On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 19:01:12 -0700, Gerry wrote:

On Aug 20, 11:01 am, "Lloyd E. Sponenburgh"
lloydspinsidemindspring.com wrote:
I audited an NRA handgun safety course Saturday that my wife was
attending for her concealed permit.

I was appalled. The instructor was a really nice fellow, and obviously
an experienced shooter, but his course was inadequate to the nth degree.

The sum-total of ALL safety instruction in the course consisted of his
reading a poster twice. The poster had three safety rules -- "always
point the weapon in a safe direction", "keep your finger off the trigger
until ready to fire", and "don't load the weapon until ready to fire".

All in all, those ARE the bases for safe handling, but this was a class
of 50-ish women and soft-handed men who'd never picked up a gun before.
They couldn't extrapolate from that scant reading anything about safe
transfer of weapons from one to another, safe cleaning practices, routine
muscle-memory checking of every weapon you touch, safe transport, etc.,
etc.

Then he left me puzzled when he told the class that a revolver is NOT a
pistol; only slide-action automatics are pistols. (so, what do you call a
muzzle-loading lock-fired handgun? And, does that mean that a cylinder-
fed rifle isn't a rifle?)

He spent exactly twenty seconds describing a sight picture. And his
drawing was wrong for short range pistol.

The rest of the four hour classroom session consisted of recollections,
instructions to immediately shoot to kill any home invader, and rants
about the local liberal newspaper, then finally a full half hour devoted
to how to answer the questions on the application.

Can it really BE that gun classes have devolved to this level? If so,
what hope have we that the liberalocrats won't finally strip all the
metal from our hands?

LLoyd
From Wikipedia, FWIW
"In American usage, the term "pistol" refers to a handgun whose
chamber is integral with the barrel, making pistols distinct from the
other main type of handgun, the revolver, which has a revolving
cylinder containing multiple chambers." After 20 years of gunsmithing,
that is the I see it as well

True indeed.

however...like calling magazines "clips"...its been *******ized in
common usage.

Gunner