Actually there is less than that as an excuse.Chapuis wrote:Maggot what you describe there is poor or inadequate training with a pistol something for which many units of the British forces have been guilty of in the past and continue this day. I have witnessed some of the very worst gun handling ever by certain units and in particular with pistols. Far worse than I have ever seen on a civilian range.
That plus the continued use of a magazine safety on the Browning GP and poor drills are a recipe for a ND.
The unload is what it is with any weapon (remove the source of ammunition and check then leave the weapon in a safe state), a makesafe is an unload followed by a load....with pretty well anything.
I just put that perticular incident down to the individual not thinking.
Oddly enough I am just going through the ACF CFAF training and (contrary to what some might believe) I am chuffed to report that while I am not unsafe, my drills suck. Slow and all fingers and thumbs but its coming back. Its been 25 years FFS, but the good news is that regardless I have to do the lot from scratch so I am sucking it up, every last sylable!!
The only concession I have is that my Det Comdr is going to use me for some of the technical lessons like zeroing and aiming off for miss drills because of my Mil/Civ background/experiance.....and its all bloody metric....bugger!!
As an aside, and in spite of my spiky personality at times, can I just say that I am staggered at how much the ACF has changed.
OK, nothing is perfect but compared with when I was in the Hitler Youth (It may as well have been back then) the resources and equipment is incredible.
More importantly, the effort made to train the CFAVs and make sure the kids are safe and well looked after is unrecognisable to a cadet of the late 70s.
I would recommend anyone who asked now, seriously.