When life gives you lemons…make up a story about saving pretty girls from a tiger.
Unsplash photo. Attribution appreciated but not required. Photo by Keyur Nandaniy.
Though Shalt Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbour. Exodus 20:16
One of ten seminal directives issued directly from the mouth of God Himself, the ninth commandment against professing falsehood represents arguably the most foundational metric of human character. A willingness to lie, while an apparently necessary skill in the world of law or politics, is generally derided as a negative thing. However, when skillfully wielded the surgical application of subterfuge can indeed be a combat multiplier.
Our hero was a 12-year-old from a nearby community who presented to the children’s hospital with a ruptured appendix. He lived maybe 45 minutes from the modest city where I plied my trade. For sake of this tale we’ll bestow upon him the nom de guerre Bailey. Bailey was just sick as stink.
We took Bailey to the operating theater, cleaned out his belly, and put him on the floor of the hospital to recover. Given the sordid state of his entrails, his sojourn in the hospital would be about five days. As soon as he was lucid post-op I informed him that he needed to come up with some cool story to tell his friends to explain why he was in the hospital, something cooler than his appendix ruptured. He assured me he would indeed do so.
Five days later I went up to discharge Bailey and queried as to what he had contrived. He said he was vexed. He couldn’t come up with anything. I said, “Well, how about this?” Every syllable that follows is true.
“How about you tell your school buddies that your parents took you to the local zoo? While at the zoo the Swedish Ski Team was debuting their new line of designer swimwear, a bunch of gorgeous Scandinavian babes in bikinis, but you didn’t care because you were twelve.”
“As you wandered off to check out the monkey cages there arose a mighty commotion. It seems a tiger had escaped from the zoo and was attacking these gorgeous babes. Everybody was paralyzed in fear, everybody but you.”
“You leapt into action and engaged in mortal combat with the snarling jungle beast. With great difficulty and at tremendous peril to your person you wrestled the massive cat back into its enclosure, incurring this modest wound on your side. As a result you were committed to spending five days in the hospital recovering.”
“When your friends voice skepticism as there was no mention of your exploits in the local newspaper you explain thusly. The zoo used their influence with the paper to cover up the story. If word got out that tigers were escaping from the zoo, nobody would go to the zoo. What do you think?”
Bailey looked at me like I had three heads, so I just shrugged my shoulders, signed his paperwork, and bid him farewell. I thought little else of it.
Three weeks later I had another kid come into the hospital from Bailey’s little town. I went up to get to know the young man and innocently asked if he had ever been in the hospital before. He replied, “No, but there’s this kid in my school who was attacked by a tiger…”
He went on to relate the whole story to me. He told me about the girls and the tiger and the conspiracy with the newspaper to suppress the story. I responded, “Yeah, Bailey, the tiger attack guy. We couldn’t take care of him for all the hot Swedish chicks up here smooching on him all the time.”
A grand time was had by all. More than two years later I was working in a local Orthopedic clinic. A guy I didn’t know walked into an exam room and lit up like a light bulb. He went on to explain that I had made his son famous.
This was Bailey’s dad. He said they had passed that story all around town whenever well-meaning folks had asked why Bailey had been in the hospital. That outlandish tale earned young Bailey quite a bit of notoriety thereabouts.
So, I’m not encouraging you to wander about lying to people. Rather, just make the best of a bad situation. If you find yourself in the hospital or in some similarly dire straits just make up some cool story to justify it. If your friends don’t believe you just have them call me. Folks will believe any fool thing a doctor says. It’s like having a superpower.
The shooter, who identified as transgender, specifically targeted the school because another location she thought of attacking had too much security.
The hearing room, which was full of gun control activists, booed and heckled the Republican representatives after voted to advance the bill through a House committee. As people got up to leave, one woman began shouting at the representatives about how she knows how to use firearms but she would never carry inside the classroom because she would not shoot her students.
“I would never carry a gun in front of my students! I loved my students. I would die for them but I would not shoot them,” said the woman wearing a Moms Demand Action t-shirt.
Now there’s a few ways to interpret what she said, none of which are good. One is that she thinks she is not stable enough to be trusted around a firearm because she might use it on a student, which ok, yes, if you think that, you should not have a firearm. One charitable interpretation is she meant the second “them” as in the incoming random attacker, but then in theory her students would still be in danger if she dies without taking out the threat.
The last possible explanation is that she would not shoot her student who is going around killing other students. Again, none of these explanations are good and it was certainly an odd comment to make in an attempt to persuade lawmakers.
—————————————————————————————-As a retired School Teacher myself, I strangely have to agree partically with her. In that the vast majority of teachers that I have met out here in the Peoples Republic. I would NEVER let them near a gun!!! As while frankly while nice folks. I just know that it would be either a blood bath or the shooter would quickly have another gun. Grumpy
Don’t let ‘em fool you — these are guns are for experts!
Top to bottom: S&W Custom 640 by Gemini Customs, classic Colt Agent,
Roy’s beater S&W 340 and an old cut-down Charter .44 Special.
Yeah, I know, we all have one or more of them, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In experienced hands — and I mean near-expert hands — they are effective, accurate, reliable and highly concealable. But frankly, too many inexperienced shooters have them, and in most of their hands, the small revolver is an inadequate tool with the potential for being a real problem if called upon to be used.
It’s been my experience most who carry a small-frame revolver can’t shoot it worth beans, and hardly ever (maybe never?) shoot it anyway. In their mind’s eye they have themselves whipping it out, engaging a bad guy, the bad guys does down with solid, centered hits, and the good guy is a hero.
In reality most people shoot poorly with these little guns, don’t carry a reload, can’t manipulate them well and have little or no idea of the gun’s true abilities. They’re a potential danger to themselves and everyone around them.
Why do we seem to think we can buy one of these guns, load it, and for some magical reason — suddenly know everything about it?
A S&W 6″ Model 14 and a 5-screw 36 on the right. At a lasered 37 yards,
using Federal .38 Special148 gr. Match wadcutters the 14 gave 2.25″ and the 36 about 3.6″.
Not bragging — just showing the little guns can shoot if you know what you’re doing.
Astoundingly enough, the J-frame was spot-on (a rarity) and I favored
the top of the red zone as I shot, dropping the shots right in.
The Problem At Hand
Are small-frame revolvers actually expert’s guns? Absolutely. But, they’re alluring because they’re easy to carry. Few are willing to compromise with comfort, and are drawn to the lightweight and small size of these appealing little shooters. But is that bad?
It’s not — if you take the time to learn to run these tiny terrors. If a gun-store-counter-commando talks you into buying one for your wife or yourself, there’s more to the game than simply loading it and putting it into your pocket. Much more.
Don’t be fooled though — the guns are inherently accurate, and I’ve actually shot old-time PPC courses (a form of police target shooting out to 50 yards) and used a 2.5″ Model 19 .357 K-frame. You’d be stunned at the groups possible at 50 yards, and a tuned gun in good hands can deliver 5″ or 6″ — and better! — easily at that range. The scary thing is so can some J-frames in good hands.
Not long ago at Gunsite, with a crew from S&W, we shot 2″ to 5″ J-frame .38s out to 100 yards, making regular hits on man-sized steel. But these were experienced shooters, and most importantly, everyone knew how to run a double action revolver, staging the trigger to get accuracy at the same level you can get shooting single action. And that’s the biggest secret to these little guns (or any gun) — trigger control.
More Secrets
Like anything small, a J-frame or equivalent can be fumbly so you have to train your fingers to work smaller grips, smaller triggers, harder actions, cylinder releases tending to be sticky and tiny cylinders. Not to mention those usually inadequate sights and short sight radius. But, if you seek the training you should, from people who understand these guns, you’ll find them to be elegant compromises when it comes to personal protection working guns. If you’re willing to work at it.
As we’ve chatted about before in these pages, sight picture is important, but trigger control is paramount. It’s especially true with these little guns, as the slightest wobble can toss a round into the next county. If you gain control over the stagy-hard-gritty trigger on many of these guns, you’ll be rewarded with accuracy sure to surprise you.
When I was a range officer for a short time on the police department, we would have detectives attempt to qualify with their various 2″ guns. This was the very early 1980s and wheelguns were the backbone of police work. Plus, wearing a Colt Detective or Chief’s Special was the hallmark of a detective. Call it their badge of office.
However it was the rare bird who could actually shoot one. Most would show up with their old duty belt and 6″ Model 10 and shoot that. I would cry foul, but at the time, it was allowed. But now and again, I’d see one try with a 2″ and snort in disgust, “This is a piece of crap and it won’t hit a thing at this distance!”
“This distance” was usually seven to 15 yards. “Can I borrow it for a sec?” I’d ask. They’d hand off, making harrumphing noises of disgust. I would load with five and, taking a comfortable stance and staging the trigger, could usually place the five in a neat group in the head or center torso of the B27 target. I would then hand the gun back and say something witty and charming like, “Gosh, the gun seems to shoot fine. Perhaps you need to learn how to shoot it? I’d be happy to teach you,” delivered with a big, toothy grin.
I also bought a lot of small guns, cheap, right then and there, and used to keep a $100 bill in my wallet just for that purpose. And it’s too bad, as 15 minutes of training might have had most of them on-target — if they’d only wanted to learn.
And that’s the key, right there in front of us. You need to want to learn. It’s the only way you’ll be safe with these guns. And, it’s the only way you’ll be able to use one and enjoy just how remarkable these little “expert’s guns” truly are. Honest.
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