Friday, July 09, 2021

Habit Forming


Someone left this comment on YouTube, apparently, to which Caleb Giddings replied on his Bookface page:
"This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this dumb opinion, and it’s still super dumb.

The entire point of blue guns (and all clearly inert trainers) is so that we can do things with gun-shaped objects that would be unsafe to do with a live gun. This can include force on force, weapons based grappling, instructor demos in the classroom or pointing towards students for better visibility, and a whole other mess of things.

If you treat a blue gun like a real gun, you remove any training value that a blue gun has."

I'll agree with Caleb, albeit with one caveat: I will turn into Judgy McJudgerson if I see you waving a blue gun around like it's a generic chunk of plastic.

I won't SAY anything to you because it's not an actual safety hazard, but you are telling me volumes about how important you consider building good gun handling habits. Whether it's a real gun, SIRT gun, blue gun, whatever, it should never be waved around like it's a can of soup. It should be aimed intentionally, held in a muzzle-aversion ready or carry position, or in a holster or case.

Doing anything else is just rehearsing for an eventual screwup. You're essentially getting reps in for a potentially disastrous mistake.


(Also, if you're an instructor, I'd say that it's probably "Industry Best Practices" to ask a student before you go pointing blue guns at them. Some people get nervous about that for various reasons, so make sure you and your paying customer are on the same page before pointing fake guns at them. You are supposed to be a professional offering a service to clients, not larping your R. Lee Ermey fantasies.)

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