Worst gun advice you’ve ever heard
- Thread starter Alan
- Start date
Questionable gun advice could fill volumes of textbooks labeled, "HOW NOT TO SHOOT A FIREARM." One volume would be named, "BAD ADVICE ON HOW TO SHOOT ON THE RANGE," the second volume would be titled, "WHAT WILL ULTIMATELY RUIN YOUR HUNT."
As I sit here trying to remember some of the idiotic things I have seen or heard on the range and in the woods my mind is boggled trying to sort them out and pick one over the other.
OK, let's keep it simple. There was a grandfather on the range with a younger boy, probably around 10 years old. Grandpa was teaching the boy how to shoot using an old Remington model 33 singe shot rifle. The bolt action rifle that had a knob on the back of the bolt. You had to pull back on the knob to cock the rifle before it could fire. If you take a look at the attached picture you may note that there is no safety on the rifle. The safety is more or less iffy in that the thinking was that if the rifle was not cocked it was safe. That was only partly correct because if you were to strike the knob that you used to cock the rifle when in the uncocked position, the firing pin, would move forward and strike the cartridge and the gun would fire. OK, all well and good so far, Grandpa's teaching technique was not great, but it was working. The bad advice came after the session was over and the kid asked about how to carry the rifle while hunting. That was when Grandpa said, cock it and be careful where you point it. Up to this point I had listened and watched, but this last bit of advice was something I could not ignore. I went up to Grandpa and introduced myself as a rifle and hunter safety instructor. I went on to explain that I couldn't help but overhear him mentioning to carry the rifle cocked when hunting. Grandpa, of course disagreed with me, nothing unusual, so I had to demonstrate how unsafe carrying the rifle cocked was. We loaded the rifle, cocked it and I took it to one of the posts holding up the roof over the firing points, pointed the rifle down range and tapped the stock against the post, and as I suspected the rifle fired. This surprised Grandpa. I explained that if carrying the rifle cocked and one was to fall the chances of the rifle firing were very good. Grandpa said that had never happened and he had owned the rifle since he was about his grandson's age. I went on with another demonstration. I had not ejected the spent cartridge from the previous shot, took the rifle and cocked it again, then from about six inches held the rifle straight up and let it drop back on the stock buttplate and as it hit the concrete one could hear the ominous click as the rifle again fired.
I could go on but to make a long story short grandpa went out and bought the boy a used Remington 514 .22 single shot rifle. An improvement still a single shot but at least with a thumb safety.
