JimConway
Instructor
The latest from John Farnam
Nearly all independent trainers, like myself, have witnessed students perpetrate NDs on ranges. Genuine ADs, resulting from defective guns and/or ammunition, do occur, but they are extremely rare.
The vast majority of NDs involve single shots, and the errant bullet subsequently impacts harmlessly. However, every so often a student is shot accidentally, due to an ND.
The vast majority of these injuries involve handguns and are self-inflicted.
In nearly forty years of conducting shooting instruction on ranges, I've personally witnessed three. All involved handguns, and all were self-inflicted.
The first (early 1980s) involved a student getting his support hand in front of his muzzle during a low-light exercise. The single, 9mm hardball
round passed through the side of the small joint of his ring-finger. Doctors
subsequently fused the joint, so all he got out of it was the inability to flex his ring-finger completely.
His pistol was a S&W with a two-stage decocking lever, and the student had failed to decock after firing his first rounds. As he fumbled for the lever, one of his other fingers found the trigger just as his support-hand wandered out ahead of the muzzle.
The next took place on an outdoor range in the Midwest eight years later.
A student, a gunsmith, dropped his G17. Instead of just letting it fall to the ground, he fumbled with it. Again, a finger made contact with the trigger. The single round (hardball) went through his thigh, inside to outside. In fact, I saw the bullet hit the ground next to him after it exited.
Happily, the bullet passed through without hitting his femoral artery, nor his femur, nor anything else particularly exciting. We transported him to the local hospital emergency room where they did little more than put a band-aid on entry and exit wounds and send him on his way. He was never admitted, and, less than an hour after his arrival, departed and returned to the Range with us and completed the Course, albeit with a slight limp!
The last took place at an indoor range on the West Coast fourteen years ago. A student holstered her Taurus copy of Beretta. It was Taurus'
1911-style Beretta-copy and was thus correctly carried cocked-and-locked. She had
a generic hip-holster, but her finger was wrapped around the trigger, and the pistol's manual safety was mysteriously "off," as she slid the pistol into the scabbard. Of course, the holster itself shoved her finger into the trigger, and the pistol functioned normally.
She was a slim gal, so the bullet (9mm hardball) made nothing more than a twelve-inch streak-mark down her right leg. It then demolished itself on the concrete floor. The bullet never actually penetrated her skin, so there was scant bleeding. She was treated and released at the local hospital, again spending less than an hour there. Unlike my gunsmith, however, she did not return to the Course.
Happily, none of the three incidents produced significant injury, but they did happen, and any one of them could have been much more serious. More to the point, I was standing within a few feet of each student when the NDs took place. In the second case, I saw trouble in the making and moved to prevent the accident. I was not fast enough!
The lesson here is:
Realistic training with guns is dangerous! In relative terms, it is far less dangerous than driving to the range on a public road, but risk can never be completely eliminated. It can be reduced, monitored, and managed, but risk is always present.
Even reverting to cold ranges does not eliminate risk. In fact, I believe cold ranges are actually more dangerous than hot ones, but, however you want to argue the issue, no trainer I've ever heard of, in the public or private sector, claims to run a range that is "completely safe." Anyone who does is a naive fool!
It is the mission of us trainers to "manage" risk, avoiding unnecessary and extreme risks, but accepting the fact that some risk attaches to every exercise we put students through.
Many "career-minded" in military and law-enforcement training have decided to "dumb-down" firearms training in an effort to eliminate the possibility of anyone getting hurt. That attitude is cowardly and fraudulent, and, in addition, fails on both counts:
No one receives quality training, and we still have accidents!
When accidents, and near-accidents, occur, we need to look as what we're doing, tweak as necessary, and then boldly drive on, every looking for opportunities to make training ever more realistic and relevant.
We can never forget who is working for whom!
/John
_______________________________________________
Dtiquips mailing list
[email protected]
Copyright 2010 by DTI, Inc. All rights reserved.
Nearly all independent trainers, like myself, have witnessed students perpetrate NDs on ranges. Genuine ADs, resulting from defective guns and/or ammunition, do occur, but they are extremely rare.
The vast majority of NDs involve single shots, and the errant bullet subsequently impacts harmlessly. However, every so often a student is shot accidentally, due to an ND.
The vast majority of these injuries involve handguns and are self-inflicted.
In nearly forty years of conducting shooting instruction on ranges, I've personally witnessed three. All involved handguns, and all were self-inflicted.
The first (early 1980s) involved a student getting his support hand in front of his muzzle during a low-light exercise. The single, 9mm hardball
round passed through the side of the small joint of his ring-finger. Doctors
subsequently fused the joint, so all he got out of it was the inability to flex his ring-finger completely.
His pistol was a S&W with a two-stage decocking lever, and the student had failed to decock after firing his first rounds. As he fumbled for the lever, one of his other fingers found the trigger just as his support-hand wandered out ahead of the muzzle.
The next took place on an outdoor range in the Midwest eight years later.
A student, a gunsmith, dropped his G17. Instead of just letting it fall to the ground, he fumbled with it. Again, a finger made contact with the trigger. The single round (hardball) went through his thigh, inside to outside. In fact, I saw the bullet hit the ground next to him after it exited.
Happily, the bullet passed through without hitting his femoral artery, nor his femur, nor anything else particularly exciting. We transported him to the local hospital emergency room where they did little more than put a band-aid on entry and exit wounds and send him on his way. He was never admitted, and, less than an hour after his arrival, departed and returned to the Range with us and completed the Course, albeit with a slight limp!
The last took place at an indoor range on the West Coast fourteen years ago. A student holstered her Taurus copy of Beretta. It was Taurus'
1911-style Beretta-copy and was thus correctly carried cocked-and-locked. She had
a generic hip-holster, but her finger was wrapped around the trigger, and the pistol's manual safety was mysteriously "off," as she slid the pistol into the scabbard. Of course, the holster itself shoved her finger into the trigger, and the pistol functioned normally.
She was a slim gal, so the bullet (9mm hardball) made nothing more than a twelve-inch streak-mark down her right leg. It then demolished itself on the concrete floor. The bullet never actually penetrated her skin, so there was scant bleeding. She was treated and released at the local hospital, again spending less than an hour there. Unlike my gunsmith, however, she did not return to the Course.
Happily, none of the three incidents produced significant injury, but they did happen, and any one of them could have been much more serious. More to the point, I was standing within a few feet of each student when the NDs took place. In the second case, I saw trouble in the making and moved to prevent the accident. I was not fast enough!
The lesson here is:
Realistic training with guns is dangerous! In relative terms, it is far less dangerous than driving to the range on a public road, but risk can never be completely eliminated. It can be reduced, monitored, and managed, but risk is always present.
Even reverting to cold ranges does not eliminate risk. In fact, I believe cold ranges are actually more dangerous than hot ones, but, however you want to argue the issue, no trainer I've ever heard of, in the public or private sector, claims to run a range that is "completely safe." Anyone who does is a naive fool!
It is the mission of us trainers to "manage" risk, avoiding unnecessary and extreme risks, but accepting the fact that some risk attaches to every exercise we put students through.
Many "career-minded" in military and law-enforcement training have decided to "dumb-down" firearms training in an effort to eliminate the possibility of anyone getting hurt. That attitude is cowardly and fraudulent, and, in addition, fails on both counts:
No one receives quality training, and we still have accidents!
When accidents, and near-accidents, occur, we need to look as what we're doing, tweak as necessary, and then boldly drive on, every looking for opportunities to make training ever more realistic and relevant.
We can never forget who is working for whom!
/John
_______________________________________________
Dtiquips mailing list
[email protected]
Copyright 2010 by DTI, Inc. All rights reserved.
![[laugh]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/012.gif "Laugh [laugh]")
Chances are a park'd RIA would rust itself shut before I had an ND with one.
![[hmmm]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/009.gif "Hmm [hmmm]")
It wasn't like this range complex was dead quiet; there was other people using other cells on the same range complex. And somehow my students kept quiet. My students definitely could have hung me out to dry if they wanted to. I saw an instructor relieved of duty for this in the past, so I got very lucky in many way. It happens, and I messed up big time, but at least my weapon was pointed in a safe direction.
![[rofl]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/013.gif "ROFL [rofl]")
