I watch a lot of old B&W movies because I love that they had to use something besides profanity, boobies and baby space aliens hatching out of somebody's chest to entertain. Last week I was watching one of those old films about a Royal Air Force pilot who lost both his legs in a crash between the World Wars but defied the odds to continue flying (with artificial legs) and became a major influence on British dog fighting tactics during WWII. During the film his character said something that struck me as profound.
"Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men."
I looked up the quote and found that it was something the real guy was fond of saying but he was quoting a fellow RAF pilot. Anyway, a day or two later I thought of that quote after I'd come across two separate gun bloggers who were making a point of dumping on what they considered to be instances of unsafe gun handling they had found on the 'web because some random guy was muzzle sweeping himself. However, in both cases there was a complete absence of any evidence to either confirm or deny that the gun handler in question had taken adequate precautions to "safe" the weapon beforehand.
EDIT:
Actually, that wasn't exactly true. On reflection, one of the two shooters in question was showing an empty magazine well and had an empty chamber flag in the breech. In that condition it would be more dangerous as a club than as a firearm, so I take exception to the claim that he was doing something unsafe by placing it pointed at himself.
[/Edit]
And everybody knows Jeff Cooper's four rules of gun safety, right?
1. All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.
2. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger till your sights are on the target.
4. Identify your target, and what is behind it.
But here's the thing. Col. Cooper wasn't the prophet Moses. Those rules weren't inscribed on stone tablets by the finger of G-d, they were written by a man, a human man. And the greater community of shooters and guns owners decided many decades ago that sometimes those rules need. not. apply.
First example. At least two of the widely accepted CCW methods -- shoulder holsters and appendix inside the waistband -- have us routinely muzzle sweeping either bystanders or ourselves.
With the gun carried horizontally, you sashay around muzzle-sweeping everyone who happens to be behind you. But even if the holster carries the gun vertically, you can't produce it and train it on the target without muzzle sweeping about a third of the planet in the doing. Which is exactly why some LEAs -- Secret Service for one -- forbid shoulder holsters.
It's all the rage now but there's nothing new about "appendix" carry because people have been sticking their gun in the front of their pants probably ever since there've been handguns. But the simple fact is you can't carry AIWB without pointing the muzzle at your own wedding tackle and/or lower extremities. Yet nobody rags on the companies that make and sell AIWB holsters.
Then there's this:
At this moment, somewhere on this planet, there's somebody shooting clay pigeons who's resting the muzzle of his shotgun on the toe of his shoe. It's simply "the done thing." You can even buy a thingamabob to put on the top of your shoe so you don't get a grease and gunpowder muzzle ring on it.
I'll grant you those skeet shooters are using top-break shotguns with the breeches opened but A) it's still a firearm, and B) not everyone who shoots clays uses a top break. When I was younger, and before liability loomed so large, every trap and skeet range of any size in the country rented out semi-auto Remington 1100s, and it still was permitted to rest the auto's muzzle on your foot, provided the breech was locked open.
I still shoot a few rounds of skeet every year with an autoloading shotgun in the weeks leading up to the opening of dove season to get the cobwebs out of my follow-through, and I have two of those toe protector thingamabobs that I use. The range where I shoot is operated by a friend who also is a professional skeet, trap and sporting clays referee, and I can assure you he would tear me a new asshole if I did anything he considered unsafe while on his range. And I habitually rest the muzzle of my 12-gauge on the toe of my shoe instead of keeping my sweaty hands in contact with its beautiful blued steel.
I've tried to research the practice and see when it began and all I could find was that it already was "the norm" before the turn of the 20th Century. So it's been going on for at least 120 years (that I can account for) and yet the vast majority of clays shooters still have two intact feet.
And there's very little to do with firearms that doesn't come to us by way of the military, so they would never institutionalize any practice that amounted to unsafe handling of a firearm, would they?
This is the Inspection Arms during the Changing of the Guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery. FF to about 50 seconds and you'll see the inspecting officer looking down the muzzle of the guard's weapon (for the record, and popular myth to the contrary notwithstanding, the guards DO NOT carry any live ammunition).
Which raises still another point. Are the bores in you guns clean? How do you know, unless you looked down them? And when you checked them, did you disassemble the weapon and remove the barrel before checking it, or did you simply lock the breech open or open the cylinder before looking? And how was that not an unsafe act?
With all respect to the ghost of Col. Cooper, sometimes there is such a thing as safe enough.
Also for the record, I do not think taking exceptions to any of those rules is a good thing. In a perfect world we wouldn't have to take any of those exceptions to Col. Cooper's Rule #2. But if this were a perfect world we wouldn't need governments, policemen, self-defense firearms, or rules for firearm safety in the first place.
All that said, here's my point. Anybody who blogs about firearms is putting themselves forward as some fashion of an authority on the subject. But in a time when 2A and RKBA are under such extreme threats, you are NO FRIEND to the community if you seek to enhance your own position by beating up on some hapless gun guy (who doesn't even have a platform to use to rebut your allegations) when you don't/can't know to a certainty whether he was doing anything unsafe to begin with. And it's in general pretty gutless to kick someone who can't defend themselves.
So if you come across some self-anointed safety expert railing on another gun guy when it isn't necessarily deserved (or they're doing it entirely for their own aggrandizement), I would encourage you to take the time to bust their chops for it. Because the gun community has more than enough external enemies, and we should self-police to get the idiots out of our midst whenever and wherever possible. Or at least get them to clean up their act.
Reply With Quote