95 thoughts on “Foudre de Guerre”

    1. But Jake Sullivan is FINALLY using Browning Automatic Rifle. Only took 2 covers to get that detail right.

      1. Keep in mind that they aren’t about accuracy. They are about getting people to pick up the book long enough to read the back cover blurb in the store. The mini gun on the Mage Brute cover wasn’t accurate, but it demonstrated that Sullivan had super strength or something, and it helped sell books.

        I’m guessing Heather Kerkonnen wasn’t wearing a leather corset under her sheriff’s deputy uniform either, but that cleavage shot on Monster Hunter Alpha helped me sell a lot more books. I’ve learned never to bug my marketing people too much. 🙂

      2. For what it’s worth, you could put a picture of a turd on the cover, call it “A Turd’s Life” and as long as Larry was the author, I’d buy it.

    1. They actually had Hard Magic as a finalist for a big award there. And I couldn’t even campaign for it because I didn’t speak the language. Crazy what happens when people actually read books rather than just slandering the author based on their preconceived notions. 🙂

      1. Well, I’ve heard that the French that most people dislike are Parisians and the Parisians are disliked by the rest of the French. [Evil Grin]

      2. The work I have done with the French has been 30 min from downtown Geneva. The comment about Parisians is spot on. The folks I have met and worked with have been hard workers.

      3. That MST3K bit about Hockey Hair was hilarious, and makes me think that my White trash self would get along well with the fine citizens of Quebec.

  1. Larry,

    It would be cool if you could get .mp3 samples of people reading the same passage in the novel in different languages along with a translation. That would be interesting to see how things translate.

    -Scott

  2. Isn’t fiction involving anything other than wine, hookers and immediate surrender illegal in France?

    1. I just made a comment on FB to similar effect, but I’m going to defend the French. Yes, I know, hang on. Hear me out. 🙂

      As I’ve gotten to know more and more international readers I’ve discovered that the monolithic stereotype pushed in our media about the French being a bunch of happy little socialists is only about as true as the media stereotype about Americans, where we’ve got two enlightened coasts full of cultural liberals with a giant wasteland of flyover country in the middle, made up of racist rednecks and the dad from Footloose. I’ve found a lot of French fans who would fit in perfectly well here. Those are the ones buying my books.

      I’ve also been surprised by some of the messages I’ve been getting from England over the many recent kerfuffles. The left loves to act like they’re a cultural monolith (one reason they hate me so much) but I’m running into a lot of English Fandom who is just as sick of this shit as we are here.

      1. Yeah. I never mock the French troops. Their leaders (including their generals), sure. But the guys on the line don’t deserve the stuff that gets thrown their way. Everything I’ve heard about them over the years indicates that they’re good quality troops who aren’t afraid of a fight, and they’ve always been good quality troops who aren’t afraid of a fight (including most of the men on the line in 1940). They just seem to get consistantly stuck with lousy leadership.

        Also, from what I’ve heard of British politics recently, I’m guessing that a lot of your fans in the Isles have been taking advantage of the new third party (UKIP) over there to file their protest votes.

      2. Well, your reasoning is sound. I could see Parisians giving the rest a bad name. But it’s still fun to look up Mark Twain’s observations on French society.

      3. “They just seem to get consistantly stuck with lousy leadership.”

        Yes, they do quite well when they don’t have French generals running things. A Corsican, say, or even a 14 year old girl, can do amazing things with French troops.

  3. Given the excellent (no irony at all) French involvement in peacekeeping efforts in Africa involving boots on the ground, nice to see there are re-developing their martial tradition by purchasing such excellent work as Mr. Correia’s.

    1. One of the many things I liked about the recent MHI series is the inclusion of hunter teams from other countries. I was rooting for some of them in the Nemisis e-Arc (Go Grim Berlin!)

      -Scott

      P.S. Are we having another patch contest anytime soon?

    1. that’s funny. My rusty high school french would say “Lightning of War” or better yet “War Lightning”. Anyone got a better translation? Maybe “War Bound”? 😉

      1. ok, nevermind, looked up the entire thing.

        Une personne forte, capable, compétente.
        Un objet puissant, performant.

        or per google translate, the idiom is

        A strong person, capable, competent.
        A powerful object efficient.

  4. I keep telling you dude, you need to get Baen to hire this guy to do all your covers. I’m not a huge fan of the US ones (I really don’t like the art style), but all the covers I’ve seen done by Chong kick some serious ass.

  5. Appropo of nothing whatsoever, did you happen to see that Dave Brin gave you props on the Hugo nomination? I nearly fell out of my chair. Check out the Contrary Bring site (Google for link).

  6. Damnit Larry, you have to make it easier on your haters to send you their hate mail. Without an easily accessible email address I can’t send you my ‘hate mail’.

    It was fairly irrelevant anyways, I was going to say I read your gun control argument and one of your second amendment points was pretty silly. The second amendment as a protection for government tyranny is pretty laughable. You do realize that you having a gun doesn’t mean shit if the government legitimately wanted to oppress you, right? If tomorrow the government banned guns for civilians completely, your ammo stockpiles and your plans for armed rebellion would last about 5 minutes. That is if you were smart and realized some 21 year old kid with a playstation controller could kill you with a drone the instant you presented any threat.

    It is comforting to know that conservatives are as vulnerable to fear-mongering as liberals when they actually think Obama gave a damn about guns. I mean I haven’t paid any attention to politics in the last few months but last time I checked Obama just increased gun rights despite CNN’s attempt to show everyone they were an actual news station with New Town. I just think it is hilarious that in response to ‘the liberals are going to take your guns’ fear conservatives stockpile and buy more. If they were taking your guns you realize stockpiling would just mean more for them to take, right?

    Also a lot of your argument seems to rest on guns being the most reliable way to stop attackers. What you would say if there were a weapon developed that could reliably provide a non-lethal substitute? I guess it seems to me like jumping immediately to lethal force when threatened is a little extreme. I don’t ignore how fast and easily terrible things can happen to people at the mercy of other but I do wonder how much of this argument is actually about safety.

    If you were only arguing for recreational use what guys should be legal to own? As a man with a lot of experience with guns, which guns do you think should be illegal?

    Maybe you should transfer this, I am a little drunk so I am just going to post it.

    1. I’m going to let the others tackle the rest of your post, but I’m going to address the portion of your comment regarding use of force seeing as I know a little about it. Quick background about myself, I’m in the military, air force law enforcement, and as a result I have been trained in two of the main means of less than lethal defence, taser and expandable baton, (no OC where I’m at.) In my spare time, I’ve also taken martial arts classes off base covering Krav, JKD, and FMA, so as a result I’m familiar with the gentle art of breaking heads. First off, there is a reason most folks in the know prefer the term Less than lethal as opposed to non lethal in that all of them can potentially go wrong. Tasers have ignited their own controversy on using safely under certain circumstances, baton strikes to the head are treated as potential kill shots-which makes escrima classes interesting, incidentally-and if you get OC and you have asthma, you’re in for a fun time. None of them are 100 percent effective either, OC and ASP rely on pain compliance, so if your assailant is hopped up on drugs, you’re fucked. Tasers work, when they connect, but if one of the leads doesn’t connect, or you miss, you’re stuck with either switching cartridges, or using drive stun. As for martial arts, they’ll work, but they’re typically considered perishable skills, you have to train enough to obtain and maintain proficiency. And all of this is hampered by small details such as multiple attackers. So with regards to less than lethal alternatives, it’s good to have the option as long as it remains just that, an option, with deadly force held in reserve for those special occasions, (my job currently has those occasions narrowed down to 8)

      But keep in mind, this is from the perspective of a young, healthy, fit, (if I do say so myself,) red blooded American male. Not everyone has that option, some have medical conditions, some are old, some are overweight. From a civilian perspective, typically after using less than lethal means, your job is to beat feet and get out of Dodge, again, not always an option for an 80 year old man who got voluntold for a session of the knock-out game.
      In addition, all of this can be hampered by your local laws, some states and/or cities have rather antiquated laws concerning weapons.
      So what’s my point? Simply that less than lethal training is an option that works in some situations but don’t in others. It may come across as extreme, but in terms of putting out a viable self defence strategy, it’s absolutely neccesary.

      1. @ av willis

        Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I mean the obvious first priority has to be protecting yourself from a dangerous attacker. From what you said it seems like you wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to a non-lethal solution if it was actually effective. As you pointed out we aren’t there yet, so maybe guns are necessary. I don’t know enough about the issue to be sure but at least that is the impression I get.

        I guess the message always seems to get jumbled with second amendment legal arguments, recreational gun use opinions, and gun classification disagreements. I think what might make more liberals rethink things is if they saw where conservatives draw the line for which guns should be legal. Things are often framed as no guns or all guns but most responsible gun owners seem on board with at least some of the regulation (some form of background check, training for gun owners, etc.).

        1. No. Gun owners are not on board for “some” regulation, because everything they keep suggesting is horse shit, but I’ve already written up a 10,000 word post on this topic.

      2. @Correia45

        So it conservatives think there should be no regulation? I am not asking what ‘they’ suggest. I am asking what you suggest.

        I mean it is nice to just shit on everyone ideas and all but maybe if instead of that people who knew things about guns came up with the idea we might get somewhere. In that entire post you don’t say anything about what you would do, you just bitch about what other people say and how things are.

        If your entire view on gun control is ‘not what liberals say’ that explains a lot of conservative perspectives, you just talk shit without ever thinking about how you would do things. If you do think of things, you come up with bullshit pizza deal ideas like Herman Cain’s ‘999’ plan.

        1. Why would I waste my valuable time to tell you anything? I already created a 10,000 word essay about that very topic which is one of the most widely read articles on gun control ever written.

          Oh, wait. You’re under the mistaken impression that you’re like my intellectual peer or something and this is a roundtable policy discussion between equals. No. It isn’t. Fuck off. I don’t owe you anything.

      3. Things may have changed, because even though I made it through the academy, a couple of months as a sheriff’s deputy snapped me back to my senses and I did something less stressful than law enforcement: a combat tour in Afghanistan. But when I went through, it was called “less lethal,” as in, “it’s less lethal (usually) than a 9mm.” Is it “less than lethal” now?

      4. @Combat Missonary
        To be fair the terms tend to be interchangeable, you’ll still come across the phrase non lethal, or less lethal, and no one has ever accused Security Forces of being at the cutting edge of law enforcement. Or the blunt end. Hell there are days I’d settle for being the handle. It mostly boils down to the obscuring of the posterior in the event that something goes wrong.

      5. @ correia45

        I didn’t ask for a roundtable, I asked for your actual opinion. You should retitle your gun control article ‘Bitching about what liberals say about guns’.

        This I guess was my whole point when I commented on the last post, you are politically ignorant because you don’t seem to actually care about the issue. All you care about is arguing with liberals and proving them wrong rather than presenting any real ideas.

        10,000 words with nothing to add. Conservatives always bitch about ‘the government’ being too large and ineffective. Then usually just avoid actually dealing with problems, the whole point of government, by ignoring the issue or presenting ‘common sense’ (a.k.a. retarded) solutions. If you were watching the last election the Republican economic policies were all of a sudden a big secret after everyone shat on the Paul Ryan plan. That seems to happen quite a lot, republicans bitch about ‘the government’, never present their own ideas, and when they do come up with ideas they are underdeveloped bull.

        I probably shouldn’t expect more from a conservative blogger but you seemed to present your idea well in your books so I figured it would be worth asking here. What I didn’t anticipate is that either you are too dishonest to present a positive argument, you have never though about how the law actually should be written, or you have never thought beyond talk show radio points about gun control.

        I guess me and the rest of the elitist who are simultaneously working at coffee shops and fast food jobs will get back to work and leave the big picture stuff to totally not self righteous douchebags like the “Lord of Hate”. I am not even that young and I think that is fucking lame. I guess if everyone who responded to your facebook jerk off fest is over 50 that is what you get though.

        1. Yawn… Nothing new to add. Which is why it became the most widely read article on gun control in the country over the last few years. Yet, I somehow OWE Stupid Snake an in depth thesis in response to his poo flinging. Yet, when other posters give him the detailed answers he demands, (like for example, combat vets giving him the detailed numeric breakdown of an armed conflict in the US) he just ignores them.

          I approach boredom. This does not bode well for Stupid Snake.

        2. Slippery, you’re a total moron. In the last few hours, you’ve said that Larry’s (and everyone else’s) experience with or membership in the military and law enforcement communities doesn’t qualify them to know what cops and soldiers would do in a major internal conflict in the US. You then cite having a brother in the marine corps as proof that your line of thought (if you can nail down one coherent train of thought in your rambling oral diarrhea) is valid.
          You then accuse people who give you thousands of words of personal experience, research, lies of reasoning and statistical data of merely spouting conservative talking points and don’t bother to reference your own lack of ANY relevant experience with or in the aforementioned communities, and you fail to cite any data at all. You don’t even bother to mention what YOU recommend to solve society’s problems.

          You’re either a graduate of a cut-rate school of stellarly incompetent defense attorneys or you’re a complete moron. If we were in a courtroom, the judge would have the bailiff take you out back and shoot you without a trial as a punishment for such utter failure to grasp logic and inability to understand how debate works.
          For future reference, please follow this debate format so you don’t embarass your mom into wishing she’d had a child that lived any more:
          1. You stated this: (insert invalid point here).
          2. I believe this to be correct instead: (insert only one thought here. Make it complete and comprehensible).
          3. The data that backs up my point are: (insert study results, relevant experience, or research here).

    2. Your posting while drunk isn’t much different when you are sober.

      Though thanks for the list of the usual anti-gun talking points. Oh, you thought you were making a new argument that hasn’t been rehashed over and over again? Alas, you aren’t as clever as you think you are.

    3. Stop posting drunk. You’re only displaying your ignorance.

      First, there’s the fact that a lot of people cast their own lead and reload their own ammo.
      Second, there’s the fact that black powder is easily improvised.
      Third, go online and google “Zip guns.” They’re easy to build.
      Fourth, you build a zip gun or a volley weapon, which you use to kill the brownshirt and take HIS weapon.
      Finally, there’s the fact that the number of legal gun owners in the United States outnumber the combined Armed Forces plus all local, state and federal law enforcement bodies combined by a ratio of ten-to-one. Even assuming they weren’t 80% support personnel, and assuming they were all willing to enforce a confiscation order (20% is probably a very generous number in and of itself), it would still be a suicide mission. And that’s just the FBI’s estimates of LAWFULLY owned guns.

      I’ll tell you what, Slippery. Why don’t you go join the LAPD and lead the charge to enforce the existing gun laws in LA, or get a job in Watts or Compton and just go pick up all those illegal guns for us, OK, pumpkin?

      And don’t tell me about drones. We’ve spent trillions fighting Al Qaeda with the full support of our national treasure and the willing members of the armed forces fighting ignorant primitives. We’re about out of national treasure, and we’d have almost ZERO support from the Armed Forces for a mission against educated and determined Americans that include veterans of Korea, Vietnam, countless Central American missions in the 80’s, the Gulf war and Iraq and Afghanistan.

      And before you spout off about the glories of less-lethal resistance to armed attack, go get a CCW permit and study the continuum of force concept I was taught at the police academy back in the day. Then come back and ask some relevant questions.

      1. You ever notice that dumbasses have this really ridiculous idea of how less than lethal stuff works like magic? They kind of miss the part where when cops try to use that stuff on actual dangerous people, Cop #2 is standing there with a real gun in case it fails?

        Ah, but what do I know. I just taught this stuff for a living. Stupid Snake is a barrista. 🙂

      2. @ correia45

        You notice how every conservative asked legitimate questions about guns resorts to not reading and spouting bullshit.

        I never said ‘non-lethal’ work like magic but I guess you have to put me in one of your boxes so go ahead. The only time I talked about them was to ask a hypothetical question.

        You are so self righteous you didn’t stop to notice that someone that mostly agrees with you about guns might just be asking a reasonable question.

        1. You don’t “mostly agree” with me about anything, Concern Troll. I’m afraid you’re too stupid. If you did agree with me, it would probably be on accident. 🙂

  7. Okay, let me tackle the “an armed populace is no threat to the military” fallacy real quick using my least favorite subject, math.

    After roughly 30 minutes of Google fu I came across these numbers. For population count I went straight to the U.S. census Department, for Military strength I went to wiki and followed their citation chain to the department of defense. Police figures are from the bureau of labor statistics. So I’m pretty comfortable with these numbers.

    For gun Owners I took an aggregate of 3 separate sources, http://www.TheBlaze.com, justfacts and http://www.gunpolicy.org. I am using the low end numbers just to show the most moderate scenario. Also remember the data on actual ownership rates requires that A. the owners actually admit to having them, and B. some guesswork using math fu I am not privy to in order to guesstimate the “illicit” amount of firearms in the hands of people in the US.

    So, the numbers. There are, as of December 1.3 million active duty personnel in the US, of which 175k are Combat Specialty occupations(I.E. they have “directly engage the enemy” in their job description)., and around 850k (no easily findable info on how many combat specialists let’s assume half.) in reserves. That means fully mobilized, barring a draft the US military, all branches, regardless of job, has just over 2 million people. They also have a crap load of force multipliers in regards to air power, heavy artillery, and armored vehicles. Furthermore there are 780k police and law enforcement officials in the United States. This again includes everyone in law enforcement, including HR and Accounting. But for fun we’ll assume 1/2 the 780k are actually field capable officers/detectives/special agents. This means in this scenario the “man” can realistically bring 175k full time soldiers, 425k reservists, and 390k POSAD(Police Officer, Special Agent, Detectives) to the table. A total active force of just around 1 million trained personnel who have “engage the enemy directly” as part of their job.

    The US population as of 2010 is 308 million, since it’s 2014 lets round up to 310, for sake of making math a little easier on my poor befuddled brain. There are an estimated 270, to 300 million firearms in the US. This number assumes the “illicit” firearms as well as a guess as to the number of people who didn’t answer yes when asked if they own firearm. These same sources list anywhere from 89 out of 100 residents owning a firearm, to 101 out of 100 owning one. Let us be a little more moderate, for the sake of benefit of the doubt and put the number at a much more conservative 80 out of 100, or 80%. Now mind you I’m using a percentage that is actually 9% lower than I could find in the sources I’m using. Simply because even to me, a gun owner advocate, 89% ownership still seems a bit high. So out of 310 million people, 240 million of them have access to firearms.

    Now for assumptions… I hate this, but barring an actual revolution it’s all we have to go on. Let’s assume that an uprising occurs due to the US citizenship deciding that all the people in power gotta go, and the people in power saying the citizens need to be put in their place. I will make no allusions as to why, that’s not my purpose. I simply want to try and reason out a logical chain of events to such a situation in the US.

    Assumption 1, it’s is a perfect police state, and 100% of the military and police force back the reason for quelling the uprising(which in a cultural as diverse as ours is HIGHLY unlikely)

    Assumption 2. Only a scant 20 %( I honestly believe that this number will be larger) of the people who have access to a firearm will actually take up arms in the over throw. I’m using 20% to try and give fair due to the percentage of the population who will use the firearms only in the defense of their or their families lives, as well as the criminals who decide a police state is a good idea and don’t want to get involved.

    Assumption 3. My numbers are right. I’m trying to use as many accurate statistical databases as I can, but hey until I read slipperysnakes post I honestly hadn’t tried looking up the numbers myself. But he made me curious so I decided on research. If I spend several weeks doing research I could probably fine tune the numbers but I honestly give myself margin of error of about +- 10% using the above established “good” numbers from the government backed statistics sites (census, labor, and DMCD)

    Even loading the odds in favor of the government, we are still fundamentally looking at around 1 million well trained individuals, vs. 48 million armed insurrectionists. Let that sink in. 48 MILLION People. And of that 48 Million a large portion will be ex military and ex police. And thanks to the facts that we have the largest percentage of gun ownership in the known world, actively teach people to use them, hold competitions glorifying people who shoot really well, and have old vets like R. Lee Ermey showing us the ins and outs of how military hardware works (god I love mail call), the part of that 48 million who is not ex military and ex police will on average still have a better grasp of use, accurate shot placement and effective force use than a lot of other nations militaries do. Now I fully agree that they, on average, will not be as well trained in tactics as our military would be. Nor would they have access to all the latest and greatest toys the military and police of the US enjoy’s. However they still maintain access to a lot of older technology as far as aircraft, artillery, and armor goes, and still have a solid working knowledge of tactics and warfare.

    Even if we bring in force multipliers we still need to redress the balance of the equation so that in a best case scenario for the US government, they would need a kill ratio of 48 to 1. That’s ratio is double that using the most accurate (if Iraq War logs can be trusted as “accurate”) numbers I can find of enemy deaths. Of course this number climbs with wounded and captured, but still dosen’t hit the 48 to one we need to see the US Military achieve to suppress a complete open revolution (although, based on differing reports, they seem to sometimes be as high as 100 to one, but this are all from journalism sources, and as such I find it hard to attribute them as more accurate then declassified Iraq Ward Documents.). And that 24 to 1 is against an enemy that although on paper looked intimidating proved to be a very ineffective fighting force. Not so much the American people who as I stated before, have a far more ingrained gun culture than ANY other place in the world.

    So to sum up, using very conservative figures, slanted against gun owners, and granting the government every conceivable advantage I can, you can still see the scope of the problem for the US Government in passing an extremely unpopular bill (like taking everyone’s’ firearms away), if the people were to revolt. And that’s assuming that in a country were freedom of thought, and expression still exists that the US Government would maintain 100% control of its’ military, it’s military assets, and The local Law enforcement, A scenario in and of itself that is laughably unlikely. They. Would. Still. Lose.

    P.S. Sorry for the Monster post, but my old man always told me, go big, or go home.

    1. Real quick, the greatest military coalition ever assembled in all of human history spent ten years fighting a war against a group of about 20,000 insurgents at any one given time, in a country about the size of Texas.

      The second Slippery Snake starts spouting off about super weapons and drones, it demonstrates that he knows absolutely nothing about the US military, who makes it up, who serves in it, who drives the drones, services the drones, where the drones and super weapons stage out of, the concept of logistics, or any knowlege whatseover of warfare.

      Let me put it this way, democrats routinely lose the military vote by 40+ points. In combat arms that percentage ranges from worse, to absurdly worse. If you try to confiscate all the guns in America, most of the US military isn’t going to be the ones doing the confiscting. They’re going to be the ones shooting the confiscators.

      I owned a gunstore next door to my state’s National Guard headquarters. Anybody who thinks the majority of the NG is going to go along with confiscation when they, their friends, and their families, are the ones being confiscated from, is an idiot.

      The percentage in law enforcement isn’t that much different. In big cities, perhaps. In most of America, ain’t gonna happen. Even then, from dealing with the actual cops who know how to shoot and train others to shoot in America’s biggest cities, if it comes down to a full on shooting war to take guns, you’d lose 80% of your tactically capable types immediatley. I know and have worked with feds from half a dozen agencies, and have worked with law enforcement from all across America… Most of them are not on the confiscators side.

      For those that would be confiscators, they have to live somewhere. They will not be popular with their neighbors. After the first, the rest are free. Once the gloves come off a large number of people will die. The only question is how many millions are morons like Stupid Snake prepared to sacrifice? And really, once law abiding citizens become overnight felons, and the noncompliant start getting drone striked, you will have a full scale civil war erupt.

      Those super weapons of yours? They’ve got to land somwwhere. You get one guess as to the nature of the people who serve at and chose to live around Cannon AFB.

      Percentage of regular people who do not comply with confiscation? Well, they’re not complying in one of the bluest of blue states right now. Hell, they didn’t comply in Canada, and that was just registration. The noncompliance in places like the west and south will be close to 100% and that includes a majority of law enforcement, the NG, and I’d guess half of the active duty military stationed there.

      1. “the greatest military coalition ever assembled in all of human history”

        Retarded on so many levels. Why even include this. You realize there were WORLD WARS right? I guess since you are going to warp my nick name I will call you the “Lord of hyperbole”. Tell me more about ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY (it deserves the caps).

        “Even then, from dealing with the actual cops who know how to shoot and train others to shoot in America’s biggest cities, if it comes down to a full on shooting war to take guns, you’d lose 80% of your tactically capable types immediatley.”

        When you start making up your own bullshit math you have to realize something is wrong here. Instead of this bull you should probably just make your point, you do this for a living right. I mean I know I am shitty and all but what the hell.

        Your points:
        1. The U.S. has dealt with terrorism poorly.
        2. Law enforcement and military would not go along with gun confiscation.

        Point 1 I think is mostly due to other factors and wouldn’t be relevant unless guns rights supporters actually acted like terrorists.

        Point 2 seems basically like a lot of bullshit, I tend to think most people wouldn’t respond violently to gun confiscation. I think most people would be take a less violent route and not be so sympathetic with law breakers. Instead they would work to reinstate what they thought was right politically.

        Mr. Lord of hyperbole you talk about my ‘super weapons’ as if they are something special, they aren’t. I am just saying owning a gun store and knowing a lot about guns doesn’t mean you know jack shit about cutting edge military technology. Neither of us do, so if you will excuse my assumption that it is probably pretty badass then I would appreciate it.

        1. Uh, yeah, actually. A single CBG today brings to bear more firepowr than the entire combined military might of the world in 1945. Our troops now are better equipped, have better C&C, better logistics, better training, and far more assets than we did then. And since I know these people, and you apparently don’t, when you ask them to kill their friends, family, and neighbors to bring about your utopia, they’re going to tell you to fuck off, and if you ask again, they’re going to shoot you in the face.

          Cutting edge military tech? Well, on the low end I know lots of people in the industry that makes stuff that kills people. Working SHOT for 6 years does that. On the high end I was limited to working with things like DISA, IMDB, WRP, DPG and 36 other military contracts. My last office went Army Colonel, Air Force Colonel, Navy Commander, and me as the cake eating civillian who made the math work. So yes. I do know more than you. I have fans that have forgotten today than you’ve known ever. My technical advisor is a real life Jack Bauer. I ask, he puts me in contact with an expert on any weapon system in the world. I wrote a short story about a Marine, I asked a question on Facebook, within 45 minutes I had one hundred Marines provide answers. #1 book in Baghdad, Baghram, and the Ronald Reagan, bitch.

          Becasue of this, I know these people. You don’t. They’ve got integrity, balls, and they know how to make war. On average, they’re on my side and they think you’re a statist tool.

          So hop to it. Those fries aren’t going to cook themselves.

      2. @ Slippery
        ‘“the greatest military coalition ever assembled in all of human history”

        Retarded on so many levels. Why even include this. You realize there were WORLD WARS right? I guess since you are going to warp my nick name I will call you the “Lord of hyperbole”. Tell me more about ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY (it deserves the caps).’

        What the hell do you know about it, dumbass? I’ve been to the Valley of Death. Want to see what I’ve done? Go watch Restrepo. I was there when they filmed it. You know exactly dick about the military. But whatever. The Greatest Generation has my respect. I had family die in that conflict. Their Soldiers definitely kicked insane amounts of ass, so this one gets a pass.

        ‘1. The U.S. has dealt with terrorism poorly.
        2. Law enforcement and military would not go along with gun confiscation.

        Point 1 I think is mostly due to other factors and wouldn’t be relevant unless guns rights supporters actually acted like terrorists.

        Point 2 seems basically like a lot of bullshit, I tend to think most people wouldn’t respond violently to gun confiscation. I think most people would be take a less violent route and not be so sympathetic with law breakers. Instead they would work to reinstate what they thought was right politically.’

        Point 1: The policy makers who are more worried about hurted feelings of special snowflake in public/bloodthirsty terrorist in private have done a great job of inviting terror to our shores.

        Point 2: Larry’s point comes from knowing state, local and federal law enforcement and the military. These are very small, close-knit communities of largely like-minded individuals. Your retort is ‘I call bs because my anecdotal evidence doesn’t bear your real-life experience out.’

        You owe Larry’s balls a tongue bath.

      3. I’m not worried about massed forces for the reasons you put forth. I’m more worried about the heavily armed, poorly trained bureaucrats who think they’re Rambo because they get to carry firearms swamping some poor “nobody” as an example. Bundy would have been taken out if people hadn’t come to his defense. Now that he’s been “exposed” as a racist, who will help him next time? That’s what’s in store for each group in turn that gets in Big Gov’s way.

      4. @Correia45

        I guess I will start as childish as you ended Mr. ‘Voice of a Generation’. Ok Kanye, you act like every other ‘famous’ person on the internet. Is there an ‘army’ yet for Larry’s followers because if there is that is fucking hilarious. Then you can match your followers against those of the ‘chocolate rain’ guy.

        God, you think because you had marines respond to you on facebook they are would automatically agree with you. I have met marines too and I am not so fucking arrogant that I forget they are people with their own opinion. I am not a marine but having one in the family I know for a fact it gets pretty fucking annoying to be treated like they all think the exact same things.

        You really do seem to be dense about this use of force to prevent ‘tyranny’. At least most of the people I know have nearly store nearly all their assets electronically. We live in a heavily interconnected society where we expect certain luxuries, so would all these people want to teleport back in time instead of moving elsewhere or attempting to overturn the law? I don’t think so.

        Military and law enforcement tend to be pretty protective of their own so shooting people just doing their jobs I doubt would go over with them as well as you think.

        Also when you say ‘greatest military coalition in human history’ than try to defend it by saying they had the most powerful weapons, just stop. Only Neocons try to rewrite history by pretending it was a coalition and therefore had popular support worldwide. As for the greatness bit, talk about technology but don’t go all ‘greatest generation’ and think our generation was awesome. People have fought throughout history for every imaginable reason and calling one of these groups the best is just childish and disrespectful to the other groups.

    2. I don’t mean to diminish all you work but I don’t think it is a numbers game. That is my point and I am sorry if I didn’t make it clear. I mean I could totally see the counterpoint that unsophisticated terrorist have succeeded so maybe I am wrong but I think things would be different if the goal with revolution.

      Also the idea that the only people that would be involved in the conflict are those currently trained and the rebels seems a bit naive to me. Even if I thought it were a numbers game I think more people would support the rule of law than the right to own guns or at least attempt to reinstate it in a legal way.

      I have a couple of friends who are engineers that work on things like guidance systems for weapons and I may be wrong be I tend to assume that even a long-time gun store owner doesn’t know jack shit about cutting edge military technology. Looking at the U.S. military’s resources it just doesn’t seem very likely to me that people stockpiling ammo really have a chance.

      1. There’s simply no way to break down the argument any more simply.

        I spent the last 5 years before becoming a full time writer as a military contractor for a company that was very specifically on the high tech end of things. Most of my time as an instructor was working with a bunch of pointy end of the stick types. Most of my friends come from a high tech or high speed blow shit up background. You are a fry cook.

      2. I do believe it is a numbers game, and I believe our founding fathers knew it would be a numbers game.

        To me it works as the ultimate check and balance in a system of checks and balances. Our founding fathers understood that in typically oppressive society, power is consolidated in a small group, who rules over a large group. By arming the large group and granting them the rights to protect themselves from all enemies, foreign and domestic, they created a huge counter balance to a despotic regime.

        Even if I was to be completely fair and make the Military Strength match the Civilian strength, your still talking about the potential loss of a third of your population. This number can easily escalate, in a conflict of this scale, to half or even 2/3rds of your population engaged in the conflict. Imagine an America were half of its population was wiped out by an armed conflict.

        This will screw your economy. This can lead to starvation due the loses of farms, and the people who run them. Your military strength would be seriously depleted. You’re going to take loses to your upper echelons. Which means your overall power structure could be made weaker as well. You will recover, provided no other country sees this post civil war as a great time to roll in and make some new land grabs (don’t forget, the Japanese, and Canadians have both taken U.S. soil away from us).

        The best part is, politicians, whether we like them or not, know this. They can see the numbers, and they can see just how badly this country would fare from a large scale uprising/civil war. And while we like to classify all politicians as either loud mouth ones who love the spotlight and Don’t have the common sense of a rock, or the ones in it genuinely to try and create their version of a better world (whether or not better is really better is a matter for another debate), The honest truth is that a lot of these guys, and girls, are career power wielders who want a fancy mansion, a trophy wife/husband, and a steady source of income. Just like most Americans to be honest. And it’s this majority of the politicians who understand power comes from the people, and pissing off a lot of armed people will most likely never end well. Win or lose.

        That’s why, IMHO, the founding fathers made it a point to mention that the population should be armed. Just to keep the people in charge honest.

        Well relatively honest. 🙂

      3. The fact that the trigger pullers under the worst of circumstances would be outnumbered 48 to 1 and they MIGHT be using support systems maintained by the people they’re targeting, IF they get support at all doesn’t seem significant to you?

        Are you drawing up plans for a land war in Asia right now or something?

      4. “I have a couple of friends who are engineers that work on things like guidance systems for weapons”

        I have two actual (as opposed to imaginary) friends who do that (one is a missile guy, the other one I don’t know exactly what he does, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a device that hands out free hugs).

        Neither they, nor any of their coworkers I’ve encountered, are going to be down with your little program. Not. At. All.

        “I think more people would support the rule of law than the right to own guns”

        You think a lot of bullshit things, don’t you, hoss?

      5. Ah, I see. You’re impressed with fancy toys, and think people blindly follow laws without considering what those laws do. Or more succinctly: An idiot.

      6. What’s the government going to do? Nuke it’s own cities to suppress rebellion?

        The rule of law depends on the trust of the people to implement it. Passing more and more laws with fewer and fewer reasons doesn’t increase that trust – if anything it kills it and makes it less likely that the laws will be obeyed.

        And when you effectively discard the rule of law and shift to a ‘Well, the law’s whatever I say it is, right now’ as Washington seems wont to do these days you’ve got two likely outcomes.

        (1) People fire the politicians via voting – and if they don’t go, they get removed. Legally or forcefully, their choice.

        (2) People ignore the laws. We’re seeing the effects of this – gun registration laws get passed, and people go “Guns? Sorry, I lost all mine in a canoeing accident. Darn shame, too.”

        The politicians are OUR servants, not the other way around. The attitude that they’re a special, structured elite who can’t be questioned needs to change.

        “I think more people would support the rule of law than the right to own guns or at least attempt to reinstate it in a legal way.”

        As I said – the rule of law requires trust in the law. Erode that trust, and the rule of law becomes much less effective, until it fails altogether.

      7. @Jerry Lawson

        I guess, I think most people aren’t radical gun nuts that would resort to violence if their guns are threatened.

        If the majority was against you then what? It seems like people with guns are saying that they are going to start some sort of armed rebellion if people don’t agree with them. This to me seems ridiculous, I don’t tend to hear this childish response from liberals. I don’t even agree with confiscation. I just think the argument of sparking some kind of armed rebellion is half-baked.

      8. Another fun factor in the Left’s US Military vs US gunowners fantasy:
        The American Left hasn’t exactly been kind to the US Military. They’ve spit on, belittled, insulted, disrespected and treated men and women in uniform like liveried servants at best.
        And the Left actually thinks a majority of the military will back them up if the Government gets all Stalinist?
        Rule one of the Tyrant’s handbook- be sure your guys with the guns are happy.

      9. And while we are at it- for years I have heard the Left say that the US Military would be helpless against gurella soliders in Vietnam/ Nicuragua/Hondurus/Iraq/Afganistan/et al. One of the main plot elements in “Return of the Jedi” according to Lucas.

        One may even presume that Slippery has made similar statements regarding the War On Terror.

        And now, after about 50 years of saying the USA cannot fight Gurellas, the Left is trying to tell me that a gurella war in the US can easily be won? Really?

      10. @joe

        Guerilla war in the U.S. I guess if you call winning it living in a cave for a decade then you could win. There isn’t even a point in comparing the two because it would take too much time to point out how ridiculous it is.

        Basically they are completely different including the amounts of information about the combatants and the goal of the conflict just to name a few of the huge differences. No one was ever worried about our ability to ‘defeat’ the terrorists we were more worried about the term ‘defeat’. If you think we ‘defeated’ someone in the recent wars they I think you aren’t very well informed. We spent a lot of money to occupy countries supposedly to defeat attackers who mostly weren’t even from the countries attacked.

        Turns out terrorism is more complex than just attacking another country. So ‘defeating’ a cause may not be a simple matter.

    3. Good heavens, and I thought my post of ten to one was mopping the floor with Slippery Snake! I bow to your superior math-fu.

      1. Thank you kind sir, that google fu was a result of the bad habit of finding my own entertainment when really bored at work.

        Found out that when you get paid for what you “know” as apposed to what you “do” means you have a crap load of free time.

    4. Well, I haven’t seen him do some of the dumb things other trolls have tried like, oh, claiming the US military would nuke US cities to quell an uprising.

      He might start after the next download from the hivemind, though.

      1. Have you ever considered that most of your assets are probably electronic? When I talk about military technology I don’ necessarily mean the biggest guns. We live in a far different society from those of the past and things don’t work the same way.

        1. He’s lecturing us on electronic military tech… I’m betting Stupid Snake doesn’t know what most of those acronyms I listed mean. Hint. Most of them are brain stuff staffed by a bunch of computer experts.

          Also, the more big brain you get into military tech, the more likely it is managed by civillians and maintained by civillians. The military doesn’t keep high tech people very well, but you’d know that with all of your expertise on this stuff.

          And since I know those people better than you, go ahead and ask them to help kill millions of their friends, neighbors, and collegues to reach your utopian vision and see how that works out for you. I’m sure it will work out great and they’ll pay you as much respect as we have here.

      2. Last word! Lol.

        I was actually hoping to have a conversation with a venue not designed for it.

        Anyways, all those people killing their neighbors, wait who is starting an armed rebellion and how? You are the one talking about responding with violence to laws you don’t like. People passing policy they think will make the country better = utopian.

        Lol, you really are the Lord of Hyperbole. Also tell me more about the ‘brain stuff’, that really showed me how much more you know about military technology than me. You know ‘these people’ though so I guess that should put me in my place. Going to school with and having friends that are engineers I couldn’t possibly understand private contracting though despite the fact that it occurred on campus. This has devolved so much from the original point which is this illusion of control that people have about government is total bullshit.

        As have been proved recently the government can collect pretty much any information they want about us. I tend to think they could do a lot more nefarious things if they were hellbent on being the tyrants you like to pretend they are. Also I tend to think that national security is less inept than people think, i.e. they have thought even the most remote possibilities like uprisings within the use or more likely how to deal with right wing extremists.

        1. You went to school with engineers? Wow…

          Oh, and that last word thing? Heh… Bitch please. I’ve got the control panel. 🙂

      3. “You are the one talking about responding with violence to laws you don’t like.”

        The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land. Many people have taken an oath to support and defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and actually take that oath seriously.

      4. So you “went to school with engineers” did you?

        Some of us actually are engineers, doofus.

        I went to school with cheerleaders, but that sure as hell doesn’t make me one, or qualified to have a valid opinion on the topic (other than purely aesthetic…ahem).

      5. Ah, I see. You are part of the “surrender early, avoid the rush” view on tyranny.

        How sweet.

        You are still under the impression that what you bring up is new and original and hasn’t been rehashed all over the place.

        It isn’t and you are not as smart as you think you are. *sad face*

      6. I wanted so bad to say:
        @ SlipperySnake “I was actually hoping to have a conversation with a venue not designed for it.”

        I thought i was engaging in honest discourse by presenting a statistics driven argument about the ramifications of ignoring 48 million armed and angry civilians. And then got into the philosophy of using gun ownership as a check and balance to prevent tyranny. I’m not sure how me doing this constitutes me not wanting to participate in a conversation.

        But then I had a weekend with a house party, some online gaming, a little story concept design, a new meatloaf recipe (which was bomb), mocking the hung over on the floor of my living room, and then smashing some automatons in the face with my holy war hammer of Torag (well i think it’s holy… hoping the GM will get the hint and perma bless the damn thing.), and kinda forgot.

        Sorry. My bad.

        1. You brought this Tiny Cowboy song on yourself.
          😀

          “Ground beef and breadcrumbs, some onions and an egg
          My mouth is watering so please don’t make me beg
          I know everybody’s got their tastes and that’s just fine
          But if you say that you don’t like it, then you’ve never tasted mine
          I’m talkin’ ’bout meatloaf (meatloaf)

          So moist and savory, it’s beef that’s shaped like bread
          Don’t know what that aroma’s doing in my head
          Whatever we don’t eat we’ll discreetly put away
          But never fear, my meatloaf, we’ll eat again someday

          I’m talkin’ ’bout meatloaf, I’m a meatloaf lover
          I’ll tell your brother, yeah, don’t need no other
          Talkin’ ’bout (meatloaf) meatloaf, meatloaf lover
          Warms you from the inside like it’s made by your mother

          Talkin’ ’bout meatloaf (meatloaf, yeah)
          We’re talkin’ ’bout meatloaf (meatloaf, yeah)
          We’re talkin’ bout meatloaf (meatloaf, yeah, yeah, yeah) ”

          Oh, and don’t feel bad about your conversation with Slippery. Like Shi Fu, he was wiser than us all. Slippery, we hardly knew ye! BWA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAA! *Black flag hoisted, slitting of throats to commence in 3… 2… 1…*

  8. Apologies if this is rude or impertinent.

    My name’s Jasyn, we met at the shooting range fundraiser a couple of months ago. Jan Turner, the rangemaster, is my cousin. You coached me on loading and firing the Barrett .50. (Which was awesome. 🙂 I still have the brass.)

    I was the guy with the shaggy hair and sandals. (Despite which, I am not a hippie.) You should know that my excellent experience at the fundraiser has caused me to begin regular shooting practice with my brother-in-law (CCW permit holder) at that same range, just as soon as my new prescription comes in.

    I’m writing a roleplaying game. I have one very specific (and very short) question about firearms I’d like to get your opinion on.

    You’re very busy, and I don’t want to take up any of your time beyond the bare minimum necessary to get a “you’re wrong, do something different” or “sounds good” answer.

    If you’ve a few minutes to read 400 words and give me your opinion, I’d appreciate it.

    Again, I know you’re insanely, unbelievably busy, and this would *not* be a regular thing. You’re just the only person I know with experience in RPG’s and guns.

    If you’re interested, drop me a line at jasynj@gmail.com. If you can’t, for whatever reason, I fully understand.

    Thanks for the range instruction, and not laughing at the hippie who came to the range barefoot. 🙂 Good luck at the Hugos. May many despondent puppies be comforted by your impending victory.

  9. I have a question for everyone else on this post. I’ve been reading the hatey hate hate on the Radish. Trying to get a feel for what the other side was talking about on this issue and I noticed something really strange.

    People were using fiction writing to show that someone was racist. This blew my mind. I wanted to shout IT’s FICTION you moron. This is not the author, this is a character in FICTION!!!. Is it just me or is this truly as stupid as I think it is?

    Cause I think this is about as bright as peeing on an electric fence more than once.

    1. See if the fiction is historically relevant. I had an argument this weekend about the use of the N. word in Django Unchained(which I have not seen, and freely acknowledged this when arguing.).

      They argued use of the word is racist so therefore Quentin Tarantino was racist. I argued that it isn’t if it’s historically and contextually correct. I also am kind of against censorship in all forms simply because of the “give a mouse a cookie” argument. Plus I adhere that intent is more important than what words used when it comes to language.

      Anyway I managed to drag everyone to the same argument instead using Blazing Saddles as a reference, since I had seen it and could argue better from there, and they made the same statement, that using the n word was uncalled for and that made Mel Brooks a racist.

      To which I pointed out Mel Brooks intentional satire of the old west, and the fact that in that time period the way in which Mel uses it was both accurate, and correct.

      This prompted the, “You’re not black, so therefore you just don’t get it.”, argument towards me.

      When I provided the argument that what they had just said to me was racist they suddenly remembered things they had to do elsewhere…

      1. Another Synodus Horrenda brought to you by your friendly neighborhood SJW committee. They’ve been trying to do that to Mark Twain for decades. 😀

        1. Really? That one i did not know about. I wish I had >:)

          I love Richard. I loved him the same way I loved Bill Cosby, not so much Eddie Murphy though.

          To see why I loved Bill and Richard just watch any of their live stuff and watch the audience. I figure if I could ever learn to write and hold an audience the way they could entrance a room by just telling a story, well Larry will be calling me for loans.

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