Thoughts on Gun Safety

I was doom scrolling my Facebook feed here a day or two ago when I landed on a post by an acquaintance I "met" here in blogger land who used to have a blog of her own. She has since taken it private and relegated most of her other musings to Facebook. She leans left of center politically, and her post was a photo of her nightstand upon which a revolver (Taurus snubbie in .38 or .357 by the look of it) was prominently displayed. She proceeded to state that she "hates guns a lot" and wanted "all the gun control". 

I chose not to comment on her post because I had more important tasks on my plate at the time, and I know the person well enough to know that no good would come of me opening that particular can of worms. For reasons that most of you will already guess, that post set my habitually firearm oriented mind spinning like a game of Russian Roulette.

Setting aside (for the moment) the irony of someone who hates guns and wants all the gun control leaving a revolver out unsecured on a nightstand, it got me to thinking about gun safety. Not the liberal left's view of of gun safety, but the actual-for realsies-don't shoot yourself in the face-gun safety. 

So, I thought I would share a little vignette from my deep past to illustrate the point which is guns, by themselves left to their onesome, cannot hurt a sole. For crying out loud, someone found a Winchester leaning against a tree in the woods after 130 years. The silly thing was rusted to Hell and gone, but it was sitting there for 130 years right where the original owner left it bothering nary a soul. 

Back to our story. Once upon a time in the early 1990s, I was a young lad getting back into the shooting sports after coming of age and having my own money to spend. At that time, semi autos still hadn't made the full transition to being the primary sidearm of choice for pretty much anyone beyond the military. Heck, this was a few short years after taking my driving test with a state trooper who was carrying a huge revolver. So, I was the proud owner of a 6 inch Taurus .357 revolver. This was back in the day when Taurus quality was a crap shoot, and I didn't have the money for a Ruger much less a Smith & Wesson. Colts were already discontinued by that point. So, that wasn't an option either. 

Small digression, I worked in the layaway department at Walmart for a time while in college back when Wally World still sold handguns and cool stuff like Marlin Camp Carbines. I was working the desk one night when one of our sporting goods guys (great guy named Bud who was a WWII/Korea fighter pilot who flew F2G2 Corsairs [the Goodyear version of the Vought F4U]) brought an attractive lady back to put a revolver on layaway. It was a monster 7.5" barreled Ruger Redhawk in .44 Magnum. I asked her what she intended to shoot with it. Her response: "Husbands". Priceless. 

On with the main part of our story here. There's a point in here. I promise. So, during college, I was dating this young woman. She had 3 sisters, the youngest of which had never shot guns before. I offered to take them both out shooting at what was then my grandmother's property. We load up the Taurus, my Remington 870, I think I had the Marlin 60 back then, as much ammo as I could scrounge, targets and set off for the back pasture. 

After a little warm up, I gave the Taurus to my lady friend for her to have a go. She took a couple of shots, and then proceeded to take a pose in which she rested her chin on the hand holding the gun with her other arm supporting the gun hand's elbow with the Taurus sticking out at about the 10 o'clock position WITH HER FINGER ON THE (please enjoy this soothing music while our author vents a spleen in colorful euphemisms using all permutations of the universal adjective) TRIGGER. Now, granted, she was unlikely to receive a .357 caliber Qtip out of the deal since the muzzle was pointed at the stratosphere instead of her dome, but she'd have had the potential to be deaf in one ear for life had I not gently reached over and secured the gun before catastrophe struck. Besides, I don't like cleaning blood spatter of guns; and, contrary to popular belief, stainless steel isn't stainless. Ask Number One Follower about his Colt Mustang II. 

The moral of the story is that gun's are not to be taken lightly. If you don't like them, don't get one. If you don't know what you're doing, get some training. If you like guns and want to keep them, start educating people about how to safely handle them. 

Thus endeth the sermon.