There's good training, and then there's bad training

Guess which this is?


I cringed too many times to count watching this video, with yayhoos firing weapons past each other and over their heads while spinning. Yikes!  There's a guy in comments defending this shooting school, but I wouldn't go there.

The concept of "Big Boy Rules" and firing weapons over or near someone else is absurd in my opinion, and is an accident waiting to happen. The Marine Corps does live fire with people forward of the firing line, as they would in combat, but those who are forward are not in front of those who are shooting, and even with that it doesn't look anything like this clown show. For starters, there's no choreographed spinning or twisting of the shooters, flagging one another as they transition from one target to the next. And for sure, in real world shootings there are those who have to shoot real close to their fellow Marine or Soldier or Officer, but surprisingly the Marines haven't felt the need to practice that one in peacetime, and it doesn't seem to have effected their lethality. With that in mind I have to question doing it in practice. As far as I know, only a select group or two within the Special Operations community routinely practices live fire with their own down range, and that's because their job description involves shooting bad guys who are in close proximity or direct contact with hostages. I just don't see surgical shooting being a skill set that black-clad mall security needs.

Now I'm going to be all paranoid when I see armed mall security, wondering in the back of my mind if they've been to one of these monkey business shooting schools.

Never heard that excuse

An Arizona Republic story about Anthem Republican Lori Klein's carrying of a gun in her purse while at the Legislature said she showed off its laser sighting by pointing it at a reporter interviewing her in the Senate lounge.

According to Klein, the gun has no safety but there was no danger because she didn't have her hand on the trigger.

Wow. The normal, knee-jerk excuse has always been "Relax! It's not loaded!" This politico's dumb-ass attack takes it up a notch though.

There is also the addendum excuse given that the reporter sat in front of her laser, which is still a moronic thing to admit to. Why was she fondling her firearm in a public building to begin with?

***Update: The story has changed yet again, with even more equivocation thrown in for good measure. Klein says that she cleared the Ruger's chamber before pointing it at the reporter, and the reporter says that he found out later that it was loaded. How it was determined that it was unloaded is unknown. It sounds to me like the pistol is a Ruger LCP with the Crimson Trace Laser on it, and that she had it in the zippered case that it comes with tucked down in her purse. My recommendation is that Ms. Klein get some firearms safety instruction, and also attend a course to learn how to safely carry the gun and have it more readily available than in a zippered pouch.

Also, the reporter she pointed the gun at was interviewing her because of Klein's insistence on carrying the gun into the Statehouse two days after Rep. Giffords was shot. Not said is how many days after the shooting of Rep. Giffords is it considered appropriate to carry a gun for protection in the eyes of the media, but then again the media doesn't need to make sense to create controversy. Any port in a storm, I guess.

Negligent discharge caught on video

Nasty. ***NSFW Language***

I have to disagree with the self inflicted victim -- negligent discharges do not happen. It is not something a gun owner should expect or believe will happen to them at any point in time. You do not practice gun safety with the expectation that it will happen to you; you practice gun safety with the expectation that you will not be the one on a YouTube video expaining how you shot yourself. Also, the blame does not lie with the safety being inadvertantly disengaged when you draw from the holster because your finger should not have been inside the trigger guard until the sights were on target.

That being said, I don't like holsters with doodads on them. This includes the Blackhawk! Serpa holsters, of which I have several and use them. I see the Serpa as being a safer alternative in a retention holster when you re-holster, as there are no flaps to worry about finding their way into the trigger guard like with a snap holster.

Finger is only authorized to be on the trigger when you are ready to shoot.

Rule #3 - "Keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you are ready to fire."

A firearm on the loose!!

In California, an innocent gangbanger's gun animates itself and shoots a random bystander. At least it didn't hit its intended victim.

Disconcerting

This story doesn't sit too well with me, even if an internal police investigation exonerated her actions.

City police spokeswoman Natatia Bledsoe said an internal investigation showed that Officer Alexandra Cameron was well within department policy when she shot at the woman, who was throwing knives and a meat cleaver at city officers who’d come to calm her down.

Throwing meat clevers at the poe-leeeeeece is grounds for getting shot in my book. No question. But like most things in life, there's conditions:

The shot was not a particularly accurate one. In fact, Bledsoe said police don’t know if the bullet struck the woman or not. The woman had an abrasion that could have come from being grazed by a bullet or it could have been caused by something else.

That is part of what is unsettling. I can't tell you for a fact that I would be an accurate shot under the same circumstances, but it seems the cop had no idea about the general direction that she fired her issued weapon. It "went off" so to speak. If you have the soundness of mind to draw your weapon in response to a threat, than you should have the soundness of mind to know if your weapon was pointed at the threat's face or the townhouse two blocks down. Then there's this:

Police initially fired “less-lethal” pellets that release pepper spray in an attempt to subdue the woman. The spray appeared to have no effect, and the shot was fired as she kept coming at the officers while throwing the weapons.

You know, all this "less lethal" crap that you see on Spike TV and S.W.A.T. Magazine seems to me to be. . . . .well. . . .crap. Yes, there's the sanctity of human life and all that jazz, but something tells me that when you shoot a woman who's off her meds with shit designed to burn her eyes and skin, you're not helping the situation any, but in fact making an otherwise crazy person turn into a violent, deadly threat. This video clip comes to mind when I think about those retarded pepper balls ***Warning, language***:

Policing used to be considered serious business, so why is it these days that departments are buying junk like paintball guns filled with pepper? Tasers are close to lethal, and from what I've seen have been pretty effective. Same with shotgun shells loaded with bean bags. But pepper balls? Come on! Might as well be loaded with Nipple Twisters and Indian Rashes.

Shootout in convenience store

Armed self defense works even if you're not good at it. In this case, a store owner is assaulted by two armed men. When they jump off of him to attack someone else in the store, the store owner pulls a small concealed handgun from his waistband. This video is exactly why you carry your gun fully loaded with a round in the chamber; you can see that when he draws his gun, he tries twice to chamber a round, and then the magazine falls to the ground. The video skips forward a few seconds, and he has reinserted the magazine and then sucessfully chambers a round and starts firing. He doesn't even attempt to use his sights, but the bad guys don't notice; they're trying their hardest to flee!

Dangerous jackassery

You have to be a real asshole to shoot deer well outside of your limits. Shooting animals at distance is cool if you can actually hit where you aim at, but this douchebag lobs round after round of .50 BMG at deer at a mile until he finally kills one. The reason I decided to post this here is to show my several readers that most rifle rounds actually do ricochet.



The ones ricocheting off the water near the end are perhaps the most dangerous.

Disregarding Rule #4

Either this guy owns 5,000 acres of uninhabited land, or he's a moron. Don't fire rifles up into the air! Rule #4!!

Thinking about it, even if you owned enough land to know that your rounds wouldn't be impacting in a school yard four miles away, you simply can't guarantee where your rounds are going to land. Bad juju.

Unorthodox gun usage

Who knew that a handgun could be used to calibrate x-ray machines?

There is definitely a "don't try this at home" warning associated with this advanced technique, as the security guard aptly demonstrated.

I will have to seek out some outside-the-box uses for guns for future posts.