Best "Gun" Advice or Saying?

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“Forget everything you’ve seen in the movies or on TV about gun handling. They don’t do it right.”

This is the first thing I say to someone who is about to shoot a gun for the first time.
 
"The gun is always loaded." (i.e. treat it that way)

A close second: "A gun's safety is a mechanical device that can fail."
 
I have heard that one plenty of times. In my experience, the guy with only one gun has never shot it, has no idea how it works, and does not own any ammo.
Nope....while today, there are those that have a gun just t to have one, this saying came out of a time of hard times when a man usually only had one gun and it was a working gun that usually saw much use and was taken care of. Having more than one gun was for the wealthy and priveledged who had more time from having to scrabble to take care of a family. My grandfather gave my uncle and father two 10 ga and three .22 shells, when available, and they were expected to feed a family of eight. They hunted year round..didn't have the caliber "flavor of the year", or the "one hole, 1000 yd ray guns" that get shot for fun on weekends.
 
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"Always make sure you have a left handed wheel man." This was passed on to me by one of my "godfather's" who worked for George Remus during Prohibition. I was about 5 or 6 when he told me, and it took me a few years to figure it out. What he was saying was, when you are enganged in any sort of criminal enterprise which requires the use of someone to drive the car, make certain that the driver is left handed so that he can drive and shoot out of the window at the same time. Haven't had occassion to make use of this advice.... yet.
 
Ones that I like and have not seen mentioned yet:

"See what you need to see in order to hit what you need to hit."
"A flinch begins with the eyes."
 
"The hand holding the gun is what is dangerous." This is both a gun safety warning, and a comment on situational awareness.

As other have already posted, "You cannot miss fast enough to win." Somewhat of a corollary to this is "A good enough shot made NOW beats a perfect shot made LATER every time."

"The only safety is the one between your ears."
 
I've had the privilege to meet and know some extremely good shooters, including people who have won things like state, national, or world championships. Not one of those people own just one gun.

75 years ago, the dirt poor hillbillie who relied on his .22 to put rabbits and squirrels in the pot and crows off the moonshine corn probably knew how to shoot it pretty well.

These days, there are very, very, very few people in comparable circumstances. Basically, everyone who truly knows how to shoot enjoys shooting. That means that, sooner or later, they tend to buy more than one gun.

Today, claiming that "the man with one gun" is most likely to know how to use it is like saying "try to find guitarists who only own one guitar, as he probably knows how to play it." Well, maybe, or maybe he just picked one up because it was the cool thing to have in the college dorm, but never got past the first 3 chords and now keeps it around because he can't be bothered to sell it. I'd wager that most people in the U.S. today who own one gun have it stuffed in the top of a closet or maybe a bedside drawer and shoot it once a year or less.

Whatever kernel of truth was ever at the core of the "beware the man with one gun" saying dried up and blew away a long time ago.
 
Some of the things I wanted to say have been said :)

One thing I tell everyone that is new to shooting be they kids or adults;
“Treat every gun like it has a high powered laser beam coming out of the barrel that can vaporize anything it hits.”
 
Dad

“If a deer is so far away you think you’ll have to hold higher than the top of his back to hit him, he’s too ______ far away to be shooting at.”

“Never point a gun at anything you don’t want to kill.”

“Once you pull the trigger, the fun’s over.” (speaking about big game hunting)
 
"Aim small, hit small," which I understood to mean take your time and do your best, the well tuned gun will do the rest.
no, it means aim small, miss small. when i shoot at 5/8" dots, my groups are almost always smaller than when i shoot 1" dots. try it sometime.


Nope....while today, there are those that have a gun just t to have one, this saying came out of a time of hard times when a man usually only had one gun and it was a working gun that usually saw much use and was taken care of. Having more than one gun was for the wealthy and priveledged who had more time from having to scrabble to take care of a family. My grandfather gave my uncle and father two 10 ga and three .22 shells, when available, and they were expected to feed a family of eight. They hunted year round..didn't have the caliber "flavor of the year", or the "one hole, 1000 yd ray guns" that get shot for fun on weekends.

Errr... a year ago I started a thread on stupid/wrong gun-related sayings that need to go away. https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/gun-related-sayings-that-need-to-go-away.839911/

My leadoff saying was the one about the man with one gun. It's possible that had some truth many years ago. It has long since lost any truth whatsoever.

like all sayings, they're not intended to apply to EVERYONE without exception. No one is debating that the best shooters have more than one gun.
or that your cousin that inherited a single gun but never shot it is the most fearsome person in the world.

it's quite simply saying that people have a finite amount of time to practice and gain experience. if they focus all of that on one thing, they'll get much better at it than if they divide their time.

my personal experience shooting in practical rifle / sniper matches is that the people who get one gun and stick with it over the years typically outshoot the guys who buy a different gun/cartridge every year.
and the guy who puts 3000 rounds through his 308 every year is going to outshoot the guy who has 30 different guns each in a different caliber, and shoots each of them 100 rounds.

in that context, i think it is ageless wisdom. that's not to say that the guy with 15 nearly identical AR15s is somehow disadvantaged. it's just saying pick something and get good at it.
 
my personal experience shooting in practical rifle / sniper matches is that the people who get one gun and stick with it over the years typically outshoot the guys who buy a different gun/cartridge every year.

And is that the only gun those guys own? I doubt it.

I get and agree with your deeper point. I shot the same gun in USPSA for several years, while others swapped guns every 6 months. Given that adjusting to any new gun requires some kind of ramp-up period, and the more different the gun the longer the ramp-up is likely to be, you do spend more time in something other than ramp-up mode if you're not constantly changing the particular gun for the particular purpose.

But the saying is not "beware the competitor who sticks with one platform in a given endeavor, for he probably is getting at least OK results with it." The statement asserts that there's an inverse correlation between number of guns and skill, at least from n=1 to n=2. And that's just hugely contrary to reality.

Let's try this thought experiment. We're going to have a shooting competition (your choice of discipline, up to and including an actual gunfight between humans). We'll create two teams. One team will be 10 people randomly chosen from the population of people who own only one gun. One team will be 10 people randomly chosen from the population of people who own at least 5 guns. Which team would you bet on?
 
That’s a thought experiment in being excessively literal to the point that you lose the wisdom.

If i said don’t whiz into the wind and someone else replies well technically the air is never really perfectly still and so I would never be able to take a whiz outdoors so that’s a stupid saying.... Theyre being too literal and losing the meaning. And one day might whiz on themselves.

Don’t be that guy
 
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