Grrl Power #327 – Ask a self evident question…
I’ve had this page in my head practically since I started the comic. Its tough to sit on them for that long, but it just made more sense to have it happen on the second day at the earliest. Granted, Sydney had to play along a little. I don’t mean she immediately understands what Maxima’s doing and rolls with it, I mean she specifically had to not get it in order for the gag to work, so I sort of poke fun at that with the “going to keep staring this direction” word bubble.
Normally Maxima doesn’t make a habit of pointing her gun at recruits, and obviously Sydney will be taught never to point a gun at anyone unless there’s a pretty good chance she’ll need to shoot them, but I thought I’d say that Max gets away with it because besides outranking everyone, her finger isn’t on the trigger naturally, and more importantly, her pistol is single shot break action and she doesn’t keep it loaded. With her speed, she can load it faster than most people can cock a hammer. She can even do it one handed, just let go of the gun in mid air and pop a bullet in the chamber before it has a chance to fall more than a centimeter.
There was no way to make this a single page comic. If I really had to I maybe could have cut 3 of the panels and maybe even combined the first two, but it would have lost something and still wouldn’t have fit on a single page, so it had to be a double. Unfortunately it put me two days behind and I’m not caught up yet because of A-kon, though fortunately I didn’t fall any further behind. I still have my buffer but I will probably never actually use up my buffer. That’s for like if I break my hand or something. Not that I have enough of a buffer to ride that out, I just don’t want to use it up if for no other reason than it would take me about 4 weeks to get an extra page ahead again. That’s why I haven’t updated the vote incentive yet this month. I do have two pieces that are half finished I could use but I’d like to have them a little further along before I post them.
I’m mostly pleased with the art on this page, (I could nitpick nearly all of it of course because artists are hyper self critical like that) so maybe it’s dumb, but my favorite panel is the one with the ballistics gel dummy. It just really looks like ballistics gel to me, especially with the old bullets and the spawled trails behind them.
The firing range BTW is in the basement, one level above the garage where the machine shop and the few ground vehicles the team uses are kept. Regular parking is in a proper parking garage next to the building
Here’s the link to the new comments highlighter for chrome, and the GitHub link which you can use to install on FireFox via Greasemonkey.
Okay, always a second, third and fourth guess to good stuff, but another way to have done it was to have Peggy, the non-super, already pointing a gun behind Sydney’s head before Sydney turned around. That would have been a greater contrast between perception and level of threat (yeah, okay, either one kills, but level of overkill then). Pure Monday morning quarterbacking, but sharing the same.
Most people think thats what the scissors paper rock between them was about
I disagree. Sidney’s question was, (briefly) “Why should supers who can blow up tanks with their hands carry guns?” Peggy is a non-super, who cannot blow up tanks with her finger. No one questions why SHE would carry a gun.
While you’re mentioning it though, I was thoroughly confused by the hand-signing in panel 3. Is that supposed to be a game of Rock-paper-scissors? I suppose it could be…
It was, yes.
Besides which it nicely demonstrated how Sydney WASN’T threatened by the finger. She thought Max was pointing at something, even though that finger had just nearly blown up the building.
I just thought of something absolutely hilarious, what with the advent of the new Fallout game coming up and all. Sydney with a Pip-Boy. Knowing her, she’d probably end up beating people over the head with it, rather than using it productively. That, or getting into all sorts of V.A.T.S.-related shenanigans.
Maybe that’s what her mystery orb does. It does a V.A.T.S. like thing where time slows down for everyone but her.
*Fallout nerd activated* Actually, it would just speed up her reaction and processing speed to the point where everything else looked like it was going in slow motion. That’s what V.A.T.S. does. It doesn’t slow everything else down, it just speeds the user’s mind up. Anyways, it would be a neat idea, but I’m not sure how Sydney’s ADHD mind would react to it. Hell, I’m not sure how my own ADHD mind would react. Man, that’s a scary thought. Sydney with V.A.T.S.
Sydney is not a licensed medical practitioner, she should not conduct Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery!
Although, I grant, that using the telepresence and tentacle orb, and in an emergency, or survival situation, she could have a go. Trouble is it would only work if Halo was operating on a whale, the tentacle is not fine enough for the work otherwise. Unless it can get really teeny. Sydney, check your buttons on the orb!
But, plus side, her tele-self may well be luminescent. Failing that, she could strap a light, on her forehead, to ensure that the image, likewise, had a light-source. A miniature Halo image would be best, if she also has an enshrinkener icon, on the truesight orb. But, if not, she could just lean her virtual head into the chest.
So, yea, not a bad suggestion. ;-)
What if one of her orbs works like the Prince of Persia time rewind function…?
Not to mention that guns are the less lethal option when compared to exploding lazerbeams.
There is no such thing as “less lethal”. The only difference is in how many pieces there are left to pick up. Dead is dead, no matter what kills you.
“Less lethal” means having a lower chance of killing you. Getting tazed is less lethal than getting shot by a twenty-two, which in turn is less lethal than being hit by Maxima’s energy blast. Each has a chance of killing you, but some are more likely than others.
Two words: Collateral damage.
Scraps of Hope: Orphanage and Bunny rehab.
One word: overpenetration. Sometimes you wanna use something that doesn’t consider a main battle tank to be “concealment” rather than cover.
Overpenetraiton always remind me about the rpg game traveller. In it there are a potrable bfg plasma cannon dat soldier can carry with them ( if they use battle armor ) troble is fire the cannon cause leathel level of gama radiation around the gunner and target. Second problem the cannon is design to destroy tanks and starships.
Its to deadly to use in normal battle and a fun way for the game master to suprise the players.
Dr. Revenge I know that you are thoroughly familiar with firearms and so are bothered by breaking basic gun safety rules. Those who mentioned training are quite correct. I have personally used the m.i.l.e.s gear which does require you to point a weapon loaded with blanks directly at a friendly and squeeze the trigger. The final step in bayonet training has the soldiers actually fighting with rifles equipped with a sheathed bayonet. That is the problem with absolutes. No rule is right 100% of the time or at least it is not the only way to handle the situation. I have not personally been trained in close quarters combat involving a firearm but I think that an instructor in such a class would have to point guns at his students and have them point guns at him. In this case it could be argued that Sydney needs a lesson emphasized this way for it to really sink in.
I would also like to respond to all those who claim we are conditioned to respond to a gun in a certain way. If someone pointed a gun at me my immediate response would be to attempt to disarm and disable them if they were close enough. In this case though it is Maxima pointing the gun which would make that response impossible.
still not cool with hero’s with gun unless your deadpool or the punisher and they kill people hero with guns always do it sort of comic law these days just saying
Understood. And the risk is heightened by the setting being ‘real world plus super powers’. In the real world cops, and soldiers, do get killed by guns.
Here Sydney is being taught how to make herself a credible threat, by showing she is ready and able to kill. The flip side of that coin is that she is also making herself a target, as a result.
The advantages that Halo has is her shield is bullet proof and then some. Provided she has it raised, of course. Likewise most, but not all, of Arc-SWAT have strong defensive capability. And, to top it all off, they all have the kevlar+ body armour.
All of which go to reducing the risks. But, you are right that they do not go away. And we are likely to see injuries. Some, like Heatwave’s foot and Jiggawatt’s hearing impairment, may be permanent. And even fatalities are a credible prospect.
What we do know though is that Dave will not allow the comic to be dragged into the doom and gloom introspection that has plagued modern comics, over that. He has explicitly stated that as his intent. Like any police or military unit, they will grieve for their lost comrade(s) and then get back to doing their duty.
The plus side though is that it does serve to heighten any tension, that we the readers will feel, if a protagonist, or any character, for that matter, is at risk. They might well be injured or die. And, unlike all too many super stories, I am certain that they will not be coming back. That would only cheapen death.
“not be coming back”
Which, however, does not rule out clones, time travel, or alternates from parallel universes. And leave us not forget a hero faking his or her own death in order to fool an enemy. And lastly, seeing the hero die, only to find out it was actually an imposter that had infiltrated the organization and was stopped moments before carrying out their diabolical plan.
This is a comic after all. :)
…. But you wouldn’t wanna bet your life (or that of a loved one) on that.
Noting that the major comics have been kind of stepping back from the resurrection deal for a while now.- it has been hugely over-used down through the years, after all.
I suspect that the thing now is to only kill majors off imemdiately before or during the universe “reboots” that seem to be a regular thing now.
Yes, a death in the “family” doesn´t mean dark, brooding heroes from there on out.
Love and Capes killed of one of the heroes (with little to no chance of resurrection) and, yes… Life goes on. It sucks for a while, but nonetheless.
Well bear in mind, no pun intended, that for these folks the guns are Purely to make a person WANT to surrender. By giving them a recognizable threat. Max can do more damage than any man portable weapon known.
Problem is sometimes you just don’t want a grease stain.
The Phantom
I have been seeing a lot of discussion about the impracticality of Maxima’s gun, as well as the fact that it’s irrelevant in the first place given what she’s capable of. Not here, of course, but since this page addresses the issue, I figure it’s a good spot to put it. This page serves to illustrate part of why I think she carries it (people recognize a gun as dangerous, but don’t connect something as simple as pointing as being far more dangerous), but I want to put forward another: intimidation. First, a link:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NjlCVW_ouL8
The video in question is from Stargate SG1, and illustrates the difference between a weapon designed to intimidate and a weapon designed to kill.
Now, multiple people who know about guns have commented about the impracticality of the weapon based on designs drawn by Dave, and I’m not going to argue with them. However, the thing to understand is that Maxima’s firearm isn’t designed to be practical. It’s designed to intimidate people. The size of the weapon itself is enough to scare people; however, it’s also stated somewhere (unfortunately, I don’t remember where) that Maxima carries the thing around unloaded. If the weapon was meant to be used as a weapon of war (to use the video’s terminology), that would be a stupid move. If, on the other hand, the weapon was designed to scare the living bajeezus out of people, having people watch as you load a round the size of a roll of quarters into it is going to do the job. As a weapon of war, her weapon isn’t particularly effective, but as a weapon of intimidation, it does an excellent job.
I always thought that was a great scene. A little “n’yah n’yah humans are better than aliens” moment.
Also like I said, Max can load her gun in a fraction of a second. She also carries around multiple types of ammo (though not a lot of each round since they’re so large) and she’ll use the gun situationally, so keeping it empty makes it so she doesn’t have to unload it before reloading it with the correct ammo. Again that wouldn’t be much of an inconvenience for her since she can do it so quickly, but it also makes it that much harder for someone to try and grab her gun and misuse it (ignoring the monstrous trigger pull)
Re: the gun: I get what you guys are saying, and it makes sense. However, the size of the weapon and the (assumed) size of the rounds it fires does make it pretty intimidating. Guess that’s where I got the idea that it’s a weapon of intimidation instead of a weapon of war.
Re: the scene: to me, that scene isn’t a ‘Humans are better’ moment; instead, to me, it’s a ‘We may be primitive, but that doesn’t mean we don’t know what we’re doing’ moment.
But humans are better!
They give me walkies, tummy rubs and Scooby snax!
Have a scooby snack.
I’d give you a tummy rub, but it would turn out more like a chest rub. Y’see, I also happen to be a male & I tend to avoid a male dog’s tummy, for one obvious reason…
Human are definitely better… Buuurp! ::wipes drool off face::
Oh, definitely! I just loooove children especially! Medium rare is best.
I love kids, but I couldn’t eat a whole one.
I could eat a whole one, but not in a single sitting…There would be leftovers for later.
I would find a large caliber single action revolver of the .454, .475, .480 or .500 calibers more terrifying myself. In addition to having a bore the size of a subway tunnel someone looking down the business end can also see the meplats of the bullets in the chambers and they look HUGE.
If you check the author’s blog above, for this page, you will see why Maxima keeps it unloaded. She is fast enough to be able to load it, as she is drawing it, without slowing down. Don’t forget that we have seen her speed in action, when she grabbed a bullet, between her fingers, before it hit Sydney.
You are right that Maxima is not likely to need the weapon, given her capabilities. But, if she does, it is not just a bluff. In the meantime though, because it is never loaded, there is no risk of an accidental discharge.
Accidental discharge is almost always the result of operator error. That’s not really an issue with Max, I’d say it’s more a detterant against a disarm. If it’s loaded and you get it you only get one shot. You can also load fiendishly huge rifle rounds in a *pistol* That’s the draw with the Thompson contender, this is a similar idea.
I had a character in the Champions RPG that was a very strong brick, but didn’t look like it. So she carried a big handgun which was written up as a Presence Attack.
The laser on Maxima’s pistol deserves some thought, I think. It should be capable of more than shining a bright red “gotcha” dot on some villains’s shirt. Leon could have easily rigged that laser with her GPS to let Max ping range and bearing to spots she wants marked for attention. Those marks could then instantly pop up on everyone’s map displays. Take that, fog of war! She could also paint targets for laser guided stuff to find, if she ever feels the need. Anyway, my point is that it’s probably a lot more useful than your average laser sight, because Archon. Best not tease the kittehs with it, just yet.
“Nuclear Launch detected.”
Well lasers often are used for “sit down, shut up” purposes as well. It’s also VERY incapacitating when you put it on the bridge of someone’s nose. You can’t see anything but red.
I hope we get to see Maxima going to her photo shoot. Even if we will be seeing one with Sydney too, eventually, I am sure they will be very different. Especially as I would see that gaming and comic companies would be pushing heavily to be the ones to get the Halo gig. Whereas Maxima is likely to have both the serious press and fashion industry clamouring, the most, for hers.
Maybe the company doing Maxima’s shoot will bring in the super barber, from the Cah Pahk fight, for the added publicity? If we are lucky.
Now you have me imagining what costume Sydney will end up wearing in her photo shoot. Ghost Buster overalls and proton pack? MIB suit? Star Trek uniform? Slave princess Leia? Xena? Lara Croft? Samus? She has already shown a fondness for Wonder woman with her shirt from ‘yesterday’.
I like how Sydney not only puts up her shield. She grabs a table to hide behind PLUS puts up her shield.
Way to be thorough, Sydney.
Bad, very bad. One of the primary rules (if not the first rule) is NEVER point a gun at someone unless you actually mean to fire it, even as a joke. Having a superior officer do it to a newb is just wrong. The reason I would have given that they carry weapons, is you never know when something could happen to make you LOSE YOUR powers.
You may want to check out the author’s blog above.
Note that the military have to point guns at each other, when conducting training. Which is what was happening here. It was not a joke.
But, of course, your point is very well made for all other circumstances.
I would like to point out that if it was a Nerf zombie revolver my kids react exactly as she does (and I will always try to get them too)
I’m sorry to be nitpicky here, but if the point of the gun is intimidation, and not for her to actually fire it, then why not give them all prop guns, then they could be even more intimidating, due to not actually needing to work, and you never have to give sydney a loaded gun, or, for a non-sydney based argument, those that don’t need guns don’t have to do maintanence and cleaning, as it’s not required to be in working order. So long as it still looks sufficiantly “Gun-like” is there any practicable reason they need to work when they have more efficient weapons available? Now if they were stun guns of some type, to give them an actual non-leathal takedown, especially given what we’ve seen, but given we’ve already seen at least one bad guy, not to mention maxima, against who guns just wouldn’t work. (i’m thinking of the speedster, rather than the concrete lady), working guns seem a little superfluous. Not to mention that it could be spun as irrisponsible, or at least a waste of funds. I’m thoroughly enjoying the comic, please don’t think i’m trying to bring it down, the thought processes have just been so good within it’s continuity that i guess the bar has been raised a bit for me.
One reason not to use prop guns is simply that people would (eventually) learn that they were prop guns, which would negate the intimidation factor.
Also, if the backup weapon to your super powers is a prop gun, that could lead to a bad situation if you end up actually needing said gun.
Also, they are military/police, so giving them real guns is an inherent part of the budget.
Prop guns cannot fire warning shots.
Plus they might need to use the guns to kill villains. We already saw, in the cah pahk fight, that some supers attacks are ineffective against some opponents. Having a gun gives them an extra option. Whilst Halo is less likely to need that, than most, it is better that she be trained and armed, in case the need should arise.
Further some foes might be immune to practically any attack. But, if they do have a weakness, Arc-SPARQ may be able to manufacture custom kryptonite ammunition.
The ‘skivvies’ on Mr.Gel, priceless. Also, an excellent job depicting ballistic gel. Still laughing….
Well done!
love the look on Arianna’s face.
Sorry if someone mentioned it already, then I might have to +1 my search skills.
I can see how Maximas strategy would be beneficial in some circumstances. But there is one loophole: speedsters. A powerful speedster can avoid bullets or catch them, but they can still be used to keep them occupied. Military folks call this “fire and motion”. (And evil marketing folks adapted the term as well.) But if the gun has to be loaded first, Maxima is at a disadvantage. Sure, she could fire her finger of doom, but as mentioned elsewhere, she might not want to.
Now this might sound like a stretch to imagine such a situation, but as far as we have seen, being a speedster does not seem to be rare. Do the benefits of carrying as she does really outweigh the drawbacks? I am not 100% convinced. But then I am not an experienced gold-plated war veteran superhero. Heck, I do not even own a gun.
Maxima is a five star speeder, with her dial on the right setting. So, even if they are the fastest ever encountered, she is still in the same ballpark herself. But you do not use a gun against a top end speeder, in any case. Like Maxima, they can just walk around the bullet.
Mind you Dave has acknowledged, elsewhere, that speeders are one of the most powerful types of hero going. Should there be one that is faster than her, she will have a challenge on her hands, true enough. Anything less than that though, and she can just punch them in the face.
Every time I re-read GP comics I spot new things; Dave does an amazing job putting in all the little details. When I read it this time, I looked at the second panel, bottom row, and thought “Why is there a ballgag on the floor?”
Then I realized it was the hearing protection earmuffs.
Hmm, I read that as the items being in mid-air, as the table is hurriedly overturned, rather than on the floor.
Also I’d say sometimes using something that pretty much makes Tank Confetti will be overkill when a bullet will do just fine.
An email I received today. For both entertainment and educational purposes.
MY SHOT GUN
Today I swung my front door wide open and placed my Remington 12 gauge semi-auto shotgun right in the doorway. I left 9 shells beside it, then left it alone and went about my business. While I was gone, the mailman delivered my mail, the neighbor boy across the street mowed the yard, a girl walked her dog down the street, and quite a few cars stopped at the stop sign near the front of my house. After about an hour, I checked on the gun. It was still sitting there, right where I had left it. It hadn’t moved itself. It certainly hadn’t killed anyone, even with the numerous opportunities it had presented to do so. In fact, it hadn’t even loaded itself.
Well you can imagine my surprise, with all the hype by the Left and the Media about how dangerous guns are and how they kill people.
Either the media is wrong, or I’m in possession of the laziest gun in the world.
The United States is third in Murders throughout the World. But if you take out just four cities: Chicago, Detroit, Washington, DC and New Orleans, the United States is fourth from the bottom, in the entire world, for Murders! These four Cities also have the toughest Gun Control Laws in the U. S. All four of these cities are controlled by Democrats. It would be absurd to draw any conclusions from this data – right?
Well, I’m off to check on my spoons. I hear they’re making people fat.
The four cities listed hade a total of 1,083 murders in 2011. Total murders for 2011 in the United States were 14,612. The 1,083 is only 7.4% of the total. This is not enough of a change to move the position of the United States international standing on the rate of murder very much, let alone from the mythical “third from the top” to the equally mythical “4th from the bottom”.
The States with the highest gun murder rate per capita are Louisiana, Missouri, and Maryland. All three have Republican Governors. Cute stories are nice, but facts are required to actually solve problems.
New Orleans is the leader in murder rate for the state of Louisiana, and has a Democratic Mayor, Mitch Landrieu. Can’t tell you anything about Missouri or Maryland since I don’t live there.
The educational part of the story is to inform you that a gun, by itself, is nothing. Without a human being to pick it up, load and use it, it is just a funny shaped door stop. The problems are with the people, not the tools.
*walks by with a halo wrapped tightly, around mouth, forming a muzzle*
Thought bubble:
“I hope anifreik notices how restrained I am being.”
*wags tail*
I would contest the description of ‘tool’ for such an object. The term that the dictionary would have you use is ‘weapon’.
A weapon, by definition, *is* a tool, smartass.
True, but it is a SPECIALIZED tool, and that specialization is relevant. Saying ‘a gun is only a tool’ suggests that the task it is designed to aid is innocuous, such as driving a screw, or embedding a nail in wood, or prying open a crate. Deliberate killing and/or injury is not innocuous. Those tasks stand apart from other tasks, and the things designed explicitly to aid them stand apart from other tools.
I wholeheartedly agree that the problem is with the people… Which is exactly why they can’t be trusted with guns!
Those are some very pretty statistics you’ve got there, ani. Did it take you long to cherry pick them, or did someone else do it for you?
& I’m pretty sure aboo just accused you of outright lying… are you gonna just sit there & take that?
0_o
that shouldn’t be bold like that…
Did anyone else notice that the shield orb is suddenly rather more….purple…now? Any speculations as to why? My thought is it has a level-up or other message waiting for Sydney to notice and receive/acknowledge.
thank you
A thought on your buffer – if you do a page that’s a cut over to Deus and Happyfunevil Industries Inc. gang chugging along on their agendas you can hold it to drop in at any time you’re nursing a broken hand …up until you have to use it for it to still be relevant. Which meets the needs for that week and gives you a chance to work on your next floating buffer. Maybe a page showing where Vehemence is incarcerated and the precautions being taken. Stuff that’s interesting but only loosely chronologically linked.
What?
Seriously, I don’t get it.
what the purpose of the gun?
A recognizable threat.
Maxima demonstrates the fact that she can utterly destroy a man from lifting a single finger, and then turns that finger on Sydney and she didn’t react.
She points the massive gun at Sydney and she becomes utterly terrified.
Do we know what caliber Maxima’s gun is?
And while Dave does point out that Maxima can fire and reload before most people can pull back a hammer, I still say a single shot break action is impractical to say the least.
At the same time there has to be SOME way to utilize Maxima’s insane speed. It’s more than likely that any semi-automatic would fire slower than Maxima can with that thing, and single-hand-capable automatic weaponry has a tendency to lack accuracy.
This has been discussed before and if my memory doesn’t fail me it her gun chambers a round called .577 Tyrannosaur or .577 T-Rex.
This is an existing cartridge intended for the guides who accompany big game hunters. As such it’s not a sporting round. It’s intended to take down any animal that charges after the hunter manages to wound it. So when an enraged elephant bull comes charging the guide with the T-Rex rifle is the last defense, and overkill is considered a feature.
Oh and automatic pistols are not inherently inaccurate. Most any pistol you can buy will be far more accurate than what 99% of the owners are capable of. Put the gun in a vice and it will print tight groups even at range, but put in the hands of most shooters they will still appear inaccurate.
The problems with shooting a pistol at longer ranges are the short sight radius (the distance between rear and front sight), the lack of multiple points of support, and a lack of velocity. Follow up shots suffer as recoil is relatively high when compared to rifles with similar ballistics.
When going to an extreme cartridge such as the .577 T-Rex a single shot or double barrel break action is really the only practical design. The round is far to large to fit in a magazine that goes into the grip, and if you put it in front of the trigger then the gun will become ridiculously long for a pistol. The same can be said for a revolver design as the cylinder would have to be very long and quite large to accommodate at least four cartridges.
As the .577 T-Rex was designed for rifles there’s a few things to think of when using it in a pistol. With a regular rifle load there will be an enormous muzzle flash and the velocity will suffer from the short barrel. So it’s likely that Max has had Peggy work out a load using pistol powder and primers that will burn much faster and push the pressures far beyond the range of scary and well into terrifying. A single shot design can relatively easily be adapted to take insane pressures, and higher pressure means the bullet will travel faster, drop less over the same range, and hit harder. The muzzle blast will be much smaller, but don’t worry it will still be stupendously impressive, but the report will actually be higher and the velocity quite a bit higher.
But no matter what you do Maxima can do more damage with her little finger than any pistol that’s small enough that she can comfortably carry it in a holster.
I don’t get what point Max was trying to make here. *My* argument would be that guns serve as a historically reliable, lightweight, and unobtrusive backup weapon, and that there are a lot of cases where using your powers would be overkill. Max doesn’t seem to arguing either of those things, and whatever she *is* trying to demonstrate has gone right over my head.
Well, now I know her point, and it’s a good one, but I still feel like it wasn’t quite as salient as the above.
Personally, I wouldn’t be so comfortable with her pointing a finger at me… but then I don’t expect she even needs to point a finger. Maxima can probably just shoot beams out of any point of her skin at will… so even being near her is horribly dangerous.
If her finger was pointed at my face that close (frame 9), I probably would have licked it like a puppy.
Once.
Quickly, and cursory.
Maxima may be more effective at blowing your head off than a gun, but the gun still makes a much clearer threat.
I have to say I am astonished, nay, shocked!, that no one mentioned that great scene in the book Snowcrash.
It’s a scene that perfectly explains the above – the Deliverator (pizza delivery guy, honest!) muses about how much easier his deliveries are now that he ditched that company-sponsored tiny little disintegrator gun for his badass Katana swords.
No one believes a tiny little toy gun could do any harm unless they see it firsthand. Anyone will believe that the 2 meter hunk dual wielding swords means business.
(Not sure if he’s really 2 meter, but if someone is drawing razor sharp swords in front of you, you’re probably not going to argue about specifics.)
I’m reminded of my days in the Air Force:
When learning base defense and basic fire arms, a member of my flight asked the question: What do we do if the potential intruder doesn’t speak English?
The instructors response has stuck with me to this very day, and likely will for the rest of my life…
” -Cocks the slide- sounds the same in any language.”
Knowing how this plays out, I do wonder what they would have done if Peggy had won the rock-paper-scissors. Thanks to rules, doing it any other way would be questionable.
Caliber of this firearm? Ammunition? Or is this just a generic modified G17 using 9mm? 7.62x25mm is better…
Zeus almighty is that a pistol or a handheld shotgun O.O