This is NOT How You Do It

All to often we see videos posted on YouTube like the one below.



This one shows a small lady shooting either a .44 Magnum or perhaps a .500 S&W revolver. She almost kills herself in the process. The first shot sends the barrel straight up, and she apparently squeezes off another round accidentally. The poor girl is not at fault in anyway, and is damn lucky she was not shot in the head.

The person that needs to be beaten severely, with the butt of this revolver, is her presumed boyfriend/friend shown in the video. He knew for a fact that she could not handle that gun so he braces her shoulders. This is probably what caused the accidental discharge of the second round. The recoil could not be absorbed by her body, so the gun went straight up. She was not in control of the firearm, and his bracing probably made it much worse. Hopefully she didn't receive any damage to her wrists from this fiasco. Luckily for all involved no one was shot and/or killed.

Why some douchebag men think it is funny to scare and possibly injure females or young boys with firearms is beyond me. It is immature, and ruins the persons possible enjoyment of shooting. If it is their first time with a gun, they will often times never shoot again.

Congratulations asshole. You have just ruined the best ability your girlfriend could have had in defending herself in the future. You are a disgrace of a man, and should be beaten to knock some sense into you. I have seen several of these videos. Another infuriating example showed a small woman shooting a large caliber rifle with a scope. Her asshat in charge, decided to brace her back as well. The result was a very nasty scope injury to her forehead. Smooth move moron.

I must admit that I made a smaller version of the same mistake with my wife when I took her shooting for the first time. We started with my 10/22 rifle, and she loved it. Great, I thought, let's try a pistol. So I handed her my 1911 with some standard practice loads. She shot it a couple of times and did not like it at all! It hurt her wrist a bit, and was to loud. Now my wife is not a little five foot pipsqueak, she is right at six feet tall, and I mind my manners for the most part, so she doesn't whip my butt. :) She did not like the recoil from the .45 though, so we stopped shooting it.

Unfortunately, my mistake with the 1911 took a while to fix, and we are still working on that one to a certain extent. Live and learn. My solution was to buy her, a Ruger 22/45. This is Ruger's .22 LR semiauto pistol, with a 1911 grip angle. My thought process was to get her used to the .22, and then work up to the 1911.

This was good and bad. Her little .22 is a joy to shoot. It is easily as accurate as my 10/22, and points beautifully with that heavy barrel. She loved it, and sent clip after clip full of Mini-Mags downrange with glee. My progression back to the .45 never materialized however. She decided to just stick with the .22.

Crap, this wasn't good. I was overjoyed that she liked shooting, but I can't let her try to defend herself in the future with an anemic .22. Sure it would be better than nothing, but only marginally so.

My fiasco with the .45 also made her shy to shoot rifles. I took her to the range to shoot my AR-15, and had similar results. "It is too loud and I don't like it. Can't we just shoot the .22", she said. I noticed we were in a range that had 20' concrete walls on each side, magnifying the sound. She was of course wearing proper hearing protection, but the concussion from the .223 round going off was amplified by the barriers. She also did not like the recoil from the AR. Anyone who has shot centerfire rifles knows that, an AR has about the lightest recoil you will find. It is almost nonexistant.

Well it wasn't to her. I don't think it hurt her at all, but was more violent than she expected, and she was not comfortable with it. So, strike two on me.

Luckily for us, she fell in love with a nice little .38 Special LadySmith revolver at the gun store one day. It really is a sweet shooting little gun. She loves it, and will straight out kill someone with it if need be. She is quite the marksmen with that little 3" barreled jewel. It's small grip fits her hand perfectly. She feels in control, when she shoots it, and has enjoyed the satisfaction of shooting it well.

She is now open to shooting the AR again in the open, out in the woods, so I look forward to doing that in the future with her. Hopefully we can get her to liking semiauto handguns that are a larger caliber than .22 as well at some point. My ultimate goal is to get her used to some recoil so she can shoot a .243 or 30/30 with no worries.

I type all this to illustrate how easy it is to scare someone away from guns, if you are not careful. I, unlike the douchebags in the videos, had the best intentions and still screwed up a bit.

Guns are not something to use to scare your wife or kid. You can cripple their ability and desire to shoot irrevocably if you are not careful. Any gun fan wants nothing more than to have his wife, and kids, enjoy shooting with him. Don't be the guy that makes that permanently impossible with one stupid stunt.