Safety Matters
What is a Safe Backstop?
By Kathy Jackson
If you dry fire a handgun in your home, you will need to be prepared in case
your gun loads itself when you are not looking. This means you will need a
backstop which would stop a handgun bullet. You must be certain that an
unintended shot could not possibly do any harm other than minor property damage.1
What will stop a handgun bullet in the average home? Not
an interior wall. Not a standard exterior wall unless it is made from
solid brick. Not the couch, not the TV,
not the front
door.
A two-to-three-foot thick stack of phone books, positioned with the
books' faces toward the shooter,
would stop a bullet. For convenience, you could place
these phone books inside a cardboard box, to be pulled out when dry firing and
put away out of sight at other times.
A brick fireplace would stop a bullet -- but stand back.
There is a ricochet potential.
The cement wall in your basement would stop a bullet
(ditto ricochet potential).
A very crowded bookshelf, with no airspace between
books, would stop a bullet if you fire from the long end. Do not dry fire
straight into the spines of the books. Instead, aim at the bookcase end, so
an unexpected bullet would travel the entire length of the bookshelf before coming to rest
somewhere between the pages.
A bullet-resistant vest, hung on the wall, would stop a
bullet.
A five-gallon bucket of sand would stop a bullet. This
could be disguised inside a decorative basket, with a fake houseplant such as a
ficus tree plunked inside the sand bucket. Such a contraption is a handy
place to point your firearm when you must load, unload, or disassemble it
(especially in the case of Glocks and other designs which require you to pull
the trigger during the disassembly process).
Obviously any or all of these things will result in
property damage if you shoot them. The bulletproof vest, for example, would
subsequently be useless. Replacing the books would be a drag. Undinging brick or
cement walls is difficult; getting sand out of the carpet is nigh unto
impossible. But minor property damage is acceptable -- uncontained bullets are
not.
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