Kids and guns

There are several tails attached to this beast, and I'm seeing that they're being addressed in clever ways these days.  When it comes to this topic, I have several questions.  How do you introduce firearm safety to young children?  My meaning here is not only one of having children shoot so they know how to control it, but also one of avoidance for the younger children.  How do you provide access to older kids so that they can become part of home defense?  Can you safely provide access to an older kid, but also keep younger kids away from them?

Some of my kids are still too young to even sit down with them and give them an Eddie Eagle talk, but two of my kids are old enough for instruction, but are not really ready for live fire.  In my day, my father and/or some of his trusted friends would give me firearm safety instruction, followed up with some .22 rimfire shooting.  That was safe and effective, but the airsoft and pellet gun sounds like it's overall the best way to get kids trained on firearm safety.  Some gun bloggers you may have heard about did just that, and provided an environment with many children at one time learning gun safety and how to shoot.  Perfect!  I missed out on the opportunity, but I plan on having my kids involved for the next one.

On the other end of the spectrum, having a well thought out plan for your older kids to defend themselves or the house while you're away is priceless.  Here's a great example of a well executed plan that fortunately didn't include gunfire.  Having a codeword that is only used during a no-B.S. moment of danger is good policy, and having your children disciplined enough to be trusted alone with access to firearms is what you want the end result to be.  I have a long way to go before that happens in my house, but I pay close attention to those with older kids and how they do things.

Ultimately, you have to have some sort of plan.  It's reckless and irresponsible to have firearms in the home and not tell your children about them.  Most of the friends that I have grew up with guns in their house, and none of them had any accidents or injuries, and none of the guns were hidden.  I can guarantee that you can't hide a gun from a kid for long.  Education is the only way to fly, you just have to start.

To infinity and beyond your target

This weekend I was able to sneak out at nap time for a little shooting therapy. I did some load development for my mom's Ruger LCP which went well; I tested out my ammunition weatherproofing skills which also went well, and I started to do some weak hand only (WHO) drills because I hadn't done them in a long time, but that part came to a screeching halt due to safety concerns.

I was shooting next to my brother's fiance' (WHOOOOHOOOOO!!!! Congrats, y'all!!!), ringing the Nevco steel target while shooting with my left hand when I noticed someone walking along a path on the top of the hill from my target. All I could see was from his jaw up, and he didn't seem to have any idea that two people were blasting away not 150 yards from him. The hilltop is part of what used to be a massive dairy farm surrounding my parent's property, but has recently in the past few years fallen into the hands of the Historical [Hysterical] Society; they made it into a Civil War historical thingy where there's a pathway a couple of miles long with information plaques every quarter mile or so. You can't do anything with the land that I know of except walk along the path, and that path happens to take you along a 15 degree angle above the place where I've been shooting for 25 years. It's a rare occasion that anyone actually walks it, but this weekend it happened. We packed up and quit shooting for the day because I couldn't tell where the guy went.

Thinking about it, I've had this very thing happen to me on four other occasions over the last 8 years or so:

- Once while shooting on a friend's private property in the middle of 25 wooded acres, a buddy of his jumped on a 4-wheeler with my friend's 6 year old daughter and went trail riding, and the trail brought them directly behind the dirt backstop we were shooting into. They knew we were shooting before they took off, but they didn't know where they were when they were behind the backstop. My friend called a cease fire and we quit for the day.

- Same friend and I were shooting rifles at 300 yards on a gas-line in the middle of a big piece of property in another county. I was in the middle of a string of fire from a .300 Winchester Magnum when some kids on three 4-wheelers drove into the woods about 200 yards behind the target. I was on the scope and couldn't see them, but my friend called a cease fire and we quit for the day because we couldn't verify where they went.

- Again, same friend and I were shooting on a big piece of privately owned property that was going to become a subdivision one day in the near future. We were shooting rifles at a 350 yard target, I was on the scope touching off 308 Winchester rounds when my buddy called a cease fire. Some curious moron with his young son drove his truck onto the property and drove right up to the target to see what was going on. His truck appeared from behind a hill about 100 feet to the left of the target. They sat in the truck for awhile and then drove off. It just about gave me a heart attack.

- Shooting on a power line on a huge piece of property in the middle of nowhere, I was spotting bullet trace for a buddy of mine while he was shooting a 30.06 at a big target at 650 yards. Right before his 3rd shot, I saw a man's face appear at the top of the target in the distance -- it was four men riding on two 4-wheelers, and they were about another 600 yards behind the target. I yelled cease fire right at the shot, which went low and into the dirt in front of the target. The men rode past us a few minutes later, but we still decided to quit for the day.


Keep in mind that these events happened over the course of about 8 years, and represent only a fraction of a percent of times when I've been shooting and nothing happened. One theme all of them have in common is that the backstop we were shooting into was certain, but the people who appeared were in the direction of fire. Rule #4: Beware of your target and what is beyond it -- this rule is really two rules in one; and unless you break it and another safety rule, you won't shoot anyone. It does help to have someone not shooting to be a general lookout so that if there's a safety issue it can be dealt with quickly. It pays to be observant!

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."

Spousal Unit Fail

Little initially put the gun to the dog's head and pulled the trigger several times, but nothing happened, police say the wife told them.

Knowing my wife like I do, I'm certain that if I was sitting on the porch pounding moonshine, snapping a partially loaded revolver at the dog while babbling about how bad my life sucks, she would probably end my suffering temporarily with a frying pan long enough for the state-run help to arrive and give me proper attention. But maybe my wife is different then the vast amount of them out there in that she cares about me, and wouldn't just sit on her ass while I self destructed.

The guy in the article is dead by his own hand, but I have to question the sanity of his wife. Telling the cops that her husband "got tired" of playing russian roulette with the dog means that she had plenty of time to do something to prevent such a tragedy, unless of course she's patiently waiting for that "til death do us part" clause in the marriage contract to be executed (oh, my pun!) so that she can get on with her life. It makes sense then.

Laaaaawww the doooo daaaaa daaaaay

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Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be Delta

How about some 11 year old fire and maneuver complete with immediate action drills this morning? Very cool!


Gun safety iiiiiiiiiiiiissssss AWESOOOOOOOOOME!!!! Yeah, I watch a little too much Yo Gabba Gabba these days. Don't judge.

I found the video on this thread at MP.net, which if you take the time to read, a Frenchy goes all Oh Noz!! over the idea of a non copper handling a gun, and then he gets his ass handed to him by American commentors. Just so you know.

Unsafe shooters, meet your god

I don't know for sure that this kid isn't a troll, but he breaks every safety rule ever devised in this video. Witness as Blake (who owns you, apparently) shows you the power of an 18.5 caliber Glock firing real shell bullets made by "Wuff:"


From this video I learned to use forehead goggles to protect myself from ricochets in case I can't outrun them. That's valuable info.

It's stuff like this that makes me adamant about teaching my kids gun safety, instead of them learning it on their own with the help of their brave and stupid camera man.

Taiwan police women choose Colt

Well, at one time they did by the looks of these lovely ladies masterfully handling Colt Troopers. Who knows what they use nowadays.

Strange foreplay

"Sedille told investigators that, during sex play the night of Dec. 21, he took a handgun he thought was unloaded from a shelf beside the bed and racked the slide back, cocking the weapon. According to the affidavit, he told police he placed the gun to her head and it fired."

Uh-huh. "It fired" all on its own. Savagely violating the first three rules of gun safety had nothing at all to do with it.

AK Kaboom

Wait. . . .what? I thought AKs never jammed or stopped running? Nothing can stop them!!



I don't know the back story, but this sucker was definitely firing just fine, and then blew to pieces. Couldn't happen to a better person though!!

Adorable marksmanship

Starting safety and marksmanship early on makes for good habits. It's cute too!

And for the ladies, it's important that the weapon matches the outfit!

Live a life of avoidance, de-escalation, and detterence

It's imperative if you carry, as even if you're right, someone may take the very sight of your holstered handgun as a threat to their personal safety.

Beasley eventually let the other driver know he wasn't pleased, and the two drivers exchanged words and gestures.

The two ended up in a parking lot on Corporate Drive, where they continued their dispute.

The complainant accused Beasley of displaying a gun, and Beasley said the other man had a knife. Beasley said he never took his gun out of its holster.

The complainant, aka slow-assed driver who doesn't know the law, felt that Beasley was a big-scary-man-hiding-behind-that-humongous-weapon, and called the po-po. Why in the world did Beasley decide to stop on a remote side of a highway at night to dispute someone's shitty driving?

One might argue that just because you carry doesn't mean that you don't have the right to give someone a piece of your mind, but I would retort that in this particular situation, as well as any that are even remotely close, it doesn't matter one teeny bit whether or not someone is armed. You don't purposefully engage in a heated conversation with anyone, armed or not.

I make it a general habit to not argue with anyone over anything while I'm out in public, and certainly not after midnight on the highway on a school night. Someone screams at me over a parking space - go ahead and have it, hoss. Say something nasty about my wife while we're eating at Olive Garden - sorry you feel that way; have a good night. There is simply no reason why I am going to engage in conflict when I strive at all times to avoid it.

Now, about the complainants driving. I cannot stand folks who will not yield the passing lane to another driver, and it makes me yell out loud in my truck when I'm stuck behind some douche who is in the passing lane riding abreast of a slow-ass driver in the right lane. One day amongst all my screaming a vein in my beet red forehead is going to pop, sending a lazer beam of blood smashing through the windshield and slicing through shitty-driver's rear tires. If you're too chicken shit to overtake the car to your right, then tap the brakes and move on over behind them. There is no excuse.

And to all the old folks who say that there's no reason to be in such a hurry, "it's only going to save you five minutes", well. . . . go piss up a rope. Every day driving to work, I end up behind three of you blue knuckled sonsohbitches, which adds up to thirty minutes of my time you have robbed from my kids every single day because you can't get the fuck over. Happened not an hour ago.


And for all you city folk who have moved down here from yankeeville to find your country roots, and still have all the I heart DC/NYC/Baltimore bumper stickers stuck on the back of your Prius, when you're riding down the country roads where all the disgusting hillbilly people live, and you have a line of headlights behind you as far as your eyes can see, and there's no cars in front of you, then pull over at the first available driveway and let the folks who know how to drive pass. Back roads around here go on for ten miles or more, so your non-driving ruins productivity for the people who work for a living. GTFOver!!

The Natural Selection is strong in this one

This loser soundly violated all four rules of gun safety, and will hopefully now get the full affect of daddy's wrath.

EMBED-Kid Accidentally Shoots Dad's AK-47 Indoors - Watch more free videos

Sadly, this type of behaviour is almost expected among our youth these days; why 90 lb. juveniles think it's cool to cover their face with bandannas while spouting hard words at a camera is anyone's guess..

Hey hoss, keep your focus on the fundamentals right now, like not peeing on the toilet seat, before setting your ambitions any higher. And I'm afraid guns will never be your thing, so get that out of your head.

H/T Ace

Highly trained

TAZEWELL, Va. - A retired Virginia state trooper faces charges after shots he fired at a coyote hit a school in Tazewell.

Rule number 4!! Just because someone is trained to handle a firearm does not mean that they are always safe.

Public understanding of firearms

Despite the big uptick in firearms purchases as of late, the public at large is still dumb as a post when it comes down to understanding fundamental gunnish things.

Here's a story about a federal police officer shooting a dog in a dog park for allegedly acting aggressively/attacking his dog and/or him personally - the details are not crystal clear, and it will be a he-said-she-said argument regardless. Sad story either way.

What I am pointing out though is in the comments:

Oldcyrus22
"What is that officer doing with his gun in a park loaded with hollow points? He is a menace that was looking for a reason to shoot. . . . ."

Hollow points = menace. Got that?

How about this one:

anonymous
"My first question is WHY is an OFF-DUTY Federal Officer walking around with a gun loaded with hollow point bullets ? Why would he feel it necessary to use a hollow- point bullet on any dog? ANYONE with a brain in their head would know that doing so on anything smaller than an enraged bear [and then I would only allow 2 regular caliber hunting bullets] is not only excessive over kill [pardon the bad pun] but also shows an EXTREME psychological failure on the part of the officer in question. Obviously he does not know when and how to use a 'man-killing' round in his weapon. Dogs 'feint' agressively at each other all the time to establish hierarchy and dominance some more than most. Different dogs have different levels of aggression. Before his superiors let him have a gun they should have checked he knew what it was good for. It would have been best if he had just thrown the safetied weapon at the seemingly aggressive dog THEN NO ONE WOULD HAVE GOTTEN HURT MUTTONHEAD! And isn't that the point of being a FEDERAL OFFICER?????"

My emphasis. This person also does not know why virtually every police department and federal law enforcement agency in the country uses hollow points in their service weapons, and I don't think it matters if he or she finds out. Hollow points are for large bears, and you're only allowed to shoot a bear with "regular" hunting bullets. . . twice.

Oh, but there's more:

Schatzie59
"What the heck is the off-duty officer doing with a loaded gun in a dog park? Fire him. If he can shot a dog, what happens if some person makes him mad?"

Schatzie

Now we're not talking about hollow points at all; this person is questioning the carrying of a weapon in general, and from an anointed police officer at that - a federal one even. So if he or she believes that a cop could fly off the handle and start murdering Lassie, Benji, Cujo, and their owners because he had an off day, how can you possibly expect him or her to trust you with a weapon?

Back to the comments though, we're still not through with the perception of a cop carrying his duty weapon in public:

Dranny3
"Get this Federal Officer off the streets. No reason he should be carrying a loaded gun when he's off duty and in a public park. Sounds to me like he's a little trigger happy and maybe shouldn't have a gun at all. He should be charged with animal cruelty and forced to face charges. . . ."

Again, this one's about carrying a gun in general in public. If you are not in a uniform, there is no way you can be trusted to have a firearm with you. Also, the cop in question should be run up the flagpole for shooting the dog when we still don't have the facts.

The big picture I'm trying to paint here is imagine yourself standing in a courtroom in the aftermath of a defensive shooting. You glance over at the jury, and you see a cast of good hearted human beings that no doubt love their fellow man, and wouldn't harm a soul, but won't hesitate for an instant to send your ass to Sing Sing for using a handgun bullet that in their eyes are only for killing large bears with one shot.

See how this is a major issue?

The solution of course is training; those who are in the know should be educating those who are not. If you are looking for a visual on bullets, how they work, and the differences between hollow points and "regular" bullets, I invite you to check out one of my earliest posts: Anatomy of a Cartridge. If you are looking to inform someone about bullets and their effect on body armor, check out this post: Ballistic Vest Live Fire Test; that post I did exclusively for the education of those who don't know a thing about firearms.

Only you can prevent spear gun violence

The teens told investigators that Connar and a friend were being dragged behind the boat while holding on to separate rope lines when Connar was struck by his friend's spear gun in the upper chest.

Yeah, officer, seriously, it totally was an accident that I shot a spear gun off the back of the boat striking my friend center mass. Honestly, and no, I'm not high on freon right now, and haven't had anything to drink but soda. Just soda sir.

I mean, I guess anything could happen these days, but who here really thinks that some joyriding teen bumped an errant spear gun laying on the deck and it just happened to fly aft of the boat and hit a teen on a rope flailing about in the water? Yeah, I didn't think so either.

This appears to be another senseless spear gun violence incident triggered by that devil's elixir, Zima, and could have been completely avoided if we simply registered spear guns or just ban them altogether, license boaters just like we do with sex offenders, and brought back prohibition. If you're against this clever plan, than you are only advocating for unsupervised teens to get wasted while operating a vessel at high speeds on the water with a high caliber spear gun in their hands.

Where's your common sense?

Rule number four!!!

Yikes!

That's some good fortune that that family has. Firing rounds up into the air is a big no no.

The 4 Rules, modernized

Sometimes you have to be flexible; Marines call this Semper Gumby - always flexible.

Were you aware that the 4 Rules of gun safety had other applications as well? That's the sign of good doctrine.

A BB gun is still a gun

This story is tragic, but I would guess that it is a pretty rare event.

Either way, this message does need to get out more:

"If you come across any type of gun: stop," Pagano said. "Don't touch it. Leave the area and tell an adult. Everybody needs to know that, as surely as they need to know how to dial 911, don't take candy from a stranger, stop drop and roll. That message needs to get out more."

Absolutely.

A case for suppressor ownership

It was not these private individuals but rather law enforcement groups--sometimes using automatic weapons--that concerned neighbors.

A shooting range built for youth to be able to shoot skeet is getting bad press because cops are firing automatic weapons. That's about the gist of the article. I would be willing to bet that the machine gun fire is rare, but the neighbors' real complaint lies with all the .223 Remington madness that gets fired from AR type semi-auto rifles. Fair enough.

How about a push for taking suppressors out of the NFA? That would settle the problem pretty quickly, don't you think? It would also prevent hearing loss.

Safety first, I always say.