Ravenwood - 01/12/04 10:30 PM
I've never really watched CSI, but I keep hearing rave reviews about it. Sooo.. I decided to try watching CSI Miami tonight. A guy in a parking garage gets into an argument over a fender bender, pulls out a pistol, and ends up getting blown away himself. Sounds like justifiable self defense to me, but they started investigating it as a murder. They find the dead guy's pistol laying on the ground, and the investigator chick picks it up and pulls out the magazine. She says it couldn't be the murder weapon because the mag was fully loaded. It sounds reasonable, although I couldn't figure out how she could tell the mag was completely full without trying to cram another round in there, but I digress.
Investigator chick number two claims that even though the mag was full, there could have been a round in the chamber. Investigator chick number one opens the chamber, and shows that it is empty. Based on this, they conclude that the only way to tell if the gun was the murder weapon is to look for a shell casing.
So, setting aside the fact that any trained investigator should be able to smell whether or not the gun had been fired recently, what's wrong with this?
What's wrong with it is the same reson that I stopped watching 99% of TV over 4 years ago. They're putting the stereotype that people will get killed over a fender-bender when people are ALLOWED to carry concealed weapons on TV.
And media studies have shown that when people see things on TV, they often get confused (in as short an amount of time as a week) whether or not they watched a situation on a TV show or heard about a true situation on the news.
Ergo, the network/writers/producers hope that people will see this on TV and later on think that they heard it on the news and vote against CCW legislation when the opponents bring up this example.
Posted by: analog kid at January 12, 2004 10:40 PMMaybe you're right. The red haired guy just told a chick "A .45 is a big gun for a woman."
How sexist can you get? My ex used to handle a 12 gauge.
Posted by: Ravenwood at January 12, 2004 10:53 PMLousy politics aside:
If the gun had been fired with rounds in the magazine, there would be a round in the chamber. "Auto-loader," right?
An empty chamber shows that the goblin carried with nothing in the pipe, and either didn't have a chance to rack the slide before (entirely properly, given the scenario you described) getting popped by his intended victim, or didn't realize he had to rack the slide to make ready.
Excellent test question. May we have another?
Posted by: refugee at January 12, 2004 11:29 PMWatch regular CSI. Not the knockoff. Yes, I know it's the same producer. Still a knockoff. You can find the reruns on Spike TV on Friday. Spike TV, the first network for men (and they made ESPN CLASSIC for . . . ???)
Posted by: Justene at January 13, 2004 2:33 AMWe have a winner! [ding, ding, ding]
Refugee, go to the head of the class!
Posted by: Ravenwood at January 13, 2004 6:05 AMI agree with Justene, watch the original (which in on Thursday nights), not the "Miami" one.
The whole flaw in this is it doesn't matter if a round was in the chamber or not. The person who is the shooter wouldn't know that and under the law would be justified in shooting someone wielding a deadly weapon. It would be like arresting a guy on murder 1 for shooting a man who shoved a bb gun in his face to rob him. Just because the gun wasn't real doesn't mean the person knew that at the time and shouldn't have fired.
Posted by: Rhett at January 14, 2004 1:50 AM(c) Ravenwood and Associates, 1990 - 2014
