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)
They just aren’t that hard to use.
As Thelma says, “can’t be that hard, idiots use them all of the time”.
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’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.
Yes, just historically.
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
I learned to shoot at Boy Scout camp when I was about 13. We shot .22 long rifle and 20 gauge shotguns. Many of my friends hunted (never appealed to me) and learned even earlier.
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’m actually for this. No, it shouldn’t be necessary, but it is and that’s that.
Taught my kids guns at 9 and 11. Took them out to our camp and shot a bunch of different .22s. Now instead of guns being these mysterious things “you should never touch”, well, they’ve touched and just aren’t really interested. LOL, that was 100% against my custody agreement, but I was terrified the kids would find someone’s gun one day and have Hollywood perceptions. Their mom didn’t say a word, which was really strange, so I believe she agrees.
One interesting thing I showed then was shooting an empty can with a .22. “See how that made a little hole of both sides? That’s what many people think guns do. But people are juicy, so it looks more like this.” They shit kittens when I shot a can full of water and it absolutely shredded. I think that was impactful. :)
I taught them never to pick up someone’s gun for the same reason even professionals won’t do so. “It’s not because I think you’re dumb kids, but you don’t know anything about that particular gun. What if there’s something wrong with it? How can you tell if it’s loaded? When you’re older, never accept a gun from a person who does not first clear it and show you the empty chamber. Even professionals do this. If they don’t practice this simple etiquette, they are not to be trusted and you need to get away, and stay away from that person.” Later overheard my son telling his big sis, in great detail and with great authority this rule.
Gonna suck when they’re teens. If they’re emotional wrecks like I was, they won’t see a gun in this house.
Glad to hear you doing this. My daughter refuses to learn, but I keep telling her it’s so when the dumb boy pulls out a gun at a party, she can ask to see it, and clear the chamber, take the clip, safe it, and hand it (minus the clip) back.
Point 'n Shoot
or, in a Christian state, Spray 'n Pray
Plenty of guides online but also it just isn’t that hard.
Not to blame video games but genuinely having never even held a real gun I could definitely work out how to operate one from the thousands of hours I have interacted with them digitally lol. They ultimately are designed ground up to be user friendly and simple. Yes I would be a terrible aim etc but still not the point, an idiot can still cause chaos.
I knew how to operate a hunting rifle by the time I was 12, and I’m not even American.
And if you can operate a hunting rifle, you can operate an assault rifle to a reasonable degree. Not much training needed.
And the principle is easy to figure out. When I was in the army, while I was a recruit, this guy in my platoon had never touched a weapon before, and he was pretty nervous the first day on the shooting range because he was on a different training course the day we got introduced to the basics. But he figured it out by intuition; get the cartridge into the chamber, and get the hammer to hit the firing pin.
There are only so many mechanical things one can do with a rifle, and if you try a few things you’re likely to figure it out.
When I was in the army, …
Consider, too, that the military needs every sack of meat to be able to shoot straight, load mags, clear malfunctions, clean and maintain. By extension, the light arms they use are designed to be as dead simple as possible.
As someone on reddit once pointed at, the AR-15 platform is designed such that the dumbest 18-yo recruit can use it.
I heard they make them pretty simple now. Some are even just point and shoot /s
You can learn how to use almost any gun in about five minutes. Have a friend or family member that lets you take some practice shots in their backyard? Now you know enough to be dangerous.
Even without practice shots, every gun has the capacity to be dangerous no matter the extent of the users knowledge.
One might even say that a firearm becomes more dangerous in a less knowledgeable person’s hands.
I mean, my dad took me hunting when I was young…
