Here’s a story for you. I’ve only really held a gun once, at a camp riflery range (very small calibers). I still end up doing a fair amount of gun research for understanding gun debates / safety practices, research for fiction where characters have to talk about guns, etc.
I have had to correct other Reddit users that are gun owners, about the workings of basic single-action revolvers, in a very deep/long thread. I briefly doubted myself and checked my own sources, and yes, I was correct and the gun owner was persisting off the idea I was wrong. I’m sure there’s some responsible owners out there, but the fact there are so many bull-headed idiots about their guns, who still say they’re responsible, should scare anyone.
The specific topic, if you’re interested, was on the situation where an old-style revolver is loaded and cocked by an inexperienced user, who then wants to safely decock/unload the gun without firing it (at that point, the cylinder is locked so basic approaches won’t work). Feel free to look it up - the approach needed there is pretty damn stupid.
I don’t handle guns, I just like westerns and play too many video games:
Don’t you have to hold the hammer while you pull the trigger to decock it? The trigger unlocks it, but because you’re holding the hammer it doesn’t strike the shell?
So in order to safely disarm you have to pull the trigger, which sure sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
Exactly right. It’s possible there are some newer revolver models that have fixed that quirk of design, but that’s been true of all the ones I looked up YouTube videos on.
Yeah, modern ones have a decocker to fix that problem. I’ve never looked up how they work exactly. I do know that some revolvers also have a little piece that comes up to block the hammer from striking.
The historic design is certainly unsafe, but in those days, guns were rare and expensive enough that if you had one, you were already going to be trained on it. (Also, compared to a semi-auto pistol slide spring, revolver hammer springs are surprisingly weak. The only time I’ve had to do it, in a safety class, I was using so much force to hold the hammer up, I didn’t realize I had to let off to let it down.)
I had a girlfriends father insist on taking the whole family to the gun range as a “fun day out thing”. Not my thing, but why say no to new experience? Besides her dad had always openly carried so it was clearly something HE was into, so being invited to family time with him felt like a kindness
But oh joy, was I thankful that a gun instructor was there, literally everything her dad said was corrected. From hand placement, to how to load to how to stand. The guy nearly kicked dad off the range at one point for having a loaded gun facing his kid.
Thankfully I never had to suffer his company since we broke up later, but it was a very eye opening experince. Being INTO guns definitely does not correlate with safe usage.
Here’s a story for you. I’ve only really held a gun once, at a camp riflery range (very small calibers). I still end up doing a fair amount of gun research for understanding gun debates / safety practices, research for fiction where characters have to talk about guns, etc.
I have had to correct other Reddit users that are gun owners, about the workings of basic single-action revolvers, in a very deep/long thread. I briefly doubted myself and checked my own sources, and yes, I was correct and the gun owner was persisting off the idea I was wrong. I’m sure there’s some responsible owners out there, but the fact there are so many bull-headed idiots about their guns, who still say they’re responsible, should scare anyone.
The specific topic, if you’re interested, was on the situation where an old-style revolver is loaded and cocked by an inexperienced user, who then wants to safely decock/unload the gun without firing it (at that point, the cylinder is locked so basic approaches won’t work). Feel free to look it up - the approach needed there is pretty damn stupid.
I don’t handle guns, I just like westerns and play too many video games:
Don’t you have to hold the hammer while you pull the trigger to decock it? The trigger unlocks it, but because you’re holding the hammer it doesn’t strike the shell?
So in order to safely disarm you have to pull the trigger, which sure sounds like an accident waiting to happen.
Exactly right. It’s possible there are some newer revolver models that have fixed that quirk of design, but that’s been true of all the ones I looked up YouTube videos on.
Yeah, modern ones have a decocker to fix that problem. I’ve never looked up how they work exactly. I do know that some revolvers also have a little piece that comes up to block the hammer from striking.
The historic design is certainly unsafe, but in those days, guns were rare and expensive enough that if you had one, you were already going to be trained on it. (Also, compared to a semi-auto pistol slide spring, revolver hammer springs are surprisingly weak. The only time I’ve had to do it, in a safety class, I was using so much force to hold the hammer up, I didn’t realize I had to let off to let it down.)
I had a girlfriends father insist on taking the whole family to the gun range as a “fun day out thing”. Not my thing, but why say no to new experience? Besides her dad had always openly carried so it was clearly something HE was into, so being invited to family time with him felt like a kindness
But oh joy, was I thankful that a gun instructor was there, literally everything her dad said was corrected. From hand placement, to how to load to how to stand. The guy nearly kicked dad off the range at one point for having a loaded gun facing his kid.
Thankfully I never had to suffer his company since we broke up later, but it was a very eye opening experince. Being INTO guns definitely does not correlate with safe usage.