Grrl Power #1296 - Assets include... sand

Thank you for the support! You guys are awesome!

Designated Marksman Rifles are designed to be effective around 800 meters. Plus or minus a bit depending on the actual rifle. "Proper" sniper rifles start at about 800 meters as well, but it can depend on what they're chambered for. The AWP, or Arctic Warfare Police, popularized (or vilified, depending on your point of view) by Counter Strike lists an effective range of 800m. Back in the day when I played a lot of CS2, I was a AWP whore, big time. My proudest moment was getting kicked from a game for "cheating" after going 30-2. I was playing on a local Shacknews server and had a ping of 12 on my new DSL line, so conditions were favorable.

I'm not actually sure what "effective range" means. I could google it of course, but an educated guess is that a round from a gun can hit reliably within a... 3" diameter (?) area and can deliver a certain amount of kinetic energy. Okay, let's google it. Huh. Okay, basically I was right. Not about the 3" measurement, but essentially it's a combination of precision and lethality. It also doesn't seem to be an "official" term, like there's no math ratios involved or FDA for guns testing each one for nutritional content. 

What the hell was I talking about... oh, right, so the M24, the primary USAF sniper rifle also has an "effective range" of 800m, when chambered for 7.62×67, but the M24A3 is a variant chambered for .338 Lapua Magnum, and has an effective range of 1,800m. The .50 cal Barrett M82, is also listed at 1,800, but of course we've all heard of sniper kills way further out than that. 

So, anyway, that's why I put "short range" in quotes in the last panel, cause while Peggy appreciates the lighter weight of a DMR, she also appreciates the flatter trajectory of the Lapua and .50 cal rounds. Of course, "short" range to Peggy tends to be medium to long range to a lot of other people, and long range to her most people don't even think is possible. But being a proper marksman is about more than landing some crazy shot 3,500 meters away, it's about hitting moving targets, or watching someone dive behind a wall and predicting where their momentum took them and still hitting them because bricks don't stop anti-materiel ordnance. Peggy's respected for being a skilled long range sniper, but also for hitting medium range twofers and repeatedly hitting targets after they dove behind cover. She's got that "the gun is an extension of me" mojo going on, and that "the bullet is an extension of my will" juju. Some people think there are humans that can juuust dip their toes into the Superion Field. They're not supers, but they're just a little bit too good at certain things.