Even an unloaded pistol should never be left about. Someone is sure to "snap" it and ruin the lock, lugging at the hammer and pulling at the trigger at the same time, just as people rip out the teeth of the gear of an automobile by altering gear without first taking out the clutch.

If the pistol is loaded, someone is sure to get shot by a fool. Both the owner who left the loaded pistol about and the man who fired it "not knowing it was loaded" are equally to blame.

Aiming firearms in "fun" at people is not empty-headedness solely but a form of hysteria.

It is done by the same people who laugh when at a funeral, or commence to rock a boat in "fun" and cause so many drowning accidents.

The best thing that can happen to such people is for them to "clean a pistol not knowing it was loaded" and shoot themselves.

There is a story of a man who wished to kill a monkey. When he noticed the monkey was looking at him, he took an empty gun, pointed it at his own head, and pulled the trigger. This he repeated many times, propping the b.u.t.t of the heel plate against a tree and the muzzle against his forehead.

Then the man loaded the gun, put it to full c.o.c.k, and laid it on the ground and went off.

As soon as he was out of sight, the monkey crept up to the gun and repeated what he had seen the man do.

Result--monkey's head blown off.

This is the exact mentality of the "did not know it was loaded" fool.

The only difference is that, as soon as such people kill others on the "did not know it was loaded" principle, there are plenty of others to take their place.

As they are always acquitted when they say they "did not know it was loaded," others imitate, knowing there is no danger of their being hung for this murder.

But if you shoot another man, even if you think he is going to murder you, unless you have let him first have a shot at you, you run the risk of being hung for it; if he turns to run away you must not shoot him in the back as he runs away or you get hung for it.

Parents encourage children in the criminal folly, aiming at people; they give them toy pistols and play themselves with the children pretending to be frightened when the child comes round the corner and fires the popgun or pistol with paper detonator at them.

When this child grows up, he always thinks that to point a firearm at any one and pull the trigger is "humour" and takes the first opportunity to pick up a firearm and point it at people. "Want of the sense of humour" is the unpardonable sin in the opinion of so-called "Humorous writers," who consider any one not laughing at their obvious drivel is wanting in a sense of humour, and if he abuses mothers-in-law or throws bricks at a starving cat, he considers himself a humorist.

Surely any one pointing a firearm at others in play should be punished by two years' hard labour. This would soon teach people that they must curb their "sense of humour."

There are plenty of other "jokes" left such as pulling a chair from under any one about to sit down, or putting tin tacks in his boots; but of course they have the disadvantage of not actually killing him, and you may be prosecuted for damages, but the joke of shooting a man on the "did not know it was loaded" principle entails no unpleasant consequences on the shooter. He is always acquitted even as when a defendant said "I only pulled the trigger to frighten her, having forgotten to unload my rifle when I left the trenches in France to come back to England." Imagine a soldier not unloading and cleaning his rifle when coming out of the trenches, but leaving it to rust during his leave home in England!!!

CHAPTER x.x.xII

USING ONE'S BRAINS IN SHOOTING

Pistol shooting is not merely the mechanical art most people think it is, a man who does not use his brains and think out things will go on making the same mistakes all his life and never improve or become a good shot.

There is no such thing as luck. A bad shot means a fault somewhere, and the good shot is he who can diagnose the cause of this fault and correct it.

I saw a most ridiculous instance of a man not using his brains.

A man was practising next me at Gastinne-Renette's. He shot some two hundred shots, beautifully grouped but all to the left.

I asked a friend if he had noticed this. He answered that he had seen this man shooting constantly, that he was a regular attendant and had been for years.

He always put his shots to the same side of the target, and had never discovered that if he only aimed a little to the right, he would hit the target.

I saw a man counting stamps at an hotel. He was wetting his finger to turn them over and got the whole lot into one sticky ma.s.s.

This latter man was perhaps so used to counting paper money by wetting his finger that he was doing it mechanically with these stamps whilst thinking of something else.

The former man looked an intelligent man and was so most probably in his business, but he cannot ever have used his brains in pistol shooting.

I put a man right once who was shooting at a black "man" figure in compet.i.tion.

He shot very badly. I asked him what was the matter. Unlike most men who tell you to mind your own business, and make you chary of helping any one, this man asked me if I could a.s.sist him.

He said he could not see his front sight on the target and feared something was wrong with his eyes.

I showed him it was not his eyes but the black front sight of his pistol on the black target which was at fault.

I put a big blob of Chinese white on his front sight squeezed from a water colour tube.

He won first prize with a highest possible score.

Like the conventional man with his doctor who has cured him, he never even thanked me.

Getting into bad habits in shooting has constantly to be guarded against.

A horse is very apt to get carrying his head crooked, tongue lolling, hitching, etc., unless he is constantly corrected. So must a shooter watch and correct his own faults.

It is as well to get a good shot to watch you shooting occasionally and to point out to you undesirable tricks or habits you may be getting into, without noticing it.

Some men, when shotgun shooting, gradually get into the habit of carrying the muzzle too low so that they sweep others as they walk. This is the result of shooting much alone, and so getting out of the habit of noticing when they are swinging their guns across others.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE PERFECT TARGET

Most targets are very imperfect, not only from the bull's-eye being a wrong size, but the scoring on them is very rudimentary, and does not show the real value of the hits. For instance, take the usual English five hundred yards' target.

If a few hundred men have fired at these, there are a quant.i.ty of highest possible scores made which have to be shot off and much time wasted thereby.

Seven lucky shots just touching the extreme edge of the bull's-eye counts a highest possible. A score consisting of six shots into the very centre of the bull's-eye and one shot just grazing the edge of the bull's-eye counts one point less than the former, though a much better score.

No target except the one I am about to describe enables one to know if a bullet has. .h.i.t the absolute centre of the target. In other targets you have a bull's-eye more or less small, and any shot in the absolute centre counts no better than one on the edge of the bull's-eye.

A perfect target should fulfil the following conditions: