{"id":54919,"date":"2020-05-16T14:31:55","date_gmt":"2020-05-16T19:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=54919"},"modified":"2020-05-16T14:31:55","modified_gmt":"2020-05-16T19:31:55","slug":"54919","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=54919","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Meet the gun safety instructor holding ‘office hours’ on Zoom<\/a>
\nGun rights advocates are promoting safety training in response to record-breaking numbers of arms sales amid Covid-19<\/em><\/p>\n

On a recent afternoon in San Jose, California, Chuck Rossi held up his AR-15 in front of his computer camera, talking through how to hold the weapon safely, and how to load it with ammunition.<\/p>\n

\u201cAR-15s are modular. They\u2019re like Legos for men,\u201d Rossi said. The man on the other side of the Zoom call chuckled.<\/p>\n

Rossi is an activist turned safety instructor, one of the many gun owners across the country who are using Zoom or social media to teach new gun owners how to use their weapons.<\/p>\n

The coronavirus pandemic has driven record-breaking numbers of gun sales in the United States, as gun sellers have succeeded in being categorized as \u201cessential businesses\u201d. At least anecdotally, many of the millions of guns sold during the pandemic have gone to first-time gun buyers, sparking concerns about potential increases in domestic violence, gun accidents and child gun deaths. Gun control advocates say the panic-buying during a time of anxiety, uncertainty and economic distress has also made gun suicide a particular concern.<\/p>\n

In response, gun rights advocates have focused on safety training, with some offering free sessions to make sure new gun owners understand how to operate their weapons \u2013 and feel welcomed to the gun community.<\/p>\n

Rossi was an early Facebook employee who left the company in 2018, and still lives in San Jose. He co-founded Open Source Defense, a Silicon Valley gun rights group. The group\u2019s founders live across the country, but many of them are current or former tech workers. Between 20% and 30% of Americans say they personally own a gun, a number that has fallen for decades, and the group aims to grow the base of American gun owners by being friendly, digitally savvy and \u201czero percent\u201d focused on culture wars. Zoom \u201coffice hours\u201d for new owners is one of their initiatives.<\/p>\n

When he signed up for a Zoom gun safety session, one new gun owner, a 40-year-old tech company worker from San Jose, said he expected he would be chatting with \u201csome hillbilly NRA guy\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs he even going to be nice to me?\u201d the tech worker, who is black, wondered.\u00a0Instead he got Rossi, who works in the same industry and lives in the same town.\u00a0Just a few years ago, the new gun owner, who asked that his name not be used, said he was someone who had believed that AR-15s should be banned.<\/p>\n

In early March, as concerns about coronavirus grew, his company told employees not to worry, that \u201cthe government has it under control, there\u2019s going to be a vaccine.\u201d Then he went to grocery store, \u201cand there was nothing\u201d so he had to go to his parent\u2019s house to get toilet paper.<\/p>\n

He starting thinking about stories of civil unrest during the Los Angeles riots or Hurricane Katrina and said he worried about desperate people, hungry people, who might see homes in his nice San Jose neighborhood as soft targets.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople take from those who have,\u201d he said. How likely was it that he would ever be a target? \u201cOne in a million,\u201d he said. \u201cI consider it an extreme impossibility. But why not be prepared?\u201d\u00a0In mid-March he went to buy self-defense weapons: a handgun and, because shotguns were sold out, an AR-15, which retails for about $1,000.<\/p>\n

The new gun owner\u2019s parents were appalled, and worried about the safety of his young children, ages three and one. His mother tried to get his brother to intervene. Instead, his brother bought himself three guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The new gun buyer said the Zoom session was part of his attempt to be responsible. Rossi, hefting his own high-end AR-15, recapped the principles of gun safety: always keep the weapon\u2019s muzzle pointed in a safe direction. Keep your finger off the trigger until you\u2019re ready to fire. Be aware of what might be behind the target you\u2019re shooting at. Treat every gun as if it\u2019s loaded.<\/p>\n

They did some troubleshooting: what should he do if an ammunition round got jammed inside his gun? How long would his military-surplus ammo be usable?\u00a0Ammo didn\u2019t go bad, Rossi said. He was still \u201cshooting rounds\u201d from the second world war and \u201csurplus from the Korean war\u201d.<\/p>\n

While \u201cwhite Americans tend to be more vocal about their gun ownership\u201d, the new owner said, being a black gun owner didn\u2019t feel special.\u00a0But it came with different concerns. He was more afraid a police officer might shoot him than that someone else might attack him on the street; he would \u201cnever\u201d carry a gun in public.<\/p>\n

If he ever had to call the police to his home, he said, he would emphasize: \u201cThe black guy with the gun is the homeowner.\u201d\u00a0Owning guns had already shifted some of his political opinions. He said he still supported limits on larger-capacity ammunition magazines. But when he bought his guns, he said, he had to wait 10 days to get them. \u201cThat was an eternity to me,\u201d he said. \u201cAre these really common sense gun laws?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rossi was encouraged to hear this, and said he\u2019d try to persuade the new gun owner about why he actually needed larger-capacity magazines next. The two men made a plan to go shooting in person as soon as possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meet the gun safety instructor holding ‘office hours’ on Zoom Gun rights advocates are promoting safety training in response to record-breaking numbers of arms sales amid Covid-19 On a recent afternoon in San Jose, California, Chuck Rossi held up his AR-15 in front of his computer camera, talking through how to hold the weapon safely, … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,8,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gun-schtuff","category-rkba","category-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54920,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54919\/revisions\/54920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}