Welcome to Citadel Solutions
December 10, 2015
Firearms Safety
Whatever you are shooting first off
“treat every gun as if it were loaded”, this will prevent accidents and negligent discharges keeping you and your family safe. “Never point a gun at anything you do not intend to shoot” not even in jest should you point a firearm at another person even if its “unloaded” if you do it unloaded you will do it loaded. This is a bad habit to get into. Even if you have a nonlethal pepper ball gun in your hand, do you want to accidentally shoot yourself in the face or your family possibly blinding
yourself or them? Most reasonable people would say no.
"Keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you intend to fire” again if you keep that finger off the trigger you could hurt yourself or others. Remember familiarity can breed carelessness. I have personally seen someone close to me shoot themself in the foot with a 9mm hollow point. Not a good day. ”Keep your gun on safe until you intend to fire” this is a good rule but keep in mind some firearms or self defense devices do not have a safety.
“Know your target and what lies beyond it” this one's kind of self explanatory but think about this before you pull that trigger, if you haven't shot in awhile and you don't know if you can make the shot don't do it. Just an FYI drywall won't stop a bullet. If your family member's room is behind the person trying to do you harm do you think you should pull the trigger? The answer is no. Moving on to Familiarization with your equipment, this can and will make the difference in staying alive or being drawn in chalk.
What this means is as soon as you take your equipment out of its box you need to know it inside and out. Handle it every day for afew minutes until you know how to operate it in your sleep. Remember "slow is smooth, smooth is fast, fast is dangerous". Until you are totally comfortable with it don't carry it because no one is immune to having something taken away from them.
I have seen snippets of police training saying that “every call is a gun call” why is that you ask? Because anything you brought with you can be taken away from you. That is also why good gun retention needs to be learned concerning your firearm or non lethals. There are plenty of dry fire drills you can do in your home to build that muscle memory to help you properly and effectively draw and present your device. Practice loading and unloading in your home, sighting in using the mirror practicing all those fundamentals.
Run scenarios in your head of how you would react and what you would say or do in a confrontation. General James Mattis says Be polite, Be professional but have a plan. With that said, always have a plan A,B, and C. At no point will we ever advocate violence in fact, if you can remove yourself from a dangerous situation or avoid it altogether, please use common sense folks.