The ice storm here knocked out the power sometime after midnight Thursday morning. It was only restored today just before noon, which means that our house (and rps.net) went without power for five and a half days. Lows at night got as far down as 17 degrees F this past week. All in all, not a pleasant experience. If it had continued any longer, people might have gotten hurt!

The snipers are caught, the weapon found. The debate over gun control will now continue, probably even intensify. All of the major media outlets report that the .223 Bushmaster AR-15 clone proven to be the murder weapon is an "assault rifle", even though it is not capable of automatic fire. It's quite apparent that they're happy to wallow in their spread of ignorance, because it makes for much more sensational journalism.

Will we discover the motivation for the shootings? As suggested by his last name, Muhammad, the sniper, was a convert to Islam. This of course gives rise to the question of whether or not his faith and 9/11 had anything to do with his murderous rampage. Was it simply terrorism, no different from the WTC except on scale? I doubt he had any contact with organized terrorism, any more than the shooter in LAX from a few months back did.

Angry accusations have been hurled at the NRA for their "silence" during the entire sniper murder spree. As if any of those accusers would be satisfied with any official statement the NRA were to make. If the NRA were to condemn the attacks (which of course they do) and publicize their desire for a speedy arrest and prosecution? The accusers would simply ratchet up their rhetoric that NRA executive must be held personally responsible for every gun crime committed in the United States (and probably a few in Mexico too). Do they also believe that the ACLU should be held responsible for crimes committed by people on parole or those who have been released on a technicality? I kinda doubt it, even though both organizations are simply trying to defend the rights of American citizens.

John Allen Muhammad is an ex-soldier and Gulf War veteran. He scored "expert" in the Army's M-16 qualification course. Sorry, Jack Thompson, your ridiculous assertion that the sniper gained his terrific abilities from video games has finally been put to rest. As I covered earlier, the entire suggestion was nonsense to begin with, though I doubt that it will be the last time simpleton lawyer Jack Thompson argues the position.

Sarah Brady has used the sniper shooting to try to advance several points of her group's anti-gun agenda. Even though the weapon used doesn't appear to fall under the legal definition of "assault weapon", she has argued that this attack demonstrates the need to renew the assault weapon ban that expires next year. Of course, even the briefest thought given to that argument shows how utterly hollow it is. The law is still in effect... and did not stop these shootings. How exactly is it important that we extend it? The law does not even cover the weapon used. In other words, it's not even relevant to the situation. And finally, each attack consisted of a single solitary shot. In other words, the crimes would have been no different if the sniper had used a bolt-action 5-shot .223 rifle, or a lever-action 6-shot .223 rifle, or even a single-shot falling-block .223 rifle that contained no magazine at all. Sarah Brady wants to convince us all that banning the rifle used would have prevented these depraved attacks, an argument, it's quite plain, is intellectually bankrupt.

Ballistic fingerprinting is now being thrown around as the solution to all the nation's woes, especially by people who don't understand it. It may surprise some to learn that a few years ago, I also endorsed the idea of a distributed database of ballistic information. I didn't advocate a centralized government database of records, but rather information kept by each manufacturer. It wasn't until the actual process of ballistic fingerprinting was explained to me that I realized why the entire concept was flawed and could never work. Rather than go into a bunch of details here, I'll link to an article by Dave Kopel & Paul H. Blackman who explain it far better than i ever could.

Jack Thompson, idiot at large, has deduced that the Maryland police should be focusing their attention on violent video games in order to catch the Maryland sniper. He appeared this morning on the Today Show (which is always willing to give morons a soapbox) discussing all the "obvious" connections between these murders and video games. Is Jack Thompson a detective? An expert on shooting and marksmanship? An expert on video games? No, he's the moron lawyer who tried to sue game makers after the Paducah shootings in Kentucky.

Thompson's basis for blaming video games? Here are his "reasonings":

1) "One-shot one-kill" is the basis for numerous video games. Actually, I play a lot of games and I've found this to be completely untrue. In most of them, the goal is simply to eliminate targets, and it doesn't matter how many shots you use. And of course, those video games that do have this aspect borrow it from real life sniper training. In other words, this is a case of art imitating life, not the other way around. But like most fools, Jack Thompson is flabbergasted by the concept of cause and effect. "One-shot one-kill" was not invented by video games.

2) Games have "God mode", which reflects the message found on the discovered tarot card. Tompson explained that while playing games in god mode, your targets never shoot back. This is, of course, a completely inaccurate statement. In games with god mode, this setting merely makes you invulnerable to enemy fire. That little inaccuracy aside, delusions of divinity have been around for centuries before video games, and they have often have been linked to mass murder. Did Son of Sam ever play a video game in which he took orders from a talking dog? Did Jim Jones play a video game where he poisoned Kool-Aid? Did David Koresh play Quake in "Jesus mode"? And of course none of this explains the tarot card, something not exactly common in FPS games.

3) Video games teach you how to shoot. This is the argument he used in his attempt to pin Michael Carneal's school shooting to games like Quake and Doom. It's also his most assinine and ridiculous position. "Even though he'd never fired a handgun" Thompson says in defense of his assertion. What he doesn't mention is that Michael Carneal had received firearms training on shooting a rifle, and had also practiced with his murder weapon before the shooting spree. He also doesn't explain how a video game is going to teach shooting fundamentals when it's all about moving a mouse and crosshairs on a screen. Do you know any video games that teach trigger squeeze, the single most important aspect of accurate shooting? I don't. Do you know any that encourage proper hold, the use of a rest or skeletal bracing? I sure don't. Even the arcade games with rifles have them mounted so that weight and other things aren't a factor. How many games do you know that teach proper breathing control? I've only ever seen a few that even try to simulate it, one of them being the Army's "America's Army." Even that, though, can't compare to the real thing, and doesn't take into account synchronizing with your hearbeat in order to achieve maximum accuracy. And you know how many games I've played that include accurate bullet drop or wind deflection? Zero. I have never played a game with either of these, even though they are two of the most basic aspects of long-range target shooting. Accurate shooting can NOT be taught by video games. As both a gamer and a shooter, I can attest to this simple fact, as can anyone else who has any experience in both subjects. To assert anything to the contrary merely demonstrates a person's total ignorance.

Jack Thompson is a pathetic hack who is simply trying to drum up some exposure by cashing in on a series of horrific crimes. In his Today Show interview, he explained that he'd been trying to contact the Maryland police on the sniper case, but hadn't yet received any reply. Good. That means that they have some intelligence up there. What does Thompson expect them to do? Go to Counter-Strike message boards and post "d1d ne1 h3r3 sh00t p33ps in m4ryl4nd???" Maybe they should be focusing their attention on trying to find a mass murderer. You think?

I've added a new section to my site (retiring the horribly neglected Gun of the Week). You'll see it up there: "Interactive Fiction". The reason I've added this are pretty well covered in the section. It's also my current project as I finish off what will hopefully be the last update to Night's Edge: Wet Works. What, no mod for UT2003? Possibly, though the idea I had for a rune-style mutator is kind of mutually exclusive with the built-in adrenaline, and I'm kind of tired of spending months of work on something no one plays. I won't rule out the possibility of helping out on another UT2003 project, but I won't be doing my own. Anyway, my hope is to start entering the annual IF competition every year. It's a shame I started so late, I've just missed this year's contest.