The video guy lives about an hour north of me. I watched a few of his videos in hopes of gaining some insight on local trainers. His lack of expertise and sloppy gun handling drove me away. I also felt that he just didn't have much of a handle on training events in any meaningful way, I.E., any event he attended he complimented, though the drills shown had little value, IMHO.
I have a VERY wicked scar and diminished functioning in one hand from my ND. I've gone over it a million times in my head, and know precisely what I did that led to my injuries. I don't hide the story from my co-workers or the people I train, and most of them take it in the light it's intended - if it can happen to a senior FI, it can happen to anyone in a moment of lapsed attention.
I applaud this guy's willingness to share his experiences as learning points, but was actually cringing as I watched him discussing his G26 mishap. Did anyone else notice that the whole time there was a magazine in the pistol and the trigger was forward (indicating a ready-to-fire status)? I would have HOPED that, after NDing the PCR on camera, he would have learned to CLEAR THE KITTENING PISTOLS before reaching for the video camera again.
So, kudos to him for sharing his stories, but, I think he's probably in DESPERATE need of "intervention" before it happens again...
Regards,
Kevin
Distraction or interruption is a key factor in many NDs. The closest I came to actually being killed in the line of duty was by another trooper who launched a 125 gr. .357 bullet into the space my chest occupied 1 second before. We had worked an anti-crime plainclothes detail in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, finished early and was back in the hotel. I knocked on his door and when he opened said he had dropped his revolver, thought it was broken, and asked me to take a look at it. I stepped into the room and noticed a 2 1/2" model 66 and a pile of cartridges on the bed. He sat down on the bed and picket up the revolver. I said I'd take a look after I used the restroom, turned and stepped toward the bathroom. As I turned and stepped he raised the revolver and fired a round when I was standing as I stepped away.Originally Posted by hufnagel
He had dropped his revolver, unloaded it and was dry firing to see if the cylinder was binding just prior to me knocking on the door. He had started to reload, dropping 1 round into the cylinder when i interrupted him by knocking on the door. He closed the cylinder, indexing the single round perfectly.
When he sat back down and picked the revolver up, it was still empty in his mind and he squeezed another "dry fire" stroke, nearly killing me in the process.
That sounds like management and process failure.
The rule in ops is: "Don't trust anyone who hasn't brought down the site."
If they make the same mistake more than once then management has failed and it's almost always a combination of attitude, capability, training, and process.
In the shooting world, it seems like it is (should be) the same. If you've never had a true "oh shit" moment then either you're a (paranoid) machine or you're dangerously overconfident about the possible failure modes.
Catastrophic failures are usually a sequence of failures that happen together.
Shooting example: The lady who was just shot by her 2-year old son.
Ah but in terms of assessing the statistics, the "why" of someone who hasn't had a serious accident yet matters. Are they people who train to deal with the atypical occurrences, take care of their equipment, etc. or are they the obliviously unaware and are therefore both overconfident and unprepared? If you're a betting person, which way are you gonna bet?
We have a saying at work. "If you're not screwing up, you're not getting anything done. Anyone that claims they are productive and doesn't make mistakes is a liar." There's a fine line between screwing up and playing it safe. Prudence comes from experience if we're wise enough to learn from our mistakes and can move past them.
Men freely believe that which they desire.
Julius Caesar
Yep. I've heard that there are two kinds of riders, those who have had a wreck and those who are going to have a wreck. Like you, I don't buy it. I've had two wrecks on a motorcycle, and they were both completely preventable. I got lucky both times. Though they could have been bad, both times I escaped serious injury. And more importantly, I didn't hurt anybody else with my stupidity. I've also heard that a biker starts out with two bags. One, labeled experience, is completely empty. The other, labeled luck, if full. You hope to fill the first one before the second one is empty. Those wrecks were early in my riding career, and convinced me to stop taking short cuts with safety.
I've also experienced some NDs. The last one I was still a teenager, more years ago than I car to contemplate. That one scared me because I almost took off a friends foot. A vine caught and dropped the hammer on my single shot, break action .410. I was carrying it with the barrel pointed toward the ground, but not mindful of barrel sweeping the legs of the guys with me.
With bikes and guns, I was lucky enough that my epiphanial moments didn't cost dearly. It's possible that most people are enough like me that they require something to get their attention before safety as a foundational mindset kicks in. But I believe that there are some people, simply squared away enough to get it right with out those brushes with disaster. I don't think that a wreck is an inevitable event in a riders life, and I don't buy that an ND is an inevitable event in a shooters life. I will say that most riders I've know have had at least on attention getting wreck, but not all. I haven't been hanging out with shooters long enough to have a feel for the percentage of those who have experienced NDs, but I wouldn't be surprised to discover that most have. I would be surprised to discover they were inevitable.
Reply With Quote