I spend my life traveling the world trying to educate people how to avoid doing stupid things in training so that we can do smart things in the real world. But a firearms and ammunition industry that is consumed with style over substance continues to do idiotic things, albeit from a well intentioned perspective. The latest offering from the NRA is one of those very bad ideas.
In one of the earlier Safety Bulletins, we talked about a pistol grip company that made rubber grips that had a “Thin Blue Line” around them to support the Thin Blue Line foundation. Well intentioned, but a bad idea since the Best Practices Guidelines have adopted the use of blue indicator tape around the grip of a firearm to indicate that it has been modified for use with marking cartridges. A discussion with this company led to them pulling the product off the market. Good for them. Some companies are selling Tiffany Blue Glock pistols. Idiotic, especially given that Glock also produces a blue 17T training pistol dedicated for use with marking cartridges. The possibility for someone to show up for training either with the aforementioned grips or Tiffany Glock and someone getting shot by a real gun is very, very real. This is why training staff need to have 100% control over EVERY SINGLE GUN that comes into an opposed force training venue.
The latest act of ignorance comes from none other than the NRA. RBTA Staff Instructor Rick Furr brought this to our attention today. NRA has now commissioned a red 1911 … red is the color for Inert Device as per the Best Practices Guidelines, and I will be sitting in the witness box across from the NRA for FREE the day that somebody gets inadvertently shot by one of these things because the NRA should know better, hence the production of this product is DELIBERATELY INDIFFERENT TO THE SAFETY NEEDS of the people anywhere near this thing.
Please, NRA, pull this abomination OFF the market. People could die.
Also, to those reading this, PLEASE forward this article to anybody and everybody you know and have them contact the NRA to help convince them this is a bad idea. Glen Hoyer, my favorite NRA guy, is the only email address I have … so, sorry Glen .. if you get a bunch of emails. I know that you “get” this and will be able to see to it that this message gets to the right people.