HANDGUNS Who Would'a Thought the Thing Was Loaded? Jim Wilson I suppose we all have those little skeletons in our closets that we'd just rather not talk about. You know, like the time your Aunt Mable moved to San Francisco and joined the hippie commune and now, in her 70s, teaches existential meditation. Or the cousin who always seemed like a nice enough fellow until he went off to law school and became a lawyer. It might just be something a bit more personal, like the time you'd rather not talk about when, for some unexplained reason, you actually voted a straight Democratic ticket. Right along with those best forgotten memories are the times that we've let a shot off before we were actually prepared to fire it. Or, maybe we weren't even planning on firing a shot at all. You know, like the time you were sighting in your "un-loaded" on the above-mentioned Aunt Mable's picture and the bullet punched two walls and a cuckoo clock, before coming to rest in what was left of the freezing compartment of your refrigerator. Come on, you can admit it. You're among friends, you know. Besides, we've all done that, or something worse, during our illustrious shooting careers. When I first started to work as the Chief Deputy of Crockett County, I noticed a large, round hole in one of the glass panes in the sheriff's office. "How did that happen?" I asked innocently; ".45 hardball" was all the answer I got. It later turned out that the sheriff had decided to clean his Colt 1911 one afternoon. With his mind elsewhere, he racked the round out of the chamber and then removed the clip from the pistol (sounds backwards, doesn't it?). Instead of just letting the hammer down, before he began disassembly, he aimed at the glass and snapped the trigger of his "empty" pistol. They say that the bullet ricocheted around the rock walls of that building for quite a while. With a thought that others might learn from his mistakes, the sheriff wisely decreed that the glass would not be replaced. It was a smart decision, and I never replaced the glass during my terms of office either. Some years ago, they were holding a heckuva manhunt in the Fort Worth area. Tarrant County Sheriff Lon Evens swung by to pick up his chief deputy before speeding to the scene. Now, this chief deputy wasn't much punkins with a handgun and was smart enough to know it. So, in such emergencies, he always armed himself with an old Stevens double-barreled, sawed off shotgun. On this particular evening, he ran out of his house and jumped into the sheriff's car. "Let's go get 'em, boss!" he said. To emphasize his readiness, the deputy smacked the butt of the old shotgun on the floorboard of the cruiser. Both barrels went off, simultaneously, and two loads of buckshot took out the complete windshield and a bit of the roof metal. Sheriff Evens' comments, on that occasion, are best left unsaid. I seem to be picking on law enforcement with these little firearms misfortunes, but it does bring to mind one other yarn involving a cop. My unnamed friend had just joined our department and, with a few month's pay under his belt, had decided to buy himself an off-duty firearm. We'd spent a lot of time, as shooters will do, weighing the pros and cons of the various popular models. At the end of which, my friend wisely settled on a 2 1/2-inch Model 19, just like the one I favored. He even sent it out to the local gunsmith to have the hammer spur bobbed and the action tuned just a bit. A week later, on his day off, my friend picked up his new sixgun and decided to get out to the range for a shooting session. As he pulled up in front of his house to get his shooting gear, my friend felt a sudden pain. I might insert here that my friend was single at the time and existed on a diet made up largely of canned chili. Single men who eat lots of chili have to be particularly attentive to sudden abdominal pains. My young friend, recognizing the symptoms, ran into the house and quickly ensconced himself on the porcelain throne. While thus occupied, he continued to play with, and admire, his newly acquired sixgun. Unfortunately, the pistol managed to slip from his fingers and hit on the floor right between the officer's feet. Even more unfortunately, the gun went off. A 125-grain magnum jacketed hollowpoint bullet, applied to a toilet bowel at close range, can do some mighty spectacular things, I can tell you that! The same young officer is actually an awfully savvy handgun man. But, he ought to be, considering what he has survived and learned. Just a few years later, this same fellow decided to start carrying a used Colt Commander for his off-duty gun. The pistol came with a nice action job, a trigger shoe installed and a belt-slide holster. When he showed the rig to Harry Owens and myself, Mr. Owens cautioned him to get rid of the trigger shoe as it was bound to hang up on his clothing. Sure enough, two evenings later, our friend shoved the pistol into his belt slide and shot himself in the region of his right hip pocket. It took me a while to get him to agree to go the hospital, not because he didn't want medical attention, but because he just hated to admit that he'd shot himself. Upon such tenuous issues hangs our pride. Only my strong sense of fair play allows me to include myself in this series of yarns. Take the time, for instance, that my pal Johnny Guest made me a really keen gun rig for my then new 4 5/8-inch .45 Ruger Blackhawk. I'm a little fussy about gun leather, and Johnny and I had spent a lot of time talking about how the holster should ride and just how much cant it should have. To test it out, I unloaded my single action and stepped in front of our bedroom, full-length mirror for the acid test. Drawing and snapping at my image, I was quite pleased with the results of Johnny's work and decided to keep the rig. When I was done, I reloaded my .45 (255-grain Keith and 8.0 grains of Unique, if it matters) and started to leave the room. God only knows why I did it, but I spun around and snapped at my reflection one more time. The good news is that my aim was true. The bad news is that the cast bullet hit midway on my mirror image, punched the bedroom wall and, angling up, went out the ceiling of the next room. Just like Thomas Mitchell in It's a Wonderful Life, I remember hollering to the rest of the family, "I'm all right . . . I'm all right!" I suppose I can't close out these yarns without mentioning a preacher friend of mine who hails from Missouri. This sky pilot is quite a shootist and keeps a sixgun handy just about all of his waking hours. Some time back, his daughter moved away from their country home and the preacher, and his wife, decided to move their bedroom to the upstairs portion of their house. However, the wife did specify that she wanted a telephone installed upstairs too. The good reverend thought that was not an unreasonable request and set about running a line up the outside of the house to the chosen room. His only concern was to figure out how he would drill a hole completely through the house's wall to accommodate the phone line. The preacher studied the phone line for a while and studied the bedroom wall for another while. Finally, he got out a .32-20 Winchester cartridge and compared the diameter of the bullet to the diameter of the phone line. Close enough for government work. Gathering up his .32-20 lever gun, and picking the proper spot on the wall, the preacher fired a cast bullet through the wall and made the dandiest little telephone line hole that you've ever seen. The good pastor is now considering production of a pamphlet, tentatively titled Home Repairs with Your Favorite Shooting Iron, and reminds those interested that it is better to drill such holes from the inside out, as opposed to the other direction. By now, you have all realized that this is my attempt to poke a little fun at something that is really not a very funny topic. Thank God that these yarns resulted in very little damage to people or property. We all know that this is not always the case. Another law enforcement colleague of mine was fiddling with his handgun and let it go off within the confines of his office. The bullet punched a wall and hit a good friend, and co-worker, directly in the head, killing him instantly. I also remember the case of a father/son duo out for a deer hunt. The boy crawled into the back of their van and Dad assumed that he had unloaded his rifle. At some point, the young man stroked the trigger and the bullet went through the driver's seat and through his father's spine. Fortunately, the father survived. The point is that tragedies, like these, will stay with a person for an eternity. Every summer, I am fortunate to attend the gathering of The Shootists in central Colorado. For some unknown reason, they decided that I should be put in charge of running the range and enforcing the safety rules. Giving this some thought, I wanted to try to come up with a very short set of safety rules that would be easy to remember and easier to follow. See what you think of my ideas. To begin with, on the first day, we meet with all of the Shootists and go over the range rules. I inform them that they have all been officially appointed range safety officers. No one is here to police them and no one is here to protect them. If they expect to live through their range sessions, they are simply going to have to police themselves and each other. I am proud to say that we have not had a single accident using this method. Everyone there is watching each other, offering friendly advice and suggesting that gun barrels be pointed in a safer direction. It reinforces my belief that we must all begin to take charge of our own lives. Another safety practice that I like is the way that savvy gun handlers pass guns around. I like to see a shooter pick up a gun and immediately check to see if it is loaded. When he passes it to another, that person ought to make the same safety check. He does this even though he has just seen the other fellow check the same firearm. If they don't know how to check a particular firearm, they will hand it back and ask to be shown. That, too, goes back to the responsibility to take charge of our own lives. Put frankly, I am solely responsible for the gun in my hands, regardless of whose it is or how it got there. Another thing that you'll notice about being around a savvy group of gun handlers like The Shootists is that you very seldom see a gun barrel pointed your way. There may be upwards of a hundred people on the range, handling some 300 firearms, but you just don't have to look down a gun barrel. It is just amazing how few serious accidents are caused when we always point our guns in a safe direction. We've all seen the various lists of gun safety rules that are posted for our benefit. You know, they run somewhere around 10 to 12 points, with each one beginning with the word "Don't." Well, I suppose this is just fine, but I really don't care for a long list of prohibitions that I am forced to remember. I can think of just two that will keep us all out of a good deal of trouble, and neither one begins with the "D" word. Check your gun thoroughly and often, keeping it loaded, or unloaded, as the situation may call for, and always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. Back when my son was about 4 years old, I invited a bunch of friends over for an evening's visit. While I was occupied in the kitchen, getting some liquid refreshment, one of my friends opened my gun case and started to show one of my new guns to one of the other men. Seeing this, my son leaped up and informed the guest, "Hey! You don't get into Dad's gun case without his permission!" When I started to get onto Ryan for this breach of manners, my guest pointed out that the boy was exactly right. They weren't his guns, and he should have asked permission first. Sometimes, gun safety is just that simple. I suppose what makes this subject so important is that each year we have new shooters coming into our sport. We need them if our sport is to survive. But we also need for them to enjoy this sport and stay safe. Every accidental shooting brings the antigun folks down on our kind with a vengeance. We've got to take the time to help and teach so that our sport can survive and our good friends survive along with it. For that reason, I now, hereby, appoint each of you as a full-fledged Safety Officer. You are now responsible for your own lives, so you might as well begin to take charge of them. By the way, I hope that you got a chuckle out of the yarns at the beginning of this column. I also know that most of you have some good ones to share, if you just would. Why don't you take the time to jot down some of the funny ones and send them to me? I'll put the editorial touches to them, changing names whenever appropriate and share them with the rest of our readers. Who knows, we might all be a bit more entertained and a lot safer, to boot. Copyright 1997 Mark Harris Publishing Associates, Inc.