4 thoughts on “Looking Down The Barrel”

  4. Getting a bit philosphopical here but I’ve always preferred the rule to be “Never point a firearm in jest” i.e. if you are pointing a gun at someone you know exactly what you are doing e.g. conducting fire-and-manuver drills using rifles fitted with blank firing adaptors, practicing weapon retention techniques (although that these days I gather it’s much preferred to use ‘blue’ guns for this sort of thing) or covering an armed intruder. Or even posing for dramatic pictures using a firearm which has been checked and doubled-checked to be unloaded, or ‘loaded’ with dummy rounds.

    Okay the rule “Never point a firearm at anything you’re not willing to see destroyed has its merits” e.g. the importance of pointing the muzzle in a safe direction, and a reminder that any firearm, even a .22 target pistol, is capable of killing someone.

    But applying the rule strictly would mean that we’d never see any dramatic pictures, or even gunfights in movies or on stage, and yes people have been killed with blanks. Actor Jon-Erik Hexum died while jokingly pointing a revolver loaded with blanks to his head; so never point a firearm as a joke.

    I also mention pointing a gun at someone because they’re an armed intruder. Which uis pretty darn sensible, but what happens when you find some rough looking individual in your kitchin with a gun his hand, you draw down on him and he turns out to be a repairman with a cordless drill who got the wrong address? You’re being perfectly sensible to point a gun at him, but would you really want to kill some honest hard-working blue collar guy?

    As I said this is all waxing a bit philosphical, and I’ve taken a lot space to basically say; don’t muck around with guns.

Comments are closed.