Beginner's Guide to Firearm Basics

hey there boys and girls and welcome to another episode of Lutherville so for this episode I thought I would do something a little bit different now a lot of people have commented on the fact that I am always wearing a revolver in all these videos so I figured I would do a video on firearm basics and the safe handling of firearms and how to shoot them all that sort of thing so before I get rolling into this there is one thing that I want to emphasize that is very important and that is go take a proper training class okay please do not go out and buy your first firearm and then rely on a bunch of videos to train you on how to use it videos like this should be a supplementary thing it should be something that helps refresh your memory maybe gives you some tips and tricks that you didn't know about but don't use them as your sole source of training and information whether it's my video or anybody else's okay make sure you get proper training I highly recommend that you get training with the National Rifle Association the NRA was actually founded for the purpose of training people on how to use firearms they did that for over a hundred years and then in the mid 1970s they began to get into more activism but they still do tons of training and that is what the organization was based upon so if you can find an NRA class that's great I've actually taken classes that weren't NRA classes and they were really good too so whatever you can find to help you out now the first thing that most people teach when they start to show people how to use firearms is safety and I actually disagree with that I don't think that's a good idea in my opinion I believe the very first thing you need to teach people is terminology because what good is telling someone all the safety rules if they don't understand the terminology that you're using to describe different parts of the firearm so before I get into the safety rules let's go over some important terminology whether you're using a handgun revolver pistol long gun rifle shotgun whatever it is that you happen to be firing they all have very similar pieces and parts for example all guns have barrels and all guns have a trigger guard and when you take a class that teaches you everything from top to bottom they'll go over every single little piece and part of the gun that you need to know now when it comes to handling a gun safely the two most important pieces of terminology that you need to know are the muzzle and the trigger the muzzle is the hole at the end of the barrel where the bullet exits the gun right there that is the muzzle the trigger is of course the little switch that you pull to make the bullet fire out of the weapon so most of you know exactly which parts of the gun are the muzzle and the trigger but as I said I believe that it's important in terms of terminology to make those two things very clear before you start teaching people all of the safety rules so depending upon where you take a class there are also different safety rules sometimes they have four rules sometimes they have six it all depends on who's teaching you now personally I go with four main rules the first the most important rule is always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction now the reason that this is the most important rule of all is because if you do that and you forget any of the other rules well if anything goes wrong hopefully nobody's going to be hurt or injured and no property will be damaged okay if you've always got the muzzle pointed in a safe direction at all times then if that firearm were to go off for any reason hopefully nothing's gonna happen right because the muzzle was pointed in a safe direction so that's rule number one and by the way I have to give credit to Kirsten enjoy Weiss who is a phenomenal shooter she has a ton of social media presence and she actually said that that was the first rule that she was taught when she was learning how to shoot and I really respect her abilities she's an amazing amazing shooter and after I heard her talk about that I was like she makes a lot of sense I agree that should be the most important rule of all the second most important rule is keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot now most of the time if you see someone who actually knows how to handle firearms you'll notice that when they're holding the firearm their finger is usually on the frame of the gun for example if they're holding a revolver like this one they hold it like this okay you'll always see their finger across the frame never on the trigger itself sometimes people put it in front of the trigger guard I personally don't find that very comfortable so I'm one of those people that lays it flat along the frame so always keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot the third rule is treat all guns as if they are loaded at all times now the reason that this rule is important is because you don't want to get lackadaisical about the first two rules if you kind of adopt that attitude and say well you know I can point the muzzle in an unsafe direction because I know that the guns not loaded well what if you're wrong right what if you make a mistake someday something very bad could happen so even if you're 100% certain that gun is unloaded for example I am 100% certain this gun is unloaded but nevertheless I'm not going to point it directly at the camera because I always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction so remember that one treat all guns as if they're loaded at all times now of course there is an exception to that when you're cleaning a firearm and you have to clean the barrel and things like that you obviously know that it's not loaded that's really the only exceptions when you're cleaning it pretty much all other times you treat it as if it's loaded and the final rule the fourth rule is always note your target and what is beyond it and the reason that that's so important is because you never want to accidentally shoot something that's beyond the target and I'm not just talking about people or property ok I've actually seen videos where this was this was crazy that a guy they set up at a location outdoors or they had shot many times this very high-powered rifle and they didn't know that someone had moved the target just a little bit and it was actually in front of some rocks so when they fired at the target the bullet ricocheted back and took the guy's cap off it was very funny because the guy was at a heart attack but if that bullet had come back two inches lower it wouldn't have been so funny anymore so always know your target and what is beyond it not simply for the safety of other people and other property but even for yourself so those are the four safety rules you also want to make sure that you get a good set of ear protection and some good eye protection before you start shooting and you can go to pretty much you know any gun shop and buy a decent pair of ballistic goggles and you can get electronic ear muffs or you can get simple ear plugs that go into your ears but whatever it is that you choose to get make sure that you have good ear protection and eye protection before you go out shooting another important thing to understand about firearms is how the ammunition actually works now there are different calibers of ammunition for firearms right here you see an example of four different calibers the small one right here is called a 22 the one that's right next to it this is nine-millimeter this one is a two to three and this one is a 12-gauge shotgun shell the caliber tells you the diameter of the bullet but it doesn't necessarily tell you how powerful that round of ammunition is for example a two to three and a twenty two are very similar in size but as you can see the amount of gunpowder in a two to three is going to be far more than the amount of gunpowder in a 22 so even though the caliper is a similar size a two to three is a far more powerful round than a 22 now a lot of people who are new to firearms will mistakenly think that this thing is called a bullet but it is not this is actually called a cartridge so the cartridge actually consists of a few different pieces ok this main piece right here is called the casing and then if we look on the back of the casing now you see that little dot that is called a primer and then this part right here sticking out of the casing that is the part that is actually the bullet so basically what happens when you fire a gun is the firing pin and the gun hits this little dot it hits the primer and there's a little charge inside there so the primer ignites which then sets off the gunpowder and the entire casing hair is filled with gunpowder now a lot of people mistakenly think that gunpowder explodes but it does not gun powder actually burns so what happens is that it burns very quickly and as it's burning it releases gases and those gases having nowhere to go force the bullet out of the casing and down the barrel of the gun so that's the basics of how a firearm works it's extremely simple and that's the reason that a gun is going to go off every single time you pull the trigger because the mechanics and the science behind it the chemistry is not all that complicated now a 9-millimeter as you can see is exactly the same as at two to three is just a little smaller has a little bit less gunpowder in it but as you can see the bullet is a much larger diameter now if you come down to this 22 you'll notice a big difference in the 22 if we look at the back here you don't see a primer all right there's no little dot but if you look closely you'll notice that there is kind of a lip around the edge of the cartridge so the way that 22 works is it is called a rimfire so when you hit the firing pin it actually hits the edge it hits the rim of the cartridge and within that little lip is where the primer exists so from there it works just the same as a centerfire bullet the primer ignites in the rim and then the gunpowder starts to burn and it sends the bullet out of the casing then finally we have a 12-gauge shotgun shell so with 12-gauge shotguns these are no longer called cartridges they're called shells and they're pretty similar to a bullet or to a cartridge Heather for a centerfire or to a rimfire they still have a primer right in the center there and they also have gunpowder but then there are a whole bunch of small bb's that are inside right here in fact maybe this cutaway view will explain it a little bit better so as you can see here a 12-gauge shotgun shell on the right-hand side there is gunpowder in the bottom there are the bb's that are up on top and then in between there is paper that is called wadding and that is just basically holding the gun powder and the bb's away from each other and we also have a cutaway view of a 9-millimeter cartridge as you can see there we have the primer at the bottom we have the Gunpowder in the middle and we have the bullet up at the top the four calibers I showed are some of the most popular ones but they are by no means the only ones there are literally dozens and dozens of rifle calibers and handgun calibers some of them most shooters have probably never even seen and will never see the sort of firearms that shoot those calibers but there are many of them out there and this right here is just a small sampling of some of the rifle calibers that are out there and it's extremely important when you're shooting to make sure that the firearm you're using matches the caliber of the ammunition not only would it simply not fit in some cases but in others if you put an ammunition that barely fits well very bad things can happen where you could damage the gun and severely injure yourself so make sure that your ammunition caliber always matches that of the firearm personally my firearms training began with my grand father and I've also been trained by NRA instructors and San Bernardino County sheriff's now depending upon who is instructing you they're gonna start you out in a different caliber personally I think you should start out with a 22 rifle because that is the least intimidating for a beginner it has the least amount of recoil and it's also the quietest of all the firearms that you could use once you're comfortable with a 22 rifle you can move up to a 22 handgun and then from there you could go to 9-millimeter and whatever else you'd like but starting out with 22 that's definitely the best way to go I've actually seen videos where people are instructing someone and they'll hand them a shotgun or they'll hand them a really powerful handgun like a 50 caliber revolver and that's the first thing that this person has ever shot and of course they fire the thing that goes flying out of their hand or they hid themselves in the head and you have all these idiots who are off camera laughing like it's the funniest thing ever and that stuff is just it's terrible not only is it extremely dangerous because this person is brand new to shooting they could really hurt themselves or someone else but you're also gonna scare the bejesus out of them and they're never gonna want to fire a firearm again so if you have someone who's handing you a 50 caliber revolver is the very first thing you've ever shot run in the other direction okay you don't want to be taught from a person like that because there are a total jerk make sure you get trained by people who have a little more respect for your fears and your concerns as a beginning shooter so what is it that you actually plan on shooting most people will shoot either paper targets or steel targets now personally I prefer shooting steel there are three reasons that I prefer steel over paper I'm cheap number two I'm lazy and number three I don't have a really big ego when it comes to shooting you see shooting paper gets expensive you got to keep buying more paper all the time you can only shoot it what 10 20 times maybe before it's Swiss cheese and falling apart then you have to go replace it you have to walk out there take down the old beast paper hang up a new piece paper it's just time consuming and I'm lazy and I don't feel like doing all that and finally like I said I don't have a whole lot of ego so I don't need to show it off I don't need to go hey look at this great tight grouping that I got and you know it doesn't matter to me steel solves all those problems you pay for it once and it pretty much lasts forever you don't have to keep changing it you just leave it in one spot and finally well you don't take it off and show it off to people there for steel is what I prefer to shoot so if you look at the way that my steel target is hanging here you can see that I actually have these bolts that are extended out from the main brackets so most people what they will do is they'll take a bolt and they will run it flat straight from the target onto these hangers okay but when you do that that means that your target is pretty much going to hang vertically so by extending out those little Springs in there you know I have to use Springs you could use whatever you want but you can see it kind of gives a little bit more of an angle to the target it's no longer hanging straight up and down therefore it makes it even less likely that anything is going to ricochet back and hit you while you're shooting and two of the recommendations that just about every manufacturer makes for their steel targets is that for handgun rounds let's say you're shooting twenty two or nine millimeter something like that you should be no close sir than 30 feet but if you're shooting high-powered rifle rounds such as the two to three then you want to make sure that you're at least 300 feet away from the target so just a couple little safety tips to keep in mind when you're shooting steel if you would like angle it a little bit more and also make sure that you are at a safe distance whenever you're shooting when you're getting ready to shoot whether you're firing a handgun or a rifle you want to make sure that you have a good sight picture so what is a sight picture well that is making sure that your rear sight and your front sight are lined up properly with the target so let's say for example we wanted to shoot this target and we're going to be using this here revolver okay so you can see on the back of the revolver we have rear sights right here these are fiber optic sights so they kind of glow and they'd this cool bright green color and then up here at the front of the barrel is our front sight so what we want to do is take those sights and line them up so that the front dot is right in the middle of those rear two dots and that is lined up right on the target right about there and then you would fire and I gotta say this is not easy to do when looking through a camera viewfinder so it doesn't really matter if you're shooting a handgun or a long gun rifle revolver pistol whatever it happens to be the whole idea of your sight picture is always the same that that front sight is lined up right in between the dots and flush with the flush top and down flush top and bottom and then right on the target so there you go proper sight picture when it comes to the proper way to hold a long gun like a rifle or a shotgun you don't have a whole bunch of options like you do with a handgun now I am right-handed so my left hand goes up here on the fore end of the gun and my right hand comes down here on the stock and my fingers just wrap around so that's pretty much it now when you go to shoot you're going to want to take the butt of the stock and you're going to want to kind of lock that into the pocket of your shoulder and you're going to rest your cheek on this part of the stock which is the comb so basically the way that that looks is you lock it into your shoulder right here and you rest the comb on your cheek and line up your sights and that's pretty much it so make sure that when you're doing this that you always lock it in and you have a nice solid foundation the reason that that's important is because when you go to a firearm that has a lot more recoil a lot more kick to it like a shotgun for example it will bruise the heck out of your shoulder if you don't have it locked in really well and when you're shooting a 22 it's really not going to hurt because it doesn't have a lot of recoil but something powerful does so get into the habit of making sure that you mount that gun into your shoulder properly because then when you go to something that's a little bit stronger it will be more comfortable and more natural for you now let me also show you the proper hold looking forward I am NOT pointing the muzzle directly at the camera but I wanted a little bit straighter on so you get an idea of what it looks like from the front so that's it that is the proper way to hold a long gun so when you're starting you probably want to shoot from about 30 feet away from the target and as you get better you can move further and further away and even if you're a brand new shooter you pretty much can't miss when you're only at 30 feet pretty simple once you're able to hit the target consistently from a distance like 30 feet 10 yards then maybe you want to move back to 50 feet and try from there and do the same thing once you can hit the target every single time and I just keep on moving back or the other thing you could do is work on your accuracy right you could stay at 30 feet and try to get the groupings of the bullets as tight as possible I mean you whatever you feel like doing whatever appeals to you the most personally I kind of enjoy shooting distance I don't really care about tight groupings and accuracy I I like just getting further and further away and seeing if I can still hit but you can't really miss from 50 feet with a rifle when it comes to the proper way to hold a handgun you have a few different options so let's say you're holding a revolver like this you would take your main three fingers your pinky finger ring finger and middle finger and you wrap them around the grip and your thumb goes over the top your index finger stays on the frame until you're ready to shoot then when you are ready to shoot you place it inside the trigger guard on the trigger now if you're left-handed it's basically the exact opposite so you would do the same thing with your left hand take those three fingers wrap around the grip thumb goes that way and your index finger is on the frame until you're ready to shoot now if you're a beginner you shouldn't be shooting one-handed you should be shooting two-handed and the whole idea is to get the most firm grip that you possibly can get on that handgun so what you're going to want to do is take the palm of your hand and wrap that around those fingers and then you take all four of your fingers here and you wrap them underneath the trigger guard your thumb goes up here against the frame and then this thumb crosses over the top and that gives you a nice solid foundation and a good grip left to right and the thing that you can do from this point is you can actually change this there are a few different options so you could take that left thumb and wrap it this way and you could put it on top and then put your right thumb over another option is you can take your index finger here and put it in front of the trigger guard now personally the way that I like to shoot is I like to keep my thumb against the frame and I like to keep my finger in front of the trigger guard and for me that just feels the most stable it feels like I have the most control over the gun now one thing you want to be very very careful of when you're shooting a revolver is this space right in here it's called a cylinder gap and it's basically a little bit of space between the cylinder and the end of the bore of the barrel right there every time you shoot the gun and the gases are released from the cartridge a little bit escapes out the side if you're shooting a smaller caliper like a 22 it could burn your finger if you're shooting a really large caliper it could blow your finger clean off so make sure that you keep all your fingers away from that cylinder gap and you'll be fine if it's in front of the trigger guard and it's against the frame like I just showed you but that's just something to be mindful of is don't get your fingers up near that area now one thing you don't want to do when you're shooting two-handed is called tea cupping and that's something they do in the movies a lot you'll see a person like this with the palm of their hand on the bottom of the butt of the gun kind of hold them like that like a little teacup the reason you don't want to do this is because it's completely useless this hand is not really supporting the gun it's not helping anything all the work is in your right hand - we'll be shooting single-handed so those are some of your options of different ways to hold and like I say all the time experiment see what feels the most comfortable for you and what allows you to have the most control over the gun so once you're comfortable with the rifle then I would suggest moving to a handgun now there are different stances that you can use with a handgun now a rifle obviously you just put it in your shoulder you're at kind of an angle and you shoot hold on hold on I can already see the comments people are making on the video right like that's not true and you have to do this you have to do that and look like I said the whole purpose of this video is to just be very very basic ok I'm not going into every little detail and every little nuance about shooting so I know the criticism that I'm gonna get forgive me for not going into explicit detail about everything that's not what I'm here to do but I do want to talk about handgun stances because there's two different ones that people tend to use one is called an isosceles dance now I'm not going to point the gun directly at the camera because I don't want to shoot my camera but basically you are standing with your feet square over your shoulders and you have the gun straight out at the target once again I'm not pointing it up at the camera but you get the idea so there are two different ways you can do this some people they like to let me turn a little bit so I can show you they like to just totally lock both arms out right lock out their elbows other people they like to keep their arms bent a little bit so they can take the recoil another stance is called a Weaver stance which is similar to shooting a rifle which is more of a martial arts kind of stance you're kind of standing with your body at a little bit of an angle to the target true martial arts dance you're totally sideways but for these purposes okay you're at a little bit of an angle and you have your lead arm which I'm right-handed so my right arm is a little bit straighter than the left and the left is bent so again some people do this with their arm locked out it's all up to you there is no right or wrong way to do this these are just a bunch of different options and I suggest that you try them all out and see what's the most comfortable because remember safety and accuracy are the most important things when you're shooting right so figure out what allows you to be the most accurate and what's the safest way for you to be handling that firearm so as I said once you have shot a rifle from 30 feet then move on to a handgun and in this case I'm using a single-action Ruger revolver so I have to actually pull the hammer back every single time I shoot and let's try it from a mere 30 feet I haven't even count I know it's ten shots I don't know what I'm on that was ten so once again once you're comfortable at that distance then you can start moving it back a little bit further but it's good to start from around the thirty foot mark when you're shooting something at distance it's also very important that you learn how to breathe properly now if you're shooting something that's fairly close let's say you're within 30 feet or 50 feet well your breathing technique it's not that important because you're pretty much going to hit it it's your breath isn't going to affect it that much but once you start getting out to further distances I mean as you can imagine if you're holding a rifle and you move that thing just a tiny little bit well when you're thirty feet from the target it's not going to make much difference when you're 300 feet from the target or 600 feet from the target right that tiny little bit of movement could mean that you're not even gonna hit it anymore so the way that I was taught is that you hold your breath right you get ready take your shot line everything up and then just inhale and hold it and then fire now sometimes that can be a little difficult for people especially if you're still having a hard time holding it right and you're holding your breath for a long time one of the things that I personally like to do is I try to breathe very slowly and I pull the trigger on the exhale so I'll take a long breath in and then just slowly exhale [Music] and then fire if you just try to breathe like normal that little bit of motion is gonna be causing the gun to move a little too much when you're shooting very far distances like I said when you're shooting up close it doesn't really matter that much but just another little tip for you if you're shooting something further than thirty and fifty feet away as you get more comfortable with shooting at distance you can start to go for things like this now you can see we got our target right there and that is approximately 100 yards or 300 feet away from where we're shooting and you can also hear that it is very windy day today which makes it all the more difficult to make a shot like this and most people when they start to shoot 100 yards well they start to do things like set up a bench they use a rifle scope they like to they like to lay down flat on the ground we're not doing any of that we're gonna shoot offhand we're gonna shoot standing 22 with iron sights cuz that's the way a man shoots you don't do any of this laying down and using scopes not when you're a young student coming out of nowhere it's normally reserved Augusta crowd just on his feet I think he's going to be shooting about it he's gonna be doing about 22 caliber no he can't be pleased with that he missed that one but I think he's gonna go again I think he's gonna go again this young Cinderella let's see what he has here oh it's understeer after three shots he got it right on the steel he's got to be pleased with that normally reserved Augusta crowds on his feet it's warm a greenskeeper about to become the mojave desert champion oh he missed that one the tears in his eyes I guess he lands up his last shot oh it's under steel once again so as you can see I don't always make it it's not an easy shot now once you finish shooting well your day is still not done your last step is to clean the firearm and there are a lot of different cleaners out there I like this stuff I like ballast all it was actually invented by the Germans he does a good job and product it was invented actually in World War 1 so it's well over a hundred years old and when you clean your firearm you want to make sure that you have all the proper stuff you know you get cleaning patches you can get a bunch of little brushes you can get a cleaning rod which you place one of these brushes on it allows you to clean the barrel and what you want to do when you're cleaning your firearm is basically just read the manual write read the instructions understand how to take the weapon apart find out which pieces and parts that you need to clean and how to clean them and most firearms have two different ways that you can clean them one is called field stripping which is the where you take apart just a couple little things and clean that and then you can also do a full cleaning where you're taking apart everything in the weapon taking apart all these little pins and cleaning out everything for the hammer and all that sort of stuff so as I said once you're done shooting this is going to be your last step so there are tons of cleaning kits that you can find out there at gun shops and be sure to ask about you know what's the best stuff and what they recommend this is pretty much all I use is this just a few patches and a few brushes the ballast all and that pretty much takes care of it thank you so much for watching this episode of Lutherville I hope you found it informative and helpful and once again I know I said this at the beginning but let me emphasize it once more do not rely on videos to be your exclusive form of training if you want to learn about firearms please go out and have a proactive F in them if if I think uh if that's you know go out and have a professional instruct you okay and I know a lot of you are intimidated by firearms I mean they can be scary things if you've never touched one before but you can do it you can do anything that you set your mind to right well I did it again did you hear that it was said that anything you stick to mine too it's like I have a speech impediment all of a sudden anyway maybe using firearms is an ambition that really scares you but remember if your ambitions don't scare you they're not big enough [Music] [Music] Oh [Music]

Channel: Luthorville: Off-Grid Education & Adventures

Views: 205,213

Keywords: luthorville, off-grid, tiny house, educational, house, home, home building, sustainable, green, eric muss-barnes, firearm, gun, pistol, revolver, shotgun, safety, caliber, sight picture, kirsten joy weiss

Id: 3kXNIoGUshs

Length: 40min 45sec (2445 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 22 2017