Jim Taylor
Experience Is A Great Teacher
Thursday, December 26, 2019, 14:51

or
How I Learned Not To Shoot Myself In The Foot

Education is expensive, no matter where you obtain it. I began learning that at an early age, my Daddy being one of the Instructors. However, since this is a story about firearms we will bypass the early years and concentrate on the “learning to handle firearms safely” part. Education I received about behavior is another topic.

Dad started me shooting when I was little. I don't remember ever not shooting. When I was 5 or 6 we would go to the town dump and shoot bottles and rats. I had a BB gun that was heck on bottles. By the time I was 10 I had my own rifle, a nice little single-shot .22 that Dad had shortened and cut down for me. By that age I knew to be careful to not touch the trigger until I was on target and ready to shoot. I knew about shooting in a safe direction and being aware of what was beyond the target I was shooting at. And things went well until in my teenage years I was give a nice Ruger .357 Magnum. This was the early small frame sixgun that was basically the same size as the Colt SAA.

Shooting ground squirrels and jack rabbits was no problem. I practiced daily and shot target out to several hundred yards. No problems there either. The problems arose when I decided I was going to become one of the better quick-draw artists. I began practicing with the .357, pulling and snapping the empty gun. I would stand for an hour in front of my Mom's antique vanity with its full length mirror and try to outdraw the dude in the mirror.

Eventually I became pretty good at drawing and snapping the gun and graduated to live ammo on the range. Using .38 Special loads I would draw and fire at tin cans, bottles (we shot a lot of bottles before that became a “no-no”) rocks, dirt clods and other targets including paper bad guys. Over the course of a year and a half I had gotten to where I could pull the .357 pretty suddenly. One thing I learned to do was, starting with the loaded gun in the holster and a 3” to 4” long piece of 2X4 in my gun hand, I would toss the 2X4 out in front of me, draw the sixgun and most times hit the board before it went 3 feet. It looked impressive and I was impressed by myself.

One day I was with some friends on the range and decided to give a demonstration of my lightning draw. I wasn't showing off. It was a demonstration. Ha! I tossed the board with my gun hand, jerked the .357 and fired it straight down through the holster! Stunned I stood there for a second and then I noticed the bullet hole below the holster in the right side of the right leg of my levi's. There appeared to be a hole in the left side of the same pants leg! I wobbled unsteadily back to the truck and sat on the running board, shaking. I checked my leg and it was undamaged. I don't know how. The pants must have flared forward and the bullet missed my leg by 1/8 of an inch!

Thinking back on things I realized that in my haste to impress my friends I had neglected to tie down the holster.

I also realized that I had been putting my finger into the trigger guard as I pulled the gun. Cocking it as it came up in the holster, all it took was a slight bump and the gun would fire.

From this mistake I learned to always double-check the holster and tie-down. And I began practicing not putting my finger into the trigger guard until the gun was poked toward the target. I practiced this in front the mirror, slowly, for months. All I wanted to do was build muscle memory. I knew speed comes when the movement is smooth and done without thinking about it.

Somewhere during this time I bought a Ruger Blackhawk in .30 Carbine. Sporting a 7 ½ inch barrel, I found with practice that I could pull it pretty durn fast, and I practiced with it in front of the mirror also.

One day I spent 45 minutes or more standing in front of the mirror, drawing and snapping the .357. Tiring of that I decided I would go out to the range and shoot the .30 Carbine. I took off the .357 and holster and put on the 30 Carbine and holster. Walking past the mirror I suddenly without thinking about it drew the .30 Carbine Blackhawk in the one of the smoothest, fastest draws I had ever made, and fired a shot right through the middle of the guy in the mirror.

The speed of the draw and the accuracy was amazing! The problem was, it was my Mom's antique vanity that now had a large hole in the center and “spiderwebs” radiating out from it. Not to mention the hole in the wall into the living room. No one else was home at the time so I did not have the worry of shooting someone. But .. this was a serious problem. So I did what I thought was best for me. I wrote a note apologizing for the damage and explaining that I had a problem with the gun and accidentally fired it through the mirror. And I left for a while.

Things calmed down by the time I returned and I learned several lessons from this incident.
#1 .. It would have been a lot easier in the long run to tell the truth and live with the results.
#2 … When dry-firing a firearm, no matter what kind, put it away and do not touch ANY OTHER firearm for at least an hour. If you do not practice that you will fire it sometime without meaning to. I have lots of data to back that up.

#3 … Dry-fire with a backstop. Something that will stop the bullet if somehow a live round gets introduced.

I have made mistakes with a firearm in over 60 years of handling them. The incidents have been rare and without injuries. I have never shot anyone accidentally or negligently. I do not count shooting my neighbor's dogs. He told me to shoot any dogs I saw chasing his cows. I saw dogs chasing the cows and I shot them. It was not an accident that all shots were good ones.