Tag Archives: guns

Only an Idiot would Carry with a Live Round Chambered

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A rant.

I own two guns, one of which is a semi-automatic pistol. I blogged about it here.

Yes, I do keep my gun stored loaded. It has a magazine that holds seven shots and that magazine is full and inserted. The gun is in its holster, with a snap strap to prevent it from falling out (even though it fits snugly in there) or inadvertently fired.

I don’t carry it, even though I have a concealed carry permit here in Washington and had one when I lived in Arizona. I consider it a line of last defense in the event of a home invasion (which is highly unlikely where I live) and I can’t get away from an attacker. If a fight or flee situation, I’m not an idiot — I’ll flee.

Like most semi-automatic weapons, a round needs to be chambered before it can be fired. If you’ve watched any kind of movie with a good guy or bad guy getting ready to go into a dangerous situation, you’ve likely seen him (or her) chamber a round by pulling back on the gun’s slide. “Racking the slide” like this brings a round out of the magazine and into the firing chamber. The gun can now be fired with a relatively light squeeze of the trigger.

In other words, when a round is chambered, the gun becomes a very dangerous thing to hold or carry.

And this was proved (again) just yesterday. From a New York Daily News article:

Ruger Semi-Auto
I don’t know what kind of Ruger this idiot was carrying locked and loaded in his church, but it could have been this one: Ruger American Pistol, Semi-Automatic, 9mm, 4.2″ Barrel, 17+1 Rounds

A Tennessee man and his wife were hospitalized after he accidentally opened fire during a discussion about church shootings at a local church.

The unidentified man was at First United Methodist Church in Tellico Plains on Thursday when he was showing a handgun to other attendees at a dinner, according to police in the town south of Knoxville.

His unloaded Ruger was passed around, though the man in his 80s allegedly put the magazine back in and chambered a bullet when it came back to him.

Police said that another person walked up and asked to see the weapon when the owner pulled the trigger.

“Evidently he just forgot that he re-chambered the weapon,” Tellico Plains Police Chief Russ Parks told the Knoxville News Sentinel.

The bullet hit the man’s hand before striking his wife in the abdomen. Both were taken to the hospital and are not believed to have life-threatening injuries.

He forgot that he’d prepped the gun for firing and shot himself and his wife.

Why in the world would anyone chamber a round if he wasn’t ready to fire the gun?

Well, that’s something that the NRA encourages.

You see, the NRA stays strong and powerful and keeps its membership ranks full by convincing people who can’t think for themselves that danger is all around them and they need to be prepared to fight back.

I saw this firsthand when I took a concealed carry course in Arizona years ago, when my wasband bought the first gun for our household. (Back then, the course was required to get a concealed carry permit; I’m not sure if it still is. But we took the course because it was the only pistol training course we could find in our area; I had no desire to carry and still don’t.) The NRA-sponsored course had a very heavy emphasis on the importance of carrying a gun at all times to protect yourself. As the only woman in the class who made it clear she was not interested in carrying, I got special attention. The instructor and his wife came up with numerous unlikely scenarios where I might be called on to shoot an attacker. It was absurd. They assumed I was either an idiot or was looking for trouble. (No, I don’t spend my evenings hanging out on the fringes of Phoenix mall parking lots or take long solo walks in the bad parts of any town. Sheesh.)

You can see this mentality again and again. When Googling “Can you fire a semi auto without first chambering a round?” for some additional information for this blog post, the second search result was this:

Search Result
This is the kind of crap that keeps idiots brainwashed to carry guns with chambered rounds.

So yes, there are a bunch of Second Amendment yahoos running around carrying semi-automatic pistols with chambered rounds, all ready to fire at a touch of the trigger.

And they apparently do so in churches.

Keep in mind that it takes literally a single second to rack a gun’s slide. Does waiting until you’re ready to fire really save you that much time?

I don’t think so.

So yes, I’m a gun owner. But I believe the NRA is harmful to our nation and its people. And that we need sensible gun laws that include education so morons like this guy understand just how dangerous a chambered round can be.

The Guns in My Life

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Not all gun owners are nuts.

I read something on Twitter this morning that really struck a nerve:

Monitoring? What did he mean by monitoring?

I read some of the comments and found this one:

I don’t think she meant “special” in a positive way. And that really got under my skin.

You see, I’m a gun owner. And although I like to think I’m special, I’m not special in the way Michelle seems to think all gun owners are.

And that’s why I decided to write this post. You see, I’m not the only person in my family who owns a gun and none of them are “special” in the sense that we need to be monitored.

My Father’s Guns

My father worked as a police officer in our small northern New Jersey town of Cresskill from around the time I was born in the early 1960s to his retirement. As you might expect, he owned a gun and I grew up with at least one gun in the house.

I say “at least” because I honestly don’t know how many guns he had. We were taught at a young age not to touch his gun and we didn’t. When he got home from work, he’d put it on the top shelf of a tall bookcase in the foyer or sometimes on top of the refrigerator when he came home for dinner. (He worked three different shifts: 8-4, 4-12, and “midnights” (12-8).) I knew the gun was dangerous and I knew I wasn’t supposed to touch it. I never did.

Well, that isn’t exactly true.

Every autumn, the town held what was called a “Turkey Shoot.” It was held at the local shooting range. They’d put up targets and participants would shoot. The targets were scored and the high score would win frozen turkeys. I think it was a fund raiser, but how would I know? I was a kid.

At least twice when we attended this event, my father let us shoot his gun at the target. He never handed us the gun. Instead, he held the gun with us to point and shoot. I remember it being heavy and the trigger being hard to pull. I don’t remember if I won a turkey. Again, I was a kid.

Girl Scouts

When I was in Girl Scouts, we learned to shoot rifles. This was at an indoor range in the nearby town of Tenafly (I think). The rifles were probably World War II surplus. They could hold one shot and had a bolt action. Again, I was a kid and don’t remember much about it.

I also don’t know why learning to shoot rifles was a Girl Scout activity in my area around 1970, but today I think it’s kind of cool.

I do remember that they taught us to shoot from multiple positions including prone and sitting cross-legged. I was a pretty decent shot.

My Uncle’s Guns

My uncle was a flag-waving veteran of the Korean War, although the closest he got to Korea was the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. He became quite a gun collector and kept most of them in a big gun safe down in his basement, right at the foot of the basement stairs. I vaguely remember him showing some of them to me. Most of them were collector’s items.

In his younger days, he was also a hunter. For years, he had a bearskin rug on the floor in his living room. He’d got the bear on the same trip my dad had shot a deer. (That’s when I first ate venison.)

He was a little crazy with the guns sometimes, but I don’t think he was unsafe. One day when I was just out of college, I visited his family with my boyfriend, who had a very “plain vanilla” family life. My uncle’s family was anything but “plain vanilla.” My uncle staged a fight with his son, my cousin, with my cousin yelling at him from down in the basement stairs. My uncle pulled out a gun and shot it down the stairs from the kitchen. Yes, in his house. The gunshot was loud! But the bullet was a blank. He’d apparently set the whole thing up to give my boyfriend something to talk about when he got home.

I don’t know how many guns he had, but I suspect it was more than 20. I don’t know what happened to them when he passed away.

My First Gun

I got my first gun in the early 2000s, not long after moving from the New Jersey suburbs to Arizona. My future wasband telecommuted to work back in New Jersey, which required him to be away from home 7 to 10 days every month. While he was gone, I was alone with a deaf dog in a house that creaked a lot more than I was used to. I used to lay awake at night, convinced that the creaking I was hearing was someone creeping up the stairs. Keep in mind that the house was at the end of a gravel road, pretty far from the neighbors so it wasn’t as if help could arrive quickly if there was an intruder.

At my request, my future wasband bought us a gun to keep in the bedroom. It was a 38 special revolver.

Of course, being responsible (not “special”) gun owners, we immediately sought training to make sure we could use it safely. The only training we found in the area was a Concealed Weapons Permit class. It was a weekend long and included lots of information about guns, including safety and legality. The guy who taught it with his wife — both of whom wore camouflage outfits to class — was very pro-carry. Remember, Arizona is an open carry state, meaning you can wear or carry a visible gun in most places. The concealed weapons permit enabled holders to carry a gun concealed by clothing or in a purse or backpack. Some people think this is important. I was the only woman in the class and they kept trying to convince me that I’d be safer if I carried a gun with me at all times. I said I wasn’t interested. They said, “Well, what about if you’re in a mall parking lot late at night, parked way out on the edge, and a gang of guys comes toward you.” I replied, “I’d never put myself in a situation like that. I’m not an idiot.”

The class was informative, opening my eyes to a different gun mentality than mine. It also included range time where we had to qualify before passing. Since I was the only woman in the class, I got a bit of attention. I was told that with a little practice, I could be a good shooter. Great.

A side benefit of having a concealed weapons permit was that I could worry a lot less about rules when I took my gun to the range or elsewhere. For example, suppose I’ve got the gun out of sight in my car’s glove box when I get pulled over for speeding. The gun would be considered “concealed” and without a permit to carry it that way, I could get in deep trouble. The course explained how to handle such a situation and the permit made it legal to have the gun in the glove box to begin with.

Beretta 21A Bobcat
My Beretta isn’t very practical, but it holds a place in my heart as my first gun. And yes, that’s my hand holding it.

Of course the 38 Special wasn’t really my gun. It was my future wasband’s. I wound up buying something quite a bit smaller, easier to handle, and less practical: a Beretta 21A Bobcat. It’s a semi-automatic handgun with a magazine that holds 7 22 caliber rounds. I bought it brand new in a gun shop and, yes, I did go through a background check process before it was sold to me. It’s less practical for three main reasons:

  • If I ever did have to use it to stop a serious attacker, I’d basically have to empty it into his body to stop him/her. 22 rounds aren’t very big.
  • It’s extremely picky about ammunition and will jam if I don’t buy the right stuff. A recent trip to the range for some additional training confirmed what I remembered about it: there’s a popular (and not cheap) brand of ammo it simply chokes on. No one wants a gun that will jam when it’s needed.
  • I’m not nearly as accurate firing it as I am with a bigger gun. I think that could be resolved with more practice, though.

But since I really don’t need a gun, I never saw a reason to replace it.

And it does have a nice feature that I thought was handy for horseback riding out in the desert: it’s rather unique flip up barrel makes it easy to load a single 22 long “snake shot” round. That turns the little gun into a small shotgun suitable for killing rattlesnakes or deterring coyotes out on the trail.

My wasband eventually replaced the 38 special with a Glock. I don’t know which one, but I do know that I was more accurate with the Glock than the Beretta.

The Big Sandy Shoot

As I’ve blogged about here and here, there’s a twice-yearly event called the Big Sandy Shoot, which his held on some private property in the middle of the Arizona desert. It’s a gathering of gun enthusiasts who get to fire a wide range of weapons at reactive targets. There are strict safety rules with range officers to enforce them. No one gets hurt, although the tracer rounds they use at night have been known to start fires.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, a “reactive target” is one that literally explodes when hit.

These are hobbyists, mostly, although I suspect more than a few of them are “special.” (Ever see a cannon made out of a fire extinguisher that fires bowling balls? I have.) They’re really into their guns and showing off. It’s interesting, but a bit too hard core for my taste. Since I’ve already blogged about it, I’ll let you read those blog posts to learn how crazy it is.

My Brother’s Guns

My brother shoots for a hobby. He owns fifteen guns — as he just informed me in answer to my texted question — and he’s quite proficient using them. He regularly competes using an STI Edge handgun. According to him:

It’s specifically for competition. I have different barrels for it so I can shoot 9mm, .40 Cal and .22 with it.

My shotgun is a Benelli M2 and my rifle was built by a company called JP

Back in 2013, when I was visiting my brother and his wife, I went with them to one of their competitions. (They both shoot.) It was professionally managed and extremely safety oriented. Rules were followed with no exception — range officers made sure of it. I could see why he enjoyed it. It was challenging stuff, with a variety of target types and scenarios. It got him outdoors year-round, with other people who enjoyed the same hobby. Beats parking his ass on a sofa watching TV, no?

Keep in mind that my brother lives in New Jersey where gun laws are pretty strict. (My uncle lived in New Jersey, too.) I don’t know the details on how he’s required to register, store, transport, or shoot them. But I do know that he competes all along the eastern seaboard.

He and his wife divorced a few years ago. They still see each other occasionally at the range and at competitions.

I tried to find a YouTube video of him shooting but came up empty. He sent me a 30-second video of himself at a competition shooting a rifle but I don’t think it’s up to me to share it online. If he sends me a YouTube link, I’ll add it to this post.

My Shotgun

Concealed Carry Permit
I got a concealed carry permit good for Washington State when I moved here.

When I moved to Washington state, which I believe is also an open carry state, I brought my little Beretta with me. Then I did the paperwork to get a concealed carry permit here. It’s actually easier here than in Arizona; no class is required. (I think that’s wrong.) I carry it in my wallet, even though I don’t carry the gun.

Reminton 870
My Remington 870 Tactical shotgun. I had it sitting by the front deck door with a box of ammo for weeks after the second dog attack.

But when I started having serious worries about coyotes coming into my property to steal chickens or possibly my dog, I started thinking that maybe I needed a more practical weapon. And when my neighbor’s dog got into my chicken yard and slaughtered a total of 18 laying hens and two roosters (over two visits), I made my decision. I bought a shotgun.

The shotgun I bought was a Remington 870 Tactical. It’s a pump action 12-gauge shotgun that can hold 7 rounds. (I don’t keep it loaded.) And no kidding here: I bought it at a local store called Hooked on Toys and yes, they did do a background check on me before completing the sale.

Once again, I took it (and my Beretta) to the range to work with an instructor. A friend and I actually took a course together. The course was created by the NRA and had NRA materials, but the instructor was not an NRA employee and he assured us that the educational and political arms of the NRA are completely separate. (Although I thought that was okay at the time, I now want absolutely nothing to do with the NRA and will never pay for anything if there’s any possibility that part of my money might go to the NRA.) The course was informative and I got a chance to learn how to shoot the shotgun. I discovered that the kickback with the butt against my shoulder hurts like hell and I can be pretty accurate shooting from the hip. Hell, if you can’t hit a target with a shotgun, you probably shouldn’t be shooting a gun at all.

Fortunately, the neighbor’s dog has not returned. Could I shoot it? I don’t know. But the Animal Control folks say it’s legal for me to do so, as long as I kill it.

Not All Gun Owners are Dangerous Nuts

You might be able to see why I was bugged by Michelle’s tweet above. As you might imagine, I didn’t let it go uncommented:

But she’s not the only one making uninformed comments about gun owners. There’s a lot of it going around right now. It happens after every mass shooting.

And although I am a gun owner and have insight why other people own guns, I agree that we need to have some common-sense gun control laws. At a minimum, we need:

  • A ban on all guns and accessories that make it possible to fire more than 10 rounds without reloading. These devices should be absolutely illegal to own, let alone sell or use. There is absolutely no reason anyone needs this kind of equipment.
  • Registration for all guns, including those sold in secondary markets such as gun shows or private sales. If you own a gun, it should be registered. Period.
  • Background checks for all gun owners. The check should be done before each gun is purchased and should include criminal activity, domestic violence complaints, and mental health checks.
  • Training requirement for all gun owners. Before you purchase a gun, you should be required to take a qualified class in its use and operation and have a certificate to prove that you’ve taken the class. Additional refresher course training should be required periodically, perhaps every five years.

I don’t believe guns are bad. I believe people are bad. I also believe that we should not make it easy for bad people to do bad things with guns.

The situation we have in this country is absurd, with different laws in every state, many of which make it all too easy for people who are crazy to obtain weapons of mass killing capabilities — like the bump stock the Las Vegas shooter used to fire over 500 rounds without reloading. How can anyone think that’s okay?

The Second Amendment was written in a time when a high-tech gun fired one shot at a time. The Founding Fathers likely never imagined the kind of carnage that could be done with today’s weapons, so it’s pretty silly to keep referring to our “right” to have these kinds of weapons.

And no, a good guy with a gun isn’t the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun. It’s a good way for others to be injured in a crossfire or for the “good guy” to get mistaken for a bad guy and gunned down by police.

And yes, I’m a gun owner. But if the only solution to the gun violence epidemic in this country was to take away everyone’s gun — as they have done in other civilized countries — I’d hand mine over in a heartbeat.

Comments?

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Gun Training

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Responsible gun owners get professional gun training.

Certificate
My certificate of completion.

Earlier this month, I was a participant in an NRA Basic Pistol Course. The course was privately conducted at a friend’s home in the Wenatchee area, with the shooting portion done at a private makeshift shooting range on another person’s property. It lasted two days and although I had to leave early on the first day to attend a mead-making course I’d signed up for in Leavenworth, I caught up on the second day and met the course requirements well enough to earn a certificate of completion.

I’m not a supporter of the NRA. Well, let me rephrase that. I’m not a supporter of the NRA’s political lobbying arm. I didn’t realize this until the course, but the NRA has two distinct organizations. The one I don’t mind supporting is the one that promotes firearm safety, training, and awareness. The one I won’t support at all is the lunatic lobbying organization that seems to have given people the idea that it’s okay to carry assault rifles into Target department stores. More on that in another blog post.

My Gun History

I took the NRA course because although I’ve owned my Beretta Model 21A 22 caliber semiautomatic handgun for more than 10 years, I’ve never really felt comfortable using it or handling guns.

Cleaning My Gun
The other day, I cleaned my gun for the first time in years. I can’t believe how dirty it was.

I got the gun back in the early 2000s, not long after moving into my Wickenburg house with the man I’d later marry. The house was on 2-1/2 acres on the edge of town. Although I would not consider it a “remote” location, it was certainly not what someone would call suburbia. The house was new and it creaked a lot at night. My future wasband would spend a week or more each month back in New Jersey for work and I was left alone. The creaks unnerved me — I remember sitting up in bed one night all night because I was convinced there was someone walking around downstairs. (There wasn’t.) I wanted a means to protect myself when my future wasband was away, so he bought a gun. I’m thinking it was a 357 Magnum. I know it was a big revolver. A scary gun. A few years later, I got my little Beretta and he traded in the revolver for a Glock.

Although I grew up with handguns in the house — my father was a police officer — I was not familiar with them. I wanted professional training. So we signed up for the only gun training course we could find in our area of Arizona: a concealed weapons permit course. It was an extensive course with classroom training and range practice. The course was led by a local gunsmith and his wife. They wore camo to each session. I was the only female attendee among about 6 or 7 men. When it was over, I had a card that made it legal for me to carry a concealed weapon in the state of Arizona. These days, I don’t even think you need a permit to carry concealed in Arizona. That state is whacked out and I’m glad to have it in my rear view mirror.

It’s important to note that I didn’t take the course for the permit. I took it because I wanted professional training.

Over the following years, we occasionally practiced shooting at a local range or out in the desert. It was a big deal when guests from New York came to stay with us and we took them shooting. But I never really got much practice.

Fast forward to 2013. I moved to Washington state, leaving my wasband behind forever. I bought 10 acres of property on an unpaved road overlooking the Wenatchee Valley. The word “remote” would certainly apply more to this home than my last one, although I do have neighbors within 1/4 mile. My gun, which had been traveling back and forth to Washington every year in my RV anyway, was something I kept handy. (I hate to admit it, but my wasband and the crazy old whore running his side of the divorce were acting so irrationally — going so far as to send a private investigator to try to snoop on me — that I worried about my personal safety.)

In 2014, I bought a new gun that would be handy for long-distance protection from animals, rattlesnakes, and other threats: a Remington Model 870 Tactical 12 gauge shotgun.

Of course, since it had been so long since I’d had formal training — or had even shot my gun — I wanted more training. I had my eyes trained on the Complete AK 47 rifles from Palmetto Armory I’d once visited and was fascinated. A gun is useless as a means of protection if you are afraid to handle it or use it. A friend of mine — I’ll call her Lacy — was also interested in getting some training. She set us up at the range to work with a local gun enthusiast who offered training for a fee.

The instructor — I’ll call him Gary — was very knowledgeable. I shot my Beretta for the first time in years and didn’t do too badly. I also got a chance to shoot my shotgun. That was quite an experience. The kick bruised my shoulder, so I learned to shoot somewhat accurately from the hip. Lacy got to shoot it, too. But this instructor’s politics were questionable. He kept them to himself for most of the time, but later started hinting that we needed to be armed in case the government came to take our guns away and we needed to fight back. Real survivalist stuff. I suggested that he might like living in Idaho.

The NRA Course

When Lacy arranged for the official NRA course to be held at her home, I signed right up. The idea was to have an instructor lead a class for a handful of women. Four of us were supposed to attend, but cold weather chased off two of them. In the end, it was me, Lacy, and the instructor’s mom, who had been shooting her whole life.

The course cost $50 and I’m pretty sure that all of it went to the instructor (who we paid), with a portion of it going to the NRA training materials and literature that we each got. Of this material, the 100+ page NRA Guide to the Basics of Pistol Shooting was very informative — a real keeper. The safety rules pamphlet was a good guide to handling firearms, but the same information was also covered in the book. Other material promoted additional NRA courses and solicited for women to become firearms instructors. The Concealed Carry Holster Guide was a 30+ page booklet with illustrations and descriptions of various holsters and clothing to carry a concealed weapon. I didn’t think there was that much to say about the topic, but apparently there is. There was even a patch that I could sew onto — well, whatever. I wonder how it would look on my old Girl Scout sash?

NRA Literature
My $50 bought me 2 days of training and all this printed material. I admit that I threw it all away except the spiral bound book.

Gun Safety Rules

Because Steve quizzed us repeatedly on the three rules of gun safety, I came up with a mnemonic for them:

P – Point the gun in a safe direction.
T – Keep your finger off the Trigger.
L – Load the gun only when you’re ready to fire.

PTL = Praise The Lord. The PTL Club was a religious TV show hosted by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker that I never watched. (I’m not religious.) I don’t know why this association came to me, but it did and it stuck and it works.

Praise the lord and pass the ammo.

This instructor — I’ll call him Steve — was a lot more “normal” than Gary had been. He’s the one who pointed out that the NRA was really two separate but related organizations. (I think it was a way to distance himself from the wackos.) He also made a clear distinction between open carry, concealed carry, and “discrete carry” that really made sense to me. (More on that in another blog post.) He was extremely safety conscious and quizzed us over and over on the three rules of gun safety. Although his presentation consisted primarily of NRA-prepared slides shown with transparencies on an overhead projector (!) he also had a wide variety of guns and other equipment to show us. I felt that his presentation was nicely done and complete.

My only complaint is his tendency to occasionally go off on a tangent — for example, spending too much time (on several occasions) talking about the types of ammo that were available. Did three 50+ women in a beginning shooter class really need to see a handwritten list of the 30-40 types of 38 caliber ammo presented on a whiteboard? All we really needed to know was how to find out what would work in our guns and some tips for choosing one type over another. This is just an example. Other than those few tangents, I think his presentation was right on target. (No pun intended.)

The range work was good, but not ideal — mostly because it was very cold with just enough wind to drop the temperature another 10 degrees. Lacy had provided hand and toe warmers and I had them open in my jacket pockets and shoes. Body parts that were covered were not an issue, but naked hands were. It was difficult to load the guns and I took every opportunity possible to shove empty hands into pockets and grasp those hand warmers.

Backyard Shooting Ranges

For those of you reading this in a metro area — especially back east — or in countries where gun ownership and use is severely restricted, the idea of a private shooting range at your home might sound odd to you. The truth is, there’s no reason why I couldn’t set up a range on my 10 acres of land and practice shooting at any reasonable hour of the day. Or shoot coyotes or other animals that threaten me, my dog, or my chickens. Hell, my Seattle transplant neighbors do it all the time, trying to live that “wild west” dream to the max.

Steve provided the guns. We shot with revolvers and semi automatic handguns. We shot single action and double action. The targets were paper dinner plates tacked onto a stand about 50-60 feet away. Beyond them was a berm. The “range” was at Lacy’s friend’s home. (Oddly, when I met the friends, I discovered that they knew another friend of mine from a trip to Wickenburg last winter. Small world, eh?) Steve was interested in us hitting the target as close to the staple in the middle as possible. (Real high tech, huh?) We all did fine, despite the cold.

Afterwards, we each got a chance to shoot our own gun with Steve. I let Lacy go first while I warmed up in my car. While waiting, I took my Beretta apart — following the instructions in the manual I had with me — and sliced my index finger open trying to get it put back together. (Yes! Guns are dangerous! It took over an hour to stop the bleeding!) I managed to reassemble it just as Lacy was finishing up.

I pointed out to Steve that one of the problems I had with my gun was jamming. I’d brought my ammo, which were CCL and Federal — both very good brands that he had recommended. He asked permission to fire my gun and I let him empty the magazine at the berm. Then we reloaded with Federal ammunition and I shot. The first empty shell was not ejected. Steve was surprised but after thinking about it for a moment he said he thinks it’s because the shell was bare lead and not jacketed. We emptied the Federal shells from the magazine and reloaded with the CCLs. It worked fine. At least I know what not to load.

It was too cold to do any more, so I left. Lacy and I will likely do some practicing up at the range when the weather warms up a bit. I might set up a range at my place to practice, too.

On Firearms Training

Would I recommend this course to anyone who owns a gun? Definitely.

But I’ll go a step further to say this: I believe that every gun owner should be required to take a professionally run gun safety or gun use course. In other words, I don’t think you should be able to buy a gun or own a gun unless you have a certificate or something on record proving that you’ve had gun training.

And frankly, I don’t see how that affects a gun owner’s “rights.”

Yes, this course cost me $50. But do you know what a gun costs? My silly little Beretta retails for $410. My Remington 12-gauge shotgun retails for $600. What’s $50 compared to that? An avid gun user would spend more than $50 on ammunition in a month.

And who’s to say it has to cost that much? Who’s to say that a larger class size can’t cut costs? Or that gun clubs can’t be certified to provide this training to members for free?

You want me to go even further? How’s this? I believe that any gun owner with children in the house should be required to attend a gun safety course with their kids. It doesn’t have to be long and it should be upbeat and fun while stressing the danger of guns — apparently, the NRA offers such a course. Kids need to know that guns are dangerous and shouldn’t be touched without supervision or training.

What? Kids touch guns? You think that’s okay, Maria?

Age and Maturity Level Matters

This is what happens when you give a 5-year-old a 22 caliber rifle.

The NRA and gun manufacturers apparently don’t think there’s anything wrong with marketing guns to kids aged 5 to 12. This is wrong.

While it is possible for a 10-year-old (for example) to be smart, mature, and responsible enough to safely handle a gun with supervision, I think that’s the exception rather than the rule. Think of the last kindergartener you saw — maybe you have one at home. How do you think that kid would be handling real gun?

Why does the NRA think this is okay? This is one of the reasons I can’t be a member of this organization.

Yes, I don’t see any reason why a mature and responsible young person — especially one living in a rural or remote area — can’t be professionally trained (like his/her parent) to safely use an appropriately sized/powered gun for supervised target practice or hunting. Of course, age and maturity level must be considered, and that’s likely where this would all fall apart because of the gun wackos out there. More on that in another post.

I do want to mention here that I received some very basic training and experience with a bolt action rifle back when I was in Girl Scouts. In suburban New Jersey. How old was I? Maybe 12? (Ah, if only Girl Scouts was as good now as it was back then. But I digress.)

I’ll summarize with this: the Basic Pistol Course I attended earlier this month — and the Concealed Weapons Permit course I took in Arizona years ago — provided me with a wealth of information about safely handling and storing guns, as well as how guns work. There is no reason why gun owners shouldn’t be required to learn — and be tested on — this material prior to owning or handling a gun.

Comments?

This is a hot button topic and I’ve stated some very strong opinions. I’m sure everyone who reads this has something to add. That’s what post comments are for.

But be warned: While I don’t mind readers sharing conflicting opinions, I don’t allow abusive comments, especially those posted by people who hide behind aliases. Comments here are moderated and I have zero tolerance for trolling. I have a Comment Policy and if you’ve never commented here, you should read it before trying to comment. It would be a shame if you spent 30 minutes getting all hot and bothered while composing a nasty comment aimed at me or another commenter and your comment never appeared. What a waste of time, huh?

And if you want to rant about how the government is evil and will be coming for our guns and how we need to rise up against “Emperor Obama”, go ahead. I can always use a good laugh.

Some thoughts on Gun Control

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It’s not black and white.

On Facebook today, yet another one of my friends was ranting about the need for gun control. He especially took offense to the “cars kill more people” argument, which I agree is pretty idiotic. Of course, I chimed in.

Truth is, neither guns nor cars kill people. People kill people. A gun (or a car) sitting on its own won’t kill anyone. It takes someone to pull the trigger (or drive carelessly) to kill.

My friend lashed out against the people who say that with gun control, only the bad guys will have guns. I’m one of those people. Sadly, I believe that the bad guys and wackos will continue to be able to get guns, no matter what the law says is allowed.

How about some Facts?

I then mentioned an article I’d read a while back that reported on studies that have shown that in cities where tough gun control laws were enacted, gun-related crime went up. I didn’t have the link handy, and someone immediately accused me of quoting the NRA. So I tracked down the link, which I’d bookmarked in Delicious — indeed, it appeared in the list of Interesting Links here back in January. The piece is called “More God, Less Crime or More Guns, Less Crime?” and it reviews two books that look at the relationship between religion and crime and gun control and crime. Because it’s a lot harder for Facebook users to click a link and read an article than simply click a “Like” button, I included the three key paragraphs to support my argument:

Take Washington, D.C. Before the ban on handguns was implemented in August of 1976, DC ranked 20th in murder rates out of the top 50 cities in America. After the gun ban, DC shot up to either #1 or #2, where year after year it held steady as “the murder capital of the nation,” as it as dubbed by the media. As a control experiment of sorts, after the Supreme Court decision in the Heller case overturned the DC gun ban, murder rates dropped and have continued to fall ever since. According to Lott, whose data is based primarily on crime statistics provided by the FBI, once the gun ban was lifted, homicide rates plummeted 42.1%, sexual assault rates dropped 14.9%, robbery excluding guns dropped 34.3%, robbery with guns plunged 58%, assault with a dangerous weapon excluding guns sank 11%, assault with a dangerous weapon using guns tumbled 35.6%, and total violent crime nosedived 31%, along with total property crimes decreasing a total of 10.7%.

Chicago showed a similar effect, Lott demonstrated. Ever since the gun ban was implemented in 1982, no year has been as low in crimes as it was before the ban. Island nations (which serve as good tests, Lott says, because their borders are more tightly controlled from extraneous variables) demonstrate the same effect: Jamaica and Ireland homicide rates increased after gun bans were imposed. Ditto England and Wales: After a gun ban was imposed in January of 1997, homicide rates slowly climbed and peaked at an average of 28% higher after the ban. (By dramatic contrast, Lott said that in 1900 London in which people were free to do whatever they wanted with their guns, there were a grand total of 2 gun-related deaths and 5 armed robberies in a population of many millions, and this was 20 years before gun laws began going into effect in 1920.)

Why do more guns mean less crime? Lott offers a very practical explanation: it is extremely hard to keep criminals from getting and keeping guns. In other words, Gun bans are primarily obeyed by non-criminals. Criminals that already have guns do not turn them in, and potential criminals that want to get guns have no problem procuring them on the street illegally. Lott cited several studies by criminologists who interviewed criminals in jail and collected data on the amount of time they spend casing a home before burglarizing it. In the U.K., where gun bans are much more prevalent than in the U.S., the criminals reported that they spend very little time casing a joint and that they don’t really care if someone is home or not because they know the residents won’t be armed (whereas they, of course, are armed). Their U.S. counterparts, by contrast, reported spending more than double the time casing a home before robbing it, explaining that they were waiting for the residents to leave. Why? They said that they were worried they would be shot.

More Guns, Less CrimeAnyone truly interested in taking a different, fact-based look at the gun control argument should probably track down John Lott’s book, More Guns, Less Crime. Or keep ranting without the facts. Whatever.

But Assault Weapons?

Don’t get me wrong — I don’t think anyone should have an assault rifle. That’s not what the founding fathers were thinking about when they penned the Bill of Rights. The Second Amendment was written in a time when armed militias were needed to protect small towns. Part of our gripe with Britain at the end of the 18th century is that they wanted us disarmed so they could control us. The Second Amendment was written, in part, to prevent the government from having the ability to do that. And I’m sure that came in handy in 1812 when the British came back for a second try.

Sadly, the NRA and Second Amendment proponents have twisted that around to say we have the right to bear any weapon. I really don’t think that’s what was intended.

Aurora

What happened in Aurora is simple. A freaking nut job legally got his hands on guns and, in his deluded mind, carried out some sort of mission which involved killing a lot of innocent people. No gun control law would have prevented him from getting guns if he wanted them badly enough.

Or maybe he would have built a bomb or — to take my Facebook friend’s analogy a step further — used an SUV as a ramming speed killing machine at an outdoor event. The problem wasn’t the guns as much as it was the person who held them.

Guns don’t kill; people kill.

Thinking about Gun Control

I have some pretty strong thoughts and feelings about gun control — and oddly enough, they’re from both sides of the argument. In other words, I’m not for it or against it. I do think something needs to be done, but I don’t know what it is.

What’s the solution? I don’t know. I don’t think there is one. But anyone following the Aurora story should know that gun permit requests and gun purchases have gone up in Colorado in the past week. I think that says something about how people really feel about guns.

And several fellow Arizonans truly believe that if this had happened in Arizona, all the gun-toting “patriots” there would have put this guy down before too many people were hurt or killed — and saved taxpayers a lot of money on legal proceedings in the process.

I don’t know what the answer is. Without all the facts, how could I know? How could anyone?

But until I do, I’m certainly not willing to step out on a limb and support any policy that might make matters worse.

June 30, 2014 Update
I’ve finally gotten around to writing up the site comment policy on a regular page (rather than post) on this site. You can find it here: Comment Policy.

Message to Commenters: This is a hot topic where people easily fly off the handle. Don’t let your passion on this subject convince you that it’s okay to attack others who do not agree. This site’s comment policy will be fully enforced; if you can’t be civil, don’t waste your time commenting here.

The Big Sandy Shoot, Take 2

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I return for a weekend-long rides gig.

Last year, I wrote extensively about the Big Sandy Shoot, an event held north of Wikieup, AZ by MG Shooters, Inc. I’d gone to the event at the urging of my friend Ryan, and although I did some helicopter rides, it wasn’t a terribly good gig for me. But it certainly was a fascinating experience.

A few months ago, the MG Shooters folks contacted me, asking me to come to this spring’s shoot. The rich guy with the helicopter who’d shown up last year and had given free rides had sold his helicopter. I wouldn’t have to compete with him. I checked my calendar, saw that Mike and I had the weekend free, and decided we’d try again. I didn’t expect to do many rides, but I thought it would be a nice opportunity to test out our camper in a real off-the-grid situation. We’d leave Jack the Dog and Alex the Bird at home with a house-sitter and just get away for a weekend. If I did rides, great. If not, I’d brought along a book to read and Mike could study for his helicopter check ride, which is later this week.

Getting There

The weather was bad on Thursday and Friday, with heavy rain throughout most of the day. This was good and bad. Good because the shooters would be able to use tracer rounds during the night shoots without worrying much about starting fires out in the otherwise dry desert. Bad because the shoot location is about 5 miles from pavement on the other side of the Big Sandy River. The Big Sandy River does not have a bridge at the crossing, so you have to drive across the river in whatever water is flowing. And the dirt roads often get a top layer the consistency of snot when they get wet.

Of course, I didn’t have to deal with this. I was flying in. What I had to deal with was the weather itself: clouds, rain, wind, etc. We waited until [too] late in the day to make our go decision. Mike pulled out with the camper in tow at about 5 PM and I went to the airport.

In Wickenburg, the sky was partly cloudy and the winds were no more than breezes. I’d checked the weather along the route 93 corridor where I’d be flying, all the way up to Wikieup and Kingman. It didn’t seem bad, but it certainly didn’t seem good. As any pilot who flies in remote areas can tell you, weather forecasting isn’t exactly perfect for areas where there aren’t any airports or cities. So although my destination was 60 miles from Wickenburg, I couldn’t get any solid weather information for it. I had to extrapolate based on what I was experiencing in Wickenburg and what was going on in Kingman, another 30 miles northwest of Wikieup. The radar images helped. And just looking out the window in the direction I had to fly helped.

The plan was for me to fly up there and scout out the river situation from the air. If the river was flowing too swiftly to drive across, I’d call Mike on the aviation radio he had with him and tell him. We’d set up camp at the Burro Creek campground about 30 miles south on route 93 for the night. I wasn’t sure how they’d feel about a helicopter landing down there, but was willing to find out if I had to. (Obviously, I wouldn’t land in the campground itself.)

Because a straight-line route would have put me in the mountains east of route 93, I decided to follow route 93 itself. (IFR: I follow roads.) There were two benefits for that. First, if weather closed in, I could land near a paved road where I could meet up with Mike or get a ride with someone else if I had to. Second, I could check out Burro Creek campground from the air to make sure there were potential landing zones and open camping spaces.

It was an uneventful flight. The winds were not much more than light breezes. Although there were a significant number of clouds at my altitude, none of them were near my flight path. Instead, they obscured the mountain tops on either side of the valleys I flew up. I never got within a mile or two of any of them.

I passed Burro Creek and saw that the campground was about 80% full. I also noted that they’d never painted the second bridge over the canyon there. (I’d taken a photographer from Utah to shoot the bridges from the air as the second one was being completed at least a year before.) I climbed over the mountains there and dropped down into the valley where the Big Sandy River flowed. It wasn’t flowing much at all. In some places, the riverbed was dry, in other places, there was about a foot of water flowing. It was a lot like the Hassayampa River, which flows mostly underground through Wickenburg. I overflew Wikieup, then concentrated on my GPS to locate the shoot site.

It was a good thing I had the waypoint programmed into my GPS. The shoot was quite a bit farther north and east than I remembered. It was in the foothills of the Aquarius Mountains. A line of clouds at my altitude hid the mountaintops from view. The shoot site was about 1/2 mile from the clouds. A bunch of people were set up on the flattened out ridge top with campers and shade structures.

Now, I’d been told that they’d put in two helipads since the previous year. And try as I might, I just couldn’t find them. I circled once, coming quite close to that cloud bank, then decided to land, shut down, and get directions from the ground. I used my cell phone to call Mike and leave him a message about the river conditions — I knew he was too far out for the radio — then landed on the southwest edge of the ridge.

Zero Mike Lima on its helipadTurns out that the helipads were nothing more than just flattened out areas on the north side of the ridge. Someone had decided that the closer helipad would make a great campsite and had set up a ton of camping gear on it. Ed, the guy who runs the place, suggested that he move, but the guy camped out there wasn’t interested in that. He tried to say that it was muddier there than anywhere else. That simply wasn’t true, although the mud leading up to that spot was terrible. So Ed and I found another place on the east side of the ridge. It was higher and dryer and although it hadn’t been cleared for helicopter use, I had no trouble landing there. Best of all, it was closer to where the shooters and spectators would be hanging out, so I was more likely to get people coming over to me.

With the helicopter settled in and the light fading quickly, my thoughts turned to Mike. Last year, he’d gotten lost on his way in from route 93. I didn’t want him getting lost in the dark. So I found someone with a truck who was willing to take me down to the main road and guide him in. That’s when I saw how muddy the road was. It was almost frightening — especially one steep hill covered in reddish brown snotty mud.

We literally almost ran into Mike. He didn’t know I was in the truck, so he didn’t stop. My driver, Ron (I think), made a U-turn and tried to catch up with him. We were more than halfway back when Mike finally stopped and I switched vehicles. We followed Ron the rest of the way up, checked in at the registration area, then climbed to the ridge and parked the camper near the helicopter.

Night Shoot

We were just finishing the camper setup — which included parking its right wheels on five leveling blocks and using large stones to prevent it from rolling away — when the night shoot began.

A big gun. At night.If you’ve never been to a machine gun shoot, you’re missing a really outrageous event. These guys have the same kinds of guns the military has/had for warfare and I think they have more ammo than the military issues to its soldiers. And they’re not afraid to shoot it. At night they use tracer rounds that clearly show the path of the bullets as streaks of red or green light. The sound of fire is deafening and every once in a while, it would be punctuated by the loud boom of a reactive target (i.e., stick of dynamite) going off.

At 10 PM, the shooting stopped. By that time, Mike and I were already in the camper, getting ready for bed. It started raining lightly outside. It got quiet and we slept pretty well.

The Big Day

In the morning, the low clouds were back, but never really drifted into our area. The big camp slowly came to life as shooters woke. The local 4H club was serving breakfast and the bacon smelled excellent. After breakfast in the camper, I went out with some rags to dry the dew off my helicopter. We hung a sign that said, “Helicopter Rides $35” on the back of the camper, which faced the rest of the camp. At 8 AM, I had my first passengers.

I flew much of the day. It wasn’t nonstop, but it wasn’t stop-and-go, either. Generally, I’d get three or four flights in between shutdowns. Then I’d get out and grab something to drink or take a pee or do something in the camper before the next few passengers showed up. Most flights had just two people on board — most of these guys were pretty “healthy” — and I made the flights a bit longer than I needed to. The later flights were a bit shorter — after all, I wanted to make money on this event — and included a view of the little waterfall in the foothills about a mile east of the camp.

U.S. Firepower in WikieupMeanwhile, the shooters were shooting. They started up at about 9:30 AM and stopped at noon for lunch. Then 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM when they stopped for dinner. They kicked off the 1 PM shoot with the detonation of a pig statue packed with explosives. I was in the air when they did it, but my passengers and I saw the smoke out in the target area. Mike said that the car alarms for all the cars and trucks had gone off.

We used our new fuel transfer tank to refuel the helicopter. It didn’t work quite as expected. Mike got tired of cranking after about 2/3 of the fuel had been pumped and made the fatal error of stopping. The fuel drained out of the hose and we couldn’t get the damn pump primed again. So the remaining 1/3 tank (about 8 gallons) remained in the transfer tank. Later, I made a fuel run to Kingman which took about 5 minutes longer than it needed to when I parked the helicopter about 3 feet farther away from the pumps than the hose would reach and had to start up to move it. (I hate when that happens.)

The weather threatened rain to the east and west of the site most of the day. On a few flights into the mountains on the east, I got drizzled on. We saw rainbows, too. But the clouds broke up around sunset. I stopped flying at 6 PM after taking at least 40 people for rides.

We made dinner in the camper and opened a bottle of wine. Outside, everyone was preparing for the night shoot. It got dark and people started shooting off flares. They’d shoot into the air like a fireworks rocket, then explode. A red light would glide to earth at the end of a small parachute, lighting up the range. Occasionally, one would land before it went out, setting a small bush on fire. But the earth was so wet that the fire soon went out.

The night shoot began loudly. Mike and I walked down the back of the firing line, past the shooters, taking photos and videos as we went. Thank heaven for ear plugs.

The Last Day

By morning, the folks who hadn’t left the night before were packing up to leave. There was another shoot scheduled, but only the hard-core shooters seemed interested. I flew another 10 or so passengers. The waterfall was drier and harder to spot in the canyon. Between flights, Mike and I packed up the camper.

I was on the ground when one of the shooters, a man who had made a canon out of a fire extinguisher, shot a red bowling ball over the range. That thing climbed at least 300 feet, with the wind whistling through its finger holes, before crashing to earth. He’d been shooting the bowling balls all weekend, but I always seemed to miss them. Seeing it was a treat.

Mike and I had lunch, hooked up the camper, and prepared to leave. I took Mike on a quick flight up in the mountains before dropping him off at the landing zone. I flew home the direct route, detouring only to peek into Bagdad Mine on my way back. Total flight time for the weekend: 6.2 hours. When I later tallied up the money, I discovered that I did a little better than breaking even. (Should have made the rides a little shorter.) But it was enough to come back.