The FAA requires that pilots keep a minimum level of currency in aircraft in order to carry passengers.
Check out the Federal Aviation Regs, Section 61.57. In order to carry passengers, a pilot has to make three takeoffs and landings in the same category (airplane, rotorcraft), class (single-engine, land, float plane) and type (if you have to be type-rated for that airplane) every ninety days. If you want to carry passengers at night, you have to make three night takeoffs and landings. If you want to fly as pilot-in-command in instrument conditions, there are separate requirements for that.
So if you are flying a Cessna 310 (a twin), a Cessna 172 (a single) and a floatplane, you have to make those takeoffs and landings in all three airplanes. If you are flying a 757 and an A-320, you have to make landing in both types, which may be one reason why,for most airlines, pilots fly one type only.
The more types of airplanes you fly, the more landings you have to do.
This is why, to my mind, if you are going to think about using a gun for self-defense use, you need to limit the number of different guns that you plan to use. You are going to have to keep yourself current, to some level, in everything you may use. When you pick up a gun to use ti to defend yourself or your kin, that is not the time to be thinking about which way you move the safety or what your sight picture needs to be like or whether you have to cock the hammer or pull the trigger through or any of that.
It has to be almost instinctual.
And the only way it can be close to instinctual is if you practice and, unless you live on a firing range and have a lot of time to spare, you probably would be wise to limit the types of guns that you would use for defense.
Sure, it's fun to shoot a lot of different kinds of guns. But for serious work, I suggest you consider keeping the number down.
Q Toon: An Aaron Judgment
12 minutes ago
3 comments:
And if you don't practice, forget the gun. Get a baseball bat, saw it down, wrap the handle with black friction tape, and put a strap through a hole in the handle end to wrap around your wrist so it won't go far if it bounces out of your hand. Seriously. A gun you don't know how to use is just a weapon in the hands of the bad guys. Given that, whacking the bad guy over the head with a baseball bat when he comes through the door is more likely to accomplish something than giving him a weapon.
But if you suggest that piloting a handgun require a license the same way that Cessna 310 requires a license, you're, hmm, some kinda leftard gun banner out to impose Soviet rule on America or something. Gun rights are like free speech rights. Reasonable regulation != banning speech. You cannot stand in the middle of a highway, obstructing traffic, holding a sign that says "Bush Lied, Soldiers Died!". You cannot erect a 500,000 watt transmitter in your living room and broadcast your political rants to the nation on 510 AM, over-riding local stations all around the nation with the message "Liberals need to be killed!" (not that you'd need to do that, since every AM radio station *already* broadcasts that message every day). Getting arrested for doing that isn't a violation of free speech, you have a perfect right to speak freely. You just can't violate other people's rights while doing so. And if I'm sleeping in my bed and get hit by a stray bullet because some legend in his own mind in the next apartment can't do nothing but a pray'n'spray with a semi-automatic pistol... well, that certainly would be a pretty darn big violation of my own rights, I daresay.
- Badtux the Practical Penguin
(Who owns shotguns loaded w/duck shot -- a bit harder on the shoulder, but a bit easier to hit what you're aiming at, and little danger of overpenetration of thin apartment walls).
Don't know as if I agree about the sawed-off baseball bat. Going toe-to-toe with a bad guy, especially one who may be 30-50 years younger than you, is not such a hot idea.
I made no comment, no suggestion at all about licensing.
I said "more likely". 1% more likely is still "more likely", heh!
Alternately, keep the clip out of your pistol and club the bastard over the head with it when he walks through the door if you're not going to practice with the thing. You're less likely to hurt yourself in the process, and when the bad guy takes the gun away from you, he'll only be able to use it as a club too.
- Badtux the Practical Penguin
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