made, it’s not an ultimatum.
In this particular case, the killing of Mr. Lasagne is not a demand for the henches to surrender. It is a declaration that Cora will kill them anyway, and enjoy it. Some would take that as a motivation to run away. Some would take it as a motivation to get violent, in the hope of taking down the madwoman before she can kill them. Are you feeling lucky?
Define “a normal bullet”. I think that if Cora had used hollow points from a .357 magnum on up to a .500 S&W magnum at that kind of range, it would be messy.
One thing is for an action to be justified, another thing is for it to be necessary, I am sure Cora had many other way to put the guy out of combat safely without redecorating the room – and Sidney – with his entrails.
Also, kill shot is one thing, hit-wait-five-seconds-and-kill-spreading all-over-the-room shot is another
Exactly. Cora would have been justified to dispatch him quickly and efficiently to save Sydney. Choosing a round with a gratitious delay was neither. If she situation demanded shooting to kill, she was playing around with Sydney’s life by choosing a round with a delayed effect.
I strongly suspect Cora put the round into Lasagna Man’s shoulder where she did to sever the nerve controling that arm.
So do I, but if she was confident enough in that shot to bet Sydney’s life on it, doing so with a slug would have been a perfectly safe non-lethal(or at least less-lethal) option and she wasn’t justified to shoot to kill at all.
In neither situation there’s any justification for the Unwinder – it doesn’t have any benefit over a conventional round.
How long does it take for Cora to swap out weapons or the ammo in the weapon?
She may have decided to go ‘worst case’ while en route, and when arriving she may not have had time to switch to a less ‘pollocky’ option.
One thing I assume about that bullet is that it DOES NOT LEAVE the target. No collateral damage behind him.
That’s the one big reason to have this round at all, It’s 100% lethal in just seconds, and leaves hostages unhurt. And by the way it operates, it can probably take down quite large opponents, too.
That doesnt stop the point that firing the round does literally nothing to help Sydney.Its non lethal so ignoring being shot might cause an accidental discharge of a more instantly lethal bullet into Syds face theres alsoa 5 second period where the guy can shoot the hostage or more likely try to kill Cora whos armed with not instantly lethal rounds.Doubtless shes likely kitted with defences against kinetic weapons and so on but ultimately Cora wanting some murder jollies only made the situation way more dangerous for Sydney.And it was dumb luck that the gun was dropped instead of being accidently fired from the shock of getting hit with a bullet.
Honestly it wouldve been smarter to use the threat of the unwinder rounds to force a surrender or at the very least if Cora has a personal shield etc she can make sure the guns pointed at her before blowing him away.
The Unwinder would be a horrible choice for a “worst case” loadout. The delay means a determined opponent isn’t stopped immediately – if the initial impact hadn’t made him drop his gun, he would have had time to shoot Sydney – then it would have been poor consolation for her family that he got gored afterwards.
It’s not like the Unwinder is even reliably deadly – kinetically it’s quite low-powered, which means bad armor penetration. Had the opponent been another Brüt, the shot would just bounced off, leaving him lightly bruised.
There’s some situations where it’s useful (lots of physical trauma, low collateral damage), but one would never load it when they don’t what to expect. If your first shot doesn’t work you can always follow up with the Unwinder, unless time is critical, in which case the Unwinder doesn’t work anyway.
Your unwarranted assumption is that Boss Tartare would have been unable to do anything that endangered Sydney if shot in the same place with a regular bullet. It’s nonsense.
The delay, conversation and lasagnafication ended all strategic actions by Boss Tartare and his henches. Just shooting him would not have prevented the henches from acting.
The presence attack with obscenely violent demonstration was a highly efficient way to minimize overall casualties.
A regular bullet is a kinetic impact, and we saw a kinetic impact stopping him. The assertions that there’s a relevant difference to the impact is unwarranted. I don’t know whether Cora could reliably have stopped him – but she certainly seemed to think so, since she bet Sydney’s life on it. That judgment informs her choices, hence we should consider it when analyzing them.
They didn’t act after she shot him, nor seemed particularly willing to. They did act after she exploded him, if only to flee, but a criminal on the run is still more dangerous than one standing around ready to surrender.
Absolutely agree. The charcaters have been shown to be extremely competent. I am sure Cora could have safely disabled had she wished.
Her actions were foolish from the point of view of lost intelligence and the trauma she has inflicted on Sydney, who was very much in control until that point :(
Sydney was indeed holding verbal control of the situation, but only to play for time until the cavalry arrived – and even that looked as though it was reaching its limits.
Cora knew what kind of situation she was walking into. She had travel time to prepare for it. She used that prep time to load a delayed fuse explosive, which – unless it was the only round she had on her, which doesn’t seem likely given her vast arsenal – seems like a really poor choice. As Voyager and others pointed out above, the delay meant more risk to Sidney. Lasagna Man had a gun pointed at Sidney. She easily could have been shot by reflex action when he took the round from Cora.
Also Cora was outside the room and the bad guys were not aware of her before she stepped in. Did she just arrive the moment Mr. Marinara Sauce drew on Sidney and his own people grabbed his arm? It’s not clear, but if Cora arrived before the crisis moment and she had any time to see without being seen, she wasted that tactical advantage.
What other alternatives were available to Cora? We don’t know the whole extent of her armament that she carries around. Did she have a stun grenade equivalent that she could have tossed into the room, hopefully incapacitating everyone? Dunno. How about something instantly lethal? Dunno. The point is, Cora went with a really risky option, due to the delayed effect which was especially risky to Sidney, for no obvious benefit other than her getting to taunt the target.
The rescue turned out fine but the process was bad. The way Cora chose to handle it does not seem smart or admirable.
Maybe Cora will get to retcon it away by saying that unwinder round fried the guy’s nervous system on the way in, no power on earth would’ve allowed him to squeeze the trigger once it hit him. Although in that case any investigator would have to ask, if you’ve got a magic/alientech thingy that’s guaranteed to burn out the nerves, making it safe to use with a delay, why do you even need the delayed kaboom? Just a whole lot of problems come out of that delay.
The claim that the delay meant more risk to Sydney is false. The tactical situation did NOT go against Sydney in any way, and was not likely to, compared with a normal bullet.
Yes, the boss could have reacted in some other way to the woman shooting him and striding in… but he didn’t. He reacted exactly as you would expect his personality to act… turning his anger toward her, and forgetting about the hostage.
She controlled his attention and that of his henches for the three second duration, establishing herself as the alpha in the situation, and underlining that status with a hundred-plus pounds of lasagna.
Your attempting to rethink her approach, based upon your own ignorance of her loadout, is just silly. She made a choice from experience, it worked flawlessly, and you just hate the optics.
You try to pretend that Sydney was in more danger, that Boss Tartare had useful information that was lost, and so on, but really you are just rationalizing in order to justify your own human squeamishness.
She used a nasty, bloody, “shock-and-awe” munition and an arrogant striding soliloquy that worked perfectly, exactly as it would have been expected to. The expected act that Boss T did NOT do was to raise his weapon and shoot her. THAT was the danger… and his weapon would not have penetrated her shields, but he would not have known that until he tried. He didn’t get the chance.
Oh, and Dave is undoubtedly aware that Cora’s lightheartedness about a gory human death probably makes the reader like Cora less.
Nonetheless, she’s not an American. She’s a space mercenary, and if killing nasty people ever bothered her, it would lead to her death.
You’re making a whole lot of assumptions there. And you’re confusing outcome (good) with process (bad). Increased risk means a higher probability of a bad outcome.
Boss Bloodbag had his gun pointed right at Sid’s face when Cora shot him. Reflex could have resulted in Sidney’s getting shot in the face.
Cora’s delay fuse increased the risk of Sidney’s getting shot deliberately by the kidnappers. She gave them a longer opportunity to do that by using a delayed fuse.
The gore is not the issue. Try to look at the process objectively and ask how it could have been handled better. That’s what after-action review is for.
Max seems less concerned about the death and more about what ordinance Cora used in a civilian area.
Its the implication that Cora went in planning to messily kill people. Maxima is pretty lawful and moral in general so having two people laughing about premeditated murder in front of hers not going to go down well even if it can be legally justified(Doubtless Archon will go out of its way to keep this away from the press or all hell will break loose).
OMG! the amount of Monday morning quarterbacking is EPIC !
All the “keyboard kommandoes” coming forth to decry the choices made in the heat of the moment.
piling up the “What if & What about” theorem and pabulum.
Weapon pointed at “Innocent” = shoot to stop ! there is no wound, or incapacitate there is “STOP! right NOW!”
Cora did what needed doing. Note, the only one in that room at that time required to do anything other than lethal force was the criminal. That the “Unwinder” was up next does not change that LETHAL force was justified and necessary at that time. The only nations or states that have rules otherwise are the Oligarchies where “Some animals are more equal than others.” Be that due to wealth, “Party affiliation”, skin color, sex, or religion.
Well, even assuming that the “Unwinder” really did just happen to be the next round in the chamber, and that Cora didn’t have a good way to rapidly select between different rounds, that does still raise the question of why on earth she was carrying an “Unwinder” round as her go-to selection in the first place.
Why would your emergency default ordinance selection ever be something like the “Unwinder” round, with it’s 3-second-delay ? in most unexpected situations, 3 seconds is a lot more than you really want to wait.
now, an explosive-bullet type, which INSTANTLY detonated on impact, or milliseconds after impact, I could understand…. it’s the 3-second-delay which really gets to me. THAT’S the round you chose to have available in case you needed to make an emergency shot on zero notice?
Then again, one might wonder if Cora has any other kind of rounds, given what happened at Fracture station.
Her gun is explicitly variably lethal.
It doesn’t matter. That round was tactically flawless.
It just made a mess that you are squeamish about.
“Why couldn’t it be a BLOODLESS kill? Why why why why why whyyyyy!”
Because a bloodless kill would not have intimidated the henches into running without thinking.
It was tactically horrible – the delay introduced significant risk at no benefit.
And as said above, the henches weren’t going to fight anyway. Random brutality might even have pushed them to fight back when they were previously willing to surrender.
If you think this is bad, look at what happens when real law enforcement or military shootings happen. Even in a war zone, if a shooting wasn’t pre-appproved, or reasonably expected in the operation or event, there will be some level of investigation. You have to be able to justify everything, and that’s usually to a group that’s predisposed in your favor. We don’t just take your word that “he looked like a bad guy.”
Now, you’re right: there is shooting someone as appropriate to stop an action, and that may be fatal. That is not what Cora did. She disarmed the guy and then postured, when there was at least one other weapon held by an enemy (#905). It’s hard to say how informed Cora was about the situation, but she WAS informed, which predicates using only a sufficient level of force and making sure that the threat does not persist. The Unwinder is excessive for any situation that it might be used in: if the impact does not stop your target, they are given enough time to follow through before dying – excessive (and ineffective) force; if the enemy is stopped by the impact but not killed outright, they will still die regardless of the base injury – excessive force; if they are killed by the shot, their remains will be destroyed – excessive force. An analogy: a car or building full of confirmed terrorists only, in the desert 30 miles from anything, does not get nuked.
The unwinder ended Boss Tartare’s threat, temporarily then permanently. The fact that it appeared nonlethal at first managed to defuse Boss from doing anything urgent, and make the henches pause to wait for an order from him.
The grandstanding (and the gore) made sure that the henches were no threat, due to the psych fallout of the unwinder round.
This act was tactically flawless.
The boss had no reason to assume it was nonlethal – for all he knew the shooter had been aiming for his head and missed in a lucky way.
The henches weren’t going to fight, or they would at least have readied themselves. Considering that they were trying to physically stop him from acting before he got shot makes it quite unlikely they were all about waiting for his orders.
Of course the car doesn’t get nuked. Do you realize how bad nuclear weapons are for environment? You may think that there is no live in desert, but that’s not true – it’s even possible there are some endangered species there. Or will be, in those thousands of years the area will be radioactive after the nuke. Really, you need to think ecologically.
… fire wolfram rods from orbit.
We see this sort of “Monday morning quarterbacking” every time there is a police involved shooting in the U.S. People who have no idea what actually was going on will spend months criticizing the split second decision of the officer who had to take the shot. Cora is not an Earth cop, she is an alien mercenary who found one of her friends in imminent danger and she took action to end that danger. This is likely how she would have responded if the friend at risk was one of her crew. She just forgot that Sydney wasn’t as comfortable with the overkill as her crew members would have been.
Then youre proving that Cora is utterly incompetant instead. She stopped someone from getting shot with a round designed to not be immediately lethal.In short Id have had a better chance of saving Sydney with a fricking longbow as that would be more instantly lethal.I would not want to be on her crew if this is how she decides to save friends in danger.
Nonsense. That round instantly incapacitated Boss Tartare’s personal weapon. The grandstanding focused everyone’s attention on Cora and away from the hostage. The unwinder then served a demonstration to the two henches that they did not want to proceed with any violent acts.
Both the strategy and execution were flawless, and only your own squeamishness about death and gore and killing of sentients keeps you from acknowledging that obvious fact.
You guys are hilarious.
“It could have gone badly. Space mercenary Cora could have obeyed my morals and acted like a good little American cop. Wah!”
Going to respond here, since it’s a close copy of every other post you’ve made.
You have a terrible moral philosophy. Your conclusion is no different than permitting “If I feel an act is sufficiently wrong, I can kill whomever I want however I want.” That can justify every gang murder or honor killing, and then anybody who feels justified in retribution. Nobody is arguing what’s-his-face wasn’t evil, but that standards of behavior are necessary in law enforcement.
As far as tactics, you’re an idiot. The 5-10 seconds that it took for Cora’s round to detonate were enough for anybody, including the injured Evil-McIdiot, to grab a weapon and fire several rounds with an unacceptable likelihood of hitting one of the heroes, before she could make another accurate shot. And yes, people can fight through some bullet wounds, more likely in this case as it wasn’t a through-shot. A guy that can hold a conversation has enough focus to respond to an attack. Last, Cora only had one gun, for one target. No way she’s stopping 2-3, or they would have already been wounded; we know she’s not target-shy.
And in response to another one of your comments: this is the shot that has the best chance of working in a hostage situation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniper#Shot_placement), as anything else has a high chance of reflexive firing. Decent chance Cora would know about this due to being partially human, and the prevalence of humanoids in her orbit, but definitely a risk to Sydney.
BTW, I’m an Army vet. I’m not taking this position because I’m squeamish, but because I have a better understanding than average about situations like this.
I consider the gore to be a de-escalation tactic for the sake of the goons behind the target.
exactly.
The goons didn’t really need deescalation – they were already just standing around before he got gored.
And they continued with the determination of not starting after he was gored.
let’s start calling the guy Al(l) Gore
Only because they didn’t know what the fuck was going on and were awaiting instructions from their boss
And by choosing to stand around talking, Cora gave the boss the opportunity to give instructions. (He didn’t use that opportunity, but he still had it.) Anything lethal without the delay would have denied him that opportunity. Actually inviting them to surrender before detonating the unwinder would have made it clear that that option was on the table, and that lasagnification was a consequence of continued resistance rather than a callous whim.
On one hand the asshole had pulled a weapon and expressed his intent to murder Sidney, a government agent.
On the other, I’m fairly certain that Cora’s bullet would be considered a war crime if used on earth.
… It was used on Earth
I mean… it’s kind of hard to argue with that particular scenario though. They had guys forcefully capturing, enslaving, and interrogating supers. If they had taken what she was saying seriously, she wouldn’t only have been a security threat to herself but the entire team. In theory, she could have potentially gotten a lot of people killed especially if they had managed to pull some enslavement bit on her too.
Love the thousand yard stare on Sydney. This has not been her day.
It started out pretty good. Transport a bunch of people to New York. Interview a bunch of alien tourists; let them know the rules while in the States. Yeah, then things got pear shaped. Doctor Frost has her work cut out for her.
“If you think that attitude should disqualify her from law enforcement, …”
Well, yes, of course it should, but you’ve got some pretty low standards for US law enforcement.
Well at least the USA does have some standards… Somewhere.
Too many places don’t have any. Anywhere.
Places like… what exactly?
It’s not too many developed countries that have more deaths by cop than the USA has.
The US has high standards for law enforcement, it’s just that too many people refuse to enforce them. Granted, we’re not “chase the perp around like a Benny Hill segment until he tires out” gentle, but we do fairly well given the population and circumstances. The only reason your perception of US police is so bad is because we get the lion’s share of coverage of it. Countries where the ‘police’ are literally in league with criminal organizations, terrorists and absolutely corrupt and/or tyrannical governments don’t make a habit of letting their various media institutions report on it. Our police aren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but statements by people suggesting they are the worst or even close to the worse generally come from the same individuals who claim America is literally the worst place on the earth for various underprivileged groups, but then absolutely refuse to go live or even practice their activism in any other country.
Another reason (that doesn’t get enough recognition) is that on average, criminals in the US are a lot more uncooperative, dangerous, violent, and numerous than in most other “developed countries”.
That is pure BS. I’ve lived in dozens of countries and criminals here are damned pacifists compared to what I’ve witnessed in the US. Until you’ve had to dodge death squads as a kid to play soccer in the streets or found the bodies displayed to create fear, then you basically have zero real world basis for such a statement.
In Brazil they have to set up Trap stores in areas that are basically kill boxes for local criminals because they are that violent, that stupid and that hard to take down.
Take a long look at Honduras.
THen take a long look at the Cartels and MS-13 and what they do.
Then re-evaluate your precepts. I’ve seen it first hand. I’ve seen Military coups first hand. I’ve seen the end results. Just because you see more US based criminal stuff in the news doesn’t make it top dog by any means.
He did say “developed countries”. By most definitions, that’s North America and Western/Central Europe, with a few East Asian countries plus Australia and New Zealand thrown in.
If you rank those countries by how violent and dangerous criminals are, I suspect the US would be at or near the top of the list, from the sheer amount of firearms if nothing else.
It would be fair to say we have higher expectations of first world nations like the US
that aren’t dictatorships like China
India comes to mind.
thats bullshit
all of europe has less dead by police per year, than US has per month
similar for canada, japan, heck even australia isn’t a shithole country like yours.
It’s not that the absolute quality of policing in the US is terrible, but the quality relative to the rest of the social machinery. People don’t expect the police to be any good in countries with “corrupt and/or tyrannical governments”.
Zimbabwe springs to mind most easily, although any state in Africa not receiving aid from Europe or North America is probably not a place where the police can be trusted. South East Asia generally, and Russia are not heavily influenecd by Western European Human Rights… Having said that, any nation that hands out a life sentence to tourists carrying in a set of prescribed drugs that happen to be not permitted in the host country is probably not a place where the police can be seen as kind, gentle and honest.
And yes, these places are indeed “underdeveloped” by US standards.
Death (suicide) by cop became common in Australia in the ’70s when all States followed NSW example and armed their cops. It seems that most Police Academies forgot to tell recruits that they were carrying non-lethal weaponry as well as their Glocks — and also forgot to train recruits in the use of night-sticks and tasers.
And the problem with Glocks is that the manufacturer tells everyone they are “very very very safe because of our new safety system”… and everyone believes them… even after they have shot themselves in the foot.
They remind me of Scania’s engine brake: activated by taking the first pressure on the brake pedal. Really. All the way down the hill. Truly.
Rhodesia use to have a good police force, until Mugabe (put in place by… the US)
No, Rhodesia had an effective police force, not a good police force. It was only ‘good’ from the perspective of the whites it was protecting. And Mugabe drew his initial support from China, not the US.
He got his support from China later, the US forced the UK PM to appoint him
Maybe you should ask someone who was there (or at least who had relatives there during the time)
Dad was a lieutenant in the Rhodesian police (and refused to carry his gun)
Rhodesia was also an apartheid state which was okay with Blacks being shot.
So it’s not exactly the best example.
Check your racism: Rhodesia was never part of apartheid, which was a uniquely South African system
Also, Rhodesia was founded by Cecil Rhodes after he was driven up out of South Africa, and was given worthless scrubland by the king of the Matabele
It was renamed ‘Zimbabwe’ after the ‘Zimbabwe Ruins’, ruins that no one knows who made (ie was in ruin long before anyone came across them)
I notice you happily disregard 3/4 of the worlds population to make a bogus point.
“Places like… what exactly?
It’s not too many developed countries that have more deaths by cop than the USA has.”
I Keep seeing statements that are general treated as facts but i am not seeing the use of statistics like %of deaths by cops total against the total number of deaths for the country in a pre COVID year for the top ten developed countries. Give me the stats to defend your statements or you can so being a biased dumass. Also can we get a posting of the hyperlink for the USA rules of engagement in a hostage situation for anyone curious.
The U.S. gets a lot of its reputation for cops shooting suspects from how free our press is. It doesn’t matter that the vast majority of our police officers are well trained professionals who hope that they never need to pull the trigger, the news media will always concentrate on the one in a thousand bad cop.
I read about a recent survey where Americans were asked how often are unarmed suspects shot by police. Black Americans averaged well over a thousand per year. White Americans averaged several hundred. The actual figure in 2019 was 13. So the perception was far worse than the actual number.
+1 internet for you.
In 2019 there were 55 unarmed suspects killed by police in the U.S. according to this chart citing FBI figures.
Perhaps more to the point, U.S. police fairly consistently kill about 1,000 suspects on average each year. Source. If that’s what the people in your survey were asked, their perceptions on average were fairly accurate.
Pretty sure the 13 was the number of unarmed Black Americans.
Don’t know what the real numbers are, but we’re kind of demonstrating another little problem with our modern information age. If you look long enough you’ll find something on the Internet that agrees with the position you hold. People on both sides of the political aisle are good at twisting the numbers to prove that their preferred belief is the one supported by the facts. As George Canning said, “I can prove anything by statistics except the truth.”
“There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain
I’m only bothering to mention this because someone was asking about the actual numbers. So I looked them up from the FBI.gov and BJS websites and compared those sites to the articles that were linked.
According to the FBI.gov website and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, ¥&€ is right. The number of UNARMED suspects killed, regardless of race, seems to be only about roughly 4% of the total amount of suspects killed. +/-3. Of the 1004 suspects killed in 2019, 54% of them were armed and would not put the gun down, or were aiming or firing their gun at police or at others, making them very easily shown as justified shootings (based on the law and administrative rules of police department oversight). and 40% were armed with a weapon other than a gun, such as a knife. I know that means 2% unaccounted for, but were not unarmed. Maybe vehicles? It didnt say.
The full statistics are, for armed AND unarmed suspects combined:
White – 370
Black – 235
Hispanic – 158
Other – 39
‘Unknown’ – 202
For a total of 1004 deaths by police, including suspects who were armed and threatening with guns (54% of the time) or other deadly weapons (such as knives).
The actual numbers of unarmed suspects killed by police in 2019 seem to be:
White – 18
Black – 13 (which I think is where Dal is getting his 13 number from)
Hispanic – 11
Other – 4
Unknown – 9
Which comes up to 55 (which is what Candlejack stated).
The remaining 2% were undoubtedly armed with with citrus fruit.
I assumed it involved vehicles being used as a weapon but your way makes the statistic sound more zany, like it was perpetrated by Florida Man.
So, approximately 50% more Whites were shot (armed and unarmed) than Blacks?
Where are the protests about their deaths?
The problem with the statistics, as well as most of the conversation around the issue, is that they don’t really get at the point of contention: whether or not those deaths were justified. Why those people were killed is more important than how many.
Someone can be threatening even when unarmed. But how many of those killed were shot in the back? While subdued? Fleeing?
Torabi:
If a suspect, especially a suspect with a criminal history who is in some sort of altercation with police, happens to also be armed, it’s a strong likelihood that it had something to do with the arrest. Consider it Occam’s Razor.
Also… just as a bit of common sense, if you’re stopped by police, do not take out your gun. Raise your hands or put them somewhere that they can see them, tell the officer that you have a gun, where the gun is located, and let THEM retrieve the gun – do not take it out yourself. It helps people to prevent being shot by police, who themselves are really not wanting to be shot.
“Someone can be threatening even when unarmed.”
This is true. But it’s usually easier to subdue an unarmed suspect than an armed one, which makes the likelihood of a shooting lower.
Pander:
You’ve further illustrated my point. People each want to have entirely different conversations about a different subset of the statistics, and talk past each other in the process.
Torabi:
No offense but what are you talking about? I’m using the same ‘subset’ of the statistics the entire time, limiting myself to 2019, armed and unarmed. For some reason, you’re trying to use what may be a non-existent or negligible variable which would not be based on statistics, but instead is based on supposition. Statistics do NOT handle a definitive ‘why.’ They handle ‘what.’ Trials handle the ‘why.’ You find out the ‘why’ by examining the ‘what’ and see if there is a pattern.
If a person has a criminal history, and is carrying a weapon, and is in an altercation with the police, it seems insane to make the assumption ‘oh he/she was running away from the police with a gun when shot. You make the assumption of police being psychopaths who shoot fleeing suspects, which shows a bias on your part. Not to mention such an example would be heavily reported on.
Also, if suspect is ‘subdued’ they are no longer armed. Because they are subdued, which means they no longer have a weapon and are no longer a threat.
Pander:
It doesn’t matter if you’re consistently using the same subset if it’s a different subset from everyone else in the conversation. You’re having a different conversation.
Threading on this comment system is admittedly difficult to follow, but I at least thought we were talking about unarmed suspects, not people with a criminal history and carrying a weapon. Also, interesting that criminal history is not an element in the statistics that you presented, yet you’re arguing based on it.
Where a person was shot, and what they were doing while shot, are part of the ‘what’ that we should be collecting statistics on, if we want to determine whether or not those shootings were justified. Otherwise, people fill them in on their own to fit the narrative that supports their position.
Torabi:
“It doesn’t matter if you’re consistently using the same subset if it’s a different subset from everyone else in the conversation. You’re having a different conversation.”
I’m using the same statistics in the same context and I think you might be confused based on the thread.
“Threading on this comment system is admittedly difficult to follow, but I at least thought we were talking about unarmed suspects, not people with a criminal history and carrying a weapon.”
We’re talking about Unarmed suspects, but ‘unknown’ is not a counter-category to unarmed. It’s a subcategory OF both armed and unarmed.
In other words, it’s not ‘Armed, Unarmed, and Unknown’ – it’s just Armed and Unarmed. The ‘Other’ was mentioned elsewhere as stuff like vehicles, which doesnt fall neatly into Armed and Unarmed. The numbers you are using for comparison are not from ‘Other’ – they’re from Unknown’ Which is why you’re making a mistake in your argument.
“Also, interesting that criminal history is not an element in the statistics that you presented, yet you’re arguing based on it.”
Criminal would wind up being a sub-set of an already existing sub-set if you’re going to overlap not having a criminal record+unarmed. I could add it if you want – it wouldnt be hard to do that – but it would be quite small. In certain years it might even be non-existent. But it wouldnt change the fact that you’re arguing about a MUCH smaller number than the original category, or that you’re trying to compare a category to a sub-set of that category, instead of comparing two categories.
“Where a person was shot, and what they were doing while shot, are part of the ‘what’ that we should be collecting statistics on, if we want to determine whether or not those shootings were justified.”
This is true, and it’s something that comes up during an investigation. But again, this becomes a sub-set of a sub-set of a sub-set. For every sub-set of a category, the number becomes smaller an smaller, and more and more improbable to occur as something statistically likely (ie, it becomes more and more unlikely to have happened).
When it DOES happen, the police officer is arrested for committing a crime. This rarely happens because that whole combination of events rarely happens.
Guest: Look at it as a rate stat. 24% of the unarmed persons killed by police in that one year were Black. 6% of the total population is Black. These are small sample sizes, but the rate holds steady from year to year.
Pander: The weapons category includes vehicles, rightly or wrongly depending on the circumstances of the actual incident, but that’s how it’s counted. The unknown category is four times as large as the unarmed category. That alone should make you wonder how reliable is the unarmed category count.
“Pander: The weapons category includes vehicles, rightly or wrongly depending on the circumstances of the actual incident, but that’s how it’s counted.”
Yes that’s what I figured. Like where a suspect tries to run down the police with their car, or tries to run someone else down with the car, and the police open fire on the vehicle.
“The unknown category is four times as large as the unarmed category.”
No it isn’t.
For one thing, there are two ‘unknown’ categories. One for armed and unarmed suspects combined, and one for armed suspects alone. You can pretty easily figure out by simple subtraction the number of unknown for armed suspects.
For another thing, the ‘unarmed’ category is entirely different than the ‘unknown’ category. One’s a category, the other is a sub-category. The former is on the line of ‘armed or unarmed.’ The other is for race. Unknown might mean mixed race, or where they could not tell the race of the suspect upon cursory inspection, or there could be some other reason that they could not determine the suspect’s race.
“That alone should make you wonder how reliable is the unarmed category count.”
I have no idea why it would make me wonder how reliable the unarmed category count is at all. Unless you’re saying ‘the armed category is 4 times as large as the unarmed category.’ But that would be incorrect as well. Because the armed category is A LOT MORE THAN 4 TIMES AS LARGE. It’s actually almost 19 times larger.
What that does mean is that unarmed suspect deaths by police is EXCEEEDINGLY rare, even compared to deaths by police in general. And death by police in general is even MORE exceedingly rare when compared the amount of annual interactions between police and the public, which according to BJS’s Police-Public Contact Table was almost 2 million separate interactions in 2019 (the same year as the rest of these numbers).
Pander: appreciate the thoughtful response.
2015 – 2020
Number armed with a vehicle 194. The vehicle could be parked, disabled, moving towards the officer, moving away, fleeing. It gets counted as “armed”.
unarmed 394
armed with “unknown” 158
armed with toy 218 (this gets categorized as a subset of armed with weapon. Not clear if it includes “armed” with cell phone, a key ring or other things police have mistaken for a weapon.)
The 4 categories listed above add up to 964 people which is 16% of the 6068 people shot and killed by police over that 5 years. People should be skeptical of some of those categories. Armed with toy. Armed with parked vehicle. Armed with unknown.
Mentioned above, Black men are 6% of total population, Black people 12% of total, and yet they are 24% of those killed while unarmed. Since 2015, 13% of Blacks who have been fatally shot by police were unarmed, compared with 7% of Whites. Numbers are worse for some years than others, for example, of all of the unarmed people shot and killed by police in 2015, 40% were Black men, even though Black men make up just 6% of the nation’s population.
Small sample size was mentioned, yes it is, that doesn’t make it a better outcome for the unarmed individual.
“Pander: appreciate the thoughtful response.”
I try. :)
“2015 – 2020”
This is going to skew things a bit. Could you use just 2019 since we’ve been using numbers from 2019 until now. Suddenly changing to a 5 year spread would give a skewed statistic when we’ve been comparing it to one year prior to this.
“The 4 categories listed above add up to 964 people which is 16% of the 6068 people shot and killed by police over that 5 years.”
Again, if you’re going to use 5 years here, you’re going to need to use 5 years as comparison with all the other numbers as well. Otherwise it makes it look larger than it actually is.
“People should be skeptical of some of those categories. Armed with toy. Armed with parked vehicle. Armed with unknown.”
The first two are not actually things which BJS would consider ‘armed.’ Those would fall under the ‘unarmed’ sub-category by both FBI and BJS. The third WOULD be counted by BJS and FBI as unarmed, but that’s more of a placeholder for miscellaneous items being used as weaponry.
“Mentioned above, Black men are 6% of total population, Black people 12% of total, and yet they are 24% of those killed while unarmed.”
Yes I know, this is an often cited statistic, although the other statistic used to counter that stat is the whole ’12-13% of black people account for approximately 53% of criminal actions.’ (and I’m assuming based on the numbers you just gave, that black men (6%) account for 40%, while black women account for the remaining 13%. Which sometimes gets used for racial reasons to stereotype people, but the basic idea trying to get across (if a person isnt being completely racist about it) is the logical conclusion that if a group of people are committing crimes far in excess of their percentage to their population, they are likely going to be both arrested and involved in police shootings in far larger numbers in relation to their population as well. The odd thing would be that white people would be getting shot and killed at a larger percentage than the amount of police-public interactions they’re involved in, given the lower amount of criminal actions (percentage-wise, now raw number wise, since white people make up a far larger percentage of the population). It needs to be consistently viewed in order for the statistics to make sense.
“Since 2015, 13% of Blacks who have been fatally shot by police were unarmed, compared with 7% of Whites.”
Again, it’s a little difficult since you went from one year to five years, but I checked because that seemed inconsistent, and that statistic is wrong. At least for 2019. Even when you check for just one year (2019), white people are slightly MORE likely to be shot by police than black people while unarmed, and the amount is roughly consistent when you include armed and unarmed, unless you’re saying there was one year in that 5 year period which was so different that it skews everything else. I havent looked up all 5 years in your data set though because I only wrote anything because someone was wanting the actual numbers for 2019.
“Small sample size was mentioned, yes it is, that doesn’t make it a better outcome for the unarmed individual.”
It wasn’t actually a small sample size – it was a small result. The sample size would be the amount of police-public interactions, which is about 2 million. That’s a rather sizable sample size.
And while yes, it doesnt make a better outcome for the unarmed individual, I’m just pointing out how rare it is, so people probably shouldnt take a very small amount of cases and assume it’s widespread. It’s basically operating on niche cases and treating it as the standard when it really tends to be overrepresented on the news, because those very small amount of cases are heavily broadcast. Which is good in a way, since it does makes it LESS likely for that number to rise in the future, and bad in other ways, since it causes undue racial tension and makes people label all police based on a statistically (and raw-number) tiny amount of incidents.
Like Brichins says below, “freedom of the press in the US, along with the pressure of the 24-hr news cycle, does tend to make things sound worse than they are.” The exaggeration of an actual problem is a necessary evil if you want to have freedom of the press under the first amendment.
Good discussion btw.
I agree that the freedom of the press in the US, along with the pressure of the 24-hr news cycle, does tend to make things sound worse than they are. Although if not for this combination, we’d never know about one of the great heroes of our age – Florida Man.
There aren’t that many countries with a larger population than the USA. If you go PER CAPITA, police in the US are practically pacifists compared to most other countries that don’t have “NO Guns for the Police” policies like, say, the UK.
The US cops pacifists?
Not compared to Norwegian cops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd8ZTKU8csw
Trust me, the subtitles are… sanitised… the drunkard is from Northern Norway, and they can swear the paint off of a car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54jBFtVMmpo
Did I say “ALL” other countries? I’m pretty sure I said “Most” and also with the qualifier “Per capita” – What’s the population of Norway compared to the USA?
About the same as Wisconsin. 5M+
The population of the US is about 329 million people. The population of Norway is about 5.2 million people.
Did Dabbler suddenly vanish after realising what she said next to max?
No, it is just a matter of the view-point. In the last frame, Dabbler is a couple of metres to our left, out of frame, on the other side of Sydney.
A kill shot is not justified when you can safely take a non-lethal alternative. Killshots are used when because our level of technology cannot render people safe without killing them – tasers may not work through clothing, tranquilisers take time to kick in – only forcibly causing massive trauma to the central nervous system renders someone safe effectively immediately.
If we had a weapon that can instantly incapacitate people without killing them and had the same or greater success rates than using lethal bullets, such as homing knockout rounds or force field technology to trap the criminal in a bubble instantly, then there would not be justification for killshots UNLESS the instant knockout rounds and force field tech would clearly not work.
It’s like why Max or Superman would be looked down upon if they shot every criminal pointing a gun at another person – they are fast enough to stop bullets and de-escalate a scenario WITHOUT resorting to killing people and it’d probably be safer than pulling out a gun and shooting the person in question, so……… why would you have a justification to kill them when it was MORE dangerous to use a lethal weapon?
What Cora did isn’t necessarily morally wrong, but it’s not something that’d necessarily hold up in court.
A Kill shot is not authorized when you can take a safer non-lethal alternative? /REALLY?
If you pull your weapon it’s already escalated past that point.
You shoot to stop the action/criminal. Period.
Otherwise it’s brandishment.
now cops have a different set of criteria, they can threaten to shoot you and get away with it here in the US- as long as it’s to stop further violence. They rarely meet that standard according to the news everyday. But you never see it when they do it successfully either. Same way libs claim that gun owners never stopped a mass shooting. Because if they stopped it before it became a mass shooting, then it can’t have been a mass shooting. Proving a negative is impossible.
That’s the standard of news and what is spewed by politicians.
Justifiable Force is what’s claimed in shootings. Shooting someone because they are running away? not a good shoot. Shooting them because they are running at you? Justifiable.
Then again the reverse should be learned by all those that say, “There should be a Law” well this law you want. Is it worth shooting someone over? Because it will be used to justify a killing. No use in outrage later because it’s what you voted for or even suggested become a law.
“Really?”
If you have a nonlethal weapon that fires instantly incapacitating shots that safely non-lethally disable your target 99% of the time, and you’ve got a lethal weapon that explodes your target successfully 50% of the time and 50% of the time it does nothing, why would you want to use the weapon that only works 50% of the time, as opposed to the weapon that’s got a 99% success rate?
Today’s firearms are generally more reliable at killing people than tasers are at stunning people. So firearms are used in a life or death situation where you want the highest reliability in stopping more harm from happening.
BUT if you had tasers that were more accurate and more reliable than normal firearms, why WOULDN’T you want to use them more? You’d only use the lethal weapon if you were out for blood (or you knew beforehand the taser wouldn’t work, and that’s when it WOULD be acceptable to use lethal force to stop the enemy.)
“A kill shot is not justified when you can safely take a non-lethal alternative. Killshots are used when because our level of technology cannot render people safe without killing them ”
According to my cousin, the only time you point a gun at someone in any situation, police or not, is when you’re ready to kill the person who is going to be on the other end of that gun. Otherwise, don’t point the gun. As soon as you’re ready to shoot someone, make sure it’s a killshot. Shooting in the leg or arm on purpose is for television. Aiming for center mass is real life.
+1
Cora’s tech advantage allowed her to pick her target. She may or may not have chosen the ammunition for shock value. Or maybe she just fired without checking t see what was loaded. It wouldn’t be the first time someone fired a weapon thinking one type of ammo was loaded and a different kind was in the chamber. Add emotions to the mix, with a guy aiming a firearm at Sydney while she was helpless and yeah, I bet Cora was a bit steamed.
Emotions and firearms are a bad combination as MANY people throughout history would tell you. If, of course, they lived through what happened.
So many people, in so many places, think of guns as toys or as attention getting devices. You DO get attention, that is true. You may even get a rush of feeling powerful. Until someone with a bigger gun comes along. And yes, there is always someone with a bigger gun. or more guns. Or more AND bigger guns.
Firearms are not toys. They do not solve problems. They do not save lives. They are tools that can be used in a number of ways, but when the guns come out, people die. Period. Drawing a firearm is a clear and concise statement that you are ready and willing to kill.
And then so many self entitled special people wonder why on Earth people react badly to that.
It is easy to see in this thread and all the others about Cora’s response to a hostage situation who was trained with firearms and who was not.
That advice is for real life people with real life accuracy and real life weapons technology. Neither applies in this situation.
Note that Cora didn’t aim for center of mass, but dealt with the threat with purposeful shot to the arm – then killed him anyway without purpose. Had she used self-defence doctrine and done fifteen to his chest, people wouldn’t have complained.
And the shoot-to-kill advice shouldn’t be taken literally, it’s there to encourage “shoot-to-stop-don’t-worry-about-not-killing.”
“That advice is for real life people with real life accuracy and real life weapons technology. Neither applies in this situation.”
Yes, but MAAAANY times in this comic, DaveB has made sure the dialog tries to subvert standard superhero and movie tropes.
Not to mention basic real world tactics of how to use and not use firearms.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-419-lacking-in-tactics/
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-420-shipoopi/
They go out of their way to try to show Sydney why standard comic book hero stuff is impractical in ‘real world’ scenarios.’
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-428-f-u-tility/
How ‘bulletproof’ is not really a thing usually, even in a world of superheroes. And you should just assume ‘bullet resistant’ to be on the safe side.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-319-armored-with-advice/
Peggy even commanded those movie trope demons out of Sydney’s head upon starting weapons training.
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/comic/grrl-power-330-action-zeroing-the-needle/
In short, using the argument ‘this isnt real life, it’s a comic book, so we should not try to apply RL logic to it’ ….. would pretty much ignore the main emphasis in this comic. That tropes are just that – tropes – and you should rely on how real life works instead when deciding on strategies.
“Note that Cora didn’t aim for center of mass, but dealt with the threat with purposeful shot to the arm”
The following is a real life statistic. Guess how many times trained police officers miss center mass, even when aiming for center mass? 82% of the time. Still, even if Cora is an expert marksman. Which is still debatable. When people use such heavy ordinance, they might just be compensating for not being expert shots, so they rely on either a spray and pray method or something that does such a deadly attack than anywhere you hit them can result in death. You don’t need to successfully hit center mass if you’re using a bazooka. Or think of the movie ‘A Million Ways to Die in the West’ The main character was a much worst shot than the villain, but he poisoned the bullet, so ANYWHERE he hit the guy would kill him if he could just prevent him from shooting back right away and killing him, so the rattlesnake venom could take effect.
Ugh that last paragraph is horrible in its sentence structure.
It should have read ‘Still, lets assume Cora is an expert marksman’ instead of ‘Still, even if Cora is an expert marksman.’
That’s not the argument. The argument is ‘we shouldn’t assume RL conclusions when the premises they follow from do not apply.’ (Logic is abstract and applies independently in any case.) Namely, RL gun tactics are informed by properties of RL humans and RL gun technology, which do not apply to Cora and her equipment.
For Sydney, who (as long as she doesn’t use the orbs) is equivalent to an RL human und using the equivalent of an RL gun, it makes sense to use RL-like gun training, like in your examples. But when those limitations no longer apply, we can’t assume the conclusions do. This is explicitly recognized in the comic, where Arc-Swat personnel is generally supposed to follow muzzle discipline like one would in RL – with the exception of Maxima. Due to her super speed the usual safety assumptions do not apply anymore and she follows different rules.
In conclusion, we can assume things are like in RL only as long as the circumstances are like in RL. As soon as the circumstances change, the conclusions can no longer be relied on and we need to reexamine the logic behind them and use it to derive conclusions that apply to the new situation.
The RL circumstances are that one cannot rely on hitting anything specific on a moving opponent, therefore the best tactic for stopping is to shoot for center of mass. This gets framed as ‘shooting to kill’ because shooting to kill demands the same tactic. But there’s differences between shooting to stop and shooting to kill even in RL(namely, when to stop shooting; or using less lethal ammunition such as beanbags), and a difference that doesn’t really apply in RL applies to Cora – the availability of ammunition that’s really good at killing but not very good at stopping(and the opposite, like Dabbler’s bondage bullet) means we can’t equate shooting to stop and shooting to kill anymore because those two require different ammunition choices.
Cora is more than just an expert marksman. She’s a Cyborg. Sydney’s glasses prove she has insanely detailed computer-assisted aiming available, and where Sydney still needs to aim with her human arms, Cora’s arms are entirely artificial and can therefore be as precise as she wants them to be. And that kind of accuracy is possible, considering police snipers can pull it off in the right situation. In short, Cora has aimbot hax and the limitations of mere mortals don’t apply to her. If she hit his shoulder, it was because she was aiming for it.
Still, if she decided she didn’t want to rely on it, I wouldn’t blame her for it. But then she should have done something that actually compensated for it. Center of mass at the cyclic rate until he goes down, or loading any instantly killing or instantly disabling munition. Even the Unwinder itself would have been defensible, as long as she uses a fuze with insignificant delay.
And that’s the issue: As is, the Unwinder didn’t do that. Had she hit him in a not-instantly-disabling place, he would have been able to shoot Sydney before the Unwinder triggered.
That he dies in the end doesn’t matter, because it isn’t the point of the exercise.
“That’s not the argument. The argument is ‘we shouldn’t assume RL conclusions when the premises they follow from do not apply.’ (Logic is abstract and applies independently in any case.)”
I’m sorry but you’re going to have to explain that again because I don’t understand what you mean. Seriously. I’m not being mean or anything. Really hope it doesnt come off like I am. I just genuinely don’t understand what you mean, because it still sounds like you mean what I thought you meant in my above post. So I’m either misunderstanding you or you might need to explain it to me in a different way, so I know how to respond to you better. Thanks :)
“Namely, RL gun tactics are informed by properties of RL humans and RL gun technology, which do not apply to Cora and her equipment.”
The tactics used in Grrlpower have been based on RL tactics though, as I explained in my post with how Peggy has been teaching Sydney based on RL tactics, instead of comic book or movie tactics involving guns. Also while Cora is not terran, she is mostly human. But that should not really matter in order to analyze this for gun use. As Maxima and Sydney surmised, guns are, at the very least, a galactic standard. And based on the police on Fracture Station, there are usually rules for their use. Cora just held special privileges because she’s saved Fracture station a few times, according to the space cop.
“But when those limitations no longer apply, we can’t assume the conclusions do.”
How do those limitations no longer apply with Cora, just because she has ordinance that’s better at killin’?
If anything, I think it strengthens my point – you should only point a gun at a person if you intend to kill that person, unless that person no longer represents a physical threat to you or others.
Mister Ribblemsesonthewall represented a physical threat to Sydney when Cora shot him. The shooting and the exploding violently were both part of a single action, much like pushing someone off a building is the same action as that person hitting the ground and making a big red splat.
“This is explicitly recognized in the comic, where Arc-Swat personnel is generally supposed to follow muzzle discipline like one would in RL – with the exception of Maxima”
Correct. I’m a little confused since you seem to be agreeing with me so I’m not sure what the disagreement is.
“In conclusion, we can assume things are like in RL only as long as the circumstances are like in RL. As soon as the circumstances change, the conclusions can no longer be relied on and we need to reexamine the logic behind them and use it to derive conclusions that apply to the new situation.”
Again I don’t understand what you mean, since Grrlpower’s universe seems to constantly try to subvert tropes and use real life strategy and procedures within a comic book universe, and that seems to be something DaveB stresses a lot. Plus most of your reasoning seems to be saying that as well but your conclusion seems to be going in the opposite direction.
Aiming for center mass is a tactical decision to make. Guns represent a universal (okay, galactic) threat. Why would you not think the tactical decision in a galactic sense would be similar to an Earth-based decision? (which is what I’m going to use instead of RL since if we used RL, then we can’t argue ANYTHING in the comic, since we do not live in a comic, plus like I said – they tend to use RL reasoning within the Grrlpower universe).
“the availability of ammunition that’s really good at killing but not very good at stopping(and the opposite, like Dabbler’s bondage bullet) means we can’t equate shooting to stop and shooting to kill anymore because those two require different ammunition choices.”
Variable could also mean that she could have shot something that incinerates his arm, making it melt off the bone, without killing him. That’s still ‘variable.’ Cora chose to instead use the ‘like putting to much air in a balloon then it pops’ choice instead. Cora’s weapons are VERY violent, period. And they might be just as violent even in a non-lethal situation. But there’s no reason for Cora to assume that she’d successfully shoot at him in a way that just disarms him (even in my scenario where she would LITERALLY dis-arm him). If she thinks the better chance of Sydney surviving is for bad guy to go byebye, then that’s a reasonable tactic for her to make. In fact it was probably the better tactic for her to make – especially if she doesnt have anything as low tech as a simple bullet like us Earthers use. :)
“Cora is more than just an expert marksman. She’s a Cyborg. Sydney’s glasses prove she has insanely detailed computer-assisted aiming available, and where Sydney still needs to aim with her human arms, Cora’s arms are entirely artificial and can therefore be as precise as she wants them to be.”
1) Sydney’s glasses, while making it easier for her to aim, clearly do not give her 100% accuracy. She still didnt get perfect accuracy.
2) Even assuming that Cora DOES have much much much better accuracy than Sydney (a very likely case, obviously, given Cora’s profession), that doesn’t give her 100% accuracy. Even most trained top level army snipers do not have 100% accuracy on their kills. Even a sniper who is trying to take a headshot is likely to miss. The person could move. The bullet’s trajectory could be slightly off. Your arm could jerk at the wrong time. Someone could distract you at the last second. One of the other men could have seen her before she shot and shot at her first.
“And that kind of accuracy is possible, considering police snipers can pull it off in the right situation.”
Even police snipers do not have 100% accuracy. Even Peggy probably doesn’t have 100% accuracy, and Peggy is insanely accurate from what we’ve seen with her during the Vehemence fight (the eye shots, the Concretia shot, etc) Why would Cora possibly want to risk Sydney’s life by thinking she had it 100%, if she could bend things more in her favor so that no matter where she hit him he would go ka-blooey? (Heavy on the blooey).
“Even the Unwinder itself would have been defensible, as long as she uses a fuze with insignificant delay.”
I suspect that might be why Cora engaged him in a few seconds of conversation – to distract him for the few seconds it takes for the unwinder to go BLAM, so that he didnt try something like to order his men to both shoot Sydney and Cora, or use Sydney as a human shield or something.
Either that or she thought it would be funny and badass to have a parting line like that, ending with ‘oops.’ As in ‘oops, your life is so valueless to me that I did not want to try something that would not result in your violent explosion. Guys working for this soon-to-be-dead guy, take note in case you don’t want the same thing to happen to you.’
“Still, if she decided she didn’t want to rely on it, I wouldn’t blame her for it. But then she should have done something that actually compensated for it.”
Yes, I figure that she did NOT want to rely on her being a perfect shot, since she’d be basically gambling with Sydney’s life. True, she could have done any of the other things you mentioned, but her way was just as effective, if not moreso. Plus had the added benefit of scaring the heck out of the other two so they’d flee.
“And that’s the issue: As is, the Unwinder didn’t do that. Had she hit him in a not-instantly-disabling place, he would have been able to shoot Sydney before the Unwinder triggered.”
The Unwinder definitely DID do that, far as I can see. Unless I’m missing what you’re saying. That’s the whole point I’m making. She used an ordinance which basically kills the target no matter where she hit him, minimizing the risk to Sydney and maximizing the chance of the target being dead in the end. Sort of like Albert’s strategy in the gunfight with Clinch in A Million Way to Die in the West. No matter where he shot Clinch, Clinch would be dead – all he had to do is actually hit him with the bullet (and in Albert’s case, he was NOT a good shot at all in the first place, while Clinch is such a good shot that he’s able to shoot guns out of people’s hands).
https://youtu.be/vO2ixs51uGI?t=109
Honestly I just wanted an excuse to post that scene. :)
Okay, I’m gonna try explaining it a different way:
The world of Grrl Power strives for realism and consistency, but has significant differences to the real world. Those differences affect the world in a logical way. This means we can not assume things are like reality (nor different from reality.) We have to look at why things are the way they are in reality, and then decide whether the reason still applies in Grrl Power world in a specific instance.
Things aren’t different because it’s a comic book – but it’s a different world, one with superpowers, aliens and magic. So the things that are affected by superpowers might be different. Don’t have have to be different, but we can’t assume they are the same.
Yes, we can, just not automatically. Just when in doubt we have to identify the mechanisms behind RL assumptions and see if anything there is changed – if not, we’re good to go, if yes, we might need to reconsider our assumptions.
It subverts tropes, but not by leaving things as in real life, but by adapting them to the new circumstances realistically.
The best example for this already was in my previous, but you seem to have to have misunderstood it, so I’m gonna repeat it, with the point bolded:
Arc-Swat personnel is generally supposed to follow muzzle discipline like one would in RL – with the exception of Maxima. Due to her super speed the usual safety assumptions do not apply anymore and she follows different rules.
This is very explicit: Maxima follows different rules for gun use. This is explicitly justified with her powers. She isn’t a normal human, so the rules for normal humans don’t apply to her. People who don’t have her powers still follow the same rules. This difference is brought about by powers.
So this is something we need to keep in mind.
The tactics used by normal humans. They are informed, among other things, by accuracy concerns – which don’t apply to Cora.
Which was entirely user error. But she did get accurately told where the bullet would go if she held the gun a certain way.
No, but her cyborgness does. Because she doesn’t have to rely on muscle precision and hand-eye-coordination – her arms are artificial and can be computer-supported to be as accurate as she wants.
Which a computer can account for and lead the shot.
Not going to be an issue at the distances involved if the gun is any good.
Not Cora’s arm, which isn’t made from flesh.
Those are entirely independent of where she aims.
But note that this argument is essentially independent of judging Cora. Because if she wasn’t confident in her marksmanship, she still shouldn’t have used the Unwinder. You conflate certainty of killing with certainty of stopping the threat. In RL, shooting to stop and shooting to kill look the same, which is we use a shoot-to-kill rule of thumb.
But with the Unwinder, those are two different things. Minimizing the risk to Sydney means stopping him immediately (whether lethally or nonlethally is secondary, here). The Unwinder kills, but with a guaranteed delay. A delay that might have allowed him to kill Sydney. That it worked out in the end was due to luck. She did gamble with Sydney’s life by relying on him not doing anything in the seconds he had left.
This is a core disagreement here. You think the Unwinder was tactically good choice for defending Sydney, but that isn’t true. Because it has a delay that wouldn’t be present with a more conventional choice and introduces an entirely avoidable risk. And risk avoidance would have to be the justification for using a very lethal round.
And if she doesn’t have other choices available*, she should just have immediately put another Unwinder between his eyes, without even waiting for the effect of the first shot. Then the delay doesn’t matter.
*not that that would be plausible, she needs something armor-piercing at the very least.
PS – good post. Could you tell me how to do the thing where you integrate the links into your sentences because I have no idea how to do that.
Fairly sure they just quote, and then edit around the quote (adding additional quote commands where needed)
By encasing the words you want linked in html tags. Typing this
<a href=”grrlpowercomic.com”>This</a> becomes a link.
turns into
This becomes a link.
Put <a href=””> before the text you want linked, insert your URL between the double quotes, and put the closing tag </a> right vafter.
Thank you! I’m saving this so I know for the future.
I am surprised Cora doesn’t have something like ( Goober Rounds @ Ovalkwiki ). Sorry, it’s been too long since I last struggled with the codes to put URLs in.
Given her “variable lethality” comment earlier, she probably does.
If you don’t want to mess with HTML, you can just paste URLs in the text and the site will render them as links.
We’ve already seen that Dabbler, after the Vehemence fight, decided to start augmenting her arsenal with more non-lethal weaponry. Most weaponry is meant to be lethal. The only non-lethal armaments that Dabbler had was that thing she used to bind up Mac the Knife, then later to bind up Vehemence.
I see no reason to think that Cora’s ordinance is so variable to the point where any significant amount of it is non-lethal. Maybe she has ONE thing that is non-lethal, like a stun function, but did not think it was worth risking Sydney’s life on the off-chance that it would be successful before Sydney was shot in the head, which is her primary concern. Not letting Sydney be shot in the head. Or that one of the other two would not be cowed by just seeing their boss stunned and use Sydney as a human shield, or shoot Sydney as well.
What she did definitely mitigated the threat – not just by removing Chunky McSalsa from the equation, but also scaring the hell out of the other two so that they’d quickly surrender or flee for their lives..
Dabbler is making some very interesting faces today.
“she’s keeping herself pretty reigned in”
That’s “reined in,” Dave.
Not for Dabbler, it isn’t.
So, set a small forest fire, turned a tank to scrap but blasted herself with hot sand, got in a super beat down, died, respawned, fell in scab pool, sent to a distant planet, killed multiple boss mobs, stranded, spicy food of doom, woof sex, intergalactic sexting, tranqed by a demonhunter, threw up on by alien, captured, tortured, watched a man detonate into meat confetti. She’s had a pretty rough road as a super cop so far
And Sydney has not even graduated yet. A few of those Doctor Frost may be able to help her with.
We haven’t even caught up to page 4 yet. We’re still in the Tarantino rewind. It’s gonna be a while before she reaches Corporal rank. She has to go through PV2 and PFC first.
I may never eat lasagna again.
Unless it’s with fava beans and a nice chianti.
*repetitious slurping noise*
Psst DaveB, you spelled CAVITATION wrong in the sound effect art on the last page.
You know for all their advanced technology and sexual openness, Dabbler and Cora are pretty juvenile and/or backwards thinking when it comes to law enforcement. Cora’s gotta learn fast how humans are not at the stage where making a crime scene into a Saw Movie or Maxima’s gonna kick her ass out.
Heck even Concretia was like, ” Jesus, girl, I’ve wanted that guy dead for ages and even I thought that was too far!”
Very true. One of the problems is that in truth if they were not working with Archon it would be Archons job to arrest them. Neither Cora nor Dabbler have any interest in obeying laws and will gleefully do whatever they can get away with.
“Juvenile” is a matter of perspective. I don’t think we’ve got much room to talk about backwards thinking when it comes to law enforcement.
》 so yeah, she’s keeping herself pretty reigned in
Yo Dave, this should be ‘reined in’ FYI. Like when you’re driving a horse, you rein it in to keep tighter control or give it a free rein to let it go at its own pace.
Depends on who’s the dominant.
Reins are needed regardless.
Next page, have Cree corroborate just how bad Lord Lasagne was
Speaking of, did she decide to leg it as soon as Maxi *ZLRP*’d?
That look Max gives at the end reminds me of someone’s big sister who found out her younger sis had to go through something traumatic and didn’t have to.
I’ve always felt Max was a big sister/mom figure to Sydney. Now it looks like Max feels the same way.
Max has felt that way quite awhile, actually. Max is a closet geek, and Sydney’s a friend and confidante about that.
So her being RIGHTLY pissed at Dabs and Cora here isn’t really unexpected.
The comments on this page are fucking priceless (and not in a good way): last page they were calling for Henchie to die, simply because she is ‘annoying’ and a ‘Mary Sue’, and this page, they are saying that Lord Lasagne should have been kept alive
Not me. I wanted him julienned and got what I wanted. The legal ramifications are what everyone’s going on about now.
oh, he definitely needed to die. But Cora could have done a better job of building the legal shield for her actions.
Even just using a lethal round that didn’t have a 3-second delay, or just refraining from gloating during those 3 seconds, would have helped a lot.
“And then, once I realized that I had accidently shot him with an unwinder round, I promptly took action to mitigate my mistake, by shooting him 10 more times with normal rounds in order to try to knock the unwinder ordinance out of his body before it detonated. It’s such a shame that he didn’t pull through…”
“… although once the unwinder detonated, he could be pulled through a lot of things.”
Nope. There was no accident, and Cora will not pretend there was. Her strategy was flawless, just gory.
The Boss kidnapper was attempting to kill the hostage. I shot him with an unwinder. It immediately incapacitated his weapon, and focused his attention on me. He was dead when it hit, but he did not yet know it. I then engaged the attention of the entire set of kidnappers so that when the unwinder went off, it permanently prevented the Boss kidnapper from any further action to attempt to murder the hostage. The shock of the visual effect completely neutralized any chance of the henchmen taking any further violent action. They immediately fled, and we were able to track them to where they had the other kidnap victim, with no further loss of life.
Trying to apologize for the munition is stupid. It was ugly, but it worked flawlessly and as intended.
Plus … think like a prosecutor for a moment here … are you really going to prosecute the person who without a doubt saved the life of America’s Cutest Superhero ™ … on the grounds that he should have been killed more neatly?
Where are you going to get 12 jurors to convict, and in what fast-food joint will you be working after the next election?
REALLY should mention that the guy was holding a gun on Sydney while she had no access to her orbs. At that point I think Max might be a little less perturbed about the use of lethal ordinance.
And… he had already injected her with a ‘truth serum’ and was about to wipe her mind
Ya, the dude did deserve it. The extra trauma for Sydney would have been nice to avoid though, but hey, who cares? The guy is a smear on the pavement now and they captured enough cabal members to interrogate and figure out what the hell is going on so, Maxima will be miffed but at least Cora didn’t murder every baddie.
What ‘deserving’ have to do with anything? Cora here is a cop, or equivalent. Cops doesn’t decide what a crimimal deserve, judges and tribunals do that. What cops do is follow the laws, or try to. And the law say “don’t splatter the criminals, unless you absoutely must to” (a paraphrase, of course)
Where was it stated that Cora was a cop?
She’s not a cop. She’s a bounty hunter/mercenary and the galaxy seems to be the Wild West. Also, she has definitely done this before if we jump back to the alien law enforcements reaction to Cora obliterating those muggers.
In this situation, however, Cora was a ride along for what should have been mundane work turned warzone. Did Cora explode someone? Yes. Did she save Sydney doing it? Yes. So the situation boils down to Maxima deciding to arrest her or not. Maxima should arrest her but she did save Sydney, so most likely Cora is just going to get a slap on the wrist for this anyway. Me saying the guy deserved it is just my personal take on the matter.
So many people saying Cora should be held to Earth Western European cop standards.
No.
She is not a cop. She is not from Earth. She was doing favors for Dabbler and may or may not be keeping tabs on Sydney (Nth tech is CRAZY chaos making). What she did was extreme, yes. WHY she did it? Perfectly justified.
Not how laws work. When she came to Earth, she needs to follow Earth’s rules. If you go to another country and try to commit crimes, your are going to be arrested. Same goes for any form of law enforcement being sent to other countries to assist with investigations. Dont follow the rules, you get arrested and probably deported. As for Cora, she was told not to use lethal ordinance, but did anyway. However, she was helping local law enforcement, so actually being arrested is up to Maxima and being prosecuted is up to the courts
But ya, Cora was justified sense Sydney’s life was, in fact, in danger.
If you go to another country and try to commit crimes, your are going to be arrested … unless you go there as part of invading military force of another country.
Didnt realize Cora was invading the planet. Oh wait, thats not the conversation. What was your point here?
Laws work how people with money and power want them to work. Period.
I am done with this siliness, guys. Feel free to blame Cora for not being human or a cop or not ‘nice’ enough to let Mr. ‘Daddy’ shoot Sydney in the head. I don’t and I won’t. To me, her choice of munition was a bit extreme, but her choice to fire was perfectly warranted.
She DID rescue Sydney and that is good enough for me when I am reading a webcomic. (Which, by the way, has LITTLE to do with real life. Just saying.)
So, only Patreon’s get to see the girls Were-out?
The rest of us can use our imagination, and get to *reign* it out :P
Maxima asking where Sydney was means they did notice she was gone, but no one tried to check up on her? At all? One of their recruits disappearing for a while should have at least called for someone trying to reach her on radio. Speaking of, Sydney did have time to use the radio and her call should have gone out to everyone on the line, but no one heard her at all? What would they do if Sydney was unable to call for help? Find her body the next morning and go “Oops?”
I’m assuming the baddies were jamming the throat mikes and Sydney’s initial call was blocked.
That better be the reason, otherwise I would start questioning Archons competency
Yeah the lack of overwatch here after all the tech demonstrated at the restaurant battle (several months back) has been bothering me a lot.
Did anybody else notice that Max’s & Dabbler’s hair seems to be inexplicably shorter in this page?
No one mentioning how Dabbler suddenly changed her face and voice to match Maxima’s? (Panel 7)
Me thinks she put some effort into that to deflect anger from Cora and difuse situation. That or her nature couldn’t resist.
True Lies:
Did you ever kill anyone Harry?
Yeah. But they were all BAD!
I am still hoping that once Sydney has recovered from the shock she will get an orb upgrade.
Getting “disarmed” and having to deal with a problem without powers seems like it might be worth an XP point ;)
… How did she ‘deal with a problem without powers’? She was simply sitting there using her mouth
On the contrary I would except that doing something without the powers doesn’t give orb XP.
Aside from what Guesticules pointed out.
Just… No. Killing doesn’t stop “recidivists”. At all.
Actually, fairly sure it does, unless they have access to a cloning machine or a ‘Lazarus Pit’
Wait, WHut? ” Killing doesn’t stop “recidivists”.” How do they do anything after?
I think Silphael meant that killing doesn’t discourage the remaining recidivists. That does seem to be true of the death penalty. But it certainly prevents the one recidivist from committing further crimes in this world.
I also suspect that, once it gets out that Cora turned Lord Who-was-your-Daddy into a collaborative artwork of H.R. Giger and Jackson Pollock she’s gonna be a lot less likely to be hassled while on Earth. Especially after she walks for it… Oh, yeah, she’s gonna walk. Max can *maybe* arrest her. Briefly. But Cora’s got a lot of juice with the US government right now, plus has a ship with crew used to the idea of breaking the Boss out of benighted primitive lockups. A discreet warning video of highlights from said missions would possibly do the trick, all on its own.
And hell, Max might even just grumble, or possibly get one good rant off. Dude that got unwound DID have a habit of putting women in slave shock-collars, and WAS planning to vivisect one of Max’s people after drugging her. Having to let Cora get away with popping him wouldn’t be the worst bad behavior by a powerful foreigner that Max’s had to overlook since she first put on the uniform. Likely not by a LONG shot.
Max is unlikely to “arrest” Cora. She will probably chew her out, and ask her to stand down and head back to Arc, but Cora is effectively a foreign dignitary, and Max is not going to decide to blow interstellar relations based on an overzealous rescue…. especially once the details are known.
Exactly, yes.
From “The Wizard of Id” cartoon: a prisoner is about to be executed.
King: Any last words?
Prisoner: Capital Punishment doesn’t deter crime!
King (Leaving): I’ll believe that when I see YOU again.
I’m trying to decide if Max is more upset about having to deal with the aftermath of a fatality, or with the PTSD that Sydney is now dealing with.
Anyone else expecting Max’s next sentance will be, “Get off this planet :| “
Unwinder Round is an interesting name. And going by the image, it seems to literally unwind a bunch of razor-wire inside the target instead of ‘just’ exploding.
Personally, I still think the pure ridiculousness that is a Bolter is a tad bit cooler. Sure, explosive (or similar) projectiles with time delayed triggers are cool, but just for added emphasis, make them self-propelled as well as fired from a gun at the cadence of an automatic rifle or even machine gun depending on the model in question.
Dabbler contemplating free form jazz…
Oh good, it seems that, by the look on her face, Sydney has gone into shock. The good Doctor is gonna have a busy day next time she sees Sydney.
Considering she seemed fine when she was on the roof watching over Sleeping Cree-ty
Sad part is that Sydney’s explanation had me laughing just like Dabbler. *sigh* I’m not a good person, am I?
Don’t be lasagna! (DOCTOR, The 12th)
Dabbler’s face grew a snout when she was laughing?
She was laughing as much like a hyena as she possibly could.
I’m seriously concerned for Sydney’s mental well-being right now. Would not blame her if she said, “OK, this is wildly unlike anything I ever saw in comics. I have a dead man all over me, and this is not the first time this has happened. I am woefully underprepared for this. I’m out.”
poor Sydney, have experience all that gore must be bad for her mind.
but I kinda am with cora, the deadly force was necessary for that guy specifically.
max must be hella pissed off about it, and all the paperwork that’s coming with it.
Minor nitpick, but I believe that Maxima’s line about have the emphasis on the “what,” not the “sort.”
I agree. Given what had just been said prior, emphasis on “what” is more natural. Emphasis on “sort” only really makes sense if the line is delivered in a vacuum… It kind of applies here if you look at the emphasis as line delivery and the speech bubbles as lines… acting is reacting.
Space cops using using things like “unwinding rounds” and thinking it’s a “deterrent to crime” are wrong, at least in regards to human psychology… and they ought to know that considering there are apparently humans in space.
There are demonstrably far more effective ways of reducing crime. Cops shooting first and asking questions never doesn’t deter criminals, it just makes the criminals more likely to shoot first themselves.
Cora had no intention of “reducing crime”. She was neutralizing kidnappers and ending a boss, and she achieved that goal 100% effectively.
While you may disagree with it in theory. in practice, it was 100% effective in deterring further violence by the henches and the Boss.
It was therefore 100% effective in all Earth-human situations in which it has been deployed.
“thinking it’s a “deterrent to crime” are wrong, at least in regards to human psychology… and they ought to know that considering there are apparently humans in space.”
Devil’s advocate here…
Technically speaking, what Cora did was definitely a deterrent to the other two trying to do anything else aggressive. Sooooo…. deterrent.
And it’s a huge “deterrent” to the guy who exploded. I guarantee that guy won’t be pointing guns at anyone else. :)
This isn’t really in evidence. They showed no desire to do anything aggressive before he exploded.
Reasonable violence is a deterrent, but gratitious violence might as well trigger a “let’s kill the crazy bitch before she decides she wants to blow us up for fun too” reaction.
In our case they weren’t made to be aggressive, but to flee, which still isn’t successful deterrence – a fleeing criminal might commit more crimes trying to get away.
“They showed no desire to do anything aggressive before he exploded.”
When Sydney said ‘Now!’ the very first thing one of them did was pull out a gun and point it at the door to shoot whoever they thought was going to enter. I’d consider that pretty aggressive.
“Reasonable violence is a deterrent, but gratitious violence might as well trigger a “let’s kill the crazy bitch before she decides she wants to blow us up for fun too” reaction.”
I think in a fight or flight where you just saw your boss explode all over the place from a glancing shot, my money is on the flight rather than the fight. Especially since they no longer had the element of surprise.
“In our case they weren’t made to be aggressive, but to flee, which still isn’t successful deterrence – a fleeing criminal might commit more crimes trying to get away”
They were deterred from continuing to fight, and therefore they chose flight.
That was a different situation. You’ll note that wasn’t their reaction when Cora introduced herself with a shot. In fact, that scene proves they can act quickly and determinedly if they want to – so being so passive in reaction to Cora shows they weren’t aggressive at all.
False dichotomy. The third option was to surrender, and it looks like they would have if Cora had presented herself as less blood-thirsty.
If they had been willing to fight, they would have reacted before Bitch Lasagna blew up, and by then they would have been committed to fighting.
You really believe they would have done shit without orders from Lord Lasagne? o_O
I know that. Because they have acted without relying on his order.previously.
Cora had the initiative, and they didn’t. She handed Boss lasagna a mystery… an unfinished sentence… and that mystery delayed any recapturing of initiative by the boss or the henches until after the boss exploded, at which point they failed a fear check and also had no reason to fight, either tactically or strategically, if their path away was unobstructed. Cora left them a clear, unobstructed retreat, and they took it.
By that time it was already over – if they had reacted, they would have reacted without hesitation, like they did previously, and then Cora wouldn’t have gotten a word in.
Henchwoman: I will take Sidney’s trophy for wackiest facial expression!
Dabbler: Hold my beer.
Dabbles is not qualified for entry based on her not being human and the mystery 4th parental heritage