Firstly, I have to get this off my chest:
Right now, I’m about sick to death of being the workplace gunnie. I’ve got every nimrod and nincompoop who slipped through the Darwinian Net and got hired by my employer asking me to tell them “The Secret Store†where their preferred rifle or pistol is in stock or to build them an AR.
I wouldn’t trust these guys with a firearm if they promised to never come within ten miles of me. Even if I did know a secret, I sure as hell wouldn’t tell them.
And some of them are making me feel like I’m back at the gun shows of the Bush I and Clinton days, with jackholes asking about M203 launcher attachments and select fire parts.
The worst part is that I can’t be rude to them like I could with gun show creeps because I still have to work with these numbnutted fucks until they do something stupid enough to get their asses fired.
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And this last bit has been bothering me since I read it Monday night.
Earlier this week, Uncle relayed that he had had an Unintentional Discharge with a poorly designed pistol (Unc is calling it an Negligent Discharge, but he was not being negligent of the rules, so for my purposes, I’m reclassifying it).
In the comments, Ahab posted:
“They say that if you’re a shooter and you haven’t had an ND, you haven’t been shooting long enough.â€
I’m not knocking Ahab on this. He’s a good guy and a good blogger and I hope to meet him someday. Nor will I truck with anyone who knocks him here.
It is just that I find my stomach turning whenever the ever mysterious “They†say much of anything. That sentence is just about the most defeatist thing I’ve heard in years. It makes firearms accidents sound inevitable. I’d like to meet the guy who passed that little butt-chunk of bunk knowledge to Ahab and have a little talk with him.
I’m not posting this in an attempt to brag or engage in self-congratulation, but I’ve never had an UD, and AD or a ND. I’ve been around firearms all my life and quite literally grew up behind the counter of a gun shop. Since 1982 I’ve competed in various firearms disciplines; from DCM to three-gun match series so intense that no official body or organized range club would sanction them.
Granted that that is only 26 years so far. I will be the first to admit I’ve not clocked in a Jerry Miculek amount of on-trigger hours, but I don’t want to count myself as lucky. Nor do I want others to think of me, or themselves, as lucky either.
As Uncle closed his post: Be safe out there.
Well, that eliminates all the questions I had.
Except one, any advice on hosting an AR build session? We have the lowers and are waiting for the rest to come in (group buy). I have built 2 ARs from the ground up, but never in a small group.
Just make sure that there are tools enough to go around and no racing/speed building competitions.
When showing beginners, I always do it sub-assembly by sub-assembly, stopping after each to let the first timers do their while I watch. When I do it in a group of non-first timers, we figure out who does which sub assembly best and do sort of an assembly line style.
They say there are two kinds of people, those who believe that “they say” something, and those who don’t…
A “Negligent Discharge” is only a negligient if the shooter isn’t obeying the 4 safety rules. If the gun is at fault it is an “accidental discharge”.
I’ve had government issue weapons malfunction on me, or malfunction for one of my soldiers, multiple times in my career. By obeying the 4 laws, no damage to people or property resulted.
Once an M16 cooked off an entire magazine, twice I’ve had the firing pin become so fouled that the rifle would slamfire a second round, also I’ve shot with a trigger so worn that releasing the trigger after follow through caused the hammer to fall.
I agree with you that we shouldn’t accept a mentality that says “it’s ok, it happens to everybody” when it comes to safety, but unintentional discharges will happen, especially with worn equipment.