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Skill Set: The Danger of the "Non-Gun"
by Rich Grassi
If you are a shooter, chances are you'll be asked by someone to teach them to shoot - particularly in the current socio-political environment. As time goes on, we volunteer at the gun club to help out on the range or teach a youth group or we get tapped to be the agency firearms instructor in law enforcement. That's okay, but it can be risky business - and not just from students who don't get the whole "muzzle discipline" thing.
As we've become used to having a non-firing training gun - a red gun - available from manufacturers, we've begun to treat them as "non-guns." That puts us on the road to disaster. We forget Rule 1, an essential for students but for us too.
It's good to have training guns. They are essential for use in an area where a "real" gun causes loss of learning due to accelerated heart rates and increasing blood pressures. Glock, Inc. sells a "red" gun analog to their famous firearms line. A conventional looking Glock pistol, it has a red frame instead of a black or OD green one. This red frame is to signify that there is no firing pin and firing pin channel in the slide and that the barrel is plugged. This should make it "safe."
The problem comes when a trainer moves from classroom to range and swaps the G22R red gun for the issue Glock 17 in his holster. While doing a demo on the range, the "real" gun comes out and a shot is unintentionally fired. The guns feel identical. Without looking, there's no way to tell what gun you have in the holster.
There've been a number of bad situations with "Non-non-firing" guns when we meant to use a non-firing gun. The FBI Academy had an accidental shooting some years back when the instructor believed the demonstration gun was a non-firing model. The best way to approach the problem is to make everything the same all the time - as much as we can. We handle every gun the same way.
To prepare for any gun work, we "make ready." The Make Ready protocol should be used (1) when going onto duty; (2) when going to shoot on the range; (3) when preparing to do a demonstration in front of a class - or even one student; (3) when going out on private business when armed, and (4) when preparing to dry-fire - though it becomes "make ready for dry practice."
Make Ready is a standardized protocol which goes like this:
(1) Protect your Eyes, protect your ears.
(2) (Face into a safe direction) Draw to guard.
Part of MAKE READY is to check the chamber for condition: is there a round chambered?
(3) Press check - check the chamber, check the magazine(s). If the gun is empty, load it. Continue with a "tac load," putting a fully loaded magazine in place of the one with the round down. Load the "one-down" magazine with another cartridge.
(4) Finish by going to guard or the holster.
In the situation where the instructor goes to do a demonstration, the first thing to do is make ready - if the demo is indoors and there will be no shooting, make ready for dry practice. In any event, students are watching. Let them see the drill. When they see you execute phase one (Protect your eyes, protect your ears), you may find them doing the same thing! The smart ones will.
Face the safest direction and continue with the Make Ready process. When you draw to guard and press check, you can see that the Glock frame is red. Or that you are trying to ease the slide back on a cast aluminum gun. In either case, you can demonstrate the process. This is a quick way to teach Make Ready, but it has the safety benefit of giving you the chance to see which gun you have. It also gets your head on straight.
If If the gun's real and loaded, let them see the Unload process. They need visual reps of that too.
This column is a version of a piece written for firearms instructors included in Rich Grassi's book, Police Firearms Instruction: Problems and Practices. Published last year by CRC Press, it's available from Amazon.com and other fine book sellers