How Old and Slow is Too Old and Too Slow to Carry?

[feudist]

Well if you don’t have the cognitive ability to run a firearm or defend yourself...you can always just get into politics.

There's an amorality requirement too. Stupid is a good start, but it won't take you all the way.

[HCM]

Elsewhere, @Glenn E. Meyer quoted Bill Wilson having said in a magazine article:

This prompted a couple of responses agreeing and disagreeing with that concept. So I'm throwing this out for discussion - how old and slow is too old and too slow to carry responsibly?

With all due respect Bill Wilson is a Jeweler turned gunsmith, and a very astute competition shooter and businessman.

But he’s not someone with any significant experience dealing with actual violence or criminals.

The key to someone who can’t meet that standard due to age, physical limits, or carry method carrying is to know their limitations.

As a young man I worked with many retired NYPD officers who worked in the era when NYPD mandated the “Jay-Pee” duty holster. It prioritized retention over fast draw. As a result they emphasized awareness/ seeing trouble coming and the concept that if one did see trouble coming your gun belonged in your hand.

I love me some work on a timer but I put mental factors (awareness & judgment) and safe handling over BW’s abstract standard.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

That seems pretty specious (and Ableist, for shame!)as a requirement for typical self defense encounters.

I think the fixation on Black Swan event police gunfights and the economics that drive shooting school curriculums tends to warp needs and expectations.

I agree and from the last sentence - I would add the fetishism of time. I think Craig used that line. Draw and split times don't seem to be a determinant in most DGUs. It isn't the Old West.

[FNFAN]

I actually think this is a great thing to think about. Nobody wants to get their keys taken away. It meshes into something I observed recently. I was shooting a local indoor "action pistol" night. It is a very low round count affair with almost no movement scored more or less like IDPA. They typically shoot three 6 shot stages once in full light then immediately following in low light. Everyone there I would consider gun guys and good guys, but I surely would not want to be around if they had to draw a gun for real. Another guy and I there are what I would call decent shooters. We ran the whole thing points and all in about 50 seconds. The next closest guy, (an NRA instructor) was around 100 seconds and it just got worse from there. It wasn't just the time and accuracy that was bad it was the gun handling and safety as well. Now in some of the cases I am sure it was never learned right to begin with but in others I am pretty sure age was a big factor. If we don't die young, we will all get old.

You've got a huge point about the gun handling and safety, once that slips it's hard to justify having a gun. Personally, when I do IDPA matches, I'm chasing perfect hits, zero non-shoots and perfect pieing around obstacles as well as absolute muzzle safety. Speed is way down the road as a consideration. A couple anecdotal elderly shooter stories: My former father-in-law wanted a revolver for simplicity sake (he had a pristine T-Series HiPower but didn't like shooting it) and we found him a sweet little Model 15 .38 and took it out on the range. He loaded up and dumped two cylinder full's within the 9 ring on a B27 at seven yards double action at a decent cadence. I asked when he'd last shot a handgun and he said, "Right after the Tet Offensive." He drove a rescue Huey in Vietnam and went on to be a regional director of aviation for the forest service.

The other was my Dad. Dad was in the Corps of Engineers for the effort to rebuild some of German infrastructure after the war; worked building a couple large dams in S. Dakota and then did 32 years in a steel mill driving over the road and then in a Hyster moving steel products. After he retired, he spent another 14 years driving dealer trades for a couple car dealerships. He loved getting out on the road! At some point conversations with Mom got alarming -things like, his having gotten lost returning home from shopping a couple miles away. I was in a position to retire from a job in Vegas and moved back to my home town to help out. We had the conversation about driving, which was one of the most soul wrenching things I've done -but he agreed. We still got out on the road for random road trips with me driving, which he enjoyed. The next thing to be addressed was guns. He'd always been a gun collector and bird hunter and there was always a handgun under the mattress or if summertime with just the screen door closed, in a pistol rug next to him in the lazy-boy. One night when I was repainting their place, I stayed overnight, sleeping in the finished basement. I woke up to seeing the flashlight beam moving back and forth as he was coming down the stairs. I said, "Hi Dad!" and turned on the light. He told me "They" said "there was a fire downstairs." I asked who "they" were and if there was a fire why he brought his Model 27.... The next day that gun had a much shorter firing pin. Within a week of that he'd taken a fall and eventually went into assisted care, where he passed almost a year to the day after arrival. His plot at the Black Hills National Cemetery in Sturgis overlooks I-90 and I like to think it was a great spot for him. Sorry for the long post!

[UNM1136]

With all due respect Bill Wilson as ... a gunsmith, and a very astute competition shooter and businessman.

But he’s not someone with any significant experience dealing with actual violence or criminals.

The key to someone who can’t meet that standard due to age, physical limits, or carry method carrying is to know their limitations.

... As a result they emphasized awareness/ seeing trouble coming and the concept that if one did see trouble coming your gun belonged in your hand.

I love me some work on a timer but I put mental factors (awareness & judgment) and safe handling over BW’s abstract standard.

Many of my first thoughts as well...

pat

[JohnO]

[HCM]

I agree and from the last sentence - I would add the fetishism of time. I think Craig used that line. Draw and split times don't seem to be a determinant in most DGUs. It isn't the Old West.

I hate to break this to you, but the old west was not the old west in the way. Your statement implies.

Skeeter Skeleton (someone who had considerable acquaintance with real violence and real criminals) addressed this perfectly in an article titled “The Gunmen of El Paso.”

http://darkcanyon.net/gunmen_of_el_paso.htm

The devotee of firearms may draw some valid conclusions from El Paso's bullet-spattered history. While the gunmen of that place were as good as the best of the time - all of them had survived many battles before arriving in the tough border town - nothing in their performances, with the possible exception of Dallas Stoudenmire, indicated that they were outstanding sixgun men. Their close-range encounters, often from ambush, suggested murder and assassination rather than an open contest of skill between men at arms. Examination of their widely diverse methods of carrying their pistols - Hardin's shoulder holsters sewed to his vest, Stoudenmire's pocket draw, the high-ride, pistol-in-the-front-of-the-belly style of Selman and Outlaw - all point to the fact that a fast draw was of small importance to these men. When disputes found them, their sixguns would already be clear of leather and, hopefully, pointed at an unwarlike portion of their opponent's anatomy.

Today's handgunners could skunk any of the oldtimers. Slick, accurate, double-action guns, scientifically designed belts and holsters, a plentitude of practice and ammunition - all these factors make the handgun man of the present easily the master of the best of the 19th-century gunfighters. But turn the Selmans, Hardins, Stoudenmires, and Outlaws loose in the same wild border town against any of today's civilized sixgun experts, and I submit that there would soon be no experts. the reason is one that many of today's antigun fanatics fail to grasp. A shooter and a killer are two different things.

However, time has its place.

It can give one more options. If your use case is mostly get out of trouble verse, go look for trouble you may not need those options, but if you need them, there’s no substitute.

Once MUC and posturing are over fights are basically a series of competing time cycles.

But gun in hand and unequal initiative is still > fast draw.

[HCM]

I actually think this is a great thing to think about. Nobody wants to get their keys taken away. It meshes into something I observed recently. I was shooting a local indoor "action pistol" night. It is a very low round count affair with almost no movement scored more or less like IDPA. They typically shoot three 6 shot stages once in full light then immediately following in low light. Everyone there I would consider gun guys and good guys, but I surely would not want to be around if they had to draw a gun for real. Another guy and I there are what I would call decent shooters. We ran the whole thing points and all in about 50 seconds. The next closest guy, (an NRA instructor) was around 100 seconds and it just got worse from there. It wasn't just the time and accuracy that was bad it was the gun handling and safety as well. Now in some of the cases I am sure it was never learned right to begin with but in others I am pretty sure age was a big factor. If we don't die young, we will all get old.

I don’t buy that this is a primarily an age thing.

In my experience the majority of what you describe is 99% “ never learned right” combined with being too invested in fudd lore to learn right now.

The older shooters with solid backgrounds and /or who have come to / returned to shooting later in life but were open to learning “right” do just fine even into their 70s.

The youngsters may leave them in the dust once moving is involved, but they’re shooting gun handling and safety are on point.

[JCN]

The key to someone who can’t meet that standard due to age, physical limits, or carry method carrying is to know their limitations.

1000% agree.

At work I see people through end of life and the process.

Car keys get taken away (usually by family) when people don’t know limits and insist on pushing past them. The state standard is nebulous and passing doesn’t mean competence.

What I see with conscientious people is that they scale back their driving and scenarios as their skills wane.
No highway, no dusk, no inclement weather.

They know their limits and have risk mitigation levels to prevent hurting themselves and others.

I would expect the same from conscientious handgun practitioners but I know it doesn’t apply to all.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I hate to break this to you, but the old west was not the old west in the way. Your statement implies.

I know that, I should have added that is was the Old West of TV presentation. Besides, Paladin won the day with a derringer hidden behind his belt which he sneakily drew.

Time counts, but Wilson seems to imply a more "Wild West" TV draw shoot out. Certainly his standard being used to tell someone not to carry doesn't make sense in today's world.