Blackmoor Vituperative

FUN FACT! In 2019 in the USA, 89 law enforcement officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents (48 officers as a result of felonious acts; 41 in accidents). In 2019 in the USA, police officers killed 1,099 civilians.

While we discuss the practicality of “defund the police”, can we go ahead and start with “disarm the police”? Police do not need to be armed. Their job is less dangerous than that of high voltage electricians, roofers, truck drivers, and construction workers, among others.

You don’t need a gun or chemical weapons for a traffic stop.
You don’t need a gun or chemical weapons to collect statements from witnesses.
You don’t need a gun or chemical weapons to respond to a noise complaint.
You don’t need a gun or chemical weapons to respond to a shoplifting complaint.

DISARM THE POLICE.

The École Polytechnique massacre (French: tuerie de l’École polytechnique), also known as the Montreal massacre, was a mass shooting in Montreal at an engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal. Fourteen women were murdered and a further fourteen people were injured: ten women and four men.

The murderer stated that he was “fighting feminism”. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history.

You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.

For example, if you are vocal in your defense of the Second Amendment as a bulwark against tyranny, but you also voted for, and continue to support, a vulgar habitual liar who has expressed nothing but contempt for the US Constitution and the limits of his legitimate authority, it is clear what you do when confronted with tyranny, and you did it without using a firearm: you support it. You even buy the hat.

If I hadn’t just dropped way too much money on a couple of courses, I would seriously consider picking up one of these. I haven’t bought (or even wanted to buy) a new firearm in years, but this is a really neat design. I don’t hunt, so the fact it wouldn’t be legal to hunt with is not important to me.

I typically have DVDs or something from Netflix streaming in the background while I work. As it happens, today I am running through the Universal Frankenstein movies. The movie currently running is Bride Of Frankenstein, which is actually my favorite of the series.

So I am typing away, adding validation to web forms (not a sexy project, but important nonetheless), and I notice that the sound of howling hounds is really loud. I stop and listen, and then I pause the DVD — the howling continues. The howling is coming from the woods behind Castle Blackmoor, out toward the creek that feeds the moors. Curious, I went outside to look and see what was doing all of this howling.

I got to the edge of the path which leads off down to the outpost, and the howling stopped. Not abruptly, mind you: it just sort of faded away. As I stood there, the woods were eerily silent, somehow made even more eerie by the bright sunny sky above. The sounds of wildlife, birds, churring insects and so on gradually came back, and then a bit later, I heard the howl again, so far away that I could barely hear it.

At which point I realized that I’d come outside without even taking along a pistol, much less a proper rifle, as one might reasonably do when investigating a mysterious howling on the moors. Imagine how foolish I’d have felt if I’d found the source of the howling.

It’s easy to criticize the behaviour of victims in horror movies when they do foolish things: going into dark basements alone, going outside to investigate strange noises, chasing an escaped cat in one’s space-underwear, and so on. It’s much easier to make foolish choices than we’d like to think, particularly when the sun is bright and the sky is clear and we are in a familiar environment where a monster has never attacked us before.

I have been a geek pretty much from the day I opened my eyes. My mother tells me that I would sit in my playpen and watch Dark Shadows. When I was 10 or 11, and visiting my grandma Roma for a few weeks during the summer, I discovered The Lord Of The Rings at the local library (where I spent most of my afternoons — it was free, and it was air conditioned). I read the second and third books first, because the first book was loaned out at the time. I recall thinking that it was interesting, but really dry.

Shortly thereafter, I discovered vampires and werewolves and witches. (I never thought I was one. I was a geek, not a delusional loser.) Around the same time, two other things happened that confirmed my path toward geekdom: the debut of the Dr. Madblood show on channel 10, and the release of Star Wars. I would stay up late with my mom and wait for the end of The Midnight Special or Saturday Night Live or whatever sports event had preempted regularly scheduled programming that week, when we’d be rewarded with the baseline from “Green Eyed Lady” and the opening credits of Dr. Madblood. And Star Wars… ah, the good old days, before “A New Hope”, before “Episode IV”, before Greedo shot first, before Darth Vader was retconned into Luke’s whiny-ass father and the creator of C-3PO… back when Star Wars was Star Wars… back when Star Wars was good. Between the bad movies shown every Saturday by Dr. Madblood, and my infatuation with Star Wars, the first of my lifelong geeky pursuits was added permanently to my repertoire: movies. I saw Star Wars at the movies over and over (I stopped counting at nine), my parents bought me action figures, and I carried the novelization (George Lucas’ name was on the cover, but it was actually written by Alan Dean Foster) around with me until a bully on the bus took it away and tore it in half.

Such is the life of a young geek.

In my early teen years, I discovered my next geeky hobby: Dungeons & Dragons. There was an “activity day” at my school. Groups of older kids hosted various activities, and we younger kids wandered around and took part and learned about them. Kind of like Pledge Week, without the humiliation and the homoerotic undertones. I joined in on a game of Dungeons & Dragons because a girl named Jade was sitting at the table, and I thought she was so cute. She had octagonal glasses, and her name was Jade. How cool is that? I had never heard of role-playing games, of course, so I had no idea what I was doing, but I had a great time anyway. I recall I used a “Pyrokinesis” spell to keep a dragon from breathing fire. I had no idea what the spell was or what it did, but it was called “pyrokinesis”, so it just stood to reason that I could keep a dragon from breathing fire, right? The GM agreed.

Well, I was hooked right there. Role-playing games became the second of my lifelong geeky pursuits. Jade never played with us again, but I played at lunchtime with my friends in school off and on until I graduated high school. I was never mocked or hazed for playing D&D. The only problem I can recall was toward the end of my senior year, the day after prom: my mom found my D&D books and burned them.

Such is the life of a young geek.

The third of my lifelong geeky pursuits was added in my sophomore year of high school. Our school got a set of TRS-80 Model III computers. I don’t recall how or why I started using them. It may have been an elective class. What I do know is that I immediately started writing computer programs in Basic. Dice-rolling programs (for D&D), a psionic combat resolution program (also for D&D — psionic combat resolution was a task well suited to a computer program), and so on. The TRS-80 Model IIIs were replaced by Model IVs in my junior year, and then by IBM PCs in my senior year. That was the year I started the Computer Club at my high school. (I’d started Philosophy Club the year before, and the D&D Club the year before that.)

In retrospect, starting clubs has always kind of been my thing. I like to create things that bring people together. That’s why I started RPG Library and PBEM News. Just recently, I started a YahooGroup forum/mailing list called Game System Workshop, devoted to tinkering with role-playing game designs, to share ideas about new game systems and to tinker around with existing ones. (Feel free to join it, if you are so inclined — it’s an open group.)

Years later (too many years later), I am still as much a geek as I ever was. I am a computer programmer working for DriveThruRPG (combining two of my geeky pursuits in one). I still play role-playing games, and I still like sharing my gaming ideas and seeing what other people’s ideas are. I still love movies (mostly bad movies). I maintain a Digital Archive Project torrent server for Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (only the episodes that aren’t commercially available), and I even had the slide of my Walther P99 plated with brushed stainless steel to resemble the pistols used by Kate Beckinsale in Underworld 2. That’s my pistol you see there on the right.

My name is Brandon Blackmoor, and I’m a geek. I’m married to the person I love, I can have all the sex I want, I make good money doing work I enjoy, and life is good.

Such is the life of an adult geek. 🙂

A friend showed me this graphic at Simple Survival Skills, showing the protection afforded by these different types of protective vests. I thought it was interesting.

Here is another chart, from Body Armor News.

Ammunition From The Chart

1. .22 Magnum 40 gr. JHP (1209 FPS / 369 MPS)
2. .32 ACP 60 gr. Silvertip JHP (936 FPS / 285 MPS)
3. .380 ACP 95 gr. FMC (902 FPS / 275 MPS)
4. .38 Special 125 gr. Nyclad SWHP (1009 FPS / 308 MPS)
5. .38 Special +P 110 gr. JHP (1049 FPS / 320 MPS)
6. .38 Special +P 140 gr. JHP (869 FPS / 265 MPS)
7. 9mm 124 gr. FMC (1173 FPS / 358 MPS)*
8. 9mm 125 gr. JSP (1121 FPS / 342 MPS)
9. 9mm 147 gr. Black Talon (1010 FPS / 308 MPS)
10. 9mm 147 gr. Golden Saber (1083 FPS / 330 MPS)
11. 9mm 147 gr. Hydra Shok (1011 FPS / 308 MPS)
12. .357 Magnum 158 gr. JSP (1308 FPS / 399 MPS)
13. .357 Magnum 110 gr. JHP (1292 FPS / 394 MPS)
14. .357 Magnum 125 gr. JHP (1335 FPS / 407 MPS)
15. .40 Caliber 180 gr. FMJTC (992 FPS / 302 MPS)
16. .40 Caliber 170 gr. FMJTC (1095 FPS / 334 MPS)
17. 10mm 155 gr. FMJTC (1024 FPS / 312 MPS)
18. 10mm 170 gr. JHP (1137 FPS / 347 MPS)
19. .41 Magnum 210 gr. LSWC (1141 FPS / 348 MPS)
20. .44 Magnum 240 gr. LFP (1017 FPS / 310 MPS)
21. .45 Long Colt 250 gr. LRN (778 FPS / 237 MPS)
22. .45 ACP 230 gr. FMJ (826 FPS / 252 MPS)
23. 12 Ga. 00 Buck (9 pellet) (1063 FPS / 324 MPS)
24. 9mm 124 gr. FMJ (1215 FPS / 370 MPS)*
25. 9mm 115 gr. Silvertip JHP (1252 FPS / 382 MPS)
26. 9mm 124 gr. Starfire JHP (1174 FPS / 358 MPS)*
27. .357 Magnum 158 gr. JSP (1453 FPS / 443 MPS)*
28. .357 Magnum 145 gr. Silvertip JHP (1371 FPS / 418 MPS)
29. .357 Magnum 125 gr. JHP (1428 FPS / 435 MPS)
30. 10mm 175 gr. Silvertip JHP (1246 FPS / 380 MPS)
31. .41 Magnum 210 gr. JSP (1322 FPS / 403 MPS)
32. .44 Magnum 240 gr. SJHP (1270 FPS / 387 MPS)
33. 9mm 124 gr. FMJ (1440 FPS / 439 MPS)*
34. 9mm 115 gr. FMJ Israeli (1499 FPS / 457 MPS)
35. 9mm 123 gr. FMJ Geco (1372 FPS / 418 MPS)
36. 9mm 124 gr. FMJ Cavin (1259 FPS / 384 MPS)
37. .44 Magnum 240 gr. LSWC (1448 FPS / 441 MPS)*
38. .44 Magnum 240 gr. HSP (1320 FPS / 402 MPS)
39. 12 ga. 1 oz. Rifled Slug (1290 FPS / 393 MPS)
40. 12 ga. 1 oz. Rifled Slug (1254 FPS / 382 MPS)

Bullet Abbreviations

The following standard abbreviations are used to designate types of bullets or projectiles contained in the rounds tested.

FMC/J Full Metal Case/ Full metal Jacket
FMJTC Full Metal Jacket Truncated Cone
HSP Hollow Soft Point
LRB Lead Round Ball
LRN Lead Round Nose
LSWC Lead Semi-Wadcutter
JHP Jacketed Hollow Point
JSP Jacketed Soft Point
LFP Lead Flat Point
SJHP Semi-Jacketed Hollow Point
SWHP Semi-Wadcutter Hollow Point

This song played while I was working this morning. Every time I hear this song, I am somewhat chastized, because it reminds me that I don’t live up to my own goals for my behaviour.

Modesty, propriety can lead to notoriety
You could end up as the only one
Gentleness, sobriety are rare in this society
At night a candle’s brighter than the sun

Takes more than combat gear to make a man
Takes more than a license for a gun
Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can
A gentleman will walk but never run

If, “Manners maketh man” as someone said
Then he’s the hero of the day
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say

One of the things I like about this song is that it encourages polite behaviour, but doesn’t demonize anything I value. It doesn’t advocate weakness — it advocates strength, guided by wisdom. For example, “Takes more than combat gear to make a man / Takes more than a license for a gun” doesn’t say that someone with a gun is not a man — it says that a gun alone does not make someone a man. And I wholeheartedly agree.

So… note to self. Be a better person today.

Shooters head to the range during the summer, and it’s also when children will be spending more time at home. So now’s the time to review the rules of safety both when out shooting and when storing firearms in the home. Watch this short video on shooting-range safety and review the range of safety materials available from the NSSF.

• Watch a short range-safety video.
• Review safety-education materials available from NSSF.
• Find a shooting range near you.

Be safe.