I was at work, and it was a crowd of us, and we were all being handed loaded AR style rifles. It was a hectic and confusing event. I took my rifle, checking for the safety, and there was no real place to point it. Crowd, plus office park.
Now I am not super familiar with the AR. I've only shot hundred through one, not thousands. I am better than an average Air Force person, and better than a lot of Army folks with one. Not infantry trypes, naturally. All Marines come out of bootcamp with weeks of exposure to the platform. Not even close to a boot Marine.
But I have some exposure to firearms in general. I grabbed the rifle by the grip, barrel pointed down, flipped the sling loop over my head, and held it close to my body with the barrel still pointing down but NOT at my feet. Sul with a rifle? I improvised something like that. Not pointing at me, not pointing at anyone else outside my personal space, not pointed at the sky. Then I meandered away from the confusion, but close enough to hear instructions. And maybe close to actual cover, and started scanning the rest of my co-workers. Chamber check and put the dust cover back up.
Pretty standard safety stuff. Especially the hide from the horde of noobs. Stuff you sorta absorb from my now 14 years of new-found gun enthusiasm,
At this point I realized it was a test. The folks in security were handing out rifles to see how people would act. Who would be too excited, too unsafe, just too awkward, too afraid of it? Apparently I passed. I bet the ammo was fake
That reminds of this guy. Some diner facing down a horde of also-armed Marxists with an NAA revolver. Good luck with that, buddy. Muzzling EVRYONE. On purpose.
Yeah, the commie should leave people alone. And the people need to maybe think a little bit more on their CCW choices and tactics.
Hey, is there a "Sul" thing with ARs? What's it called. Is it anything more than what I improvised in a dream? There has to be something...
Oddly, that wasn't covered in any of my rifle courses, that I can recall. Generally, the only time you are moving with a loaded rifle is inside a shoot house, and most of the time that is one shooter only. Teams would have multiple shooters moving, but that would only be at the high end schools, typically .gov high speed, low drag classes.
ReplyDeleteMostly, pointed down is the way to go, even on concrete, as the bullet typically breaks up hitting reinforced 'crete straight on. However, if you are holding the old style "straight" stock, you can't do this, because your wrist won't bend that far. That one leaves you pointing it upwards. In some ways that is better, if the gun fires while near vertical. The bullet ends up falling to the ground near you at terminal velocity, which shouldn't kill someone. (it comes to a stop, and then simply falls downward. Pistol bullets are still rotating when they hit the ground, but I'm unsure if that is true for rifle bullets, since they will climb higher, and therefore are falling for a longer time, and should become unstable more quickly due to their length). If the angle is such that the bullet can follow a ballistic arc, that can still kill people, because it retains it's velocity and stays point first.
All my gun training books are packed away for moving, so I can't check them.
I think your Sul idea is functional, as that is essentially what most people are doing with a single point sling, except they are probably covering their legs/feet to some extent.
There are no absolutes for this, as situations can vary quite a bit regarding safe zones for an accidental discharge.