Reminder: Take Care of Your Carry Gun
Ron Gunner 06.12.17
A lot of people put their holster on and stuff the gun into it and go about their business. At the end of the day they take the holster out. Most leave the gun in it and they forget about it until the next day, if they carry every day. You’d probably also be surprised at the number of folks who have a permit but don’t carry every day. Then you can add in the ones that bought the gun, the holster, took the class and got their permit a few years ago and have never shot the gun since their class or even taken it out of the holster in all this time.
Let me tell you, you are begging for a failure if you ever need to draw and use that gun. It’s also the case that your shooting skills will be next to nothing, you will have forgotten 90% of what you learned to pass the class and get the permit. So shooting it well and putting the shots where they need to be would be a miracle at best.
But if you have been following my articles now for two plus months, then you know I am a very strong believer in practice and more practice with the gun you are going to carry. If you do this, you will not only maintain but improve your shooting skills.
But if you don’t and you fall into what I talked about at the top of this article, you may not have to worry about bad shooting because there is a strong chance your gun will malfunction on you when you need it most. If you never take it out of the holster and clean and oil it or treat it with whatever you use, chances are it will have rust, debris and ever corroded “greenish” ammo in the magazine.
If you have one in the chamber it may go off, but chances are the rest will jam the gun up in a hurry. We all know you have less than 2 seconds to defend yourself against most attacks. They happen fast, people. So now you have a gun that is jammed and you are out of time all because you didn’t shoot your carry gun enough.
In the small town I grew up in, we never had a population more than 3,500, and it’s even less now. We had a police officer in the 70’s and 80’s that only used his gun to requalify as needed. And the police chief at the time didn’t push that too much either. So in 1984 a new police chief came into town, hired by my father who had just been elected Mayor. This new chief was a go getter. On his first day had all the officers meet him in the council chambers as he looked over their records.
When he asked to see their 38 special revolvers, this one officer could not even get it out of the holster. It was locked in place by melted Hersey bars (his favorite), which he would put in the holster then forget and they would melt. He patrolled the local Dairy Queen most times so the DQ was the safest place in town.
When the new chief saw that he was so upset all he could do was start laughing. He told them they were all to take the revolvers down right then and there and clean them, and he was going to watch and inspect them before they went back into the cleaned holsters. And they were going to shoot a qualification the following weekend, so they better practice because if they didn’t pass, they no longer worked there. Within a few years the new chief got away from the old 38s and into Glocks by 1988. But this goes to show you that just like you take care of your car, you need to take care of the gun you hope you never need but if you do, takes care of you.
Take them out of the holsters, clean them and by all means, SHOOT THEM, and get used to them. You are depending on them to protect you if the need should ever arise.
See you out there. Gunner
