OSD 310: How to take a newbie to the range

The most effective thing most people can do to make new gun owners.

This post on /r/liberalgunowners went a bit viral last week:

We’ve written a lot about how once people learn about guns, they tend to be fine with them:

OSD 223: You know too much

[I]f instead of an open “are guns noxious?”, someone’s starting point is “guns are noxious, now how do we stop that?”, [the innumeracy of gun control ideas] starts to make a lot more sense. Now technical details become dangerous, not helpful. The foundational premise is that guns are noxious. So it would be game theoretically stupid to learn about them, because that knowledge can only cut against your premise. So a rational actor would acquire only enough technical knowledge to sound convincing to the laity, and no more.

This is really a question is about the incentives of seeking — or avoiding — detailed technical knowledge about guns and related stats. We are lucky that the game theory shakes out such that gun rights benefit from the spread of knowledge. Gun control, conversely, works better the less people know about the technical details.

The more people learn about guns, the more they tend to see things differently from what they might have been taught to believe. Or, more to the point, taught to fear. The lesson is clear, then. Teach more info to more people. The deeper they go, the better off we’ll all be.

So if your spouse is uncomfortable having a gun in the house, they probably just haven’t been exposed to guns in any context other than a violent news story or someone getting killed in a movie. If 100% of the times you’d seen a gun involved someone getting murdered, you’d be worried too.

The solution is to familiarize them. But someone’s first gun experience is high variance. A great experience can convert them, and a bad experience can turn them off for life. So how do you make sure it’s great?

Some tips:

General things to keep in mind

• Newbies will be shocked at how loud a gunshot is. Especially centerfire rifles. Unless someone works with explosives, a gunshot will be the loudest sound they hear in their life. That will take time to get used to. Double up ear protection.

• The mere presence of a gun will be scary for them. Take your time getting them comfortable being near then gun, then holding it, and then dry firing before working with any live ammo. This should take 15-30 minutes. And everything you ask them to do, you demonstrate it first.

• The goals are safety first, fun second, and everything else a distant third.

  • Safety: give them a safety brief, ideally before you get to the range, explaining the four rules of gun safety. Those rules are important for them to know, and it also builds confidence when they see you prioritizing safety.

  • Fun: guns are fun! The goal is to have a good time.

  • Everything else: don’t get too nitpicky on technique or accuracy unless it’s interfering with their safety or comfort.

  • Act like you’re teaching your boss, not like you’re teaching a child. If the newbie makes a mistake, don’t let your tone get frantic or angry. Keep it positive. If they do something unsafe, spend more time on instruction and dry fire before moving forward.

• Tell them all of the above. For every negative/confused feeling they might have, it’s comforting if they know that you anticipated the feeling and told them about it beforehand.

• Don’t talk about politicians or crazy gun control laws. Just stay focused on having a fun, casual range day. Eventually, your newbie might start asking you about laws. When they bring it up, answer the specific question calmly and factually, without “selling” a viewpoint or launching into a rant. You win more converts by letting people come to it on their own. If they don’t bring it up, that’s okay too, there is no need to discuss it.

What to shoot

• Don’t pressure them into shooting a centerfire rifle. ARs have soft recoil, but they’re very loud, especially indoors. Start with a .22 LR, either a pistol or rifle as determined by what the newbie is interested in. Then you can graduate to a full-size 9mm pistol or similar, and finally an AR or bigger stuff if they’re having fun. Forcing anything is going to be counterproductive.

• For their first few shots, only load one round at a time. An accidental double-tap is common for first-time shooters, so you want to eliminate that possibility.

Where to shoot

• If you have the option to shoot outdoors and the weather is not uncomfortable, this is better for newbies because there is substantially less noise, fumes, and risk of ricochet than at indoor ranges. Ceasefires will be called periodically to change targets, giving the newbie rest for the ears and the psyche. The two disadvantages are that targets may be set at awkward distances (like a pistol range that only has target hangers at 25 yards) and that at many facilities, you are exposed to the noise of gunfire as soon as you enter the property.
  
  If the weather is gross or you only have indoor ranges in your area, try to find the ones with the best ventilation and noise reduction between the range area and the lobby/check-in area. It’s worth overspending on a range that is clean and fancy. Lots of indoor ranges are dingy, and it’s hard to create a good experience in that environment.

Manual of arms

• Before the newbie starts shooting, they have to understand how to operate the firearm. Follow these steps on each new firearm you introduce:

  • Demonstrate loading a dummy round, pressing the trigger, ejecting the dummy round, and making the gun safe.

  • Talk them through the process above, then have them do it without verbal direction.

• Don’t get too nitpicky about terminology. It’s useful to know basics (trigger, slide catch, etc), but be cool if they say “clip” instead of “magazine” or something like that.

Marksmanship fundamentals

At this point, you can start introducing the basics of marksmanship, like grip, stance, sight alignment, and trigger control, at a very basic level. Here’s guidance for a pistol:

And for a rifle:

Dry fire

This is a chance for the newbie to get a sense of what the trigger feels like, and to get used to the idea of the gun itself. It’s also an opportunity for you to correct any glaring errors in stance, sight alignment, or trigger control. The newbie should have a chance to dry fire each firearm they’ll be shooting at least 10 times, or until they’re comfortable with it — remember, for a lot of newbies, even picking up a gun is very scary. They may need a few minutes before loading live ammunition just for the adrenaline to subside.

Firing the gun

• Progress from demonstration to imitation until the newbie is comfortable on their own.

  • Load and shoot one round yourself to demonstrate how loud the gun is.

  • Load and shoot two rounds yourself to demonstrate how the gun operates.

  • Load one round for the newbie and have them shoot it to get used to the noise and recoil. Always finish this process with making the gun safe.

  • Load two rounds for the newbie so they understand how the gun operates.

• If by this point they’re comfortable and being safe, you can start loading more ammo into the magazines

Finally, followup

• Lots of first-timers will be excited about posting pics of their range trip to Instagram. Take some great pictures and videos of them while they’re shooting.

• Tell them to ping you anytime for questions or advice.

Try this on spouses, friends, and family. We’d love to hear your feedback.

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This week’s links

Federal judge orders California to allow residents of other states to apply for carry permits

One practical limit to the order’s reach is that it is currently limited to the plaintiffs in the case and their members. Beginning in 90 days, only members of either the California Rifle & Pistol Association, Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners of California, or the Second Amendment Foundation who are not otherwise prohibited from possessing guns under federal or California law will be permitted to apply.

Chicago judge vacates her predecessor’s ruling that some “ballistic fingerprint” evidence is inadmissible in court

In the case of Illinois v. Winfield, attorney Richard Gutierrez of the Cook County, Illinois Public Defender Office asked a Chicago judge to hold a hearing on the scientific validity of forensic firearms analysis. This is the field that claims to be able to match a bullet or shell casing to the gun that fired it. Circuit court judge William Hooks agreed to hold the hearing, and after considering evidence from the state and defense, he issued a landmark opinion in February 2023 which barred prosecutors from putting their analyst on the witness stand.

It was the first such ruling on forensic firearms analysis by any criminal court in the country. A handful of state and federal courts had previously put restrictions on the language these analysts sometimes use on the stand, citing the lack of scientific research to support their conclusions. But Hooks’s opinion was the first to bar an analyst’s testimony entirely. It was a big deal, because forensic firearms analysis is one of the most common types of expertise in the criminal legal system. Juries around the country rely on it daily to send thousands of people to prison each year.

But as of last month, Hooks’s ruling is no longer valid in Illinois. After a bizarre series of events, which began with an allegation of racism against Hooks and resulted in his retirement, the judge who replaced him then vacated the opinion, effectively erasing it from Illinois case law. Just like that, a small bombshell and long overdue win for science-based forensics was taken off the books.

We wrote about the original ruling in “OSD 223: You know too much”:

Over on his Substack, Radley Balko wrote this week about how bullet matching might actually be bullshit:

For more than a century, forensic firearms analysts have been telling juries that they can match a specific bullet to a specific gun, to the exclusion of all other guns. This claimed ability has helped to put tens of thousands of people in prison, and in a nontrivial percentage of those cases, it’s safe to say that ballistics matching was the only evidence linking the accused to the crime.

But as with other forensic specialties collectively known as pattern matching fields, the claim is facing growing scrutiny. Scientists from outside of forensics point out that there’s no scientific basis for much of what firearms analysts say in court. These critics, backed by a growing body of research, make a pretty startling claim — one that could have profound effects on the criminal justice system: We don't actually know if it's possible to match a specific bullet to a specific gun. And even if it is, we don't know if forensic firearms analysts are any good at it.

The article is fairly damning. It makes the case that while bullet matching does have some predictive value, it falls far short of both the confidence with which it’s portrayed and the certainty that should be required to send somebody to prison.

In a way, this shouldn’t be surprising. Bite mark evidence turned out to be bullshit. So did much of arson fire forensics. Hell, even fingerprints aren’t as reliable as people think.

The most surprising part of Balko’s piece is the part where he says that because of these concerns, a judge in Chicago ruled that bullet matching evidence is inadmissible in a case he’s presiding over.

Traditionally, courts aren’t great with math. For example, in a Ninth Circuit ruling upholding the lifelong gun ban on people who’ve been involuntarily committed, they reasoned that “the scientific evidence supported … that those who have been committed involuntarily to a mental institution still pose an increased risk of violence even years after their release from commitment.” But the ruling went on to cite just one study showing increased risk of suicide, and that study only followed patients for 8.5 years. The plaintiff had been mentally healthy for 20 years.

Courts might be the only professional setting where this level of innumeracy remains acceptable.

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