Thursday

[ksmith]

Tomorrow I take Mickey to the big vet clinic for his ultrasound. He's to have no food after midnight, which I would guess means they're going to put him under?

Poor little guy. He's trying to sleep now, but I think I have Peter Murphy playing too loudly. Bad Dogmom me.

Thinking about things. After the TWA 800 disaster, one of the local shock jock radio stations received lots of calls from the usual gang of chest-thumping pencil-dicks, describing how they would have freed themselves from their seats after the explosion, found whatever life rafts or other flotation devices they could, and survived the crash into the ocean. No, the situation can't really compare with what happened at VT. Simple physics would've removed all judgment from the TWA 800 equation. The reality of what happens to a human body that is held immobile in a metal tube while shockwaves rocket through soft tissue.

Now others of that same ilk are going on about what they perceive as the cowardly inaction of the men of VT. God, are we ever going to get past this wanking bluster bullshit? Are the realists going to retake the hill anytime soon?

Really good comment by Old Jarhead, #84 in today's makinglight thread. The rest of the post is quite good, as well.

I took a private investigations course in 1996. The instructor told us that he had carried a licensed firearm for years, and had only taken it out of his holster once. He didn't fire it at that time. I think he and Old Jarhead would have gotten along.

Comments

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

While I agree that it's wanking bluster bullshit, I do have to wonder exactly what was going on. A 9mm is a deadly gun, but even the freaking NYPD have a hard time killing a suspect unless they unload a full clip at him. Thirty people in a single rampage? That's some damned accurate shooting, Tex, especially given that most of the victims were young and healthy. I'm waiting to hear that he was using some extra-lethal ammo.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Speaking from what I've gleaned in discussions with others, and reading--please, someone with more experience, feel free to wade in--there's a prime distance--6-8 feet?--where even an inexperienced shooter can do a lot of damage. Also, we don't know what folks were doing as he shot--even a few seconds of shocked stillness could allow for several fatalities. How big were these classrooms, and how many people were in them? Crowding? Running into each other and tripping over desks in panic? He's in front of the door--they can't run past him. We could be talking fish in a barrel.

He could have been using juiced ammo. You're right, a lot of questions. No one mentioned how much, if any, practice on the range he did.

[pmrabble.livejournal.com]

Coverage tonight showed he had OMG number of rounds of hollow point. This was serious premeditation.....

[thecurlyboy.livejournal.com]

Based on personal experience, I'd say your 6-8 feet against moving targets is in the right range. At those ranges, given typical muzzle velocities and someone running full speed perpendicular to your line of fire, you're only going to be off 1.5-2 inches from whatever you were pointed at when the bullet was fired. Assuming you are inexperienced and have your gun pointed at the middle of your target's torso, and using an average-thickness torso, you're still going to get a solid hit and do significant damage at that range.

I could probably do some more math, throw some statistical magic together and put together a paper on it taking into account a lot more, but ...

Or not. Now that I'm looking at it, that's creepy. Sorry.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Not really. I think about things like this sometimes.

A Writer Who Shall Remain Nameless told a story about how she and a friend worked out how to poison vast amounts of food in a grocery store.

It's parasitic, in a way. But it's what we do.