Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Ready!
Hi, I'm Richard Carlton, for Drypractice.com. This is a video to discuss the issues of using
snap caps and alternate tools for dry practice. Now, I want to recommend a great video by
James Yaeger, who talked about negligent discharges with your firearm, and negligent discharges
are a critical concern with dry practice. When you're dry practicing, you want to make
sure that you're actually getting dry clicks, and not live bangs, and so I wanted to discuss
a little bit about the alternatives that you have for dry practice.
I'm going to go into detail with some of these tools in future videos, but I wanted to do
a quick overview video and talk about my thoughts on negligent discharges, and the tools that
you use for dry practice. As James Yaeger pointed out in his video, and what's common
with a lot of folks, is that negligent discharges are frequently caused by people who are tired,
or who are distracted. Maybe they're fatigued, they've been working long days, that type
of thing.
So when I do dry practice or dry testing of our software, and we have it out here and
we're testing it at the range, sometimes I find myself at the end of the day and I'm
really tired. Now, while my preferred dry practice tool is my live Glock 21, you know,
the idea of making sure that it's empty, with no ammunition and an empty chamber - no magazine
- I become concerned sometimes that I'm mentally 100 percent there, sharp as I can be for that
Dry Practice session, yet I know that I need to dry practice. And so it gets into a situation
where when I feel that I'm not a hundred percent, but I know I need to dry practice, I prefer
to pick up a tool, I put down my weapon (that's a full sized, real pistol that shoots real
bullets) and I pick up one of my other weapon systems for dry practice that have a colored
slide on them, or a colored part. Now, of course, there's always the famous orange gun,
the red gun-orange gun, and these are great training tools, but the reality is that they're
really lightweight, and so while I'm comfortable in using this for demonstrations with people,
and if they get, you know, if they get swept with an orange gun, it's the only gun that
I consider "safe," realistically. I don't sweep anyone with a weapon unless it's an
orange gun and it's a training environment, maybe a takeaway drill, or something like
that.
The reality is that I prefer to grab a weapon that's going to mimic the feel of a glock,
but I don't recommend people use weapons that are trainers or simulators, but they're painted
to look identical to a real weapon system. Here is an example right here: this turns
out to be an airsoft type system, and it perfectly resembles a glock. If someone pointed this
at me, I would think in real life, for sure, that I was gonna die. It doesn't have an orange
tip on the end of it, and the slide even functions. The reality if someone points this at me,
I'm going to be concerned I'm going to be shot, and I'm going to be reaching for my
real weapon to bring to bear on them. And so having people training with pretend guns
that look like real guns - you know, when I was younger I always hated it when people
painted weapons because I was a kid - I hated that, and I said "wow, that's the dumbest
thing in the world." But as a person who does dry practice now, I actually count on the
painted weapon to keep me out of trouble. If I'm tired, if I'm fatigued, but I need
to dry practice for some reason, I will go and I will find one of my weapons, an airsoft
weapon of some type, that clearly has a painted slide or other component. The SIRT laser simulator
is a great one: the slide doesn't move on it, but once again, it gives you the good
grip - good feel of the glock - and it allows you to get your presses in, and the bonus,
of course, of seeing the laser. But I know that, by using a weapon with one of my colored
components, that under no condition at any time can this weapon actually discharge a
real bullet. And that, to me, is a great feeling of safety, I guess, knowing that I'm not going
to make an accidental mistake and torch a round off during my dry practice session,
because I've been there when things like that happen, and it gets really exciting.
And so I highly recommend that people who are doing dry practice, with dedicated dry
practice tools, to make sure that their weapons are painted appropriately, because the reality
is that, if you look down here (that weapon's clear, and that weapon's clear) is that you're
not going to be able to easily discern between these two. Both of them look exceptionally
deadly to me, and so when I see a weapon that's solid black, with accurate reproductions,
I assume it's a real weapon. Now with this weapon here, they had no idea with how weapons
are supposed to be painted for training, so their idea of masking and painting was somewhat
goofy, so I don't necessarily recommend this, but this is a highly accurate re-production
of the Glock 17, it's a green gas airsoft weapon, and once again, this thing is so accurate
that it's got real glock sights on it. And so the last thing I need is for some person
to be using this thinking they have a real gun and it doesn't go boom, or them thinking
that they have the airsoft gun by accident when they've picked up a real gun and they
haven't chamber checked it, because these things feel identical when you pick them up.
But the idea with this is that I prefer to have my training weapons clearly painted,
so if I feel fatigued or I feel tired, I can pick up a weapon that has bright colors on
it, and I know that even if I can get my presses in, I'm not worried about torching a real
round off during my dry practice session. So that's on the issue of colored slides.
Another issue that we've been running into with regards to the dry practice app is the
use of snap caps, or dummy rounds, and this is where people like to use, basically, ammunition
where the primer and the powder has been removed. And I understand that the value of training
with this, especially if you're doing malfunction clearances and emergency reloads and things
like that, but the reality with this is that these things can get you into trouble real
fast if you're not 100 percent mentally sharp. So the official policy of Front Sight, the
policy of Drypractice.com, is not to recommend these tools, and the reason is is down here:
I have a pile of Dry Practice ammunition, right? If I'm not paying 100 percent attention
to what I have in my hand, and I load this into my magazine, I'm going to have a serious
problem, because I'll be talking to you on video and I'll start loading up the magazine,
and we'l be doing dry practice. And this happened to a guy the other day, and he inadvertently
killed a family member with his AK-47, of all things, because he had dummy rounds in
it mixed with live ammunition. And as I talk to you and I'm distracted, or you're distracted
at home, dry practicing, and you inadvertently get a real round of ammunition in here, suddenly
your real round of ammunition looked just like those yellow rounds that you had stuffed
in the weapon. And so you go click, tap, rack, click, tap,
rack and then boom, you get a live round going out the end of that weapon system. So you
need to be exceptionally careful about having snap caps and using them at all, because people
are making mistakes about mixing live ammo with the snap cap ammo, and so the general
policy of Front Sight is not to endorse or recommend the use of snap caps in any way,
because if you don't use them, you're never going to have a problem of mixing them up.
We've had issues with students who have a negligent discharge end up blaming the fact
that they mixed live ammunition with their snap cap ammunition, and they were told during
their dry practice sessions not to use dummy ammunition. But they did anyway - they inadvertently
mixed live ammunition in there, and they're in the hotel room, and they torch a round
right out the window into the hotel. So we highly recommend that you forgo use of these
devices, and so when you see videos and we're using chap stips, or pen caps, and you're
laughing to yourself "hahaha, it's not very realistic" well, we're trying to keep ourselves
out of trouble by not having a negligent discharge. If we're not 100 percent on top of our game,
there's a chance of getting live ammunition mixed in there, so no ammunition means no
ammunition. It's not anywhere in your training environment, you're completely dry, there's
nothing that remotely looks like real ammunition in your guns, in your body, in the room, in
your dry practice environment. It doesn't exist.
So I'm Richard Carlton, for Drypractice.com, and I'll see you at the range.