I get very angry when I see unthinking men get a good laugh out of handing a heavy-recoiling firearm to a slightly-built woman and enjoying her pain and humiliation when she can't control it. I've written about that before in relation to shotguns, here and here.
This morning, via an e-mailed link, I came across this animated .GIF image, taken from a video file.
Quite apart from the very real danger if she'd kept hold of the trigger while the revolver pivoted around her hands, it's likely that lady will never again want to touch a handgun with any meaningful performance - whether necessary for her defense or not. Way to go, idiot(s) who put it in her hands! The least you could have done was load it with lower-performance ammunition, so that it wouldn't kick quite so hard . . . but no, that wouldn't have been so amusing, would it?
Peter
From the looks of the gif, looks like she's spared any impact to her face and the assorted hilarity that comes with it (busted lips, missing teeth, broken noses), and seems she's cracking a smile too... Hard to say without the full vid, but I think your strong stance on the topic is defining your view on what is in front of you and the details thereof.
ReplyDeleteYep, dumbass and I hope she dumps him too... Thankfully she didn't keep her finger on the trigger!
ReplyDeleteWould it have been so bad had she kept her finger on the trigger if the barrel had rotated TOWARDS whoever set her up???
ReplyDeleteI will admit that my brother and I set up a friend in this manner, my defense is that the friend was a strong man and he was asking for it. Sam was declaring that he loved heavy handguns and recoil was never a problem when we knew he had very little experience shooting and that with a 9mm automatic.
ReplyDeleteSo, we took him to the range and handed him my brother's Ruger .44 Redhawk. We'd loaded it with shells having no bullets and only primers. He didn't even notice that nothing was going downrange, or that it was making less noise than a .22 pistol. Then my brother reloaded it with our maximum powder loads (by the manual, we like our firearms) and handed it back to him. BOOM! I managed to catch the pistol and keep it from hitting the ground. Sam never again talked big about guns, at least when we were around.
M4, I think that's a grimace, not a smile.
ReplyDeleteI see these videos from time to time, offered as the height of hilarity, and I think I'm completely with you, Peter.
My wife is very petite: 4'10". She is willing to take on any gun, and has earned the respect of every teacher she's ever had, but I would never have done something like that.
Could well be a grimace, but I won't cast judgement without information on the aftermath. Do acknowledge that this is dangerous and not a good idea, even if the "victim" knows what they're getting into.
ReplyDeletePretty sure thats a grimace, she's cringing away from the gun coming at her face....
ReplyDeleteI agree anyone who does it for laughs is a moron, but I've seen a too-much-gun and laughed for awhile after, because it was a case of the new shooter refusing to listen to anyone else and insisting that she could 'handle the .44 fine. After all, the .45 was easy'.
ReplyDeleteThat is a youtube/ web phenomena that has always baffled me. I do not see how it is positive to whatever your relationship with the gal is, her introduction to firearms/ self defense or safety.
ReplyDeleteCan see how maybe a new shooter is working their way through a bunch of handguns and the transition from say .357 to .44 is rough but handing an inexperienced shooter a .454 or whatever is just stupid.
I will agree that it's more than stupid to give someone more gun than they can handle, but in this instance the result is self inflicted.
ReplyDeleteLook at her hands - at the moment of firing she lets go of the gun. She retracts her hands from the gun - pay close attention to the wrists and the back of the right hand - it's moving away from the gun, and if the right hand is moving away, due to sympathetic bilateral contraction, so is the left. The proof is that her upper body does not move horizontally from recoil, as it would if the hand-to-gun connection was maintained.
If you're going to let go of the gun, anything more powerful than a .22 will end up hitting you in the face.
That said, whomever allowed (or encouraged) her to shoot a large caliber revolver committed an error of the first order: had whomever it was paid attention to her shooting skills (or, rather, the lack of them), they would have not gone above a 38 Special revolver with light target loads.
@1:29
ReplyDeleteYou're not very observant. You can clearly see the force moving through her right arm and jolting her shoulder. The gun got away from her due to her thumb giving way. I suspect she suffered an injury from the way the gun came back through the space that should have been occupied by that thumb. The way she folds up her hands, especially the fairly tight right one, may be a further indication of this. Looks like she is wrapping her fingers around the thumb, since there is no part of the thumb visible above the index finger.
I wonder how much damage she could do to that gun, swinging it left-handed against every hard surface she could find, to include the idiots head.
@1:29
ReplyDeleteI think what we can see there is a catastrophic failure of grip. Possibly because the force could've done damage to wrist, elbow or shoulder if the grip was maintained. Fairly clear that the thumb gives way and nothing can be done to retain hold of the weapon after that - you can see her hands still trying to hold onto a gun no longer there, crossing over after finding no central object to apply force to.
This particular idiocy has led to at least one "accidental" suicide. A woman from South America visiting her family killed herself with a Smith and Wesson 500 just this same way.
ReplyDeleteM4, your attitude is somewhere between negligent and homicidal. Whether THIS woman was injured or not does not make the practice more or less smart, dangerous or negligent.
The risk is not theoretical. It has killed people. It is dumb, dangerous and irresponsible, and anyone doing it is homicidally stupid or evil.
I hope I wasn't unclear.
FormerFlyer
@FormerFlyer
ReplyDeletem4 said: "... Do acknowledge that this is dangerous and not a good idea ..."
Just to clarify, my stance is that this IS dangerous and not smart. We're not in disagreement on this point.
Yeh I know a sadist who thinks that putting a .460S&W with a four inch barrel in the hands of a 4' 10" woman is the peak of hilarity. He hasn't killed anyone YET. But if he did he'd think it funny, and post it to You Tube. I have shot the bloody thing and it makes the recoil on the .500 Desert Eagle seem mild. ---Ray
ReplyDeleteI have done something like this exactly once and even then I tried to avoid doing so. The_Missus insisted on trying out a 642 .38 Special so I loaded the lightest charge of Unique I could behind a 158gr cast lead bullet and off to the range we went. To her credit she held onto the gun, but even I thought that light .38 load felt like a full power 240gr. Hollowpoint from my 3" .44 Magnum.
ReplyDeleteShe'd shot plent of hanguns before even .357s and a 10mm but to this day after that experience prefers a carbine to a handgun.
@SteveG:
ReplyDeleteA lighter bullet would have been a better choice. The only bullet weight I shoot in my Airweight Smith is 125gr. Anything heavier is useless, as far as I'm concerned. Strangely enough, I prefer the heavy bullets in my Lightweight Officers .45acp. I suspect it is the grip/barrel relationship that affects this.
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ReplyDeleteThat's actually a male shooter:
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/oqGejjfG76I
Jump to about 5'10" in the video.
I'm looking at that gun. I'm looking at the shooter. I'm thinking, at some point, a person is responsible for their actions. Yes, I know, I may know a thing or two about firearms being ex-military. But just looking at that thing I'm not picking it up, much less firing it, unless there's a Grizzly trying to break into the front door.
ReplyDeleteSuccess, we have video. Looks to me that the shooter thoroughly enjoyed the experience... Cameraman is lucky to not have sustained injury though!
ReplyDelete