ClickClickD'oh
Member
OOOFF.. Talk about a thread that has pinged some of my instructor pet peeves.
Reading the OPs list reminded me of the guys carrying around little .22 revolvers usually with many of those very same reasons.
Add another to the list: "I don't need to carry one in the chamber because it only takes a second or two to rack the slide"
I have always said that if you are going to carry a gun for the possibility of maybe ever having to use it to defend yourself or another, look at what the people who plan on getting into gunfights do... They bring rifles, body armor and buddies and they train a lot. So, maybe not those guys. Look at the guys next down the line. The guys who go to work with an elevated change of having to use their gun. Obviously, we all don't need to be running around with batons, hand cuffs, OC, radios and the whole nine yards, but..and be patient with me a bit here while I chase a rabbit... No one, and I mean no one, in the history of ever, has come out alive from a gun fight and said, "Man, I wish this gun carried fewer bullets and I had left these extra magazines back in the squad room." Police officers are always trying to cut weight from their belts, yet I've never met a single one that downloaded ammunition. There was a really good video that came out maybe six months ago involving a very quick roadside gunfight in which one of the officer ran his 1911 dry in about two seconds and struggled to reload it while the fight was still going on. I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to be the one to go dry first in a gun fight.
As for instructors that have put bullets into other people.. This question gets asked by students on a very regular basis. Once a class reaches a certain size, it's almost inevitable that someone in the class will ask if any of the instructors has ever shot anyone. It's always a guy that asks too. For the core instructor group I teach with, the answer is "Yes, some of us have." Not all of us have, and it doesn't matter. Generally, our students never can figure out which is which. We also get asked which ones of us are prior military. Some are. The rest are LEO, private security/executive protection and sport shooters. Military firefights generally have little to nothing to do with civilian self defense skills, assuming the person even service in a position that saw small arms firefights. The best thing surviving a military fire fight teaches is how not to panic in the next fire fight. That is something that is nearly impossible for an instructor to teach unless you are doing good force on force training.. and then it's the force on force training, not something coming from the instructor. For an instructor, being able to recognize deficiencies in students, connect with the student and constructively correct the student is far more important than having ever been in a firefight. What does and doesn't work in a gunfight isn't exactly closely held trade secret that only people who have been in a gunfight are awarded via secret handshakes. Being able to impart that knowledge to students though, that isn't exactly a universal skill.
Reading the OPs list reminded me of the guys carrying around little .22 revolvers usually with many of those very same reasons.
Add another to the list: "I don't need to carry one in the chamber because it only takes a second or two to rack the slide"
I have always said that if you are going to carry a gun for the possibility of maybe ever having to use it to defend yourself or another, look at what the people who plan on getting into gunfights do... They bring rifles, body armor and buddies and they train a lot. So, maybe not those guys. Look at the guys next down the line. The guys who go to work with an elevated change of having to use their gun. Obviously, we all don't need to be running around with batons, hand cuffs, OC, radios and the whole nine yards, but..and be patient with me a bit here while I chase a rabbit... No one, and I mean no one, in the history of ever, has come out alive from a gun fight and said, "Man, I wish this gun carried fewer bullets and I had left these extra magazines back in the squad room." Police officers are always trying to cut weight from their belts, yet I've never met a single one that downloaded ammunition. There was a really good video that came out maybe six months ago involving a very quick roadside gunfight in which one of the officer ran his 1911 dry in about two seconds and struggled to reload it while the fight was still going on. I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to be the one to go dry first in a gun fight.
As for instructors that have put bullets into other people.. This question gets asked by students on a very regular basis. Once a class reaches a certain size, it's almost inevitable that someone in the class will ask if any of the instructors has ever shot anyone. It's always a guy that asks too. For the core instructor group I teach with, the answer is "Yes, some of us have." Not all of us have, and it doesn't matter. Generally, our students never can figure out which is which. We also get asked which ones of us are prior military. Some are. The rest are LEO, private security/executive protection and sport shooters. Military firefights generally have little to nothing to do with civilian self defense skills, assuming the person even service in a position that saw small arms firefights. The best thing surviving a military fire fight teaches is how not to panic in the next fire fight. That is something that is nearly impossible for an instructor to teach unless you are doing good force on force training.. and then it's the force on force training, not something coming from the instructor. For an instructor, being able to recognize deficiencies in students, connect with the student and constructively correct the student is far more important than having ever been in a firefight. What does and doesn't work in a gunfight isn't exactly closely held trade secret that only people who have been in a gunfight are awarded via secret handshakes. Being able to impart that knowledge to students though, that isn't exactly a universal skill.