I have a dark and evil secret. I like CSI: Miami. After much reasoning, I’ve come to the conclusion that I enjoy overly hammy acting, junk science, and watching lab techs interrogate murder suspects. My wife called CSI: Miami “The show about forensic Magic”, because that’s what it really boils down to.
Unfortunately, last night’s episode really, really baked my crust – as most shows do when the have “ballistic weirdness” involved. The gist of it was that one of the their CSIs was shot, in the head, with what they repeatedly referred to as a .223 caliber bullet. Now, of course my first thought was “wow, he survived a .223 rifle round to the head”; but then they said that they were looking for a handgun, so I got confused. But wait, there’s more. When they showed a picture of the bullet on their super-magik ballistics computer, it looked like a “heel-based” .22 LR. Now I was really confused, because a .22LR is .224 inches in diameter, not .223. CSI wasn’t done yet. They then determined that the round had come from a rifle they called a Ruger 10/22, and I was thinking “Okay, the 10/22 is a .22, that’s cool, I guess I can forgive 1/1000ths of an inch”. Until they showed the rifle. It was a bolt action.
Right about then, I felt something inside me die. I mean, sure, they constantly called a .22 LR a “.223 caliber”; sure, their EVIL SNIPER WEAPON turned out to be a 10/22; but having it be a bolt action? I mean come ON. Do a little research. Seriously, just like 10 seconds of research would have prevented having your writers look like a bunch of idiots.
Although rather masochistic, for some reason I thought it was funny that the Hoplophobe crowd decided to make a .22 LR into their EVIL SNIPER WEAPON of choice. I’m still unsure exactly how Pelosi and the Brady bunch will turn my .22s into something for Suzy Soccermom to be afraid of, but I’m sure they’ll figure something out.