Gun safety instructor shoots student

Mindset and Situational Awareness !!!

The rule is All Guns Are Always Loaded
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That is exactly how I present it and even though that may not be factual , It's the "Mindset" That I want new students to have and maintain. In class, when I first reveal a firearm, I have to present it this way and then proceed to "prove" to them that it isn't, by clearing it as I want them to do, afterwards. ..... ;)

Now then, as far as a safe direction, regardless of where you are, there is "always" one direction that is safer than the rest. We teach situational awareness where you have to read and measure your environment. I once recall a gun counter person, in a chain store, who showed me a handgun, after he cleared it and then directed me to point the muzzle behind the counter, in his direction. I asked him what, was above the ceiling and he said, nothing but the roof, that became my safe direction. ..... ;)

As far as the benefits of one on one tutoring, I agree but not realistic. Right now, I am working with one Grandson and so far this year, we have taught about 150 students. ..... :)

Be Safe !!!
 
Brian Pfleuger said:
I have no use for the NRAs 3+10 system. Folks have enough trouble remembering 4 simple rules, 13 is ridiculous. I also feel like the wording makes them sound a lot less serious than they should be.
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I agree completely.

But ... I'm a Boy Scout type. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do," and all that. When I'm teaching the "NRA Basic Pistol" class, the NRA says I have to teach the NRA's rules. It's their certificate I issue at the end, so I teach their curriculum and their rules. If I decide Cooper's rules are better (they are) and teach that ... I am no longer teaching the NRA class, I shouldn't be advertising or promoting it as the NRA class, and I shouldn't be issuing an NRA certificate of completion.

That's just what is. If my state would accept the "Aguila Blanca Basic Handgun Safety" class as a prerequisite to issuing carry permits, I could teach Cooper's rules. But ... the state doesn't recognize the "Aguila Blanca Basic Handgun Safety" class, so we go with what we've got.

If I happen to let slip during a break that there's a simpler set of rules that's easier to remember ... well, what happens in breaks stays in breaks. The point is, though, that many of us are so accustomed to Cooper's four rules that we forget the major national organization behind firearm safety training doesn't use those rules.
 
Although being a little off topic regarding gun shows they are somewhat different from show to show depending on organization and operators. One show I attended was sponsored by a collectors club and no guns of any type were allowed through the door without at least a tie wrap through the action , mag well and or barrel. What ever the design they were unable to be fired with how the tie wraps were placed. There were even diagrams to show what was acceptable according to type and design.
Another show your somewhat on your honor to have your firearm checked at door to show unloaded and on your honor not to load once inside.
At one of these shows I asked a vendor what the large glass jar was on his table filled with all types of caliber love rounds. His reply was it was all of the "Unloaded" firearms he has received.
As far as a safe direction, every environment is different. Most times that would IMO be the ceiling when indoors, but not always.
You can have one rule, three,,four,thirteen, doesn't matter when it comes to having good common sense.
To me a desk or as in the video your foot, does not qualify for good common sense or safe directions. Neither is having someone hand you a gun and tell you it's unloaded, without checking it yourself.
 
I am still flabbergasted that some people believe you cannot dry fire while following the Four Rules. Here is a quote from one of the pages on my website.

Too many people become complacent and chuck the Four Rules out the window simply because they need to get some dry fire practice in. Foolish! The purpose of dry firing is to engrain certain physical habits into your memory — so deeply engrain them that your body will automatically behave that way under stress. You do not want to engrain poor safety habits. Dry firing without following the Four Rules is worse than not dry firing at all, because it accomplishes the exact opposite of its intended purpose.

Here are the Four Universal Rules and how they apply to dry fire:

Rule One, “All guns are always loaded,” means that the safety rules ALWAYS apply. You must always treat every firearm with the cautious respect you would give it if you knew for sure that it was loaded and able to fire. When you follow this rule, even after you have just checked to see that your gun is unloaded, you still never do anything with it that you would not be willing to do with a loaded gun. All other safety rules follow from this one cardinal rule.

Some people apparently believe that merely checking to see the gun is unloaded means you can then treat it like a toy — that you can point it at your friends to pose for a picture, or at your training partners for disarming practice, or at a flimsy interior wall to check trigger function. That’s a foolish, foolish idea that kills a certain number of people every single year.

Rule Two, “Never point the gun at anything you are not willing to destroy,” simply states the logical consequence of Rule One. When you choose a direction for dry fire, you must choose a direction in which you would be willing to fire a loaded weapon. Don’t point it at your dog, at the big-screen TV you can’t afford to replace, at a friend, or at an heirloom vase. Point it at something that would result in only minor and acceptable property damage if the gun were loaded.

Please note that the word “willing,” as used or implied in the first two rules, does not mean that you really want to shoot a hole in your subflooring, or that you have a great and burning desire to blast that buckeful of dry sand from your safe backstop all over your bedroom carpet. It only means that you are aware that your other safety measures may fail, and that you are willing to sacrifice these things if you make a mistake. It means you reasonably believe that only minor property damage — not physical or emotional tragedy — will result if you err.

One of the reasons people dry fire is to learn Rule Three, “Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target.” This rule needs to be contained not just in your thinking brain, but in your body’s physical response to holding the gun in your hand. It should take a conscious effort of will to put your finger on the trigger. You should never, ever, ever find your finger resting on the trigger or within the trigger guard when you didn’t consciously put it there. Keep your finger out of the trigger guard until your sights are on target.

What’s a target? A target is anywhere you have deliberately chosen as the best place for a bullet to land in a given situation. It can be a piece of paper, a criminal intruder, or a falling steel plate. It can be a particular spot on the living room floor, a thick stack of phone books, or a painting hung on a basement wall. The important thing is that the target is deliberately chosen. Never put your finger on the trigger, for dry fire or for any other reason including disassembling the gun, until you have deliberately chosen the best place for a bullet to land in that situation.

Rule Four, “Be sure of your target and what is beyond it,” is particularly important when dry firing. Because you are following Rule One, you know that the gun in your hand could be deadly. So you are not going to point it at a flimsy interior wall which you know would never stop a bullet, or at your own reflection in the bathroom mirror. You won’t dry fire at the TV. Instead, you’ll set up a useful target with a safe backstop.

If you cannot set up a safe backstop in your home, you must not dry fire there.
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Some people believe that just because they are doing something "important" – such as dry firing, or such as teaching a class, or such as learning how to defend themselves – they don't need to follow the rules. Or they believe that they can ignore the rules whenever they find the rules uncomfortable or inconvenient.

I do not believe that is a healthy mindset. Rule one does not mean, "Check the gun to be sure it is unloaded, then do whatever you want."

The actual meaning of rule one is, "The safety rules always apply."

pax
 
Here is the thing about checking to be sure it's unloaded - we are fallible, and we may forget that things have changed since we checked.

A non-firearm example, from yesterday.

Got home recently from the sandbox, and took my motorcycle out for the first time since getting home. (Had family visiting, and other things that kept me from doing so before yesterday.) So I had to reconnect the battery, check tires, fluid levels, etc.

Rode over to a buddy's house without incident. Shot the bull with him for a bit, then wanted to leave. I could not start the bike. Turned ignition and kill switches off, then on... nothing. Would have scratched my head, but that's hard to do through a helmet.

Clutch squeezed? Yes. Kicked it into gear, back into neutral. Squeezed clutch again... still no start, and no electrical indications...

Realized that the kickstand was down. I had dropped it while talking with my buddy, and had not registered that I had done so. The kickstand dropping will disable the ignition on my bike.

So, in a similar way, it would not be hard to absent-mindedly insert the magazine or speed loader in the gun, after having checked it...
 
I don't think visual and finger checking a chamber, then dropping the slide and saying "this gun is still loaded" is any more "wink and nod" than doing so and saying "Even though I just checked this gun and I know it isn't loaded to the extent humanly possible, I am still going to treat it as though it is loaded."
No normal human being is going to actually think the gun is loaded in either circumstance. A normal human being isn't going to take what they think is a lie seriously. Maybe if a drill sergeant pounds it into your head for a while, but then you might not be a normal human being.
 
The most flabbergasting part of this thread...

The next exercise involved pointing the weapon at a partner and pulling the trigger. Oops ...
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Seriously? Are there really training classes that actually involve pointing a weapon at a classmate/partner and pulling the trigger? That is completely against everything I have ever been taught and would certainly be the the exact moment I opted to drop the class.
 
Fishy
I am not paranoid.
If I check the gun first, you can point it at me and fire. Any time you want. Once I verify it is not able to do anything to me, and I can observe that you do not load it, it cannot hurt me.
Unless you bang my head with it like a club.
I am not like the anti's where I believe that if there is a gun in the same city as me, that I am "in danger".
Nor do I believe if a gun is pointed at me, with no one near it, that I am "in harm's way".
Even if it is loaded.
The gun will not fire itself.
dc
 
There is a training center in Ohio that is best described as regionally respected. From what I hear they are REALLY big on the circle the instructor and shoot him exercise. They have everyone pass the guns around the circle so every student and instructor in the group checks every gun. An instructor goes to the center of the circle and the students dry fire at him. They tout it as being the only way to break people aversion to shooting at people. I haven't been there, but I have heard it described as that more or less from two different sources. Most CCW instructors in the area who want an extra cert or two will go there. They take this drill back to their own classes with less experienced students and usually less experienced instructors.

I'm not sure the drill works as they claim. If I were in a more advanced class than I belong in I wouldn't mind running it. Something where everyone has fired a hundred thousand rounds and if they weren't super careful they would have killed themselves or someone else already.
 
I'm not sure how pointing and pulling the trigger on a KNOWN empty gun gets people past their aversion to shooting other people with a KNOWN loaded gun. :confused:

Instead, it would seem to foster a more cavalier approach to handling firearms.
 
I would think the intended goal would be better achieved via AirSoft or Simunitions Force on Force training.
 
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MLeake said:
I would think the intended goal would be better achieved via AirSoft of Simunitions Force on Force training.
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I agree. I don't think the exercise described would in any way contribute to "removing" a reluctance to shoot at a real person -- since the exercise does not involve shooting at a real person.
 
While 2 NDs in 36 years isn't HORRIBLE, especially for someone handling guns on a regular basis, 2 INJURIES should make him reconsider his role as a gun safety instructor.
 
While 2 NDs in 36 years isn't HORRIBLE, especially for someone handling guns on a regular basis, 2 INJURIES should make him reconsider his role as a gun safety instructor.
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Yes, it is horrible. That's two more ND's than many folks have had in similar periods of time.
 
While 2 NDs in 36 years isn't HORRIBLE
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One of the insurance seminars I went to back when in insurance looked at the rate of "close calls" to "accidents". The research had been done to show that in most industrial accidents dozens of close calls where no one was hurt b/c of sheer luck happened before large accidents. In this case one can easily see that most NDs are not going to result in a shooting. How many have people fessed up to here on the forum that did not result in a shooting? How many never talk about them?

Two NDs in 36 years isn't a number that absolutely terrifies me. If someone told me they had two NDs in 36 years I don't think I would automatically refuse to shoot with them. I find it very hard to believe that 100% of his NDs resulted in someone getting shot though. I am guessing he has a number more, especially after reading about the hayride shooting into the air story. For starters, if he was on the hayride and intending to shoot a 38 blank he was also absolutely careless about ear protection for those around him. Even if he was driving the tractor he was probably less than ten feet from the closest people.
 
I find it very hard to believe that 100% of his NDs resulted in someone getting shot though.
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That's my thought as well. Most folks like that probably have more than a few "oopsies" they don't talk about.
 
And here we go again:

http://www.wbtw.com/story/23221920/public-safety-officer-shoots-through-window-at-savannah-college

A spokesperson for Savannah State says the campus officer was participating in a firearm training/demonstration exercise at the time.

The newspaper reported that the officer was showing new campus police officers the types of weapons used at the school. A college official told the Morning News the Glock should have not been loaded at the time.
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Don't put all your safety eggs inside the "It's unloaded" basket.

pax
 
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