I'm thinking we need a PT shirt that says this. I'd be in line to get one in 3 colors: Tacticool Tan, Glock Green, and Badass Black.Originally Posted by ToddG
Hope you didn't mind that I edited that a bit for clarity
I'm thinking we need a PT shirt that says this. I'd be in line to get one in 3 colors: Tacticool Tan, Glock Green, and Badass Black.
Hope you didn't mind that I edited that a bit for clarity
Fairness leads to extinction much faster than harsh parameters.
Tangent, but I had a blue gun pointed at me at a class I did recently (as part of a demonstration) and, even though I knew it was a hunk of plastic and totally inert, it still gave me a really uneasy feeling in my gut.
I thought that was the weirdest, most irrational response I could have had. But still, seeing it pointed at me was unnerving.
I think safety briefs are imperative for groups of unknown shooters, particularly intro shooting classes, and any sort of shooting event open to the public. I'm inclined to think that safe handling zones are overly dogmatic for cold guns, but that's me. I spent 3 years working at a shotgun range after high school and the most dangerous thing I ever saw (repeatedly) was any dude trying to teach his girlfriend/wife how to shoot. Because I spend most of my time at public ranges and public events I'm more inclined to be patient with heavier handed safety regulations, I just prefer that those regulations are clear enough to be followed without additional explanation.
The last time I got swept on a public range I had my 9 year old with me, my response while not rude was certainly far from friendly. I also spoke loud enough to make sure the entire range heard me.
I do my best proofreading after I hit "Send"
I have responded previously "mine is". I regard getting flagged as a crime (and it here in SC), regardless of weapon status or intent."but it's not loaded"
Rob, I'll reply with more in a bit.
I'm not an instructor, but I frequently bring guests with me to shoot, and they often shoot my guns. I always give a safety brief to my guests before approaching the range and uncasing. I'm ultimately responsible for my guns and I reinforce how important the rules are for their AND my benefit.
I have zero tolerance for getting flagged/swept. My reaction to it depends on the situation. If I'm at a monitored range, I'll report to the range officer/operator. If I'm at an unmonitored range, like the Ocala National Forest public range, I'll politely approach the offender and politely advise them of what they did. If I get grief or it happens a second time, I simply leave. I'm not going to argue with an armed idiot.
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The only person who has been hurt over the 32 years I have been running classes is me. I had a student turn point the gun at me and pull the trigger to prove to me it was empty. BaiHu & TGS can vouch for the bullet graze scar on my arm proving it was not as empty as the student assumed. A few years later I had another student dry fire in the center of my back as I was changing a target (the company’s personnel manager and I had a long talk about the intelligence of her new hires after that). So as you can imagine I'm pretty sensitive about this kind of thing.
I run a “Semi Hot Range”; everyone reports to the range with a cold weapon, at my command the entire class reports to the line and loads on my command. From that point on the students are responsible for keeping their guns loaded until the end of the class at which time when they finish the last exercise they will holster an unloaded weapon. There's no "let me check my weapon to see if it is loaded" at the beginning of any exercise. The weapon should have been topped off at the end of the last exercise. All loading and unloading is done on the firing line and not anywhere else on the range unless under my direction.
Normally I don't want anyone flagged by a muzzle; I even harp about support hands holding holster flaps out of the way and people flagging themselves as the gun passes into the holster. Sometimes depending on their stance students will inadvertently flag a foot or knee while drawing and I have to accept this. But holstering I try to instill an awareness of the muzzle in all my students and they shouldn’t have to flag a body part while holstering. AIWB is a different creature and this weekend was the first time I had those on one of my ranges and guys I was watching. But flagging anyone else is verboten period.
When doing demos that may require pointing guns at others the blue guns come out. If for any reason I have to use a real gun because a blue gun is unavailable, the entire class verifies that the gun is clear, the only person that the gun is pointed at is me and I have physical control of the weapon during the entire demo.
When I go to public ranges or gun shops I find myself flagged constantly. It unnerves me and I try to avoid those places when they are busy lessening the likely hood of being flagged.
Scott
Only Hits Count - The Faster the Hit the more it Counts!!!!!!; DELIVER THE SHOT!
Stephen Hillier - "An amateur practices until he can do it right, a professional practices until he can't do it wrong."
Just a fun tale from me to break the mood. One day at the local outdoor range, a car with two middle-aged couples pulled up. They took the station next to me. Their looks and actions immediately gave me pause. Don't think they had been drinking, but looked like the types where that would not have been out of the question. After breaking out a couple of revolvers, one woman took the position and emptied what looked like a .38 of some brand down range. She then turned to the other woman, pointed the gun/barrel directly at her chest and said Ok it's your turn. I really couldn't say if her finger was on the trigger or not because I was IMMEDIATELY in the process of collecting my stuff and leaving.
Worst range experience I've ever had.
My personal threshold for having a gun pointed at me is zero tolerance. I won't have it, and I won't do it to others. That said, I shoot at home, and after reading plenty of public range stories across the 'net, I'm very glad I have what I have. I do have trusted friends and family shoot with me here at times, and my personal rules on that are that you are only loaded on the firing line (wherever that may be at the time). If you aren't up shooting, I want to see the action open (slide locked back, cylinder swung out, bolt locked to the rear, etc) until you are on the firing line.
That said, I have had one ND in my life, when I was at my fathers house. I was doing a sort of "Mad Minute" drill with a bolt action 22 that had a very light trigger. I was changing mags, went to cycle the bolt home, my hand slipped off the bolt as it was closing, and from there, the momentum of the hand caused my thumb to slap the trigger as it passed it. One of Eley's fine TENEX rounds sailed off to the general direction of the berm, but may have gone over it, I'm still unsure, it's been several years. I'm a lot more careful myself when I do the sorts of things with bolt guns now, and actually became a much safer shooter from the experience.
As far as demo's and the like, I believe that's what Blue Guns and training barrels are for myself. My cousin (who has quite the collection of all things firearm related) has a couple of blue guns, and we have used them at times to try different HD scenarios, and they don't bother me. He has a training barrel for another of his guns, but I myself always preferred the Blue Guns. I didn't protest (we were at his home), but he could tell what my preference was, so we went with that.
I remember a horror story from a year or two ago that was on another forum about a class where there seemed to be a lot of flagging going on, and I would have left that class personally.
Thanks for the replies guys.
My take goes along the same lines as many of yours. I have a group of guys I go to the range with monthly, and other than when we have a new guy join us there really isn't much in the way of a safety brief. Everyone knows where the safe table is, everyone knows where to keep their muzzle, etc.
My view is that if you have a gun in your hand, loaded or not, you need to be aware of where the muzzle is pointed. Always. and I don't believe there is an acceptable time to point a gun at someone on the range (obviously excluding some sort of violent escalation that just happens to be at a range) regardless of whether it's loaded or unloaded.
In a training environment, I think it's always beneficial to review the rules with everyone, and to have policies in place that stop problems before they happen, and to be clear about where and when guns are to be handled. Some find the idea of a safe table or safe area to be too much, but I don't see a way that it hurts anything, and especially when dealing with shooters new to that environment (whether it be training or a match) it can help prevent a lot of problems. "don't handle a firearm unless on the firing line or at the safe area. Don't handle ammunition at the safe area." Seems pretty easy and straightforward to me. Standing behind the line and realizing that you're not loaded and everyone else is, is not an acceptable time to whip out your hogleg and charge it up, pointing it at the backs of everyone else.
I don't have a problem leaving the line with loaded handguns if they are holstered, but I'd always prefer to clear out carbines first in the majority of class environments. Something about a rifle hanging in front of you just seems to be too much for some people to resist fiddling with. And once they start paying attention to other things that muzzle starts to swing wildly when bending over, etc.
What seems to get missed a lot is that the need for perhaps Draconian safety measures is inverse the the level of the shooter, but that you have to base your range safety standards on the lowest level of shooter. So when someone says something like "we don't need all that extra safety stuff" they are usually right that THEY don't, but others on the range most likely do.
Good. It should feel wrong.
The reason a blue gun is pointed at you in training is usually to simulate a bad situation. You're supposed to react as if it were real.
When I do good EMS training scenarios with simulated "victims" I still get a knot in my gut if they don't go well.
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