A Visual Aid

My wife is pretty great when it comes to firearms. I wouldn't call her an enthusiast quite yet, but she respects the hobby, doesn't take much of an issue with where I'd like my collection to go, and has gone shooting with me several times (and she was enthusiastic about it at least once). 

We were watching the A-Team movie on FX this weekend and there was a scene where one of the film's villains was pursuing the Mr. T character with some kind of automatic weapon. As Baracus was being peppered with gunfire my wife remarked "whoa, that definitely looks like a semi-automatic."

Not one to waste a "teachable moment" I asked her to define a semi-auto. She was under the impression that semi-auto meant that a pull of the trigger fired several rounds (what in actuality is a "burst fire"). I told her so, and what a semi-auto was, but she kept asking questions, and I could feel the confusion piling up. Well, a semi-auto means that one pull of the trigger is one shot. Like an over/under? No, that's different, that's like a revolver, it's one pull of the trigger but it's not using the power of the round to eject the spent cartridge and load a new one. How does a revolver work? Etc., etc. I was just making things worse, so I ducked out, grabbed a pen and pad, and drew this:

ORIGINAL CONTENT DO NOT STEAL

My thinking in the moment was to divide up handguns, shotguns, and rifles into categories. Handguns are semi-auto and revolver. Shotguns are pump, semi-auto, and over/under. Rifles are semi-auto and bolt-action. That thing at the bottom is a clip, because I am a masochist and decided to seize the opportunity to correct her on the clip/magazine distinction.

What I did after telling her what the drawings represented (I'm particularly proud of the precision rendering of the semi-auto shotgun) was draw lines to connect the things that had similar actions. A solid line connects the semi-auto handgun, shotgun, and rifle, since they all work pretty much the same way - trigger pull, shot fired, action works to eject spent shell and chamber a new one. The handgun and rifle take detachable magazines, so I drew those, but didn't dwell on that distinction.

Another solid line connects the pump-action shotgun with the bolt-action rifle. Both of these guns require the user to manually manipulate the action, either the pump of the shotgun or the bolt of the rifle. Bolt rifles can store their ammunition in an internal or external/detachable magazine, but I had the sense to realize this didn't matter so I didn't dwell on it.

The dotted line connects the revolver and the o/u because they work similarly - the operator manually places the rounds in the chamber, closes up the weapon, and then fires. By virtue of the mechanism - the clockwork in the o/u that alternates which barrel fires, and the mechanical linkage between the trigger, hammer, and revolving barrel in the revolver - one trigger pull equals one shot, but neither would be considered a "semi-auto."

Why post this? Besides the fact that I never miss an opportunity to show off my gun drawing skills, honed through years of middle school practice? Well, teaching new people about guns (despite me being a fairly new person myself) is one of the things I really love about the hobby, and I'm always trying to better my technique. This was a situation where I was talking a mile a minute about things that made perfect sense to me, but only served to confuse my wife, so I had a flash of inspiration to reduce it to a much simpler series of drawings. The ease of making these solid and dotted line connections surprised me as I was doing it - the act of teaching allowed me to see the taxonomy in a new way. 

Firearms are a dense hobby with a lot to learn. A lot of people in the world don't take the time to learn things which seem second nature to us - look at Washington for countless examples of people who don't understand what an AR-15 is, don't know the clip/magazine distinction, or the difference between semi-auto and full-auto. As with any hobby we're passionate about, it's easy to rope in bystanders and get everyone bogged down in minutiae, but that's not the best path to take with newbies.

Another lesson: pick your battles. Yes it's always tempting to seize the moment to educate someone on what's a clip and what's a magazine, but my drawing - and the conversation - would have been far more elegant had I just left that alone for the time being.