Do we scare off would be shooters

olafhardtB said:

I often read posts advising prospective shooters that they have to practice a lot, practice all sort of positions, clean thier guns a bunch etc. I think we may scare some of them off. It's just not true. I have known effective hunters and poachers that really never practiced. I have also seen plinking with a 22 transfer directly into skill with larger bores. I also question some of the safety rules. I hunt in thick woods, there could easily be something behind my target that I wasn't aware of regardless of how vigilent I was. I think it is good to practice every once and a while and to be careful with guns but I look at shooting as a fun sport. If you can chase a tin can with a Ruger mk 2 then you can blast boogers with a Glock 19.

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I'm not sure that telling people we think they should shoot more scares them away from shooting.

Generally, in my experience, when it is suggested to a person that they shoot/practice/train more, it is either because they are not achieving what they would like when they shoot, or it is within the context of self defense...neither of these would apply to hunters or poachers who are achieving their goal.

What kinds of locations do you hunt in thick woods where you don't know what is behind your target? You may or may not be taking shots that you shouldn't be.

Again, I don't think the general recommendation to practice/train more is directed at those who simply want to plink at tin cans or punch paper once every few months for fun and that's that.

Ironically, I just sat through almost the exact opposite discussion last night at a gun club meeting, where some members were nearly despondent, heads-in-hands, over how lax and casual and quite literally dangerous many of our new club members seems to be. That we just have to put restrictions on any more new members because these fun-loving, happy-go-lucky IDOTS are going to kill someone!!! And so forth.

Like no one ever told them, HAMMERED them, with the safety rules, so they wander around the parking lot with guns out, load and unload them at/in their cars, go check their targets and then walk back up range with their guns pointing right at everyone else back up at the benches or parking lots. Or they point their guns at THEMSELVES, so as not to be so rude as to point them at someone else...etc.

Truth is, while you probably can get along happily without anyone teaching you skills and without any more seriousness than "hey, cool, I hit that tin can!" guns are DEADLY SERIOUS.

It's a big tent and I don't want to scare anyone away, right? Check that. NO, not quite true. I don't want to scare anyone away -- who will treat guns with dire seriousness and religious observance of safety.

I know we need all the gun owners and gun VOTERS we can get on our side, but if you're a new shooter and me driving home proper gun handling is off-putting to you, and if being super serious about what you're doing when you have a gun in your hands takes the fun out of it for you? I really don't want you in our "tent."

+1. It's just like all the people in our society today who see absolutely nothing wrong with driving while playing with their cell phones because they believe they can "multi task". Those people have no place behind the wheel of an automobile if you have to explain to them that they need to pay attention to the real world around them - and they have no idea what you're talking about. I used to enjoy driving - now it scares me to death.

Drail said:

+1. It's just like all the people in our society today who see absolutely nothing wrong with driving while playing with their cell phones because they believe they can "multi task". Those people have no place behind the wheel of an automobile if you have to explain to them that they need to pay attention to the real world around them - and they have no idea what you're talking about. I used to enjoy driving - now it scares me to death.

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Yet I'm pretty sure we are safer in our cars now than we used to be.

Same as violent crime is lower than it has been for decades.

If they aren't willing to practice or clean their weapons, they probably don't need one in the first place. You don't have to shoot thousands of rounds but enough to know how to operate the gun and become safe. Otherwise they are a threat to themselves and the rest of us.

I don't think you can emphasise safety and responsibility enough with all shooters, not just those who are new to guns. Practice is great but I never tell new shooters they must do it all that much if time and monetary concerns won't allow for it. Just basically be safe with any gun related activity and have fun with it too.

I think some people do scare off new shooters by telling them that in order to be a decent shooter & be a safe gun owner, they have to "Get some training, take safety classes, etc" as if shooting was some type of special, complicated elite activity that is reserved for highly-intelligent, genius types. What a crock. What is required for gun safety is common sense. If someone doesn't have that, a safety class won't help.

I've been shooting & handloading for 42 years. I've shot competitively for 10 years & been an instructor for five years. I never took a safety class or got any formal training. When I bought my first gun in 1973, I read the instruction manual that came with it. Didn't require much training for that.

Well, I do think that new shooters often get the idea that they need to clean their guns more often than the really need to, but I think the OP is way off when he says that maybe we need to de-emphasize training. No, we need to emphasize it more.

I work at a gun shop/range/training facility and I'm so, so tired of people who are completely and totally unsafe with firearms. I'm tired of handing someone a gun across the counter and having them immediately put their finger on the trigger and wave it around, dry-firing it in random directions including at me. I'm tired of people whipping out their loaded carry guns without asking us first, often flagging half the store in the process. And I'm tired of people on the range who handle guns behind the firing line, shoot the walls, floors and ceilings, and even turn around while holding a loaded gun with their finger on the trigger and flag the entire line of shooters next to them.

No, we need to emphasize more often to new shooters that they need training, because I can't tell you how often I see new shooters buy a gun and then decided that means they're protected, all the while they have absolutely no idea how to handle that gun safely or effectively.

a lot of states require a hunter safety course for prospective hunters. so,why can't ranges require a shooter safety course before being unleashed onto the range, or when they break one of the rules? might be a good idea to pound the reason for the four rules into peoples heads as often as possible.

murf

Shaq said:

I think some people do scare off new shooters by telling them that in order to be a decent shooter & be a safe gun owner, they have to "Get some training, take safety classes, etc" as if shooting was some type of special, complicated elite activity that is reserved for highly-intelligent, genius types. What a crock. What is required for gun safety is common sense. If someone doesn't have that, a safety class won't help.

I've been shooting & handloading for 42 years. I've shot competitively for 10 years & been an instructor for five years. I never took a safety class or got any formal training. When I bought my first gun in 1973, I read the instruction manual that came with it. Didn't require much training for that.

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I can't tell you how strongly I disagree with this post. Like anything else, gun handling is a learned skill. Without proper training from somewhere (a friend, a class, the military), It's a lot harder to learn the skills you need to be safe and effective.

I completely disagree that common sense is all you need. When you learned to drive, did you learn solely based on your common sense? When you learned to write, did your common sense teach you? Here's the thing, for many new shooters, all they know about guns is from what they see on TV and in movies. That's why their "common sense" tells them to put their finger on the trigger the moment they pick up a gun, and also why their "common sense" doesn't drum into them to always subconsciously be aware of where the muzzle is pointing. And their "common sense" won't tell them the proper way to hold a firearm, and they sure won't learn it from watching actors.

Sure, the more common sense someone has, the faster they'll learn the basics of gun safety, but a little bit of training can do far more for the average shooter than anything else can. You say you've been an instructor for five years, but I highly doubt that's full time at an actual training facility; because if it was, you'd most likely have the opposite opinion. I'm not an instructor and I've only been in the business for 4 years or so, but it didn't take me long to realize how much more training the average shooter needs. And that includes myself; once I started working day-in and day-out with instructors and other shooters who were more experienced than I was, I realized that I had a lot more to learn than I thought I did.

What is required for gun safety is common sense. If someone doesn't have that, a safety class won't help.

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I see what you're saying and I hear it often but I'll rebut.

Enough perfectly "smart" people with good "common sense" don't grasp all the nuances of gun safety. "Hey, it's unloaded," is a perfectly logical, common sense thing to say. It isn't acceptable. It isn't safe enough. It gets people killed.

The idea of layering safety measures -- which is why we have four rules when any one of them is capable of saving a life -- is not perfectly intuitive. This is a construct we as a society of shooters have developed over many years. "Common sense" doesn't give you that.

There's also a strong element of group-think, peer influence, that will shape a shooter's habits -- for better or worse. And if someone has not had some figure with authority above that of the current peer group lay down the law about firearms safety, then there's almost no way that group, or any individual in it, is going to rise above bad, dangerous habits. As they say, "None of us is as dumb as all of us."

If you bought a gun, read the instruction manual, never got safety training and you've shot for 42 years and never endangered anyone, never violated any of the 4 rules, never had a moment that could have ended badly, well, that's great! Hats off to you. You're a rare one. There's no way on earth I'd recommend your example as a good course of action for a new shooter.

Yeah, if you've come up in a shooting family, or you learned to shoot in the military, or you started right off joining a competitive shooting discipline with plenty of good peer mentors around, maybe you don't need to take a safety class. Maybe. (There's plenty and way more than plenty examples of all folks from all of those backgrounds who exhibit terrible habits.) Expecting people to be able to figure out and properly apply the safety rules out in the real world, from what they picked up reading the instruction manual of their new .22 would be .... well, a bit part of the problem we see at our shooting clubs and ranges these days.

Shaq said:

I think some people do scare off new shooters by telling them that in order to be a decent shooter & be a safe gun owner, they have to "Get some training, take safety classes, etc" as if shooting was some type of special, complicated elite activity that is reserved for highly-intelligent, genius types. What a crock. What is required for gun safety is common sense. If someone doesn't have that, a safety class won't help.

I've been shooting & handloading for 42 years. I've shot competitively for 10 years & been an instructor for five years. I never took a safety class or got any formal training. When I bought my first gun in 1973, I read the instruction manual that came with it. Didn't require much training for that.

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"Common sense" is not only uncommon, but is often incorrect.

How do you get the genius elite activity junk from recommendations for training? I would recommend that everybody who is new to driving take a driver's education course too, does that mean driving is an elite activity for geniuses? No, it means that you don't know what you don't know, and training and knowledge acquisition will really help you get good quickly and safely.

What kind of instructor are you that you can be instructor without ever having received any training yourself?



But really, since when were things like focusing on the front sight, immediate and remedial action drills, proper grip and stance, proper prone or kneeling or standing positions, reload methods and pros/cons, natural point of aim, respiratory pause, rifleman's cadence, and more..."common sense"?


As far as I can tell common sense says to load birdshot in your pump shotgun and shoot violent life threatening attackers/intruders in the leg once.

"Common sense" is not only uncommon, but is often incorrect.

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I'm going to quote that just because it needs to be repeated loudly and often.


As I said before, "Hey, don't worry, it's unloaded!" is perfect common sense. I'm sure it's empty, so it's safe. An unloaded gun can't kill anyone...right?

It also is probably the most commonly lamented punchline to so many terrible tragedies we all know too well.

One of the things I see here too often is a prospective new shooter posting a thread about buying their first gun, generally a budget entry level firearm like a Charter Arms or Taurus and folks rip off their head and spit down the hole telling them they need to buy something more expensive or nothing at all. To many first time gun buyers, even those entry level firearms seem expensive and better quality firearms are out of their budget, thus they take the advice, buy nuttin' at all and they never post again.

I'm all for training, but I hear enough of the extreme that leads one to believe that unless you spend every weekend taking a new training course, shoot a thousand rounds a week, follow the current trends in weapons choices, read and comply with all the FBI recommendations for their agents, and read every book written by the self defense Gods of publishing, that there is no point in owning or carrying a gun, and if you ever come across someone armed with a rifle, you might as well put your pistol to your own head.

Of course, an aspect that seems to be lost these days is the old concept of giving someone your honest opinion, without sugar coating it, and them being secure enough in their person-hood to take your opinion for what it may be worth and adopt it or leave it without emotional trauma.

That and the corresponding ability to give honest advice and have it accepted or (politely) rejected without enduring emotional trauma yourself.



When we're all apparently "ripping off [someone's] head and spit[ting] down the hole" by giving firmly voiced opinions, or telling people they should just put a gun to their head if various recommendations are not followed, it makes one wonder if we all shouldn't stop talking to each other altogether. We are too sensitive creatures to endure the crushing pressures of human conversation.

Sam1911 said:

When we're all apparently "ripping off [someone's] head and spit[ting] down the hole" by giving firmly voiced opinions, or telling people they should just put a gun to their head if various recommendations are not followed, it makes one wonder if we all shouldn't stop talking to each other altogether. We are too sensitive creatures to endure the crushing pressures of human conversation.

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I've been teaching Hunter Safety for 30 some years. 30 years ago the majority of the students I taught were 12 year old boys wanting to go hunting for the first time. Their first deer gun was probably going to be a single shot slug gun or a Mil-Surp from the bargain barrel at Montgomery-Ward. Folks accepted that, and gave them advice on the limitations of those firearms. If they were going to bow hunt, they used a $35 dollar recurve. Nowadays, many folks(not all mind you) would tell them they have no business in the woods with such weapons. They need to invest $800 in a decent rifle scope combo or Matthews no-cam bow or stay home. I see it all the time. What else has changed is the student base. Nowadays there are a lot of girls/women students, or men that are considering getting a CWC license. These folks have not grown up around guns and know very little about them. Thus they take the Hunter Safety course and come to online gun forums like this for info. They take what they hear from their peers as Gospel. These folks are at "I'm considering getting a gun" point. They are not necessarily driven or highly motivated to get into firearms, just considering it cause it looks like fun. When told they need to spend more than they are willing to, just to try something.......they move on to golf, or bicycling. My local High School just started a new "trap shooting team". Biggest hurdle they have is getting kids without the finances to afford a high end trap gun, to get started into the sport using Dad's ol Mossberg.

We need to embrace new shooters, regardless of the firearms they own or intend to own and the amount of interest they have. Any interest, even the slightest to shoot only once a year with a POS firearm, should be met with a positive response. I personally don't always see this, not only in my classes, but at the range, or here.

so,why can't ranges require a shooter safety course before being unleashed onto the range,

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Every gun club and commercial range (well, except for one in Tacoma) that I know of around my area requires at least some type of brief safety indoctrination, if not a mandatory "training session" .... I actually stopped shooting at a local gun club after the rules simply became too draconian (three pages posted in each shooting bay).

But to answer the OP's question, I'd say yes. And I've seen such egregious treatment of young men (especially minorities or those who dress in the latest urban fashion) in gun shops and at ranges, such extreme condescension toward females who show up in gun stores or at ranges without a male, that it's almost a wonder that we're getting any new shooters coming up at all.

And, these days, some of the biggest complainers I know are the old guys who came up in the day where the trigger finger was always seen on or near the trigger, and there was little to no regulation of most ranges and no mandatory hunter safety courses.

I have to agree with Theohazard. I worked gun counters and did Range Officer duty for enough years to become completely sick of most people's incredibly stupid handling of guns and their "attitude" when gently corrected (especially the old "It's not loaded" line). Most people just don't think at all about what they're doing. They cannot conceive that they could do serious harm by being careless with a firearm. Something else I noticed when instructing for the NRA was the incredible difference between men and women. Men all seem to think that they are born with full knowledge of gunhandling and are intolerant of any criticism while women will only do exactly as they are instructed and are willing to follow every rule simply because they realize that they know nothing about the subject. They were safer, they listened, they asked intelligent questions, they would never pick up a gun unless instructed to and they shot better on their first session than any of the men. Plus, they all smelled better.

These forums dont scare off would be shooters fro shooting.
They scare off people from using the forums.
For every good piece of advice given, there are 20 dilholes in some trailer somewhere being a JA!!!
You see this in alot of gun shops too whenever they hire some young kid that has watched a few too many youtube videos and thinks he's James Yeager!

Probably the most basic gun saftey rule is : "Never point a gun (LOADED OR UNLOADED) in a direction that you don't want to shoot" !
Too many times we have seen on the news that people were injuried or killed by an UNLOADED gun.
Also, never use "BOOM" and "OPPPS" in the same sentence !