There is no hiding that our world is becoming increasingly dangerous to people, families, neighborhoods and liberty. Previously anti-gun or ignorant about firearms people are awakening to a personal responsibility for defense. The explosion in gun sales tells some of the story. Mandatory background checks for purchases from licensed gun dealers from January through June this year were 19,180,047.
Nineteen MILLION guns sold from January to July this year.
Dealers report MOST OF THOSE ARE FIRST TIME GUN BUYERS.
That matches my personal experiences. Even in well-armed Podunk, Montana guns and ammo are in very short supply, and prices are climbing according to the rules of scarcity.
A handful of people who understand that I know a bit about the subject have asked me to help them select, find, purchase and learn to use firearms. I am good at that… better than many gun shop clerks, in fact.
I made a series of videos that may share the key nuggets of the basic knowledge I think is most important to newbies and novices. I most definitely prefer to do this one-on-one, in-person, in a comfortable, safe, controlled, relaxed setting. However, I suspect many of those nineteen million may not run across decent coaching. Maybe some can get a third-grade substitute here with my short videos below.
Ah, but first some other reference material links. If you are deciding what type, style of firearm to get, you might want to check out the two articles linked below.
your first home defense firearm
I am a major proponent of revolvers as your first handgun. In the series of short videos below I demonstrate why, and how to approach them. The easiest mistake for new gun buyers to make is buying a semi-automatic handgun. Sadly, two thirds of the gun store counter clerks will simply help you do that rather than steering you towards the much better choice of a revolver, or better still for newcomers to home defense, a 20-gauge pump shotgun.
I’m trying to help avoid serious, life-threatening accidents, not to mention mistakes in handgun selection as novices recognize the need to provide for defense of self, family, home and community. Review the information before you go shopping… fershur before you go shooting.
This first video is a review of the Taurus 692 revolver that has a wonderful capability of shooting .38 Special, 9mm, or .357 Magnum. That is very versatile and quite handy when ammunition availability becomes spotty.
I have some experience with Taurus – enough to trust their handguns to be both reliable and accurate. This is a great little revolver that I highly recommend for novice self, family, home defense.
In this video I go over the fundamental operation and demonstrate its versatility. Of course I stress safe operation as I demonstrate shooting each of the ammo types into paper targets.
It is easy for novices to overly concern themselves with where their shots went rather than how close together they landed. Decent sights can be adjusted. The proper job of shooter and gun is to make a group of holes that can be moved with sight adjustments.
From forty or fifty feet away with a new handgun, I was pleased. I could move the group closer to target center and I could shrink the size of the group as I gained experience with this new gun, but for a short barrel, short sight-radius handgun, I was quite happy with what I did hit.
Next time out with this Taurus I will adjust the rear sight a tiny bit to the right which will move the group of shots to the right. Then I will change my focus from making videos about learning to shoot safely over to concentrating on where I am holding and squeezing off more accurate rounds.
It is tempting to do right away, but I have a large number of other things on my ToDo list ahead of that one.
Western classic revolvers are all single-action. You thumb back the hammer, then the trigger pull releases it to fire the ammunition. That can provide wonderful, sweet, smooth, light triggers conducive to excellent long-range pistol accuracy.
BUT, in a defensive mode you may wish for double-action where every time you pull the trigger a high-speed bullet is launched at your threatening adversary.
In this video I move much closer to the target, discuss and demonstrate the differences between double and single action, their applications and advantages, then demonstrate shooting a double action revolver from a more realistic handgun defensive distance.
This cautionary video is applicable to ALL semi-automatic handguns. They are more plentiful and affordable than revolvers, but I highly recommend AGAINST them for novice shooters.
In this video I show why I consistently steer those I coach towards revolvers and away from the hugely popular semi-autos. There are many handling and safety issues that can only be resolved with lots of coaching and many hundreds of rounds shot downrange.
Please do one or the other. Do not kill or injure The Good Guys. For this demonstration I use one of the extremely popular Glock handguns, but the lessons apply to nearly every semi-automatic pistol out there.
Please don’t hurt yourself. It is so easy, and so common to get your hand position wrong and carve a major notch into your thumb. After producing the other videos on the shooting range I realized I had not stressed hand position strongly enough. It is extremely important so I go over it in this separate video.
Get a good coach. Employ a good coach. Someone watching you, stopping you from making serious mistakes and coaching you to develop good technique cannot be done remotely.
Oh I try to do it in this video, but do not really believe there is a substitute for having a qualified, competent individual supervise your training with your best interests and final success in mind. Nevertheless, I give it a go with this video.
My Number One recommendation for home, family and neighborhood defense is a 20-gauge pump–action shotgun. Here I review one that I trust with our lives.
Shotguns are not magical. They only hit what they are aimed at. They do not impart super powers onto shooters. But they are the best choice for many defensive purposes. Some training and practice is required, but they are much more powerful than handguns and very straightforward in operation.
Here is an introduction to a good one, and how it operates. This video clip stops when I reach the point of loading ammunition into the shotgun’s magazine and am stopped by a dowel Mossberg inserted to assure the new owners would read the owners manual with five pages of lawyer warnings before shooting.
This is not my first Mossberg pump shotgun, but it is the first that came with a wooden plug to prevent loading without some disassembly to remove the rod. I now resume my demonstration, shooting the Mossberg pump-action 20-gauge shotgun at targets on the embankment … a bit too fast for accuracy on clay pigeons from the chosen distance, but plenty for that theoretical gang of fascists approaching our front door intent on doing us serious harm.
Here my cameraman repeats my run with the Mossberg 500 20-gauge shotgun. He slows down the tiniest bit and hits every clay target, except for the last one which was not a good angle so he put the last payload of birdshot into one of the cardboard silhouette targets.
As you can see at the end of this clip the birdshot spread out in the distance from shooter to target covering the whole silhouette with tiny holes pretty-much everywhere. Those little pellets are effective on small birds and fragile clay targets, but larger ones are used for turkeys, and larger still on things bigger than that. Number 4 buckshot is as big as I have seen in 20-gauge, while 12-gauge buckshot gets much bigger.