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gun nerdity
Jan. 4th, 2009 10:14 pmI was considering, the other day, something that happened a couple of weeks ago and how it may not be a typical sort of response to that kind of thing, and what it says about my own knowledgebase and habits.
I was listening to NPR not long after the Mumbai shootings. They were talking with the investigators and one of them started saying something about how when they looked at the crime scene, they could see that the shots that had missed actual, you know, people were all in single shots or 3-shot bursts and mostly below head level. "What does that imply?" asked the interviewer.
Being a big expert (ha) on gun-type stuffs, and being the sort of person to talk back to the radio, I said, out loud, "Well, it means they were trained and knew what they were doing, not just random guys with assault rifles." A second later, the radio expert guy said, "It means they were trained and knew what they were doing," and went into a little discussion of recoil and the tendency for automatic weapons to ride upward when fired by people who don't know what they're doing and think full-auto is the way to go. Trained killers, you see, keep their MP5s (or whatever) set to 3-shot bursts and adjust their aim between bursts, since automatic weapons ride upward as you fire them. (Any firearms do, really, but it's more noticeable when it's something automatic than a single-shot pistol or rifle, and trained shooters can adjust for the recoil. And, uh, when I play shooty games with marginally realistic weapon behavior I tend to start off aiming low and let the recoil stitch bullets upward.) Random dudes with Uzis or MAC-10s or AK-47s or whatever who just want to freak people out and aren't worried about doing loads of damage (or who just think that the more bullets in the air the better) set 'em on full-auto and go wild. This usually means lots of plaster falling from the ceiling and not a lot of people getting shot. Except, of course, for the dudes with the MAC-10s when the actual trained security forces arrive.
So, is this normal? Have I read too many gun nerd books? Is this, like an American-boy-who-grew-up-in-the-80's thing? Should I be interviewed on NPR talking about stuff that I thought I didn't really know much about? Should I play fewer RPGs and FPSes and maybe read a romance novel or a history book or something that doesn't involve shootin'? Hm. In my defense, I do also like kittens.
I was listening to NPR not long after the Mumbai shootings. They were talking with the investigators and one of them started saying something about how when they looked at the crime scene, they could see that the shots that had missed actual, you know, people were all in single shots or 3-shot bursts and mostly below head level. "What does that imply?" asked the interviewer.
Being a big expert (ha) on gun-type stuffs, and being the sort of person to talk back to the radio, I said, out loud, "Well, it means they were trained and knew what they were doing, not just random guys with assault rifles." A second later, the radio expert guy said, "It means they were trained and knew what they were doing," and went into a little discussion of recoil and the tendency for automatic weapons to ride upward when fired by people who don't know what they're doing and think full-auto is the way to go. Trained killers, you see, keep their MP5s (or whatever) set to 3-shot bursts and adjust their aim between bursts, since automatic weapons ride upward as you fire them. (Any firearms do, really, but it's more noticeable when it's something automatic than a single-shot pistol or rifle, and trained shooters can adjust for the recoil. And, uh, when I play shooty games with marginally realistic weapon behavior I tend to start off aiming low and let the recoil stitch bullets upward.) Random dudes with Uzis or MAC-10s or AK-47s or whatever who just want to freak people out and aren't worried about doing loads of damage (or who just think that the more bullets in the air the better) set 'em on full-auto and go wild. This usually means lots of plaster falling from the ceiling and not a lot of people getting shot. Except, of course, for the dudes with the MAC-10s when the actual trained security forces arrive.
So, is this normal? Have I read too many gun nerd books? Is this, like an American-boy-who-grew-up-in-the-80's thing? Should I be interviewed on NPR talking about stuff that I thought I didn't really know much about? Should I play fewer RPGs and FPSes and maybe read a romance novel or a history book or something that doesn't involve shootin'? Hm. In my defense, I do also like kittens.