Hershel Smith continues last week's discussion on following orders, with this instance on law enforcement. He thinks, and I agree, that most police and military would obey illegal orders, and would fire on civilians.
I read elsewhere that during WWII 85 percent of all riflemen the US deployed would not even fire their weapons at the enemy. That is an amazing statistic. I gather from that discussion that the other 15 percent would willingly fire their weapons and wound or kill an enemy in battle.
In the article today on wargames' treatment of WWI, it is said that that ratio is reversed primarily because of first person shooter (FPS) games, such as the Call of Duty series and Arma III. According to that article, shooting and killing an individual in FPS wargames has desensitized American riflemen to doing so in real life.
...
In Oklahoma City we have the case of a local attorney who shot and seriously wounded another individual in what is being touted as a bar fight Thursday night. The bar in question is a disco with a 1980s theme, meaning lots of old fellas and young girls in their 40s. The attorney, identified as Jay Silvernail went to his vehicle, retrieved a gun and shot another individual. A third party who was carrying a firearm, according to the early reports held Silvernail at gunpoint until the kops arrived.
Silvernail shot a client of his last year, but was neither jailed nor charged in that incident.
Now, let me posit that Silvernail despite all the justifications in the linked article has zero business firing his firearm on another individual. Until his gun came into play, there was no threat from a firearm, nor was there a threat to him personally. Acting in place of police he could have, as the third party eventually did to Silvernail, held the victim at gunpoint, but he didn't do that. He shot him.
Prices for pistol ammunition were mixed on the minus side. Prices for rifle ammunition were mixed.
Prices for both used pistols were mixed, while prices for used rifles were lower across the board.
Note: The previous two week long price spike for AR-10 semiautomatic rifles was arrested this week as prices moderated in Texas and Florida.
New Lows:
None
Pistol Ammunition
.45 Caliber, 230 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (8 Weeks)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Goose Island Sales, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Cased, .24 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Cased, .24 per round (From Last week: +.01 Each)
.40 Caliber Smith & Wesson, 180 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (4 Weeks)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Cheaper Than Dirt!, American Bullet, TMJ, Brass Casing, .20 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 1,000 rounds: Freedom Ammunition, Store Brand, RNFP, Brass Casing, .20 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (3 Weeks))
9mm Parabellum, 115 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (2 Weeks)
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Bud's Gun Shop, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .16 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 1,000 rounds: Freedom Ammunition, Store brand, FMJ, Brass Casing, .16 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (9 Weeks))
.357 Magnum, 158 Grain, From Last Week: -.02 Each
Cheapest, 50 rounds: Cheaper Than Dirt!, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .23 per round
Cheapest Bulk: 1,000 rounds: SG Ammo, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel cased, .25 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (4Q, 2015))
Rifle Ammunition
.223 Caliber/5.56mm 55 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (7 Weeks)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Hotshot, FMJ, Steel Casing, .21 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: Cheaper Than Dirt!, Tulammo, FMJ, steel casing, .21 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (4 Weeks))
.308 NATO 150 Grain, From Last Week: Unchanged (3 Weeks)
Cheapest, 20 rounds: LAX Ammunition, Tulammo, FMJ, Steel Casing, .37 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 500 rounds: J&G Sales, Tulammo, steel casing, FMJ, .34 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (8 Weeks))
7.62x39 AK 123 Grain, From Last Week: +.01 Each
Cheapest, 20 rounds: Top Gun Supply, Russian military, steel case, FMJ, .25 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 1,000 rounds: Ammunition To Go, Wolf WPA, steel case, FMJ, .22 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (4 weeks))
.22 LR 40 Grain, From Last Week: -.01 Each
Cheapest, 50 rounds (10 Boxes Max): Ammomen, CCI Blazer, RNL, .07 per round
Cheapest Bulk, 325 rounds (2 Cases Max): Natchez Shooters Supplies, Federal Automatch, RNL, .07 per round (From Last Week: Unchanged (5 Weeks))
#1
during WWII 85 percent of all riflemen the US deployed would not even fire their weapons at the enemy. That is an amazing statistic.
U.S. infantry all divisions were labeled by the Nazi commanders as shock troops. Japanese Imperial commanders ordered decimated units to attack U.S. lines ferociously and suicidal in bonsai assaults and were cut to pieces.
I asked one veteran how many of the enemy his unit killed on various missions and he looked at me like I was crazy for asking such a question and responded "ALL OF THEM!".
Infantry was so on the edge at times they accidentally shot their own people. You were not to leave your fox hole from dusk to dawn as anyone crawling around out there in the dark would be cut to pieces.
#3
I read elsewhere that during WWII 85 percent of all riflemen the US deployed would not even fire their weapons at the enemy. That is an amazing statistic. I gather from that discussion that the other 15 percent would willingly fire their weapons and wound or kill an enemy in battle.
(I'd post the links to Amazon, but my two prior attempts with links failed)
The author is S.L.A. Marshall. The book is Men Against Fire.
It's an airborne unit deployed on line to cover their front near Normandy. The men are individually separated by 10 feet and the attack is at night.
However, he would follow up with a study in Korea, Infantry Operations Weapons Usage in Korea in which he recorded a significant increase in firing. Tactical doctrine and emphasized had changed. Men were paired up (you may not shoot to save your own life, but you will to protect your those of your 'hunting group'). Officers and NCOs were directing fire, as in smack them in the back to the helmet if necessary and point to where the individual should shoot.
#8
Yes, that's the first book TW. I used the short cut icon in the comment window for linkage to do the links. For some reason when I hit submit, it would not go through. Process worked on the comment in the WWI game posted article. Can't figure out why one worked and the others didn't.
[IsraelTimes] The Shiite terror group, most unusually, is not accusing Israel of assassinating Mustafa Badreddine, killed in Damascus. So who did it?
We are conducting an investigation to find out the circumstances of the kaboom ‐ whether it was caused by an aerial assault, artillery strike or a rocket. We will publish our findings soon.
-- Hezbollah spokesman
Mustafa Badreddine, the heir to Imad Mughniyeh as Hezbollah’s terror chief, had no shortage of enemies.
He's doing everything possible to degrade the office of the President, and we still have seven long, hard months to go.
President Obama’s Twitter account, which is run by his "Organizing for Action" staff, follows 636,000 accounts. Many of them you might expect: Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry. Even Mariah Carey and Snoop Dogg don't really raise an eyebrow. But several accounts on the presidential follow list fit a different theme: Asa Akira, a porn star who has 653,000 followers and, in her Twitter bio, states "I have an award-winning asshole." Joanna Angel (390,000 followers), who describes herself as a "multiple award winning punk porno princess;" Penthouse Pet Of The Year Nikki Benz (808,000 followers); and Ashley Steel (138,000 followers), who writes that she is a "Porn Star, Doggy mama, Happiness Junkie, XXX Model, Buddhist, & Total nerd."
The new trailer for Battlefield 1 (the counterintuitive sequel to Battlefield 4) was released this week to overwhelmingly positive reviews. It was so well liked, in fact, that it garnered the distinction of being the most popular trailer in YouTube history.
But while players were stoked for a game set in World War 1, a setting rarely touched by the genre, culture critics in the media and on Twitter found it in poor taste. After decades of ultra-violent video games depicting all sorts of travesties, apparently WW1 is the line in the sand for some critics.
Guardian writer Alex Hern asks if it’s wrong to set a war game in the trenches of WW1, before answering it with an implied yes. “Asking whether the first world war is an appropriate topic for a first-person shooter may reveal a more pressing question: why do we think any war is?” Hern says.
“A game set in the Great War will necessarily whitewash the horrors of trench warfare. Even when games do tenderly address these subjects, they rarely do so through the medium of 64v64 class-based combat.”
Boy howdy, good thing that WWII was less gory than WWI, huh Mr. Hern...
Hern seems to let on that he does not actually like war games, a genre people usually play not to learn the nuances of war but for entertainment. Yes, it will be impossible to realistically portray trench warfare in a multiplayer game. There’s not the player density to pin each side down in their trench, with certain death for those stuck in no man’s land. The players will not be able to organize coordinated charges without a leadership structure. Twenty-minute match times aren’t enough to develop trench foot.
But that doesn’t mean some version of the war should not be translated into a game.
While Battlefield 1 will partially take place in the trenches, its developers made a point to include many variant fronts in the war. The Italian Alps, Arabian desserts and the forests of the Eastern Front will lend themselves better to the fast pace of multiplayer.
Wired’s Jake Muncy had similar reservations. “This might sound like an exciting new frontier for the genre, but there’s a reason WW1 has long been no-man’s land for developers: It was a quagmire of death and disease that turned strategy into slaughter, with no handy narrative of heroism to layer gameplay atop.”
Where was Muncy during the launch of the thousands of Vietnam games? While the carnage and death tolls of the two wars don’t compare, it’s not the first time games have been set in pointlessly destructive wars. Besides World War 2, most modern wars were quagmires. We didn’t see people tiptoeing around video game depictions of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Probably the most naval-gazing criticism came from radical SJW Jonathan McIntosh. You may know him as the guy who led a Twitter mob after Joss Whedon, causing the director to quit Twitter for the crime of putting a Black Widow-Hulk love plot in Avengers 2.
“Everybody about WW1 was horrific, brutal and tragic,” he writes. But that’s true of most wars. So is hell for that matter, the setting for the popular Doom franchise. That does not mean it won’t make a good video game.
In a long Twitter screed, McIntosh even parroted ’90s fears of violent video games leading to real life violence. He took an argument straight from Jack Thompson, a Florida lawyer who spent his career in a losing battle against “amoral” video games until he was disbarred for misconduct.
The problem with these critics assumptions about Battlefield 1 is they treat a game as some definitive source of knowledge regarding the war. Obviously it won’t perfectly capture how terrible it felt to be bombed to hell inside a trench just like FIFA doesn’t teach you how it feels to win a World Cup.
If I want to learn about the war, I’ll watch a Ken Burns documentary. If I want to dogfight in biplanes, flamethrower some Germans and run over people in antiquated tanks, I’ll play me some Battlefield 1.
#1
A writer for the Left Wing Guardian huh. Another Social Justice warrior trying to revive Gamer Gate. Trying desperately to keep history on their side and signal their virtue. Meanwhile they couldn't make a popular game if their lives depended on it.
Posted by: Chaith Oppressor of the Lutherans1517 ||
05/14/2016 2:50 Comments ||
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#3
never underestimate the Left's willingness to beat a dead horse. Or willingness to back a dead horse, for that matter.
Remember that a big part of virtue signaling is therapy for for the signaler. These [gender indeterminate descriptor] are prone to being a mess mentally.
The sad part is, when this line of rhetoric blows up in their faces, the best possible outcome will be a church-lady-esque "Nevermind"
#6
Interesting link, Raj. I never realized Ken Burns was such a douche.
Still, credit where credit is due, he *is* responsible for the Ken Burns Effect, that slow pan across a still photograph that fools you into thinking something insightful is happening. As in this episode of American Experience, for example.
#7
I think the reason there has never been a WW1 game was not because of the carnage but because nobody had found a way to make trench warfare fun. They apparently have figured that out now.
#8
Their can only one Raj, but that's okay,
And I just remembered I can't make a link with iOS, but that's okay, things are different now, not better but different, is it me or was the Sunday Joint better before 1972? The roast beef was better as well.
#9
Thing is, all the Battlefield games play about the same in multi-player mode. They have to because each character and weapons package has to be balanced. If not, nobody plays.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/14/2016 20:26 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
