Firearms Training

In my story, the company is badly managed and dysfunctional. No one actually expects to shoot the guns, they're more for show than anything and to threaten people with, in extreme cases. There is a plausibility issue since, in this society, guns are not generally available so it's more likely people will be wary of them than have a casual attitude. To partly address this, I've decided to have the MC be given verbal instructions when she receives the pistol. The manager who gives the advice has never fired a firearm before and has little idea what firearms training should consist of. Using a firing range for practice isn't an option as there aren't any. You could argue that since this is the future, detailed information about firearms should be easily available on the internet but a great deal of unreliable and fake information would also be available. I'm not trying to define what should happen, I'm more interested in how incompetent people might screw things up. The firearm issue isn't a central theme of the story so I'm not overly concerned about it but a reader who is a gun enthusiast might be.

 

As someone who works in a building with armed security, the people who are authorized to carry weapons are going to have training and probably be required to keep up a certain level of proficiency to keep their certification to carry. You don't give an armed guard a gun and tell him/her to go to work - that's not how that happens. Most building security personnel, at least in the US, do not carry guns - and it costs more to pay for trained security who are authorized to handle weapons. My workplace actually had to go through that upgrade after a security scare at a similar institution in town.

So, depending on how far you are in the future (especially if the story is set in the US), I'm not sure how plausible it would be to have an armed security guard just handed a weapon. While the US is more cavalier with guns than the vast majority of other countries, we also have a pretty darn strong gun-safety culture for people like security guards. That's probably going to go double in countries (or US cities) where guns are less common or more restricted - gun regulations tend to include a lot of training or certification requirements.

If you're in the far-future, you can explain that away with the culture having moved in a different direction, but if you're looking at a near modern setting in the U.S. or another developed country, the realism may have to start with the fact that it's highly unlikely (and probably highly illegal) to employ someone professionally as an armed guard who does not have the requisite training.

 

If I can have a highly intelligent character dumb down a basic frag grenade.
Basically pull the pin and get rid of it. (700 years in the future).
Then you could certainly dumb down basic weapons handling for a small
arms training course.

 

Also, despite everything I said about training earlier - the catch to going to through a training program is that it's entirely possible for a training/certification program to be utter, useless garbage.

 

To be fair they aren't human, and have not really heard how the grenade works.
Well beyond not being on the receiving end. It was not something covered in
her basic training, as it took place on a space ship. Explosives for exercise purposes
are kinda frowned upon in such an environment.

So yes you are most correct, that training/certification can be a bit dodgy or useless.
(Though we are assuming the one issuing the weapons in somewhat wanton fashion
to their guards would at least have a working knowledge of how the basic functions
of a pistol works, and be able to offer a few pointers on the ins and outs of what to
do and what not to do. In the bare bones minimum.)

 

To be honest, I didn't even realize that you could put a magazine in upside down. Why would they even design it that way? A glock magazine has a lip at the bottom so there is no way to shove it in wrong.

 

I have to ask when and where the story is set in. A security guard in the UK would have to be defending a key target under a terrorist threat to possess a firearm, and have had a hug level of training and a certification of health from a GP, a psychologist and three people who are not related to our live with you. Furthermore, any licence here has to be renewed every three years.

https://www.quora.com/How-do-UK-police-compare-to-US-police

Private security would be a different kettle of fish but a similar amount of accountability would be expected.

 

The story is set in an unspecified western country in the 22nd century. My current plan is to have the MC booked in for firearms training which she'll have to complete before being issues with a weapon. The story doesn't actually require she has a weapon or that she uses one. It does require her colleagues be armed so not providing her with a weapon too would be inconsistent. The organisation is affiliated to the government and has far more authority than competence. The inclusion of firearms is to illustrate the status and degree of authority the organisation has, rather than for its members to engage in armed combat. The lack of thorough training and assessment would illustrate their incompetence. Having said that, the setting also needs to be reasonably plausible while being at least a little screwed up in pretty much every conceivable way. I'm trying to avoid bogging this down with tedious details although over the top bureaucracy could be entertaining.

 

> In some areas, particularly rural areas or in the western states, all you have to do is be tall enough to put your money on the counter at a gun show.

There is basically no truth to this.

> Semi-automatic

Automatic just means "you don't have to cock it." People who talk about guns pretty much only say "automatic" in my part of the world. When we want to talk about machine guns, we say "fully automatic."

And I might take that job, but only if I'm the only person working there. The second they hire some other schmuck and give them a gun, too? I'm out.

 

Hey, moose--you *do* cock a revolver manually before each shot. The trigger pull does that.

 

...Note that there are automatic revolvers, which are an exception: they get cocked the same way a normal automatic does.

 

Oh, one more technicality and I'll stop posting: it's not the cocking that is significant (because DAO automatics are a thing): it's getting a round into the chamber and ready to fire. A double action revolver uses the trigger pull to cycle the action and ready a round, where a double action automatic uses the recoil of the weapon to cycle the action and then uses the trigger pull only to draw back the striker/hammer/whatever.

Ok, I'll shut up now.

 

Strictly speaking, you still have to cock/ready all of them, though. It's not a casual use thing. They're just synonymous. Like flammable and inflammable.

I guess this article suggests that a "semi-automatic" is a specific *kind* of "automatic."

https://crimefictionbook.com/2016/07/07/automatic-vs-semi-automatic-vs-fully-automatic-firearms-whats-the-difference/

That seems to reflect my thinking on the subject. Although I've never felt the need to specify that in conversation. Then again, that may stem from the fact that in any given conversation, most people know what gun you're talking about--otherwise you wouldn't be discussing it with them.

This article disagrees and seems to take your position:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/semi-automatic-gun-assault-weapon-definitions/

....but they get so many other facts wrong that I'm kind of inclined to chuck the baby out with the dishwater. (For instance, it's not illegal for American civilians to own machine guns, and there is no such license as the one they mention in that section.)

In the end I kind of boil it down to something I read during my formative years:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/0b/28/ab/0b28ab4a5e7f65b80e15e297b4106784--colt----pistol.jpg

...that something being the engraving on the side of my dad's 1911. In short, if John Moses thinks it's automatic, by God, it's automatic.

 

Full autos are "Class III" weapons that require a background check and a $200 transfer fee to buy. It has been illegal to make full auto weapons for the civilian market since 1986, so there's a limited pool of them in circulation. Furthermore, some states add additional restrictions on their ownership or ban them outright (Illinois is a non-Class III state).

Class II, IIRC, covers short-barreled rifles and shotguns, as well as silencers. I think. And I'm pretty sure Class I is just guns.

 

Modifying a rifle to fire full auto is actually just as expensive as buying a full auto rifle in the first place--it costs the same amount, since the $200 tax stamp is associated with the "auto sear." The real catch is that there are less than 200,000 legal auto sears in the universe, and the shitty, stamped steel they're made of has become the most valuable metal on the planet.

Brand new AR-15? You can probably get away under 600 dollars. Thirty year old auto sear? Now you're up in the five-digit range.

 

So, just looking at this now - but to bring it back to the story - if you're in the 22nd Century, you can do pretty much whatever you want in terms of safety regs. You can also do pretty much anything you want in terms of how the gun works and what it fires. So, there's a part of me that thinks you might be better off just making stuff up to fill holes ("See this light, when it's off, that means the laser has cooled down. If it's on, don't put your hand in front of the barrel, and don't holster it - not unless you want to burn a hole through your pants.")

 

Omg the lemming is right--in 200 years, who says they'll still be using guns anyway? It'll be some electric ray built into the ceiling that automatically shocks the crap out of anyone the security guard gets mad at.