5 Aug 17

The Meaning of Words:

In our litagaphobic civilization, liability has become an object of morbid fear on the part of anyone, particularly any business entity with sufficient assets to attract the attention of sleazy, erstwhile-unemployed lawyers.

This civilization is in desperate need of comprehensive tort reform!

Until that day, pitiable causalities are, of course, (1) truth and (2) frankness, and the foregoing is the reason it is nearly impossible to get a straight answer out of “Instructions-for-Use” manuals and “customer-service” representatives from nearly any manufacturer, particularly gun manufacturers.

Lawyers often use “weasel-words” and “weasel phrases,” more to confuse future litigants than to educate and enlighten current users of guns for which they purport to provide instructions. Unfortunately, precious few of those same lawyer/authors even own a gun, much less carry one as part of their daily routine.

Interpretation (more like “translation”) of gun-user manuals has thus become an art in itself, and when reading them one continuously asks himself:

“What are they really trying to say?”

In April of last year, I wrote that manuals provided with all modern pistols are improved, at least in the realm of honest, frank, and unambiguous language, over what they used to be.

However, starkly confronting the subject of routinely carrying serious guns for sedulous personal security is still almost never undertaken with any degree of honesty, either in manuals, nor in promotional material produced and promulgated by marketing departments.

For example, in just about all user manuals that come with serious pistols, you’ll find language like this:

“Never load our pistol (ie: put a live round in the chamber) until immediately prior to firing it. Unload the pistol immediately after firing.”

That language suggests to me that manufacturers of the pistol in question do not themselves believe it is safe to carry their own product while it is loaded, although they turn right around and heavily market those same pistols to police departments, where they know full-well that pistols carried by police personnel are routinely carried loaded.

And, that offends me, because it smacks of hypocrisy, although I’m sure corporate lawyers smugly insist it is all “necessary.”

In fact, manuals provided with modern guns rarely mention the issue of even occasionally carrying, much less routinely carrying, pistols.

What needs to be said in gun-manuals, but probably never will be, is something like this:

“Our pistols and designed for, and intended for, serious use, by police, military personnel, other security professionals, and private citizens. It is thus appropriate and acceptable that our pistols be routinely carried (openly or concealed) on the person, loaded (live round chambered), with a fully-charged magazine inserted, and hence in a high state of readiness, so as to be effective during personal security emergencies (which is the sole purpose for which they are designed and produced to begin with)

Accordingly, our pistols are designed to be, and are, “drop-safe.” That is, no amount, nor kind, of eternal trauma is even remotely likely to cause the pistol to discharge, even when loaded, absent pressure being applied to the trigger.

While no gun is “perfectly safe” (nor would you want it if it were), our pistols are specifically designed for, and intended for, serious purposes, as noted above. In our design and manufacturing methods, we’ve achieved an acceptable “safety/utility” compromise, though we work on improving our products constantly.

Before considering “going armed,” as described above, we recommend that all new owners of our pistols attend competent, comprehensive training, provided by us or other qualified trainers.”

The foregoing applies to Glock, SIG320, FNS, FN509, H&K VP9, Walther PPQ and PPS/M2, S&W M&P, SAXD and XD/M, Canik TP9SF/Elite, CZ P10C, Kahr, Ruger AA, Beretta APX, all the pistols I recommend for serious use, including routine carrying for personal security.

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, he turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhaustive idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

George Orwell

/John