Setting the record straight on sports and guns
Posted: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 6:04 PM
I wrote yesterday that Plaxico Burress’ problems are the result of his own stupidity. The column started a lively discussion on Newsvine, with 150 opinions posted when last I looked. I am not surprised to find that many of the posters had nothing at all to say about Burrress’ stupidity but plenty to say about mine.
Among the issues raised are: I know nothing about Glocks; I also don’t know anything about guns; I’m a godless, commie, liberal, pinko socialist who wants to trample on the Second Amendment; and I wear a hat.
I’ll take the complaints in order of accuracy. It is true, as many readers pointed out, that I don’t know goobers about the .40-caliber Glock with which Burress shot himself early last Saturday in a Manhattan nightclub.
I had said that Burress should have engaged the safety on his pistol, especially as he was carrying it in his pants. Readers pointed out that this would be great advice if the Glock had a manual safety. But it doesn’t.
I’ll get to where my gun knowledge comes from later on. What’s relevant here is that the knowledge is dated. I had no idea that handguns that are not equipped with manual safeties are sold to the general public.
The Glock has a trigger safety, which means the gun can go off only when the trigger is pulled; it cannot fire when the gun is dropped. It is a tactical weapon popular with police because it is ready to fire when drawn. There is no manual safety to remember to release. It doesn’t have to be cocked, either. When a round is in the chamber, the gun is cocked.
Many private gun owners love this feature of the Glock. They feel safer knowing that if they are threatened, they need do nothing other than pull their Glock and blow away the bad guy. Others think the trigger safety is too dangerous, and there are a number of incidents of what’s known as accidental, or negligent, discharge of the weapon. You can find a lively online debate in any number of gun forums. This is an example. Read it and draw your own conclusions.
What’s important to understand is that the Glock is designed to be carried in a holster that covers the trigger guard. If you carry it in your pants like Burress, you run the risk of grabbing the trigger when the gun starts to slide down your pants and blowing a hole in your thigh – or some other anatomical feature.
So I’ll confess to ignorance on Glocks. But it only makes Burress appear even dumber. He’s got a gun that fires when you pull the trigger, and he’s carrying it in his pants. This is the stuff that Darwin Awards are made of.
Other quibbles were raised about my knowledge of firearms, which I described as extensive and some readers described as not reaching the level of what a cocker spaniel knows about quantum mechanics.
One quibble was that I called Burress’ gun an “automatic,” which is technically inaccurate. An automatic weapon is one that keeps firing as long as the trigger is pulled such as an Uzi, AK-47 or Tommy gun. But slide-action pistols that chamber a new round automatically and don’t need to be re-cocked to fire the next round have long been called “automatics” to distinguish them from revolvers, which have to be re-cocked after every shot. (There are single-action and double-action revolvers, but we won’t go into that here.) Anybody who is into guns understands what the term means.
I suggested that if you’re going to stuff a gun in your pants, a revolver would be a better choice because it’s a lot harder to accidentally cock it and pull the trigger and shoot yourself.
I said that it’s safer yet to keep the hammer on an empty cylinder. That’s technically incorrect, and I knew it. But gun people know what I’m talking about and it’s easier than explaining how a revolver works to people who don’t know guns. For the record, for extra safety, you keep the hammer on a loaded chamber next to an empty one because when you cock a revolver, the cylinder revolves to the next chamber. To avoid misfires, you want that empty chamber to come up when some idiot accidentally pulls the trigger.
Finally, a number of readers have decided that I’m one of those gun-control nuts because I said that Burress shouldn’t be running around with an unlicensed gun in his pants. I also argued that Sean Taylor would not have saved his life if he had owned a gun. This, too, is proof that I want to confiscate all guns.
I didn’t say a word about gun control. Not one. In fact, I said up high that if Burress hadn’t been so overwhelmingly dumb, the fact he doesn’t have a license for the gun in New York wouldn’t be an issue because he wouldn’t have accidentally shot himself.
I’ll admit I don’t like the idea of ordinary civilians carrying guns into clubs in Manhattan. I don’t like the idea of anyone carrying a gun into a bar, for that matter. And I do think that anyone who buys a gun ought to be required to take some sort of safety course – even it’s only a trip to the gun shop’s shooting range to learn about the weapon’s safety features. You have to pass a driving test before you can drive a car. Seems you should have to pass some sort of rudimentary test to own a gun.
But I’m not a disarmament guy. I don’t own any guns and haven’t since I moved East many years ago, but I grew up with them and don’t think they’re the root of all evil.
My father was sergeant in the Marines in WW II. He was an avid hunter and as the co-owner of a boondocks bar in Ohio, he carried a small handgun – an “automatic” as we called it – when he was driving home at 3 a.m. with the day’s receipts. (He was robbed once at gunpoint in the bar, and he admitted himself that if he could have gotten to his gun he would have been killed.)
I fired my first 12-gauge under Dad’s supervision when I was about 10. Damned near took my shoulder off, but I gotta admit, it remains a very vivid and not unpleasant memory. I owned my first gun, a single-shot .22, at the age of 14. I later added a single-shot 16-gauge shotgun to my personal collection.
My dad had three semi-automatic handguns(Is everybody happy now that I didn’t say “automatic”?): a .25-caliber Beretta and a .32-caliber and .38-caliber of forgotten manufacture. He also owned a 12-gauge pump shotgun, a .22 semi-automatic rifle with a scope and a really cool, old Vetterli rifle, better known to aficionados as a .41 Swiss and known as the last rifle to use rim-fire cartridges.
My brother owned a 12-gauge pump, a double-barreled 12-gauge and a .38 Colt revolver with a four-inch barrel.
My brother and I were thoroughly schooled in gun safety from infancy. Guns were never left loaded. Ammunition was stored separately from the guns. I have never in my life ever pointed a gun – even one I knew with 100 percent certainty to be empty – at myself or another person.
And I never stuck a gun, loaded or not, in my pants.
I spent many summer days as a kid taking target practice in the back yard. (We lived in the woods and had a back yard that went from here to forever.) It was good, clean, safe fun - at least it was where I grew up.
But I can’t see where carrying a gun would keep me safer. I realize that there’s a heightened fear level on the Giants since Steve Smith was robbed at gun point in front of his home in a gated community on Nov. 25. But the robber approached Smith from behind and held a gun to his head. Having a handgun wasn’t going to help Smith, and it’s not going to help most people in similar situations. Had he reached for a gun, he’d probably be dead instead of just minus some cash and jewelry that can be replaced and is probably insured.
This isn’t the Wild West of the movies where people settle disputes by taking to the middle of Main Street and going for their guns. If somebody’s going to rob you at gunpoint, his gun is already out before you know what’s happening. You can go for your own gun, but more often than not, you’re the one that’s going to end up on a slab in the morgue.
If you want to get a license to carry, that’s your business. All I’m saying is don’t be stupid.
