You know, you’d think by now that the various political and gun control groups would have my phone number on a blocked list, but I just got hung up on by a pollster for Americans For Gun Safety.
Mildly interested in how “I hung up on the person I was polling” gets entered in the poll results, but I suspect it’s recorded as whatever result buoys their narrative. Ah, well.
My stance on gun safety has remained firm since 1994, and I don’t see it changing anytime soon.
I think that the Eddie Eagle program should be taught from Kindergarten up to the fourth grade, and nobody should be allowed to advance out of fourth grade without being able to recite, “Stop. Don’t Touch. Get An Adult.”
I think that Cooper’s Four Rules should be taught after fourth grade, and no-one should be allowed into junior high until they can recite the rules from memory and discuss each one.
I don’t think anyone should be allowed to graduate high school until they can field-strip and reassemble an AR15, and pass a standard US Army marksmanship qualification course with one. If someone is techy about shooting at silhouettes, round bullseye targets can be substituted, but you’ve got to earn at least 23 out of 40 to get your sheepskin.
That’s gun safety — teaching kids how to handle firearms safely and taking the mystery out of them will do more to end tragedies than any useless gun control laws; and I’m not going to ever change my mind on that.
LawDog
It’s funny that people are often on opposite sides when it comes to sex ed and gun training.
I think kids should learn both.
I would also include time on the skid pad in driver’s ed.
I think kids should learn sex ed, but I don’t think they should learn it from the pedos teaching in public schools.
I really like the idea about qualifying with an AR15, and I suspect so would the US Armed Services.
Oh, wait, they are now all “woke”, so maybe not.
Well, Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children still might like the idea, the Marines seem to be a lot less “woke” than the rest.
Do the Marines still consider “every Marine is a rifleman”?
Grandpa Termite thought so, he fought under Col. Chesty Puller and survived the Chosen Reservoir battle.
In my ‘Republic of Texas Navy’ universe, in Texas one of the requirements for registered voters is ownership of and demonstrated skill with a rifle. This may become a plot point for a certain young lady who is in the process of becoming a citizen of Texas. 😉
Hey D.A. Brook
Off Topic Subject…Love your books BTW.
I like the idea of every citizen a Rifleman, goes along with”Behind every blade of Glass” and “An Armed Society is a Polite Society”
If Alec Baldwin had learned even one of Cooper’s Four Rules, Halyna Hutchins would be alive today.
Instead, he’s still trying to evade facing the consequences.
When you pick up a gun, YOU are responsible for handling it safely. YOU, Alec, not anybody else. If you can’t handle guns safely, DON’T HANDLE GUNS!!
Like the ass-clown that
persecutedprosecuted Kyle Rittenhouse. Picked up an AR-15 from the evidence table, did not check the chamber, pointed it at the jury, and put a finger on the trigger. Three violations in three seconds. I would have laughed my ass off if that dipshit had shot a hole in the wall.If I was on that jury, I would have got up and hustled out of the jury box.
“Excuse me, Your Honor, but I get nervous when clueless idiots point guns in my direction.”
“No, I’m not afraid of guns. I’ve been shooting for most of my life. That’s why idiots scare me.”
I have to side with Aesop on this one. The Armorer on set has all the blame for not following the established safety rules that have allowed thousands of actors to fire millions of blank rounds without any on-set deaths in something like 30 years. Tombstone, Saving Private Ryan, John Wick movies. Lots of gun action, lots of blanks fired but no deaths. Somebody BADLY screwed up when they handed Baldwin a loaded gun instead of a prop.
No, they badly screwed up when they decided to save money by keeping the armorer off the set. This is the person who is supposed to see the gun is properly set up for the scene, because unless you know otherwise, an actor should be presumed to be completely ignorant about guns and everything else, can’t even be trusted to check the chamber without “accidentally” firing the gun, and wouldn’t be able to tell an empty gun from a loaded gun, let alone tell live rounds, dummy rounds, and blanks apart.
So in a properly run movie set, the armorer reviews the script and verifies that the set up for the scene is safe. E.g., if the script calls for one actor to point the gun at another actor, the cameras should be arranged so the actor is pointing the gun off to the side but it looks right on camera. If they want a look down the muzzle (and no one has said whether this was in the script when Baldwin pointed the gun at the camera and pulled the trigger), the cameraman needs to be operating the camera remotely so no one is standing behind it. Then she loads blanks or dummy rounds into the gun, double checks it, puts the safety on or off as required, and puts the gun directly into the hands of the actor just before the camera starts rolling. If anything goes wrong, it’s definitely her fault.
However, so they only had to pay her for a couple of hours a day (under the pretense of a COVID precaution), the armorer wasn’t present during shooting. She came in earlier, set up the guns for the day, and left them in an _unlocked_ cabinet. The assistant producer picked the gun out of the cabinet and handed it to Baldwin. He could have got the wrong gun – but none of the guns should have been loaded with a live round. The guns could have been tampered with. The guns could have been taken out during lunch time and loaded with live ammo for some cowboy action target shooting. (I have to admit, I’d have been pretty tempted by that collection of Old West weapons, but something stupid like that is the only way I can see there even being a live round on the set.)
Worse, there had already been two or three negligent discharges of live ammo. Everyone knew guns were being handled unsafely – the producers (including Baldwin), the actors (including Baldwin), and the camera crews (including the cinematographer that Baldwin shot dead). The only possible exception is the armorer, because she wasn’t allowed to be present when these incidents happened. Every one of them should have refused to proceed until proper safety precautions were in place…
Of course, Baldwin could have prevented the negligent shooting all by himself, by simply keeping his finger off the trigger until he knew no one was in front of the gun and there was a safe backstop.
Like when DiFi swept the press pool with the Tommy Gun and had her finger on the trigger. Ye doggies, I’d have hit the floor so fast.
Excellent post!
Phone polls? Oh I love lying my gluteus maximus off to telephone polls. Figure it out what’s they want to hear and tell them that you are all on favor. If nothing else they stop calling.
Well, numerous school children behind the Iron Curtain learned those skills (with AKs), so why not here. And concur on Eddie Eagle! D.A. agreed!
I’ve often thought that Heinlein had the right idea of requiring military service to vote was not a bad idea.