Re: Not always joking, it seems

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:08:12 -0800, David Friedman
<ddfr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>In article <cr3hr3l91ol10potv5ci66t9jlgeo5i3fe@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> David Johnston <david@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>> Friendly fire incidents have happened many times.  
>
>Sure. But they don't generally take the form described.

Actually..

If you generalise the scenario a bit, ie "bad guy fires gun. Good Guy
Group one fires at Bad Guy. Good Guy Group Two proceeds to whoop Good Guy
Group 1's ass, because they just hear gunfire and don't know where it's
coming from or that Group 1 are good guys", that's *exactly* how an awful
damned lot of blue on blue happens, if not most of it.

Very few situations are as clearcut as an auditorium filled with seated
students -- including one where all of the crowd is getting up, screaming,
and many of them are firing guns at a Bad Guy.

Incidentally, if you think that people won't fire through the front ranks
at a threat just because they don't have a clear field of fire, when the
threat appears you get tunnel vision, and you very well might not see the
rest of the audience at all, even when they're passing between your gun
and the target. That happens fairly frequently. Certainly enough that in a
crowd of 100, it almost certainly will happen.

Jasper