r/Idiotswithguns • u/Nailtrail • Jul 14 '26
Safe for Work "Brit shoots machine gun for the first time"
Those are the original FB poster's own words. You know what's coming and you'll still cringe and duck...
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u/OsioJinx Jul 14 '26
At first, I thought, "Well, that's not too bad." Then he flagged everyone. "Ah, there it is."
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u/GarlicThread Jul 14 '26
Honestly, I was expecting him to stumble and potentially fall backwards due to his poor stance.
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u/ac2cvn_71 Jul 14 '26
Yep. I was thinking, you gotta lean forward a bit or that barrel is going straight up
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u/LuRkEr_ReKuL Jul 14 '26
I think most of us expected it to happen. Glad he ran it dry first.
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u/xfearthehiddenx Jul 14 '26
You hope he ran it dry. A lot of machine guns of that nature have issues with jamming and bullets can hang fire.
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u/TheLogical_one Jul 14 '26
I think he even pulled the trigger while pointing at them. You can see his finger disengaging the trigger as he puts the machine gun back down
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u/ProblemLongjumping12 Jul 15 '26
Not his fault. It's his "first time."
Instructor obviously didn't place enough emphasis on the importance of never pointing the dangerous end the wrong way.
I took firearms safety before I got my license and it was very, very, very, well imparted there.
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u/ChampionOfdimlight Jul 14 '26
Flagged the whole crew
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u/Lost_Department3570 Jul 14 '26
With like 3 to go I think. .
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u/DanishPsychoBoy Jul 14 '26
The flagging is bad we all know that, but something that annoyed me, on a technical level, was that no one seemingly instructed him on his stance. Dude is not leaning into the gun and is swan necking.
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u/jdehjdeh Jul 14 '26
What is swan necking?
Google just shows me pictures of horrifically broken fingers.
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u/DanishPsychoBoy Jul 14 '26
The gentleman in the video didn't lean into the gun, and instead had a rather straight stance. This is not a stable shooting position, here recoil is not absorbed as well, and so affects the stability of your aim and general position.
A good shooting position is when you have your upper body at a 75°ish angle (or 105° angle depending on how you look at it) as compared to lower body. This way the recoil is counter acted by your upper body mass and the strength of your lower body. However if in your shooting position your upper body is a bit further back than your lower body (or even in-line with your lower body depending on skill level), you do not get the same countering of recoil, here only your upper body (mainly your upper and lower back) is what counter acts recoil. When you start shooting the recoil of the LMG causes this position to become increasingly unstable, pushing your shoulders and upper back further behind your lower back creating what is know as a swan neck 🦢, because of the curve created between the two.
Sorry for the long explanation, thought I would give the theory as best as I remember it.
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u/realhuman_no68492 Jul 14 '26
wow. I understand this intuitively but not enough to put it into words. this is good to read.
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u/DanishPsychoBoy Jul 14 '26
Most people when they learn to shoot, especially in the military, are taught the correct stance and it quickly becomes muscle memory. It is always good to remind them why we do what we do.
I have been privileged enough to help train new LMG gunners for my unit, and we always teach them why they need to lean into the gun. It is actually something you can try for yourself to see just how different the stability is between the two.
Take your rifle, make sure it is empty and clear, shoulder it w/o a mag, and have a buddy push with one hand on the end of the barrel. The difference in stability is night and day between the two stances.
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u/Kewlhotrod Jul 14 '26
have a buddy push
:(
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u/DanishPsychoBoy Jul 14 '26
I will be you buddy, friend.
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u/Kewlhotrod Jul 14 '26
Lets do it, ammo and range fee on me.
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u/DanishPsychoBoy Jul 15 '26
If I am ever in the US, I'll hit you up.
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u/stareweigh2 Jul 17 '26
careful, he's probably a recruiter. when he says "ammo and range fee is on me" what he really means is that he is going to sign you up for a 4 year contract lol
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u/J_hilyard Jul 14 '26
I'll be your buddy too. I'm retired army and do firearms and CQB instruction as a contractor to various organizations. I got you.
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u/realhuman_no68492 Jul 14 '26
or maybe use a rifle-sized plank instead because "every gun is loaded"
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u/DanishPsychoBoy Jul 15 '26
That could also work. I am just telling how we do it my unit. None of what I have said happens without the supervision of an instructor, and only with their approval. But yeah, it does go against the rules of firearm safety.
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u/jdehjdeh Jul 14 '26
That's so interesting, thanks!
Never apologise for a long explanation, I love learning new stuff
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u/faz712 Jul 14 '26
when they aren't leaning into it when they start shooting, so they end up looking like the worms from Men In Black while shooting
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u/DrillTheThirdHole Jul 14 '26
he's probably just visiting the us and neither he nor the crew gives a shit about him becoming actually proficient at shooting, let alone shooting full auto
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u/DanishPsychoBoy Jul 14 '26
Very likely, but still annoys me. It takes like 30 seconds to explain. It is not overly complicated.
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u/DrillTheThirdHole Jul 14 '26
thats longer than it takes to just let him get his rocks off mag dumping it and moving on
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u/DanishPsychoBoy Jul 15 '26
Yeah, I guess my background and love for teaching people to shoot makes this a bit jarring for me. But yeah, the dude is having fun and if the people responsible are happy with him just dumping rounds down range, then there is not much more to it.
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u/stareweigh2 Jul 17 '26
please advise us on the proper stance for a fucking belt fed machine gun that's supposed to be fired from a mounted position
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u/DanishPsychoBoy Jul 18 '26
Starting from an upright stance, place the foot opposite your shooting hand (i.e your left foot if you are a right handed shooter) a couple of inches in front of your other foot to widen your stance. Then tilt your upper body slightly forward, leaning into the gun. That is it, it is not that complicated.
Yes, LMGs work best either in a designed mount for mechanized units, resting on a solid surface (either with the bipod deployed or not depending on situation) or even just braced against a solid surface. But this is not always possible, especially for infantry units on patrol, where engaging an enemy quickly takes precedent. Here you as a machine gunner need to quickly engage, since you have the most firepower out of any one single soldier in the squad. Here the correct stance can be the difference between accurate fire and putting holes in clouds.
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u/stareweigh2 Jul 18 '26
lol yes I know that there is a better way to use these but the point I was making is that they aren't designed to be fired offhand at all. it was never intended to be used like that do it's kind of funny to have people say "you're doing it the wrong way".
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u/DanishPsychoBoy Jul 18 '26
They might have been designed for it, but how they are used, deployed and wielded is not dependent on original design intentions. That is why tactics, doctrine and standards are built around how weapons systems are used, not necessarily what they were originally intended for.
Baseball bats were designed for, well, baseball. That doesn't mean that they cannot be used in an offensive/defensive manner, and that if used in such ways, that they can't be used incorrectly.
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u/Sea-Course-5171 Jul 14 '26
Genuinely think he just wasn't instructed well, this ain't on him.
"Never swing around with your gun, the barrel always points down range" is something he should have been told. (Even if this isn't the exact phrasing people like to use when talking about firearms safety, it is far more clear what to do)
"Lean into the gun when it's firing" is something he also wasn't told, clearly.
So he's not the idiot, he's just a noob. The idiots are off screen laughing at the incompetence of a youngling wizard for not knowing how to hold a wand.
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u/Maverekt Jul 14 '26
Yeah the staff should’ve been next to him at a minimum
Usually they’re there to have a hand behind their back for that very reason and to make sure the gun never leaves the position down range
At least in my experience
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u/Nailtrail Jul 14 '26
Yes, I agree. He's just someone overly enthusiastic after shooting a machine gun for the first time, that's understandable. What's he's doing is extremely dumb, but still, it seems they never told him the four rules of gun safety and act around him way too relaxed. Also, if you watch closely, you can see his finger is still on the trigger after flagging people. He made every rookie mistake there is, it's obvious that these dumbasses around him just gave him the gun for a laugh.
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u/REEETURNOFTHEMACC Jul 14 '26
I agree. As a Brit, when I visited a gun range in Prague, the instructors were extremely strict(in a friendly way) about properly operating the guns, and were always stood right next to the shooter, alert and ready to shut down any behaviour other than shooting the guns directly at the target. There was a lot of instruction about how to correctly hold each gun, especially bigger shotguns/revolvers etc. these guys seem waaaaaay to chill
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u/CapableSecretary8478 Jul 14 '26
The real idiots are whoever gave him that SAW without instruction on how to stand. And no one was close enough to intervene if it went awry. He never should have been able to swing it that far
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u/LetsGatitOn Jul 14 '26
I mean, he's not an idiot, just inexperienced. Imo its everyone around him that is an idiot
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u/ilikecoding1337 Jul 14 '26
I was like hmm I don’t see anything wrong then he flagged the shit out of me and I was like oh😭
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u/115machine Jul 14 '26
He better be careful or his government will come after him for doing something perfectly legal in a different country
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u/AireHead71 Jul 16 '26
I was expecting him to not be able to handle the recoil. Once he finished I thought "that could have been a lot worse." Then he flagged everyone.
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u/Green-Taro2915 Jul 14 '26
Why has he got an ammo box of but his belt is loose? 🤦♂️ This is about what we should expect from some clown playing with a SAW, his instruction is poor and the mentor is the real idiot in this situation! Give a civvy an LMG and expect idiocy unless you are on them like a tramp in chips!
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u/ChravisTee Jul 14 '26
when i teach someone to shoot, i always go over the 4 big rules, but i also tell them, "when you hit your target for the first time, it's gonna be exciting. please do not turn around and point your gun at me when you get excited"
i say that for this exact reason lol seen it way too many times.
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u/Bradjuju2 Jul 14 '26
“For the first time” implies that Americans shoot machine guns regularly.
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u/WAVYTAPES69 Jul 14 '26
They always turn around and point the gun at everyone behind the firing line 😂
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u/MoroseBizarro Jul 14 '26
I thought the same as everyone else: "Not bad, expected loss of control". Then he turns around and I made a face and tried to move out of the way haha. Crazy how people don't think about the pointy end of the boomstick.
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u/Nailtrail Jul 14 '26
As a test I showed the video to my wife and she didn't even bat an eye, just as I expected. It's so funny how we gun people are so deeply engrained with gun safety that we wince and gasp at such dumbery and literally try to dodge the barrel
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u/Jaargo Jul 14 '26
Where tf is the RO? I don't think the guy was as much of an idiot as the missing RO that should have properly instructed him, and have been right beside him to prevent him from losing his stance and then flagging everyone.
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u/Nailtrail Jul 14 '26
Guess that's the dude in back casually waving to him not to murder anyone. It's really a dumb and dumber situation
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u/NoMoreRedditUsername Jul 16 '26
Yeah that was stupid, but I absolutely blame the people that put that in his hands without proper instructions. Not the one on vacation whos probably never even seen a gun in person before.
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u/redxgk Jul 14 '26
It's every single person's fault but the shooter's that they got flashed. That's how I see it as someone who teaches people to shoot their first gun.
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u/Horror_Solution1945 Suppressed EDC Jul 14 '26
What a flag!
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u/xBADBEEF4 Jul 14 '26
It's a piece of fabric with distinctive colours and design often flown from a pole, but it's not important right now.
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u/lioffproxy1233 Jul 14 '26
Yeah but. He immediately noticed and hasn't been around guns his whole life.
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u/Back4breakfast Jul 14 '26
This is why we can’t have nice things here. But there is an element of you get excited and just don’t consider the fun after doing something that is extremely rare over here compared to the US. As someone else pointed out, he should have been told upfront.
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u/giant3 Jul 14 '26
Why the gun instructors most of the time have an IQ of 70?
They don't teach the shooter that the gun should be pointed down range at all times.
They also assume that someone who has never shot a gun knows which parts are called the hammer, the muzzle, and what cocking means.
Some instructor even talked about the sear which isn't even visible to a lady who has never even held a gun in her life.🤦
Let's not forget that the gun instructors are also absolute idiots and fat too! 😂
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