The Gunner's Blog

It is engaging and covers the main points. Hat tips to  A/V Geeks for resurrecting this from the archives and  Gun Culture 2.0  for bringing it to my attention. Its gently amusing tone is a reminder of simpler long-ago times.  

Over the years my advocacy for the shotgun, contending that the shotgun is a generally better self-defense weapon than a rifle or a carbine, has filled a number of blog posts. Some of those posts go into detail about pattern size and density, danger radius, and assorted, related minutiae. This time I simply give the topic a once-over. I have not succeeded in convincing very many shooters that you really are better defended with a riot gun than with a modern type of rifle, for all the details I have offered. I don't know that the quick overview will do any better, but here goes. ----------------------------- I prefer a shotgun for my personal and home defense long gun. I consider it the best fight stopper at short range. Nearly all justifiable self-defense shootings are at short range. I do not think very much can be said against the effectiveness of 12 gauge buckshot loads. They are deficient in just one respect; they will not go through even the lightest body armor. They ...

Despite the heartbreak hotel tone and the hokum and hoplophobia, this propaganda film does manage successfully to underline why we have the Four Rules . I contend that if you internalize the Four Rules, make them inflexible and fully habitual, and furthermore take the sensible safety precaution of taking your gun with you rather than leaving it lying around where children might get at it, no scenarios like those following can arise. The tone and tenor of the video, though, are plainly of the 'guns are baaaad, m'kay?' irksome ilk. That it is a gummint production sends an odd message, even granted that this was the eighties and even the military hated the military. It almost says that by training and arming you we have burdened you with a curse. It should be treated as an honor, with heightened responsibilities.

The shotgun "zones," A, B and C,  describing the shotgun's behavior at varying ranges, are not much emphasized in my practice sessions anymore, because it was always a clumsy teaching. It is easier to tell people that the farther away you are from your target, the more likely you are to pelt the downrange danger zone instead of putting pellets into your target. That is really all the zones have to teach us, and you can demonstrate the same lesson in a few minutes at the range. Here is how the matter was taught, and my critique. Zone A: Very short range. The pattern has hardly spread. All your pellets will hit the combat silhouette target, for they are hitting en masse. (Bad assumption. All your pellets can miss the target too--same reason. But, if you are reasonably proficient, it is quite likely that all of the shot charge hits--and the wad as well.) Zone B The pattern has spread out, but not so widely that you can't still put all your pellets on the target. ...

The key problem is to prevent the bang in the first place. That cannot be seen to in a law code; it must happen between the shooter's ears. Around the blogosphere, suspicious voices are asking whether Evolve, the group that is behind the engaging little founding fathers skit about not being a dumbass when it comes to guns, is acting from ulterior motives. Is Evolve's real plan to portray gun owners in general as dumbasses, whose rights deserve no respect, and who should be handed further legal restrictions? Or is it really only their intent to say that some people do dumbassedly dangerous things with guns and that these people should consider their ways? Time will tell. I support the second version of the message, not the first. Doubtless what Evolve intends to say will become clearer. I am, though, happy at this point that they are drumming up attention on the safety question. You see, my posts on gun safety are always among the least read posts on this blog. ...

Clever in its way, and it makes a point that, unfortunately, needs to be made over and over. The makers of the video invite you to visit their gun safety website, which is here: http://www.takeonthecode.com/index.html

http://www.nrablog.com/post/2013/06/23/NRA-Spotlights-Safe-Gun-Use-and-Storage-Practices-for-National-Safety-Month.aspx The NRA endorses a slightly different list of safety rules than the Cooper-inspired Four Rules I usually promote. Actually, though, I'm easy. I promote the NRA rule list in settings where that is what is familiar and what people have heard before and will hear again. There is no sense in confusing the issue. The different rule sets are consistent with one another in identifying the problems and warning against them. We know what the problems are because people who disregard the warnings have the same problems in incident after avoidable incident.

The Guardian Express, a web outlet that covers the US news beat, today has an opinion piece entitled " Handguns and Their Irresponsible Owners ," written by James Turnage. I dislike the tone of the piece, and take issue with one or two minor points. But I agree with the big point of it. If you have a gun, you must store  it safely. It is something I have preached for years. Unless the gun is under your direct and immediate control, which means carried on your person or placed within reach, it should be rendered inert, inaccessible or preferably both. My logic on this point is airtight. If you really need a gun, you need it ready to hand. If you really do not need it, it should be secured. It's all quite simple to manage. Take, for example, the double action revolver. Swing open the cylinder and snap a sturdy padlock around the top strap. The gun will not work, and an attempt to twist off the lock will wreck the gun before the lock gives way...

I do something that is perhaps peculiar. When I read the news I look for stories about gun accidents. Each time I find one, if the reporting is clear at all, I can figure out which gun safety rule was violated, or which rules, for often it's not just one. Colonel Cooper's Four Rules of Gun Safety are the distillation of what you need to know, a short simple set of precepts that anyone can remember. Cooper, as likely you know already, revolutionized shooter training in the last century by clearly stipulating, step by step, the skills needed to shoot effectively. For example, he identified five steps in drawing and leveling a pistol, then he coached people until the gun came out and got trained on the target the same way every time. He turned the same analytical skills to the question of how to handle a firearm safely. Here's the thing: In every accidental shooting for which I've gotten a clear news account, it is clear that at least one of his four safety rules was ig...

Here we have another story --there have been too many--about a little kid with unsupervised access to a firearm, doing something heedless with it, with tragic consequences. A five year old was playing with a gun, it discharged. The bullet struck his two year old sister and killed her. If the incident occurred as reported, it was entirely preventable. That is what gun safety advocates have been pointing out for years. There is no need for things like this to happen. The horror of the incident with be with that family permanently. The effects are not limited to one broken and grieving family, however. Already, the anti-gun contingent is building up this incident as a pretext for further restrictions on us all, and is portraying youth-sized firearms and kids learning to shoot as something sinister . We don't need further restrictions, or further calumnies against us, we need to use good sense and thus employ precautions we already know about. There is nothing so very difficult ab...

Latest thing from the gun control crowd is to refer to their objective as "gun safety." Of course that is nonsense. Gun safety is what you do with a gun if you have one, to make sure the wrong people don't get their hands on it, and that you use it safely, so that holes end up only in the proper types of targets. If the idea is to keep people from having guns, that is properly termed "gun control." I have been advocating for better gun safety for many years (along with a great many other people) and the influence on the accident rate is significant and downward. It has nothing to do with saying you cannot have this gun, or that magazine, or that your name belongs in another government database. The term "gun safety" has been hijacked because it sounds good. Who could be against safety? But the word does not mean the same thing when it is spoken to deceive. Of course it does not: No word does.

Rule Three of the Four Gun Safety Rules states, "Keep your paws off the trigger until your sights are on the target." Or something to that effect. This news story from Sebring, Florida says that a fellow's dog stepped on a pistol that was on the floor of his truck, the gun discharged and the bullet hit the man in the leg. On the floor of his truck? That is an unusual way to carry a pistol. It created a situation that violated Rule Two. The shootee " thought the gun was unloaded ," so I'm going to have to score this one as a violation of Rule One and Rule Two for the gun's owner, and a Rule Three violation for his dog.

Rule Four of the Four Rules of Gun Safety  requires that you "Be sure of your target and what is beyond your target." Police of Los Angeles and Torrance, California appear not to know that one. They have shot up two different blue trucks that resemble the truck of a suspect they are seeking, a suspect who has them very much on edge. Neither was the right truck. Two innocents were wounded in one of the trucks. No one was hit in the other. The point is, of course, that being sure of your target includes making sure you have the right one. Being on the lookout for a blue pickup is not an open season to shoot up any blue pickup that comes along. The callous disregard for the public's safety disturbs me. The L.A. Times story  offers the following: Two women who were shot by Los Angeles police in Torrance early Thursday during a massive manhunt for an ex-LAPD officer were delivering newspapers, sources said. The women, shot in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue, were...

This story  out of Oregon is a tragic one, a young life snuffed out in a failure to apply Rule Four: Be sure of your target and what is beyond your target. I remarked  on a similar story just last month. To repeat: It is hard to imagine how you are going to have a shooting misadventure if you internalize the Four Rules pertaining to gun safety and always hold yourself to them. If you do not know what the rules are, or have forgotten them--if you cannot repeat them off the top of your head--lock away your gun until you can recite them, with feeling.

   Every shooting misadventure I hear about involves violation of at least one of the Four Rules of gun safety. In this story from the Chronicle, cops in San Francisco shot at a suspect, missed, and hit two bystanders. This shows us the reason for Rule Four,    Be sure of your target and what is beyond your target. To the obvious question, "What were the officers thinking," the obvious answer is, "They weren't." The suspect was uninjured.

This episode --and there have been too many like it-- shows why the Four Rules are everybody's responsibility all the time. Also it appears the shooter had been drinking, which is not okay. Innocent until proven guilty, but if it played out as the news report indicates, holy cats. I am pleased that the shootee survived. They don't always.