Pet-Peeves (A Rant)

I have several pet peeves that involve the shooting community, whether they involve poor range etiquette, blatant disrespect, or sheer stupidity. Most of them involve safety and could probably moved from “pet-peeve” to “extreme exasperation” when I see them. For instance, I despise when people don’t check the chamber of any firearm to see if it is loaded when they first pick it up. Even if I just checked it, showed you, and handed it to you with a little sticky note that said “lolz dis gun be empty lmao” you should still check it. I acknowledge that it sounds unreasonable, but it’s not. End of discussion.

I could write for hours on safety, and when I finished this blog post, it would look like the rantings of an asylum patient. But hey, safety is important to me. I am going to save you the safety lecture (for now) and write about one of my biggest pet peeves that I run into on and off the range: elitism.

While most shooters and firearms enthusiasts are some of the nicest people I know, elitism in the firearms community is alive and well, I assure you. If I had to break it into three easy to write categories, I would break it into Caliber Elitists, the Brand Myopic, and the Experience Snobs.

Caliber is a touchy subject among gun owners, with each having their own opinion as to which is best. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good, spirited debate, as most people will recognize that their opinion is subjective, and that there is truly no right answer. Most people can have the caliber debate amicably, but not the Caliber Elitist. The Caliber Elitist has their own truth about the best caliber, and if you’re not shooting it you are either some sort of idiot or a total wimp. “.45 ACP is the only caliber that is proven to be effective with one shot!” they’ll say, or they may assert that “5.56 NATO/.223 has not purpose but to shoot tin cans!”

I have found that the best way to defuse the situation is to just laugh at them, potentially directly in their face (it damages the ego), and walk away. Nine times out of ten, this methodology works, but on that tenth occurrence, you might be trapped, a captive audience to a opinionated lecturer. In that instance, you have three options: Scream really loud and start crying. This option draws uncomfortable attention to you and your captor, and will probably make them walk away in awkward confusion. One negative side effect is that everyone else will think you have gone insane. A second, less incriminating option is to just nod your head and give the Minnesotan “that’s interesting” (which translates to “that isn’t interesting, but I don’t know what else to do”). Your captor may mistake you for an attentive listener, however, leaving you trapped for hours listening to their drivel.

The third option is to just make something up. Oh you like the .45 ACP? That is cute and all, but I personally like the .46 Automatic Unicorn Slayer. Or you could also go all hipster on them as well. Yeah the .30-06 Springfield is great and all, but it is too mainstream. I personally go for the .30-40 Krag-Jorgenssen.

Part of why I find the Caliber Elitist so obnoxious is that there truly is not “right” answer. There is not all-around perfect or best caliber. Some calibers are better for defense, but not effective for long range shooting. All of it falls into personal preference and capability. I rotate between four different calibers (9x19mm, .40 S&W, .45 ACP, and .380 ACP) in my personal carry arsenal, and it is simply because each caliber gives me a different set of capabilities based on what situations I can envision myself in that particular day. Your caliber choice is something you really should be able to defend with “I shoot this one best.”

Check out Mr. Colion Noir and his three videos on exactly this debate: 1, 2, 3.

The second group of elitists, the Brand Myopic (a term I am borrowing from nutnfancy. Check out his videos if you have several hours to watch one video). At their simplest, the Brand Myopic latch on to one brand of firearm (or accessory or whatever), usually the one they own, and claim it is the best. To be honest, this one does not bother me as much as some of my other pet-peeves, as it really is all conjecture. You see it most often with Glock fanboys and 1911 aficionados. Like with caliber, your chosen brand of handgun should be based on what feels right to you.

It is the third set of elitist attitudes that I despise: the Experience Snobs. These are the people who will talk down to, degrade, and humiliate new shooters just for being new. These people probably weren’t loved by their parents, or were bullied as children, or something because it just doesn’t make sense. It especially upsets my tender sensibilities when I see someone handing a new shooter a ridiculously overpowered firearm and laughing at them when they fall over shooting it. Not only is it unsafe, but it could be turning a potential shooting enthusiast into someone who is afraid of firearms in general!

When my girlfriend decided that she was going to buy her first gun, I convinced her to buy a classic beginner’s firearm: the Ruger 10/22. There were many reasons for this, but the biggest one was that gun is a soft shooting, easy to manipulate tool to teach marksmanship. As she got more comfortable, she decided to expand her collection. She one day surprised me by walking into a local gun store and buying a Remington 870 shotgun. From there she purchased a little Walther .380 pistol. Now she is thinking about furthering her collection even further. This could easily have been different.

Before my girlfriend had purchased her first rifle, we were at a horribly managed Historic Weapons shoot run by the USAF Academy history department. I say horribly managed because guns were jamming left and right, one of the musketeers brought three musket balls for his muskets, and one of the guns blew up after my girlfriend handed it to its owner. The gun in question was a Civilian Marksmanship Program M1 Garand rifle that had experienced a malfunction. My girlfriend, being inexperienced but smart, handed the rifle to its owner for him to fix it. He tapped the bolt forward, and the rifle quite literally exploded in his face. He had been feeding the rifle full powered, modern ammunition and not the proper type recommended for rifles of that age. Luckily for him, he was wearing good eye protection, so he kept his eyes, but he did get a lot of wood and metal shrapnel in his cheeks. My girlfriend was standing directly behind the Garand owner, so she was unhurt. I personally got hit in the chest by a long piece of the wooden stock, as I was standing off to the side taking pictures.

This event could easily have persuaded my girlfriend to never pick up another firearm ever again, unless she absolutely had to. After a lot of coaching with the much lower threat Ruger 10/22, she got over some initial shakes. She even clears her own malfunctions now.

I acknowledge this post ended up being not only a rant, but a day later than I would have liked. Be looking for next weeks post. I got a GoPro Camera and headband from the same girlfriend above (she’s pretty cool), and I have another competition this weekend, so I should be able to get some pretty sweet footage to share with you. In the interim, have you experienced any of these situations? What are your shooting related pet-peeves? How did you handle it? Let me know in the comments!

Shoot safe!