Keep it hidden

Given today’s date, I guess I need to put the disclaimer that this is not an April Fool’s joke.

I put out my teaser list last week, with a promise to cover it in fewer than 10 weeks. Demands on my time are making that a struggle, but I’m still going to try.

The first item, “Keep it hidden”, refers to your carry firearm. Last year, there was a group clamoring for open-carry in Texas, to join the few other states that allow their citizens to openly carry a handgun without any permit. The only states that I know currently permit (or do not prohibit) open carry are Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Vermont (if you are in another state that permits open carry, please feel free to enlighten me in the comments). I haven’t heard much from this group in the past 6 months or so, but the Texas Legislature is not currently in session. I expect they will be back sometime after this Fall, for the next session.

I am not philosophically opposed to open carry. In fact, I would be all for it, just as a matter of principle concerning my rights under the US Constitution. But I would never, ever consider openly carrying my handgun.

There are a several reasons for this, a few of which are quite selfish.

First, a matter of personal safety. An example: Suppose you were in a convenience store, and you and the clerk were the only two people in the store, and you are (legally) carrying your handgun on your hip in plain sight. If some low-life decided to rob the store at that time, and barged in with his handgun, and saw yours on your hip, who do you think he would shoot first? (You can’t outdraw an already-drawn gun, which I will cover in a later post.)

Second reason is the current anti-gun paranoia. Even in places where you can legally open-carry, you are very likely to run into significant hassle, such as a recently-chronicled tale of a fellow legally carrying in Pennsylvania who was hassled, assaulted, and falsely arrested when some “concerned citizen” reported him. Roughly half of the population even in the state of Texas believes that only cops have the right to carry a gun.

Now for a non-selfish reason: I believe that a concealed handgun is actually a better crime deterrent than an openly-displayed handgun. Doubt in the mind of a criminal is a powerful force, which is absent if the criminal can easily spot and avoid the citizens that are capable of stopping him.

Nothing deters a criminal more effectively than the possibility that his intended victim might kill him. Nothing. The threat of imprisonment (if he gets caught) doesn’t work as well. Not even the possibility of capital punishment works as well.

Addendum: Thanks to Hubert Hoffman for a comprehensive open-carry list in the comments. I note that he disagrees (a little, anyway) with my position on open carry, but he gives good reasons for his own choice of beliefs.

The Reason Behind the Dry-Firing Rules

In my last post, I wrote about the rules for dry firing, and hinted about the story behind those rules. Probably the most important of those rules is the one about making a definite mental break after you are done dry firing.

This is the story (to the best of my recollection) I got from the instructor at the DPS CHL instructor’s training:

Back about 10 years ago, there was a young officer with about 7 years on the force who was practicing some dry firing with his .357 Sig one morning as he was getting dressed.

*Click* — the picture of his mother-in-law on the dresser.

*Click* — a squirrel in a tree across the street, visible from the bedroom window.

*Click* — the vase on a shelf in the hallway.

And so forth. After a few minutes of practice, he got bored, stuck the pistol in the holster, and proceeded to finish shaving, brushing his teeth, and getting dressed. Then he had some breakfast. Gathering up stuff to go to his duty shift, he went back to the bedroom. While he was there, he decided to do some more dry firing.

*BAAAM!* — A .357 caliber hole in the forehead of the picture of his mother-in-law. Sometime during the time he was getting dressed, or eating breakfast, or some other part of his morning routine, he had loaded his handgun. And then completely forgotten about it. A .357 Sig has a lot of penetrating power, so it not only went through the picture, but through the wall behind it, and blew a hole in the brick veneer on the side of the house. And then it went… well, it went *somewhere*, but nobody ever found it.

He was very lucky that it did not hurt anyone — In Texas, there is a “Reckless Injury to an Innocent 3rd Party Rule.”

By the time his ears quit ringing, there was a squad car from the local police department parked in front, and two officers, guns drawn, preparing to do a forced entry. You see, the young officer’s next-door neighbor had heard the shot, and since his neighbor knew he was a DPS officer, his neighbor assumed that there was a gunfight going on, and that’s what he told the 911 dispatcher. “Hot home invasion” gets the attention of the local law enforcement like nothing else, especially if it involves another law enforcement officer. This young DPS officer found himself on the front porch having to ‘fess up to a negligent discharge in his own home to these two local cops.

But that wasn’t the end of his troubles. When he reported for his shift, the shift supervisor had already been notified, so he had the experience of being dressed down in front of his fellow officers. In the DPS, a negligent discharge can be a career-limiting event.

Even that wasn’t the end of his troubles.

His mother-in-law was not amused.

Dry Firing Rules

Last week, I gave my justifications for using dry firing as a regular technique for improving marksmanship. I mentioned that I cover some rules meant to make dry firing safer. Here are the dry-firing rules that the DPS teaches all new recruits in their training academy:

1) Unload your gun in a specific spot reserved for that purpose. Leave all of your ammo at that place.

2) Go to a 2nd specific reserved spot in another room to do the actual practice. That room must contain no other guns or ammo.

3) Use only one pre-determined target.

4) Practice whatever skill you plan to improve (trigger squeeze, drawing from concealment, drawing from concealment while rolling on the carpet, or whatever) for the time that you have allotted, or until you have achieved the results you planned for that practice session.

5) This may be the most important step: Make a definite mental break when you are done dry-firing. It is best to say to yourself aloud, “I am done dry-firing”.

6) Go back to the place with your ammo, and either restore your gun to carry status, or stow it.

Always start your dry-firing practice at rule #1!