The Hard Part Is Getting the Ping-Pong Ball in the Holster

That's a reference to Bill Jordan, about one of his freakish speed draw demonstrations. Anyway I thought I'd talk 'bout les armes à feu.

• "Hidan no Aria" ought to be translated as "Scarlet Bullet Aria." Am I the only one who thinks a "Bullet Aria" sounds like something that happens in a Pistol Opera? Which is a Suzuki Seijun film, but I think it'd make an excellent name for John Woo type HK action flicks, that use tropes from Chinese opera. Think about it.
  
  Anyway, you know in the first episode, when Kinji goes into Hysteria Mode and shoots all those Uzi Segways in like a second? Cool and all, but I couldn't help thinking you wouldn't use a Beretta in a situation like that. If you had superhuman speed, you'd actually prefer a revolver, because there's a mechanical limit to how fast a semi-auto's action can cycle; you control the speed of a revolver. Like how, in trained hands, a pump-action shotgun is actually faster than a semi-auto shotgun?


• So I decided my felinoids' bullets (other than their anti-tank rounds) are made of tungsten-copper alloy. It's as hard as mild steel and 2 grams per cm³ denser than lead: which should give even round bullets quite the armor-piercing capability.
  
  The anti-tank rounds are made of something compressed till it's a few g/cm³ denser than osmium; the anti-armor rounds on their ships' and planes' guns are made of iridium. Remember, iridium is cheap and plentiful if you're a spacefaring race.


• You know nickel-plating and chroming and other finishes that make guns bling? In a higher tech civilization, it gets even better. Titanium nitride (TiN), see, makes an excellent finish for things like guns (it's already sometimes used on knives): and it's the color of polished brass (see, e.g, this brass 0,20 € coin). Titanium carbonitride is black with a muted shine.
  
  But that's nothing. Titanium oxynitride is various shades of blue and purple; on the Wikipedia page for TiN, there's a fuchsia pocketknife.


• And how come nobody finishes guns in some kind of bright red? I ask because guns have a lot of the same design "themes" as cars—both have been looking more and more like athletic shoes as time goes on—and I can't believe that there isn't someone, who'd buy a red sportscar, who wouldn't also want the specific bling of his blinged out pistol to be red.
  
  Oh by the bye (this whole topic was just to justify mentioning this in a post about guns), the reason red is used as a danger signal has nothing to do with blood. It's simply used because it's eye-catching. And do you know why red is eye-catching? One word. Berries. You're a monkey, and red, to you, means "food". Evolving the ability to see that color is why your sense of smell sucks, remember?


• Am I the only one who wishes so many militaries' sidearm was something other than the Beretta? It's not a bad gun, any criticisms of 9 mm Parabellum to one side, but it's just...inaesthetic. It's not really ugly; if anything it's not ugly enough. I mean, go look at a Glock: that's an ugly SOB. That thing looks like the tissue box at my elbow. But it means business, and you know it. Maybe we should switch from the M9 (Beretta M92FS) to the M11 (SIG P228), since then we wouldn't have to learn a new gun, just teach guys a different one of our old ones.
  
  The problem with the common dream of bringing back the Colt Government, so dear to the followers of Lt. Col. Cooper, is the bastard doesn't usually take more than 10 rounds a magazine; a P228/M11 can take 13, 15, or 20, and the M92FS/M92 can take also take 17 or 18. I dunno, maybe switch everyone to the HK Mk. 23 (SOCOM)? It'll at least take 12 rounds, and it's already used by some of our guys so, again, it's just a matter of changing the distribution of manuals-of-arms. And getting Heckler & Koch to start up production again.
  
  There'd still be the problem of using a different chambering from most of the other members of NATO; 9mm is the handgun caliber in NATO, and there's lots of people who say we were stupid for using 5.56 NATO when so many others were using 7.62—and at least 5.56 is a NATO standard, though probably only because we (and the French, though I don't remember if they were members when they adopted the FAMAS) went with it.


• I made a change in my dark fantasy book (which I really need to rewrite). Before, the vampire-hunting priest used .44 Magnum, while everyone else used .45 ACP or .45 GAP. But, really, why? I switched him to one of those 8-round .357 Magnum revolvers (I forget the name, the S&W one with the flashlight rail underneath); most of the others now use .357 SIG or .40 S&W (the latter in a high-pressure load, all you "40 short and weak" naysayers can sit on it). Hollow-points only, since having to expel bullets makes vampires take longer to heal.
  
  The albino werewolf doesn't use a gun in the first book, since he doesn't have a laser sight—albinos have poor depth perception, see (I'm not sure how their reduced "resolution" vision would affect the sight-picture, either). The reason a laser sight (which he gets in the second one) improves that, is, this guy I was in a class with had macular degeneration, whose effects seemed to be similar to some of albinism's visual symptoms; and he could shoot, if he had a laser sight. Cool, huh? All is grist!


• Two of the vampire hunters use Glocks, but one of them uses .357 SIG, while her partner uses .40 S&W. Yeah, I know, they're virtually indistinguishable. Ah, but worry not: not all Glocks are black, you know. His have the olive drab frame option.
  
  How is it Glock has managed to overlook the market for bright pink pistols? The frame's already polymer, guys, color can't be that hard to change.