My dad constantly makes statements about firearms in general, for my mom's ears (and others' ears), that communicate generally "you should be afraid and here's why".
When he found out my wife had a 1911, he freaked. He did the same for her 12 gauge. Her AR15 is "a bit much". And so on.
The essential effect here is that he has completely convinced my mom that she should never consider shooting anything bigger than a .22. He extends this attitude to every other female in the family. The men can shoot something a little bigger, but he considers 9mm to be "large caliber".
So it was, when my grandfather died, and my grandmother started wondering about her safety. Gramps died last Thursday. On Saturday, my brother and I visited her, and spent the day swapping out all of her door locks and installing deadbolts.
She was still fretting about her safety, so I took her aside and asked about her gun. I knew she had one, but I had also been told she was afraid of it. She told me Gramps had bought it at a gun show about 20 years ago, and had taken her out to the woods to shoot it. She said he'd fired it once, and the noise scared her so much she didn't want anything to do with it and had refused to shoot it ever since. I concluded that my Gramps had probably decided not to bother with hearing protection, likely because he'd spent his entire life on noisy construction sites, and "it's only a .22".
I asked her if I could see it, and she took me to the bedroom and got it from her nightstand. As I'd suspected, it was a Lorcin .22, but it didn't even have an extractor. It has a groove milled into the slide where an extractor would go if someone wanted to put one there, and a pin that would hold the extractor, but no actual extractor. I started having my doubts about whether the gun was even safe to shoot.
I knew my dad had a 9mm that he wasn't using, and my Uncle Jack was always coming down to visit his mom, so I arranged for Jack to bring the 9mm down to leave with Grandma… and of course when I explained the plan to Dad, his reaction was infuriating:
"Don't you think that's too much gun for her?"
I told him I'd rather she had a gun she could rely on than the extractor-less POS she currently had. And that I'd have her shoot it; if she didn't like it, she didn't have to keep it. He was a little grumpy about having to participate in this tomfoolery, but he reluctantly agreed that it would be a better gun than the one she had.
The next day arrived, and while waiting for Jack I ran to WalMart for some practice ammo and hearing protection. I bought her some foam plugs and some pink headphones. My thought was that I'd double up on her hearing protection since it was the noise that scared her so bad.
When the time came, I sat down with her on the couch and said I was going to explain everything first, before we went outside to shoot. The first thing I said was that a lot of what I was going to tell her would disagree with stuff she'd heard from my dad. I said I didn't want to disrespect him, but to put it bluntly, he's wrong. She thought that was amusing, and said he couldn't be right about everything.
I then told her that I was planning to show her that there's no such thing as a ladies' gun. I told her my sister-in-law is a tiny little woman, 5' tall and 100 pounds soaking wet, and I've seen her shoot a 12 gauge shotgun all day long. She seemed a little encouraged by that, so I kept going.
My brother had brought his 5-year-old son with him, so I took the opportunity to distract her a little by giving him a quick Eddie Eagle lesson and encouraging her to chime in on the "Stop. Don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult". He took to the lesson really well, and on my prompting he ran over to his dad and told him that he'd seen a gun and what should he do about it. They had a nice little conversation about the topic, and the distraction seemed to have gotten Grandma a little more relaxed.
I told her, "Grandma, I'm going to teach you the basics in the best way that I know how. I'm going to promise you right now that I will not tell you anything that I don't believe is true, or that I think will hurt or scare you. My only goal here is to empower you to take care of yourself."
She thought about it for a moment. "I believe that."
"Good. Let's get started…"
I started with the 4 Rules, explaining beforehand that if she thought about it, she could probably come up with all of them by applying common sense. As I went through them, she agreed that they were very simple and should be easy enough to remember.
I showed her how to unload her .22, and how to inspect it, as well as how to load it again. I explained that I had reservations about it because it was missing a part, but that we would give it a try anyway.
I then showed her that the load/unload procedure was the same for the 9mm as well as the .45 I was carrying. Smack a mag in, rack the slide. Drop the mag, rack the slide. I had her try it a while on the .22, demonstrating the two handed "strong grip" method that Cornered Cat (for one) champions. Then I switched her to the 9mm, letting her know that the spring would be a little stiffer. She had some trouble with it (arthritis in her hands, arms, shoulders), but she could rack the slide. I had her try the .45 briefly, but she couldn't get it to go more than halfway and it didn't matter much anyway since I was taking it with me. She did agree that she would have been able to rack it if it weren't for the arthritis.
Finally, we went outside and got set up to start shooting. I tried the Lorcin out first, but as I suspected, it liked to jam (and I was trying to keep it light for now, so I wasn't going to go through clearance drills). We quickly moved on to the 9mm, and with her hearing aids out, her foam plugs in, and her headphones on, I had to lean over her shoulder and shout instructions, but she was a good student and we got through 3 mags of practice ammo. We were only shooting across the driveway at a couple of plastic bottles, but she did really well with it, hitting them nicely and getting one to jump way up in the air.
She agreed that the 9mm didn't kick nearly as much as she'd feared it would. My brother had arrived to take some pictures, so she was talking with him when I pulled out the .45. She momentarily got a little scared again, and said "I don't have to shoot that one, do I? You're taking it with you, so it won't even be here."
I said "I want you to shoot it, because I want you to know that you can handle any gun you get in your hands. So come on over here and let's do this."
"Is it going to kick a lot?"
"It doesn't kick any harder than that 9mm. Just give it a try."
She warily took it from me, lined up a shot, and squeezed the trigger. BOOM! She took her time, lined up another, and squeezed again. BOOM! She got a little smile on her face, and finished out the mag.
We called it good for the day, took off our hearing protection, and examined the bottles she'd been shooting at. She started chattering excitedly about how easy it was, and how she wished she'd done it years ago, and -- the best part -- how much fun she'd had.
The 9mm she's got is not ideal for her, given her trouble with the slide, but it beats that crappy Lorcin, and will do until we can find her something better. But most importantly in my mind, she's no longer "terrified" (her word) of guns, feels like she can live alone with some degree of confidence, and feels empowered in a way she's never really felt before.
When he found out my wife had a 1911, he freaked. He did the same for her 12 gauge. Her AR15 is "a bit much". And so on.
The essential effect here is that he has completely convinced my mom that she should never consider shooting anything bigger than a .22. He extends this attitude to every other female in the family. The men can shoot something a little bigger, but he considers 9mm to be "large caliber".
So it was, when my grandfather died, and my grandmother started wondering about her safety. Gramps died last Thursday. On Saturday, my brother and I visited her, and spent the day swapping out all of her door locks and installing deadbolts.
She was still fretting about her safety, so I took her aside and asked about her gun. I knew she had one, but I had also been told she was afraid of it. She told me Gramps had bought it at a gun show about 20 years ago, and had taken her out to the woods to shoot it. She said he'd fired it once, and the noise scared her so much she didn't want anything to do with it and had refused to shoot it ever since. I concluded that my Gramps had probably decided not to bother with hearing protection, likely because he'd spent his entire life on noisy construction sites, and "it's only a .22".
I asked her if I could see it, and she took me to the bedroom and got it from her nightstand. As I'd suspected, it was a Lorcin .22, but it didn't even have an extractor. It has a groove milled into the slide where an extractor would go if someone wanted to put one there, and a pin that would hold the extractor, but no actual extractor. I started having my doubts about whether the gun was even safe to shoot.
I knew my dad had a 9mm that he wasn't using, and my Uncle Jack was always coming down to visit his mom, so I arranged for Jack to bring the 9mm down to leave with Grandma… and of course when I explained the plan to Dad, his reaction was infuriating:
"Don't you think that's too much gun for her?"
I told him I'd rather she had a gun she could rely on than the extractor-less POS she currently had. And that I'd have her shoot it; if she didn't like it, she didn't have to keep it. He was a little grumpy about having to participate in this tomfoolery, but he reluctantly agreed that it would be a better gun than the one she had.
The next day arrived, and while waiting for Jack I ran to WalMart for some practice ammo and hearing protection. I bought her some foam plugs and some pink headphones. My thought was that I'd double up on her hearing protection since it was the noise that scared her so bad.
When the time came, I sat down with her on the couch and said I was going to explain everything first, before we went outside to shoot. The first thing I said was that a lot of what I was going to tell her would disagree with stuff she'd heard from my dad. I said I didn't want to disrespect him, but to put it bluntly, he's wrong. She thought that was amusing, and said he couldn't be right about everything.
I then told her that I was planning to show her that there's no such thing as a ladies' gun. I told her my sister-in-law is a tiny little woman, 5' tall and 100 pounds soaking wet, and I've seen her shoot a 12 gauge shotgun all day long. She seemed a little encouraged by that, so I kept going.
My brother had brought his 5-year-old son with him, so I took the opportunity to distract her a little by giving him a quick Eddie Eagle lesson and encouraging her to chime in on the "Stop. Don't touch. Leave the area. Tell an adult". He took to the lesson really well, and on my prompting he ran over to his dad and told him that he'd seen a gun and what should he do about it. They had a nice little conversation about the topic, and the distraction seemed to have gotten Grandma a little more relaxed.
I told her, "Grandma, I'm going to teach you the basics in the best way that I know how. I'm going to promise you right now that I will not tell you anything that I don't believe is true, or that I think will hurt or scare you. My only goal here is to empower you to take care of yourself."
She thought about it for a moment. "I believe that."
"Good. Let's get started…"
I started with the 4 Rules, explaining beforehand that if she thought about it, she could probably come up with all of them by applying common sense. As I went through them, she agreed that they were very simple and should be easy enough to remember.
I showed her how to unload her .22, and how to inspect it, as well as how to load it again. I explained that I had reservations about it because it was missing a part, but that we would give it a try anyway.
I then showed her that the load/unload procedure was the same for the 9mm as well as the .45 I was carrying. Smack a mag in, rack the slide. Drop the mag, rack the slide. I had her try it a while on the .22, demonstrating the two handed "strong grip" method that Cornered Cat (for one) champions. Then I switched her to the 9mm, letting her know that the spring would be a little stiffer. She had some trouble with it (arthritis in her hands, arms, shoulders), but she could rack the slide. I had her try the .45 briefly, but she couldn't get it to go more than halfway and it didn't matter much anyway since I was taking it with me. She did agree that she would have been able to rack it if it weren't for the arthritis.
Finally, we went outside and got set up to start shooting. I tried the Lorcin out first, but as I suspected, it liked to jam (and I was trying to keep it light for now, so I wasn't going to go through clearance drills). We quickly moved on to the 9mm, and with her hearing aids out, her foam plugs in, and her headphones on, I had to lean over her shoulder and shout instructions, but she was a good student and we got through 3 mags of practice ammo. We were only shooting across the driveway at a couple of plastic bottles, but she did really well with it, hitting them nicely and getting one to jump way up in the air.
She agreed that the 9mm didn't kick nearly as much as she'd feared it would. My brother had arrived to take some pictures, so she was talking with him when I pulled out the .45. She momentarily got a little scared again, and said "I don't have to shoot that one, do I? You're taking it with you, so it won't even be here."
I said "I want you to shoot it, because I want you to know that you can handle any gun you get in your hands. So come on over here and let's do this."
"Is it going to kick a lot?"
"It doesn't kick any harder than that 9mm. Just give it a try."
She warily took it from me, lined up a shot, and squeezed the trigger. BOOM! She took her time, lined up another, and squeezed again. BOOM! She got a little smile on her face, and finished out the mag.
We called it good for the day, took off our hearing protection, and examined the bottles she'd been shooting at. She started chattering excitedly about how easy it was, and how she wished she'd done it years ago, and -- the best part -- how much fun she'd had.
The 9mm she's got is not ideal for her, given her trouble with the slide, but it beats that crappy Lorcin, and will do until we can find her something better. But most importantly in my mind, she's no longer "terrified" (her word) of guns, feels like she can live alone with some degree of confidence, and feels empowered in a way she's never really felt before.
Oh, Fletch...
