since kids aren’t usually allowed to train with guns… were they all training with their parents before? or is it not that hard, so can any person with no expirience technically just pick up a gun and start shooting people?
(asking not 4 myself obvs, just out of curiosity)
It’s really a no brainer in how to use guns. The part that really determines how well they can use a gun is how fast they can reload like a trained marksman who spends considerable time at a shooting range. That and how well they can prevent some guns from jamming.
But taking one, knowing it is loaded and just shooting away, that’s a no brainer. Anyone can do it.
Have you fired a pistol before?
Yes. All it takes is squeezing the gun, aim and fire. Again, not hard to do. You’re not going to hit your target all the time unless you try focusing, but my point still stands.
Most learn at home. Firing a firearm accurately does require some practice and skill. Shotguns are the easiest, pistols are by far the hardest. In an enclosed space though it isn’t that hard to hit a human sized target. Most people who shoot guns probably know how they work. They aren’t all that complicated. Usually just safety, a mekanism to cock it, a trigger, and a magazine release. It doesn’t take that much training to learn how to shoot something a few feet away from you. It does take a bit to hit targets further away than say 25 feet. This is often why cops end up smoking gangsters. Many gangsters don’t practice with their firearms and cops do, so in a ranged fight, cops usually win.
Hitting a moving target is difficult. Most people don’t realize how easy it is to actually take down an armed person who isn’t skilled and practices things like the 30 ft rule which most cops will practice. (If you get within 30 ft, they will assume you can disarm them before they can land their first shot) Aiming usually takes a few seconds if you want to land your hits, even with a stationary target 25ft away. Some people practice a lot and john wick it, but real shooting is more like an entire body composure, carefully leveling the sights, squeezing, not pulling the trigger (rookie mistake) because if you pull the trigger to fast you will miss unless someone is very close to you.
I’m just a regular nonbinary person, I learned to shoot skeets out of the air before I hit puberty. I can throw up a soda can and shoot it with a shotgun which is a fairly skilled thing to do. I practiced a lot for years, and hunted a lot. (Not into hunting these days because I’m a different person, and love animals) I might if I were hungry enough. I’m better than most people at shooting.
They’re not hard to use, they’re hard to use well. And really, not that hard. I’m a pretty good shot, and I’d say I spent much less time learning to shoot than I did, say, computer-related skills which took way more practice, and study.
It’s a blessing that most mass shooters are not skilled shooters. The shooters that are skilled tend to favour the rifle. They make each shot count, and typically only fire once. But, that’s more of an assassination. People using handguns tend to miss a lot — I think they’re really going for terror/fear and not a high casualty count.
The “problem” with being a good shooter is, you have certain safety tenets drilled into your head. Know where each shot is going to go, because you’re responsible for the bullet once it’s fired, and you can’t get it back; don’t point at anything you don’t intend to destroy/don’t have the right to destroy/don’t have the legal right to destroy; shoot to kill, never to warn or maim; don’t shoot if you can’t be sure you will hit your target; etc. Specifically because I think it begs the question, about warning shots: they’re dumb. The idea of shooting up to warn people. That bullet will eventually come down, at terminal velocity, and if it hits someone, it will do serious damage. If it hits the head just right, that warning shot absolutely can kill a bystander.
In the US, it’s not uncommon for parents to teach their kids how to shoot. I sadly was only ever allowed to shoot a bb gun. I’d like to own a gun someday. It’s low on my list though.
It’s not exactly hard to operate a firearm. They are designed to be used by the lowest common denominator of person - total morons.
Or alternatively (historically), expendable peasants that you don’t want to finance painstaking archery training on.
They just aren’t that hard to use.
As Thelma says, “can’t be that hard, idiots use them all of the time”.
since kids aren’t usually allowed to train with guns
What?
I went to a rural school, and everyone had a “hunters education” class in like 7th grade. We never touched a gun but we could legally go hunting with a gun after.
A shit ton of kids hunt, and most ranges are fine with kids if an adult is with them too.
Like, it varies state to state, but in lots of areas it’s weird for someone to graduate highschool before shooting a gun.
But besides all that, guns aren’t difficult.
so can any person with no expirience technically just pick up a gun and start shooting people?
So yeah, pretty much.
I went to a rural school, and everyone had a “hunters education” class in like 7th grade.
For the non American, how old is it supposed to be, please tell me it’s the last year of high school with 18 yo, and you were in a vocational school not a generic one
Americans graduate from 12th at 17/18
So I think I’d have been 12, and it was a public generic school
And if that sounds too early, hunting season started like a week earlier than the class and another 12 year old in my class already had his license (lots did) but that kid climbed a fence with a loaded shotgun while hunting and blew off a couple of his toes.
So like, it’s hard to argue it was “too early” because the kids were already running around unsupervised with guns.
Before Columbine people would go hunting before school and if they didn’t get anything they’d come straight to school with their gun in the back window of their truck. After they just stopped leaving them clearly visible.
I went to a rural school, and everyone had a “hunters education” class in like 7th grade. We never touched a gun but we could legally go hunting with a gun after.
That’s crazy. I had no idea anyone had a class like that. We’re basically training kids to be school shooters… at school?
You can’t expect parents to do everything.
No, I don’t expect parents who are ignorant about guns to teach their kids safety. We shouldn’t have to, but that’s where we’re at.
Hunter’s ed is basically the opposite of what you stated. It’s not part of the state curriculum. It’s similar to drivers ed courses for people to be able to get a learners permit before they turn 18. Similarly below a certain ages, most states require completion of a hunter’s education course to be able to purchase a hunting license and legally hunt.
The courses go over topics like property rights, how to carry a weapon making sure it’s not pointing at anyone, what high vis clothing is required, always knowing what is behind an animal before even aiming, rules about how a weapon must be unloaded when in a vehicle, and they strongly urge keeping an interference lock in the action of any firearm in storage.
Hunter’s ed doesn’t teach kids how to shoot, they teach kids how to not be idiots when hunting.
The person I replied to specifically said it was part of the 7th grade curriculum. Classes like that existing is not surprising, but it being part of middle school curriculum is very surprising to me.
A large amount of Americans that grew up with firearms in the home learned to shoot at the ages of 5 to 7. The reason those ages are mentioned is because that’s the time that an average human is able to hold a pistol unattended and play with it if they don’t understand the danger. I never wanted to play with guns because I knew what they were and how they worked my entire life. Most of that training will simply be that if you find a firearm unattended, you are supposed to find an adult to attend that firearm. Explaining the dangers of firearms and that anything pointed at by a firearm will be destroyed. Explaining only goes so far. Seeing on the other hand, the power and destruction that can be wrought leaves a much more lasting impression. The main purpose of all of this is because children educated purely through media have many false ideas about firearms and weapons and damage that they can cause.
Media glorifies guns and gun use and violence. In media people get shot all the time and take no real damage for it. It is important to impress upon children that have easy access to firearms that they are tools and weapons and not toys.
Tldr Children are taught about guns for the same reason kids are taught sex education.
Sounds like an elective class. My ex-wife’s niece was in an after-school shotgun club. I gather it was more target practice than hunting.
I’m of the opinion that familiarity with actually shooting is more of a deterrent to the school shooter mentality than fetishizing guns. I’m basing that mostly on the idea that these school shooters can’t seem to handle a weapon, given that kills are the goal.
As they said, you really dont need to know much to operate a semi automatic weapon. Everything you need to know is public knowledge that can be found on wikipedia, youtube, etc.
You dont need to be a very good shot if you shoot at 5m distance…
I learned how to shoot a shotgun when I was 13 at school. We were in the shooting club. It was just shotguns and skeet shooting, but still.
Even without much education, I was a geek in a rural location, one time a friend’s dad put a cigarette (half 3/4 done or so) on a fence cause we were having a competition and we hit them all. Mean the cigarette was only say 15 - 20 feet away but I I split it in half with a BB gun (yes no kick of course), probably luck but I was hitting the targets too and the dad figured no one would hit that one. It wasn’t a long range but I figure someone with access to a rifle should shoot fine enough if they practice even a bit if I can without access. I only shot a gun maybe a dozen times in total.
The hardest parts of gun use are aiming at long range and proper maintenance. Neither of those are a concern for someone planning to shoot at close range and not live another day.
Shooting is like driving a car. A baby could do it. Few can do it safely.
Using a gun is really easy. And I suspect school showers aren’t particularly concerned about safety, so that’s not an issue for them
It takes real, practiced skill and/or quality equipment to hit a bullseye at long range, or to kill an armed opponent at short range quickly and cleanly enough to not give them the chance to shoot you back. It takes no skill to hit an undefended, person-sized object at <10 meters, the distances involved in most indoor locations.
I shot my first guns in kindergarten. My uncle’s handgun and my grandpa’s shotgun. Lived on the farm, it was just normal. But it was just in the farm, supervised of course. The moment my cousin and I were old enough we were in a firearms safety course so we could go hunting. Hell we used to help make ammo (just reloading shells).
Guns are really simple to use. Reloading for most guns people will ever encounter outside the military is simple. You got the safety switch and the trigger and it’s really point and click at that point. I tell you the hardest part is learning how to hold it correctly. We’ve all seen videos of people holding a gun wrong and shenanigans ensues when they lose control of it. https://imgur.com/gallery/shotgun-fail-odC6s
The point of guns was to make warfare easier
It’s not like using a gun is hard. Training is more about maintenance and safety as well as accuracy. You don’t need to be accurate if you’re just firing indiscriminately into a crowd at close range and you also probably don’t give a fuck about safety or maintenance.
my friends and i played with guns as kids in a completely unsafe manner with no experience or instruction. chamber a round and pull the trigger. they’re designed to be simple
