The Importance of Fact Checking

[Edward M. Grant]

The SKS seems to have taken over from the Lee-Enfield as the archetypal Canadian rifle; pretty much every gun store here has a bunch of SKSs for sale. Mostly because you can buy a rifle and 1500 rounds of ammo for about $600 and it's legal for deer-hunting in a pinch.

So if you want to sell your book in Canada, don't have the character swapping magazines in his SKS, unless it's one of the modified ones. And then you should probably have them try three times to get it in because it keeps getting stuck on something.

[R H Auslander]

The SKS seems to have taken over from the Lee-Enfield as the archetypal Canadian rifle; pretty much every gun store here has a bunch of SKSs for sale. Mostly because you can buy a rifle and 1500 rounds of ammo for about $600 and it's legal for deer-hunting in a pinch.

So if you want to sell your book in Canada, don't have the character swapping magazines in his SKS, unless it's one of the modified ones. And then you should probably have them try three times to get it in because it keeps getting stuck on something.

I presume the markup from the 60 dollars US that former Warsaw Pact countries are selling them for is because of customs and shipping? Who made the ammo and when?

SKS is an accurate weapon within reason, easy to maintain, hard to hurt and you can drop it in the famous Russian Mud, run over it with an Ural, pick it up, run a stick down the barrel to get the mud clumps out and have at it.

I saw one if those mag 'modification' devices and still chuckle about it today. Quicker to use the weapon in the manner of which is was made instead of that 'pound to fit' horror show.

Another way to confuse the wannabe's is ask them how to remove the muzzle brake or flash suppressor on the AK47/AKM/Whatever model is out today. Giggle time for sure, especially when you act stupud and get them to pantomime the op. Fail every time.

[Edward M. Grant]

Well, that's $600 Canadian, not $600 US, so the markup is less than it looks .

I think the ammo crates are Mao-era Chinese army surplus. You'd have to buy something more lethal if you wanted to legally shoot a deer, but the surplus stuff would be fine for practice.

[Joseph Malik]

The SKS seems to have taken over from the Lee-Enfield

The Enfield .303 British is not to be underestimated. We learned about them at Arta Plage; they're the go-to in the Danakil for smugglers and traders. You can take a 500-meter potshot and disappear into the ravines before the echoes disappear, and it's too damned hot for anyone to chase you.

On fact-checking, I highly recommend La Legion's Desert Warfare Center if you really want to dial in your "hero crossing a desert wasteland" scenes. I learned a lot.

[Edward M. Grant]

Yeah, I was shooting a Lee-Enfield a few weeks ago because one of the characters in one of my novels has one. Seemed like it was more accurate than I could be!

But these days an Enfield in the original military form with 1500 rounds of ammo would cost you about $4000; the days of $50 rifles and crates of army-surplus .303 were over even before I moved to Canada.

[She-la-te-da]

I wish I'd gotten more weapons training in the Air Force. It's the downfall of serving in peacetime, I guess. They handed me an M-16 and a nail, pointed me at the target, and let me go. I think I'd gotten a day of theoretical stuff, and then it was shoot some stuff, and now strip, clean and reassemble, double-time!

I'm no marksman (unlike my father), but if I'm pointing a gun at you, end of life discussions should have already taken place, 'cause you ain't gettin' back up again.

[R H Auslander]

Well, that's $600 Canadian, not $600 US, so the markup is less than it looks .

I think the ammo crates are Mao-era Chinese army surplus. You'd have to buy something more lethal if you wanted to legally shoot a deer, but the surplus stuff would be fine for practice.

ChiCom ammo is dirty, daily cleaning is a must, stuff will eat some pretty good steel quickly. Best we every used was Soviet first, then DDR, although the DDR crates were the best ever, as were the DDR sealed ammo tins. Paper was a cut above, too, almost like wax paper. Don't know if Mutti sold off all the DDR stuff yet but tons of it has showed up where it shouldn't, everything from crates of 9mm pistol ammo to the odd T 72.

[R H Auslander]

The SKS seems to have taken over from the Lee-Enfield

The Enfield .303 British is not to be underestimated. We learned about them at Arta Plage; they're the go-to in the Danakil for smugglers and traders. You can take a 500-meter potshot and disappear into the ravines before the echoes disappear, and it's too damned hot for anyone to chase you.

On fact-checking, I highly recommend La Legion's Desert Warfare Center if you really want to dial in your "hero crossing a desert wasteland" scenes. I learned a lot.

Not all 'wastelands' are what most perceive as 'desert', I can take you to areas in this vast country, walk you for days on end and we'll never see another living soul besides each other and trust me, you ain't seen bad territory until you've had the fun of Rasputitsya, Russian spring and fall mud. If you worked with and/or trained with La Legion, my hat is off to you, they're some of the toughest SOB's I've ever met.

Enfield is an excellent weapon, sturdy, easy to learn and armor and reliable. For field use, I always preferred one of Komrade Kalashnikov's finest but only the 7.62 versions. As an aside, as of last week the 'mini' round version of Kalashnikov will be phased out, everything will go back to Sov 7.62 in both lengths. Troops hated the 'toys' and at first opportunity went back to 7.62.

[Joseph Malik]

If you worked with and/or trained with La Legion, my hat is off to you, they're some of the toughest SOB's I've ever met.

Thank you. My unit had the good fortune to work with 13e DBLE in the Horn of Africa. Batsh*t-crazy, fun-loving guys, yet professional death personified. There's a lot of their esprit de corps and general personae in the knights I wrote into my books.

I went on to attend Aguerrissement Zone Desertique at CAIDD, which ranks as the absolute hardest thing I've ever done.

[Maggie Ann]

Gee, and all I'm worried about right now is how to address the illegitimate daughter of a prince in medieval times. 

[Joseph Malik]

Gee, and all I'm worried about right now is how to address the illegitimate daughter of a prince in medieval times. 

"Your Royal Bastardessness?" Just spitballing, here.

[Maggie Ann]

Gee, and all I'm worried about right now is how to address the illegitimate daughter of a prince in medieval times. 

"Your Royal Bastardessness?" Just spitballing, here.

Not bad! I actually called my villainess in one book Her Most Royal Buttocks.

[Jeff Tanyard]

As an aside, as of last week the 'mini' round version of Kalashnikov will be phased out, everything will go back to Sov 7.62 in both lengths. Troops hated the 'toys' and at first opportunity went back to 7.62.

What do you mean by "mini" round?  Are you referring to the 5.45?

[R H Auslander]

What do you mean by "mini" round?  Are you referring to the 5.45?

Yes. There may be some continuing use of the 5.56 version just for grins, but neither 'sub caliber' weapon was popular with the troops.

Now, to give the answers to the barfly questions:

"Which side of the receiver housing is the magazine release button for AK47/AKM etc etc?"
Answer: Neither, the mag release is a spade lever directly behind the magazine on the bottom of the receiver.

"How quick could he change the magazine in an SKS?"
There is no external magazine in a stock SKS, it has in internal non removable magazine fed with a 10 round stripper clip.

[R H Auslander]

Thank you. My unit had the good fortune to work with 13e DBLE in the Horn of Africa. Batsh*t-crazy, fun-loving guys, yet professional death personified. There's a lot of their esprit de corps and general personae in the knights I wrote into my books.

I went on to attend Aguerrissement Zone Desertique at CAIDD, which ranks as the absolute hardest thing I've ever done.

I worked with some interesting folks, and for a while back in President Reagan's time we were training US troops, either Marines or thems that didn't tell you who they were with. Also trained and trained with German units back then and with Soviet units after SSSR was no more.

Someone in President Reagan's near entourage came up with the idea of using those who served in foreign armies to train US troops after witnessing some infantry training against each other with half of them with blouses turned inside out and yelling 'Bang! Bang!' because they had no blank ammo. Those who served in foreign armies use different tactics, uniforms and weapons so the training got real good real fast. Best US troops to train against was the Jarheads out of Lejeune, they learned fast and by the end of the two week cycle they were some pretty resourceful folks.

I would have to say my toughest training was our advanced. Over 300 young men started, two died in training and 104 of us got our patch. That was '66 and at that time the Army was pretty much full of senior NCO's who served back in the 'last' war. Tough bastids each and every one of them, and full of tricks. Of the 104, there's two of us alive today.
 

[Scrapper78]

It does my heart good to see a quality firearms discussion in a fact-checking thread!

So many books do a terrible job with guns. I'll extend my irritation to gun play and fighting in general. There are right and wrong ways to handle a firearm, and right and wrong ways to fight unarmed.

Here are things I wish action writers would do a better job with:

-There is a difference to how trained soldiers and operators handle a gun fight and how gangsters and criminals do it. A lot of great action scenes can be built off of this. Lots of tier one units get surprised by scrappy opposition with a good plan and decent training, let the differences shine and you'll get a great conflict..

-Fistfights look very different than how most people imagine them. They are shorter, less graceful, and gorier than you think. Watch some Worldstar videos and fights caught on security cameras. Focus on what happens when untrained people fight with well-trained people from full-contact styles (boxing, judo, jiujitsu, wrestling, "MMA" etc.) The differences in how they move and fight are huge.

-Just because a guy was a SeAL (SAS, Ranger, whatever) does not mean he's a great hand-to-hand fighter. Hand-to-hand is pretty much obsolete in modern warfare, and even the most elite units spend only a little bit of time on it.  As they should. We have guns, and specialists are very good with them. We shoot bad guys, not punch them. However, the average special operator is going to be in MUCH better physical condition than most of the people he/she will encounter. That can make for a very interesting fight scene.

-Learn the difference between "concealment" and "cover." If the bad guy has a .44 magnum loaded with buffalo bore 310-grain hardball, that restaurant tabletop is not cover! Conversely, if the good guy has a Ruger LCP in 380, the bad guy can hide behind whatever he wants. The Lee-Enflied discussed earlier will shoot through pretty much anything a person is likely to find for indoor cover. But no one is really going to use a LE indoors, anyway.

-Guns are loud. If your hero shoots a gun indoor without ear protection, your hero is going to be deaf in the closest ear for several minutes. If the gunfight drags on, tinnitus is part of his life for a while. This can be inconvenient for storytelling purposes, so I usually let this one slide.

I'm sure ther are more, but these are the ones that get my goat when i read and I try to avoid in my writing.

[Edward M. Grant]

Yes, I always like the movies where they're shooting at each other with high-powered rifles but the restaurant table they're hiding behind stops the bullets.

Sword-fights also seem very different in real life to many books and movies. A lot less swinging and parrying, and a lot more smashing them with a shield until you've knocked their weapon and shield out of the way and can get a good swing or stab to finish them off in one blow.

My girlfriend and I were watching a viking movie on Netflix the other day and discussing how inaccurate most of the fighting was.

And let's not forget 'it's just a scratch,' Yes, it may just be a scratch, but in a medieval society it can easy get infected and lead to your arm being cut off to save your life, if the amputation doesn't kill you anyway.

[Eric Thomson]

And let's not forget 'it's just a scratch,' Yes, it may just be a scratch, but in a medieval society it can easy get infected and lead to your arm being cut off to save your life, if the amputation doesn't kill you anyway.

You mean like this? 

[Edward M. Grant]

Yeah, until I got a sword I hadn't realized how easily they cut through things like arms and legs. Not that I've cut any off with it, but it's sharp enough to cut paper and clearly going to make a mess of anything it hits.

One of my friends from the UK does medieval surgery re-enactment, and apparently they could saw off a limb in a few seconds because it was so commonly required after battles and doing it fast was the only way they could give the patient a decent chance of survival.

[Al Stevens]

My WIP is about drug dealers using delivery drones. Apparently I bought into the myth that pizza houses were doing the same and had references to it in the narrative. Then common sense kicked in. Too many potential problems: safety, regulation, traffic, noise. A quick search verified what I'd suspected. If I hadn't had that rare moment of common sense, I'd have perpetuated an urban legend as fact in a story of fiction that's supposed to be believable.

[Tom Wood]

My WIP is about drug dealers using delivery drones. Apparently I bought into the myth that pizza houses were doing the same and had references to it in the narrative. Then common sense kicked in. Too many potential problems: safety, regulation, traffic, noise. A quick search verified what I'd suspected. If I hadn't had that rare moment of common sense, I'd have perpetuated an urban legend as fact in a story of fiction that's supposed to be believable.

Crime and pizza? You want Snow Crash: https://www.amazon.com/Snow-Crash-Novel-Neal-Stephenson-ebook/dp/B000FBJCJE/

The first pages, shown in the Look Inside, are a blast!

[Bill Hiatt]

Gee, and all I'm worried about right now is how to address the illegitimate daughter of a prince in medieval times. 

Illegitimate children of royalty were sometimes given titles of nobility (and perhaps also legitimized, though usually with a provision excluding them from the succession). For example, Henry Fitzroy, illegitimate son of Henry VIII, became duke of Richmond and Somerset. Robert Fitzroy, illegitimate son of Henry I, became the first earl of Gloucester. (It appears Fitzroy is sort of the royal English equivalent of Snow in George R. R. Martin's work.)

Other cultures may have operated differently, but it's probably not hard to find historical examples is you're using a particular historical culture.

[Maggie Ann]

Gee, and all I'm worried about right now is how to address the illegitimate daughter of a prince in medieval times. 

Illegitimate children of royalty were sometimes given titles of nobility (and perhaps also legitimized, though usually with a provision excluding them from the succession). For example, Henry Fitzroy, illegitimate son of Henry VIII, became duke of Richmond and Somerset. Robert Fitzroy, illegitimate son of Henry I, became the first earl of Gloucester. (It appears Fitzroy is sort of the royal English equivalent of Snow in George R. R. Martin's work.)

Other cultures may have operated differently, but it's probably not hard to find historical examples is you're using a particular historical culture.

Yes, I'm aware of that, especially Charles II who scattered illegitimate children all over the place and then gave them titles. Then there's John of Gaunt and his children by Katherine Swynnford who were legitimized and given the name of Beaufort and their own titles. Even though they were excluded from the succession, Margaret Beaufort was the mother of Henry Tudor who became Henry VII.

For the purposes of my story, this fictional daughter of Llewelyn the Great (Wales) was not acknowledged until she was seventeen. So, she needs to be addressed by various people up until that time.

[spin52]

I wish I'd gotten more weapons training in the Air Force. It's the downfall of serving in peacetime, I guess. They handed me an M-16 and a nail, pointed me at the target, and let me go. I think I'd gotten a day of theoretical stuff, and then it was shoot some stuff, and now strip, clean and reassemble, double-time!

I'm no marksman (unlike my father), but if I'm pointing a gun at you, end of life discussions should have already taken place, 'cause you ain't gettin' back up again.

I'm glad you weren't one of the occupants I moved into a quarter they didn't like when I worked as an RAF housing officer.

[spin52]

Going back to the discussion about derringers -- I just visited a museum in Virginia City, Nevada, where to my delight, they had an 1860s derringer on display. I said to my husband, "You know, I shot someone with one of those," and earned myself a very wary look from another museum visitor.