The Volokh Conspiracy

Last year (I think,) a woman in Georgia shot herself in the foot while reacting to hot brass down her top. I've seen muzzles flailing in all directions from hot brass. I don't know of any fatalities, but the potential is certainly there.

I'm digging the blonde.

I know I'm a broken record about this, but:

One FIRES a gun.

One SHOOTS a target.

Grammatically, the object of "shoot" is always the thing that the bullet is supposed to hit. Unless you are the Lone Ranger disarming an opponent in a black-and-white TV show, you do not "shoot a gun."

And now, back to our regular programming.

here's the flip-side to a comment posted several days ago regarding the ACLU blog:

why do gun-nuts sing hosannas for each and every exercise of the purported 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, while the exercise of other fundamental/constitutional rights receives mute applause at best?

also, as per the use of the word "vice" in the video-caption above, see this.

a strictly textual interpretation of a faint attempt at wit is somewhat misplaced, no?

I usually try to swap places if my brass is likely to go down the open top of the person next to me. If I wear an open collar shirt then I always put a tight t-shirt under it to prevent this problem. A friend of mine got a hot shell casing between the temple piece of his shooting glasses and his cheek which made for an odd placed burn.

I have occasionally run across comments that well endowed women have a natural advantage when shooting prone so maybe that makes up for their larger, um, opportunity for misplaced shell casings.

Well for a New York centric person, firing a gun is a vice as guns are verboten . As we see it happens hidden away in a a basement with barely a sign to signify the location. You can definitely tell that the correspondent and others feel they are being a bit edgy for going to a gun range.

On the upside, if more and more of the oppressed decide to frequent these "shooteasies" then it is more likely the public opinion will turn against the gun grabbers in the long run.

Gambling is also "good clean fun" for many, and yet one of the duties of the "vice squad" is to enforce anti-gambling laws. I don't think that "vice" has quite the negative connotations you think it does.

In 1998, I purchased memberships for my wife and I at the West Side range, and paid them to handle the the paperwork for pistol permits (it has to be done by a pro to be done properly).

I can't begin to tell you how badly they fouled it up, and the employee that did now owns the place.

Never got them.

Oh and:

Deliberate gun misuse is a serious crime, careless gun use is folly (and sometimes) a crime, careful gun use and training is good, but none strikes me as "vice.

Though not the primary meaning of the word, people often refer colloquially to activities that they greatly enjoy and indulge in as a vice, without necessarily any real aspect of moral condemnation implied. I could see how someone could enjoy target shooting enough to call it their vice just the same as with anything. People call chocolate a vice, for instance.

I know from personal observation.

We want video!

RowerinVA: I'm with Tennesseean on this -- what's your basis for your assertion?

This is not the only thing to group guns as a vice. It is "Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco" after all.

where's the "vice"?

As any Harvard Law Review editor could tell you, the vice is in spending money for ammo, targets and range fees that could have been donated to UNICEF.

Another gripe. Inanimate objects CANNOT be violent, so it is criminal violence, not "gun" violence.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. They regulate ALL the fun. Except sex.

Shhh! They'll start regulating cleavages at shooting ranges and pretty soon... well, let's just say it's all a slippery slope from there.

I had a spent case land on my lip once (maybe I was pouting due to poor marksmanship?) and the brass was so hot it stuck there. Nasty experience.

Eugene,

I'm surprised you don't get the use of "vice." It's not necessarily used to mean an immoral act. It's used to refer to the vice squad, as in Miami Vice. (For example, "Ma'am, I'm Crockett, Vice.")

The reporter in the video even refers to Charlie's Angels.

The "misuse" of the word vice, seems to me to come from the video itself. She gives the impression throughout the whole thing that she is having fun doing something she "isn't supposed to be doing". Like watching porn or something.

It is a vice with me. I am responsible for our armed officer program in a corp. setting and I use it as an excuse to shoot quite a bit. As to the hot brass down the shirt issue, a revolver will cure that for ya.

"I FIRED an arrow into the air, it fell to earth I knew not where"? I have to vote with Bob in SeaTac on this one.

I can see target shooting being vice in a conspicuous consumption sort of sense.

Taking someone for an afternoon at the rifle range, particularly with a .22, is a lot cheaper date than most things you can go do. And that holds true whether your guest is adult or child.

why do gun-nuts sing hosannas for each and every exercise of the purported 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, while the exercise of other fundamental/constitutional rights receives mute applause at best?

I’d lay odds these folks would disagree. BTW, from what they say, the Pink Pistols are much more welcome at gun rights events than they are at gay rights shindigs. As for the ACLU: They claim “neutrality” and believe in reasonable regulation. Yet if any other regulatory process in the U.S. produced the same blatantly discriminatory results as the firearm licensing process in their own home town of NYC, they’d be up in arms. (Couldn’t resist.) Apparently it’s okay by the ACLU if people are discriminated against in the name of gun control.

I was born, raised, educated and worked in New York City. Many people there are completely freaked by guns. I know because I was one of them until I thought the whole thing through carefully and realized that I had been brainwashed by the culture I was raised in.

I’ll second that, and NYC isn’t the only place it happens. I average several students a year who have moved down here to Texas from someplace where “guns are bad.” One familiar reason they come to me is that they are now going with someone who actually owns a couple of the infernal devices. I’ve seen adults who would rather play with a rattlesnake than pick up my Crossman BB rifle.

OTOH the disease is not incurable. If I can coach them through the first shots and get them to hitting a target the end result ranges from, “Is that what all the fuss was about?” to “Is there any more ammo?”

The ejected casings from the fired rounds are hot, they often get ejected backwards and to the side, and there are places you don't want them to get stuck, even for the second or two it takes to remove them.

Well known in these parts as the “Brass Dance.” It’s particularly annoying in the middle of a concealed handgun license practical.

Cowboy hats keep brass out of unpleasant places. When shooting SASS, my lever guns stacks all the empties on my hat brim. A tilt of the head, and they land in a nice pile easy for picking up (I save my brass and reload). Of course, I had to switch from a white hat to a black hat to hide the "trail" marks from the dirty case mouths rolling around on my hat.