This appeared in my timeline originally without the edit, just the announcement they had Blue Glocks:
For those who do not know, blue is the color given to training non-firing replicas of firearms. It is the standard across the Gun Community pretty much as when you see a white box with a red cross, you know it is a first aid kid or something to that effect. Although the ones that are just inert replicas are totally blue, the ones that fire Simmunition rounds look exactly like the one above.
So yes, a bunch of people jumped in and cried foul as loud as possible and with good reason, and Arnzen Arms LLC smartly recognized the screw up and fixed it, so they get kudos for that and my respect.
What drove me nuts was those commenting that the gun painted like that was not a big deal and in fact it was plumb silly that people would complain about the gun painted in blue.
People like these scare me. Not only they have not gotten the idea of Gun Safety right, but they think themselves above making mistakes. Why? Because they have the training, they are professionals in their fields, they know their shit. But we have heard that before:
The reason the Gun Culture is one of the safest to be around is because our almost fanatical respect for Gun Safety. It is not only the adherence to the Four Rules, but the constant check and double-check and the three back ups for the double checks. It is constant vigilance because we have acknowledged that even the best and safest of us will have a day off and we know the safety instilled in our actions will lessen a screw up or even stop it.
Or you can be Chest-Thumper and end up with unscheduled extra holes in your body.
That blue was indeed an incident waiting to happen!
God damnit!!! I hate people like this.
I happen to be a safety guy. I like a manual safety. No system is perfect, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read about some guy putting a new hole in his ass while holstering his Glock because he got the trigger snagged on something.
I’ve seen it in practice, a guy holstering his gun and having an AD. Fortunately he didn’t shoot himself, the bullet missed him by that much, but there was a powder burn (and probably a skid mark) on his pants.
I feel more confident with a manual safety. When I carried my M&P compact, I carried the thumb safety model. I can’t tell you how many “gun guys” would scoff at or verbally attack a thumb safety (or loaded chamber indicator, or other feature) as a “lawyer gun.”
If they wanted to live life on the edge, fine. I have a wife and a kid and enough holes in my ass already. My choice to carry a gun with an additional safety feature wasn’t just a matter of personal preference, but some sort of affront to their manhood.
Ask ’em how they’d feel about real bullets designed to look like Simunition rounds.