This time it's CSI's new episode, "Take my life, please!" -- such a disappointment from this program.
Setup: CSIs examining a bad-man victim who had been shot over 100 times. Sarah says something like, "X-number were blackened and thought maybe it was GSR, but they were singed." Ray replies that the burns could have been caused by tracer rounds, then adds that when he was a kid his dad and his Army buddies "would get drunk and fire tracer rounds on the base" and tell him they were fireworks.
Note to television writers: if you don't know anything about a subject -- leave it out.
#1: Army installations are not bases and an Army brat would know that. An Army brat says "on post," not "on base." The Army installations are forts, or posts, or camps, or depots, or proving grounds, or arsenals, or barracks, or presidios. But unless they are co-located with another service, Army installations are not bases.
#2: Ammunition is controlled. Weapons are controlled. During weapons training, casings are counted afterward. People may own their own weapons, but they don't shoot them off near children, and they damn sure don't put tracer rounds in them, even if the tracer ammunition would fit. Were Ray's dad & buddies supposed to be firing machine guns "on base?" Yeah, that's believable.
#3: Unless you were out on a firing range or at an overseas "rod and gun club," firing a weapon "on base" would bring down a wrath so fast, your head wouldn't have time to spin. All the servicemembers know the sound of gunfire, and if it was in the housing area, you'd have MPs showing up pretty damn fast. Ray's dad & his dad's Army buddies would have shot off weapons once -- and then it would be the stockade.
Portraying servicemembers as drunk wildmen is a popular movie and television sport, but it's stupid. It doesn't do our servicemembers or veterans any favors, and it perpetuates silly misperceptions. In the six decades of my life, five of which have been spent at some point in military quarters, I can remember seeing one weapon other than those carried by military police or guards. There may have been others, but that is the only one I remember. That one was a friend's father's hunting rifle in South Dakota. It was deer season. The deer was there, too.
Television writers, when you write nonsense you not only show your ignorance, but you shatter the suspension of disbelief, make people pause the DVR, reboot the laptop, and wind up with puny blog posts just looking for a search engine to find them. Way to build a fan "base."
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