BY Herschel Smith
11 years, 5 months ago
Just a brief note on a pet peeve of mine. I had the distinctly obnoxious displeasure of watching a man named Bo Dietl on Fox News last night discussing the George Zimmerman case. I haven’t weighed in on this case, and probably won’t until it’s finished and I comment on what a huge waste of time and resources this whole thing was. Circus, it is.
But on point, Mr. Dietl is apparently a former NYPD Police Department employee who now comments on television. He was discussing guns just “going off.” The context had to do with whether a round was in the chamber in Mr. Zimmerman’s gun, and while a round being chambered makes the gun ready to use, it also makes it liable to just “go off.”
It’s really annoying when people talk this way. Of course, a gun does nothing of the sort. Guns don’t “go off,” regardless of the fact that one can find an article about every day about guns “going off” and harming or killing someone.
Whether you like or dislike the “beaver tail safety” on my XDm .45 semi-auto, or any other model that has a grip safety, and whether you like or dislike the two-stage triggers that come on the XDm and S&W M&P (i.e., brush guard), the fact is that a pistol requires user interaction in order to discharge a round (excluding something like “baking off” a round because of heavy combat and high weapon temperatures, something most Americans won’t experience).
And even if a weapon doesn’t have those features, your trigger finger is your safety. Without it, the weapon doesn’t fire. It’s fear mongering affecting unengaged and uneducated people to say that a weapon “goes off” if you have a round in the chamber. People who know firearms know better.
I guess Bo Dietl doesn’t know firearms. What a putz. Maybe he should become educated before commenting on television. It’s the least he could do.
