Sufficient Backstop for dry-fire

[Ghost1958]

We're any of those dry firing???
Look I'm not trying to advocate anything.
I don't take money to train people though I have trained a few when asked.

So. I'm not a "professional with 10 or 20 yrs handling guns.
I'm not telling anyone to dry fire with a backstop, or without one.
I'm simply giving my unprofessional opinion that after half a century of constantly being armed, hunting, carrying for defense., being shot at, and some other stuff, I don't ,again in my lowly opinion, believe one needs a backstop to dry fire a gun.
One who is going to dry fire, knows they are on purpose going to be pulling the trigger. Repeatedly.

Not trying to be mean but if a person does not know enough about their firearm to unload it and make sure it's empty before knowingly pulling the trigger dry firing, maybe they should learn more about loading unloading and making sure their gun is empty or loaded for that matter, before they start learning trigger pull.

Again, just my unpaid opinion worth what it cost ya. Everyone do as they wish.

 

[pax]

Yes, a helluva lot of them were dryfiring.

And not one of them was any less intelligent or well-intentioned than you or I or anyone else in this thread.

pax

 

[pax]

Ghost1958,

Here's one of my favorites.

“I practice dry fires on my g17 daily as many many gun owners do. I always do a safety check and this morning was not unlike 100's of other times I have done this. I keep my gun as a nightstand gun racked in a holster. Today I took it out to the living room as I do- but first did a safety check- I drop the magazine, rack the slide, and visually inspect the chamber.. yep did all 3 like iv done 100's of times.. Then I proceed to do my first dry fire.. squeeze aimed at he wall- then BLAM!!! ... what just happened?? Time just froze as I sat there frozen in shock looking at hole in the wall and smelling the gunsmoke. My first reaction was that?? That is not possible!! I look at gun, the magazine is out so how did it magically load itself?? Then after the 2 seconds of shock, panic sets in - where is the bullet?? Did it stay in the house?? Oh god! I live in close suburb! I get up and check.. Clean hole in the wall exited into the kitchen cabin and stoped by dishes which had exploded out spraying glass all over the kitchen. The relief it didn't exit the house was replaced with terror, anger and confusion. I instantly hit the mental rewind and play to make sense of what just happened. I did the safety check just 5 seconds ago!!- and this surreal "that's not possible" emotion like I had just shifted into an alternate universe overcame me. After 10 minutes of trying to recall the clearing of the gun over and over my memory was the same- I droped the mag, racked and inspected chamber.. so what then? THis isn't possible! I am too smart and too carefull for THIS to happen to ME!.. Well apparently not. Here is what happened- Last night I had installed a new Crimson Trace Railmaster. So while doing my safety check which iv done hundreds of times- Somewhow my attention got distracted for a millisecond admiriing my sweet new laser- and in the momentary distraction my brain got the safety check out of order.. I racked, looked at the empty chamber, THEN Droped the Magazine which was loaded. I had chambered a round not even realizing it during my safety check. It just one millisecond of distraction that I didn't even realize ,or record in memory, and I cuased a negligent discharge that could have killed someone, myself, and or or sent me to prison. … I am restructuring my safety protocol."

And here's another.

“A few years back I took my S&W Model 60 out of my nightstand, unloaded it and practiced firing it, to see how steady I could do it double action. I was laying on my bed with the pistol pointed at the ceiling. Well, when I unloaded it for some dumbass reason I only took 4 cartridges out of the cylinder. I pulled the trigger 3 times, and on the 4th pull I blew a hole through the roof of the trailer we were renting at the time. I felt really stupid.”

And another

“My gun once went off unintentionally and certainly unexpectedly because after seeing an empty chamber thousands of times, my brain was conditioned to see an empty chamber, even when there was a round in it. … I went through the proper clearing sequence as I did for over 18,000 times over the last 30 years…. Pulling the trigger, while pointed in a safe direction was the standard way I had been required to clear my 1911 in competition as the last step and that is what I did. I did it all correctly but my mind played a trick on me.”

And another

“I had just bought a Security Six and I was reading a book on how to shoot. I decided to practice dry firing like it said in the book. I unloaded it and sat in my lounge chair and aimed at the gas valve handle on the fireplace. It clicked four times and then fired. I was so shocked that I couldn't move for a few minutes. Fortunately, the gun shot a little low and to the right and I just missed the valve. It went though the tile and the dry wall in the closet in the next room. It was loaded with a 38 special. Now I look into every chamber in my revolver and stick my finger in the chamber of my 1911 before I do anything. I left the hole in the tile to remind me.”

And another

“After I dropped the clip on a 1911 I racked it three times which is my usual routine when unloading guns. I assumed that any round in the chamber would have popped out when I racked it which is where I made my mistake. The extractor and ejector malfunctioned and I failed to look in the chamber to make sure by actually inspecting it. I locked the slide back and started looking at it before I put on new grips. I let the slide go forward and squeezed the trigger as I was pointing at a wall that also had nothing behind it except for a wooden deck and then the backyard. I was extremely suprised when the gun went off and when it put a hole in that wall and went into the wooden railing outside. Fortunately I never pointed the gun at anything I wasn't willing to destroy and when it went of due to my negligence in not checking the chamber nobody was hurt as a result. … Since then I've never failed to check the chamber twice each time and I haven't ever again assumed that the firearm would eject the cartridge just because I racked it several times. I also continue to never let the muzzle cover anything that I'm not willing to put a hole in. Racking the firearm several times turned out to not be a substitute for actually looking.”

And another

“Back in '89 I dropped the mag on my 9mm Glock for some dry fire practice and neglected to check the chamber. I aimed at a picture on a wall and squeezed the trigger. Bang! the 115 grain hollow point shattered the glass went through the picture frame , clean through the wall and lodged in the fence about 10 feet past that. Thank god no one was injured. I am now very very careful with unloaded guns.”

And another

“... while practicing speedloading a Smith 586, I came up to point after loading and discarged a round in an apartment I once lived in. To this day I remember the sick feeling I got in my stomach."

And another

" I accidently shot myself last night.
There....I said it. I had to tell everyone else today, so I thought I'd share here as well. Maybe someone else will be a little safer because of it. I'm not sure what happened really. Was dry firing my new G30 and while lost in (fatigued) thought, popped in a loaded mag, and kaboom. Took a Speer Gold dot through the hand and ended up having my pinky amputated. Not sure yet if my ring finger will recover completely, but it looks promising. Damn,damn,damn.....I feel really stupid....but lucky. The bullet went through me, hit some magazines on my workbench, destroyed a can of WD40, and finally dropped on the bench in front of me. Ive been handling guns for over 30 years but got careless or stupid or both."

And another

“I've been around guns for 42+ years and everyone considers me Mr. Safety in everything I do and all the time. Thank God no one was hurt. I'm very ashamed and embarrassed. I've loaded and unloaded my G-26 many times as I carry it almost daily .... And before that I carried a G-23 and now sometimes too a G-19. Then, last night I wasn’t focused on what I was doing and I let myself get distracted. As I was unloading it I pulled the magazine, locked open the slide to eject the round and then not being focused, I inserted my spare magazine as I always rotate them after each carry, released the slide and then not realizing the spare magazine was in I pointed it at the bed pulled the trigger and BLAM. Thank the good Lord the bullet went through the bed and wooden floor. I couldn’t believe it. It was surreal! I thought this didn’t and couldn’t happen to me! No way!”

I could go on, but there's no point.

pax

 

[Ghost1958]

Yes, a helluva lot of them were dryfiring.

And not one of them was any less intelligent or well-intentioned than you or I or anyone else in this thread.

pax

Not trying get your dander up.
I've had my wife go to your site many times.

I only asked because I had not seen you post where one had intentionally set out to dry fire and had their gun go off.

As to intelligence, a person would not have to be very smart to be smarter than me.

I was simply pointing out that just perhaps if a person hasn't learned the how to of unloading their gun and being sure it is empty before purposefully pulling the trigger in dry fire exercises that maybe they are getting the cart before the horse?
Not a matter of intelligence. Nobody I know was born knowing how to shoot and the basic operation of a gun.
But loading safely and unloading one or making one safe in other words are the very basics even before shooting the first round.

The four rules are great but.
Don't point at anything you don't want to destroy.

Then hang up your gun because if you carry, in any manner you are going to muzzle numerous people every day. Just an example.

Anyway. I'll shush now. Like I said everyone do what they think best.

 

[pax]

Ghost,

The thing is, nobody ... I mean, NOBODY ... plans to have an ND.

You're not immune to that deadly surprise. Neither am I.

Humans. Make. Mistakes.

We can either keep protocols in place to reduce the danger of killing someone when we make that mistake.

Or we can deny that it's possible that we could ever make that mistake.

Lots and lots and lots of people have already tried that second path. It does not go anywhere good.

Honestly do not see a downside to being sure there's a truly solid backstop somewhere in the home. It's not exactly hard work to make it happen. Does not have to cost a dime or take more than a few minutes to put together.

It's not work ... so why not do it?

pax

"'Not [messing] up' should always be Plan A. Doesn't mean that having a Plan B is a bad idea." – Tamara Keel

 

[JohnKSa]

Then hang up your gun because if you carry, in any manner you are going to muzzle numerous people every day. Just an example.

Cased/holstered guns with inaccessible triggers are considered to be exempt from the muzzle control rule because they can not be fired.

This is why I carry in a holster that protects the trigger and that is secure enough to prevent the gun from falling out in any reasonable scenario. It is also one reason why I do not unholster my carry gun in public (barring the need for self-defense) and recommend that others do likewise. Once the gun comes out of the holster, the muzzle control rule goes into effect and safe direction is required. It is often impossible to find a safe direction in public.

 

[Ghost1958]

Ghost,

The thing is, nobody ... I mean, NOBODY ... plans to have an ND.

You're not immune to that deadly surprise. Neither am I.

Humans. Make. Mistakes.

We can either keep protocols in place to reduce the danger of killing someone when we make that mistake.

Or we can deny that it's possible that we could ever make that mistake.

Lots and lots and lots of people have already tried that second path. It does not go anywhere good.

Honestly do not see a downside to being sure there's a truly solid backstop somewhere in the home. It's not exactly hard work to make it happen. Does not have to cost a dime or take more than a few minutes to put together.

It's not work ... so why not do it?

pax

"'Not [messing] up' should always be Plan A. Doesn't mean that having a Plan B is a bad idea." – Tamara Keel

Pax, I'm not telling anyone not to do it.

I just stated my own lowly opinion like at least one other did that I don't think it's necessary.

If one wants to make a back stop that's great. Heck if they live close I'll help em lol.

I was just taught differently back then I guess.
We still farmed with horses here back then if that gives you a kinda reference.
I didn't get to shoot a gun until I could break it down and reassemble it after cleaning it. Which meant unloading it first.
I wasn't taught to treat every gun like it was loaded. I was taught to make darn sure the gun was empty myself unless I needed it to be loaded.
And to make darn sure it was loaded and ready if I needed it to ready to go.

There's no reason not to do it like you said if one thinks it's necessary.
Just me personally I don't see the need for it. But that doesn't mean maybe everyone else on the forum does. If they do they should.

Oh BTW you run a very good website.

 

[JoeSixpack]

Oh! Joe Sixpack, here's one for you. Not a pellet or bb gun.

Hmm We have 2 marlin 60's.. the trigger group is fairly compact.. I'd be interested in how he lost an entire 22lr in the action.

Why did he even dry fire a rimfire? most aren't dry fire safe due to the firing pin.
I don't get the "dry fired to put a drop of oil on the trigger" bit.

Musta been gremlins.

 

[TailGator]

The cases cited make a good case for having a safe backdrop for dry firing. Dry firing in the direction of a person, or even of a valued possession, is clearly a violation of accepted safety rules. How much you value the drywall in front of a block or brick wall is your choice.

The other thing that jumps out at me in the examples given, though, is that we need to focus on the task when we are clearing our firearms, and not just go through the motions mechanically. I once told a young person that I was mentoring on another subject that the most difficult thing is to keep doing something well, with complete involvement and careful observation and attention, when you have already done it time after time after time. That applies to gun safety in spades. The safe direction is important after you have already had that lapse of attention, that moment when you went through the motions instead of really thinking about what you were seeing or doing. It would be unnecessary for someone completely immune to those lapses, but I haven't met one yet.

 

[pax]

Joe, I dunno about the Marlin 60. Have to go get my hands on one and play with it a bit to maybe figure out what the deal was on those.

One of the things that deeply surprised me were how many NDs I found with people dry firing revolvers. Nearly all of them were instances where the user looked at the cylinder but did not count the empty chambers. It's surprisingly easy to swing a cylinder out far enough that it looks/feels completely open, but isn't open enough to show all the chambers.

Like this:

It's really, really easy to miss seeing something we don't expect to see.

(For the record, the photos don't cheat. The gun in the first picture is every bit as loaded as the one in the second picture.)

That's why I strongly suggest people who use revolvers should make a lifetime habit of counting the holes with a fingertip every time they unload. It's too easy for eyeballs to lie.

I think, too, the old-timer's habit of counting the rounds in the hand (rather than individually checking the chambers) caused quite a few of the issues. In one case, the guy was already holding one round so when he unloaded his revolver and then carefully counted the rounds in his hand, he thought he was good to go because "all six of them were there". Loud noise followed.

Speaking of old timers, here's what car seats looked like when I was a little girl.

We had one like that, I think. But I don't think my parents used it much. My favorite place to ride was on dad's lap in the driver's seat, "helping" him steer. People used to do things like that. I can also remember lying down in the back of the family station wagon, playing cards with my brother in the cargo space. Or stretched out in a sleeping bag on the floor of the van, or letting the wind blow through my hair as we rode in the open bed of a pickup truck. All of those things were normal when I was a kid — and all of them are pretty much unacceptable parenting practices now.

We might smile when we remember things like that and say, “Oh, we survived those ‘dangerous’ practices, so they must not have been so dangerous after all!”

But when we say that, we’re being very foolish, because you know who we can’t ask? All the children who died before they got to be as old as we are. Check this out:

In pretty much the same way as motor vehicle crashes have gotten a lot safer for children because of changes in both technology and behavior, firearms ownership and use has gotten a lot safer for nearly everyone because of changes in both technology and behavior.

More guns are drop-safe than ever before.

Holsters now routinely cover the trigger and trigger guard area of the gun.

More people (though still not all and that needs to change) lock up their firearms when they are not under the conscious control of a responsible adult, which reduces unauthorized access by children and clueless people.

More people consciously follow all four of the most basic gunhandling rules, all the time.

And look at what's happened to the death and injury rate:

(That image came from this link, which has all the information a person might want about where the numbers came from and what they might mean.)

So while I deeply respect the experience people older than I might have had with firearms during their formative years, I'm also acutely aware that the changes in 'best practices' have saved many, many lives.

The key is to learn from other people's experiences, and not insist on making all of our own mistakes.

pax

If you have two ways of handling guns, one for ‘loaded’ guns and one for ‘unloaded’ ones, you will default to the wrong one in a moment of stress or inattention. – Chuck Haggard

.

 

[pax]

TailGator ~

Excellent point!

pax

 

[JohnKSa]

I'd be interested in how he lost an entire 22lr in the action.

I have personally witnessed a tubular magazine in a .22rimfire retain a round while the action was worked once, then give it up the second time it was operated. When the springs get weak, bad things can happen. This is why it's critical to actually check for rounds, not to just run the action until no more rounds come out and then assume it must be empty.

One of the things that deeply surprised me were how many NDs I found with people dry firing revolvers.

I know of one ND with a revolver where the operator opened the cylinder fully and dumped the rounds out of the cylinder using gravity as the "ejector". The cylinder was closed and dryfire began. The gun clicked a few times and then fired.

One round had stuck in its chamber and didn't fall out. And the shooter didn't check carefully enough to detect it. No one was hurt, but furniture had to be replaced and the shooter's hearing was permanently damaged.

 

[Unclenick]

Tailgator's point goes double for those of us who do any of our own gunsmithing. We take guns apart and put them together so many times to check fit that it is easy to get a little too comfortable with it and have a momentary attention lapse. Familiarity breeds contempt, and that goes double for those of us constantly tweaking things.

I've had three unintended discharges over the last six decades of shooting, though I would call them only partially negligent, as in all cases the gun was pointed down-range on a hot range when they occurred. Two were due to mechanical failures, one being my fault (was still learning 1911 trigger work back then and it was my first one), one actually the fault of an aftermarket part on a rifle trigger not engaging adequately, and one was pure brain gas in which I got out of sequence with a 1911 while contemplating something or other about the target (inattention).

The mechanical rifle failure was a case of the rifle discharging upon closing of the bolt. I was closing it with my trigger finger hand, so no finger had an opportunity to be anywhere near the trigger. It is another example of why you want not only a solid backstop when handling a gun, but hearing and eye protection on if you have to cycle live ammo through it to test feeding.

The two 1911 incidents happened before I went to Gunsite and learned the four rules. There have been none since. I follow all the redundancies to keep it that way, knowing all the while that sooner or later I'll absent-mindedly omit one, but that the others will then prevent tragedy. I can't trust doing anything less, based on my past experience.

Jeff Cooper was even harder on us about the dry firing setup than some mentions in this thread have been. He insisted we not only have the ammo in a separate room, but in a locked container or drawer in that room. His emphasis on safety redundancy shows there. I think there is a psychological factor as well, in that it is good to associate the acts of locking and unlocking with safe-to-dry-fire and unsafe-to-dry fire, respectively. It helps avoid the chance of some of the sequential thinking failures Pax described.