 Hey guys, Dylan Schumacher, sitting on the fence, and before we get rolling with this video, I just want to real quick cover the four firearms safety rules beforehand. I just feel compelled to do that because this is an intro video, and in an intro video it's for people who are of course new to guns, and so you may or may not know the four firearms safety rules. This deserves its own video, which I will do at some point, but for right now, just so we're all on the same page, I want to give the four firearms safety rules. The first firearms safety rule is treat all guns as if they are loaded, or all guns are always loaded, which means we're never going to do anything with a unloaded gun that we wouldn't do with a loaded gun, so the word should never, never come out of your mouth. It's okay Dylan, it's not loaded, you shouldn't say that, okay? That means we're not going to point the gun at ourselves, we're not going to point at someone else, we're just going to treat that gun like it's loaded all the time. If we all just did that, no firearms accidents would ever happen. The next three rules are derivations or an explanation of, I guess, the first firearms safety rule. So the first firearms safety rule, treat all guns as if they're loaded, or all guns are always loaded. The second firearms safety rule is never point your gun at anything you're not willing to destroy, which means I'm not going to point the gun at you, I'm not going to point it at myself, I'm not going to point the gun at anything that I am not willing to destroy. I always picture that there is a laser coming out of the end of that muzzle, and I don't want to laser anything that I'm not willing to destroy. So I want to be very careful where I point this muzzle. That's particularly important on hand guns because it's such a short muzzle, and the slightest turn of your wrist can sweep large swaths of area with that pistol. I want to be very careful where we point that. The third rule is keep your finger straight and off the trigger. This is where your finger goes on all guns, pistol, rifle, shotgun, doesn't matter, this is where it goes. It does not go here. We don't rest our finger there. We rest our finger here outside of the trigger guard. We want to keep our finger straight and off the trigger until we ready to fire. The fourth rule is be sure of your target, it's foreground and it's background. So if you pull your gun out to save your life, you want to know what's between you and the bad guy and what's beyond the bad guy. So it's important to know where else could your bullet go in the event that it doesn't go where you want it to. So those are the four firearm safety rules. That's very quick. Like I said, that deserves its own video which we will do at some point. However, that is your intro. So as you watch these videos about firearms and handling firearms, I want you to keep those four rules in mind all the time and we're never going to break those. Thanks a lot. Enjoy the video. Hey, guys. Dylan Schumacher with Citadel Defense. And today we're going to talk about handguns. This is part one of a video. So basically this is how the handgun works. That's what this video is. You just bought a handgun. What are these buttons and switches and how does this gun actually work? So this is not a video on how to operate the handgun. That'll be part two. This is simply a video on what the gun is and how the gun actually functions. So the first thing we're going to do with any gun that we ever pick up is make sure it's unloaded. This gun is loaded. So we're going to make sure to unload it since we're going to demonstrate it. And at this time, we don't want it to be loaded. So we'll talk about this a minute, but we're going to eject the magazine. We're going to rack the slide, and we're going to make sure that it's fully unloaded. We're going to lock the slide to the rear. Again, we'll talk about that. We're going to visually and digitally inspect the chamber to make sure that there is not a bullet in there. You might be able to see that, but I can see it and I assure you it is empty. Okay. Now that we have an unloaded gun, we'll treat it just like a loaded gun. So on this particular gun, this is a Glock 19 for those of you who are interested or would like to know what kind of gun it is. Couple things to note. Most modern striker fire guns are pretty simple. There's not a lot to them anymore. Really, there's just a magazine release right here. That's this button that releases the magazine. So if a magazine were in the gun and you needed to remove that, you need to press the magazine release, the magazine comes out. There's the trigger, obviously. That sends bullets where you need them to go. And then there is the slide catch, slide release, whatever you want to call it. This little button right here. I push up on that, up towards the top to lock the slide to the rear. And when I depress it, then the slide goes forward, okay? On this particular gun, it is not ambidextrous. Sometimes they'll be ambi and they'll have a slide release on both sides of the gun. This right here is the takedown lever. So the way that works is, again, with a Glock and most striker guns, make sure the gun is unloaded. There's usually some kind of takedown lever right here, okay? So make sure that's unloaded. You can pull the slide back slightly. And then what I'm doing is I am pulling this down. Pulling it down towards the frame of the pistol, releasing, pulling the trigger, and the slide is going to come right off the gun, okay? To field strip most modern guns, you're going to get three pieces. You're going to get a spring, a barrel, a slide in the frame. I guess you have four pieces, all said and done. And that's it. That's field stripping a gun. That's how we clean it. That's how we break it down. Unless you're fixing some major problem or you're some kind of armor, you're never going to need to break your gun down further than this. That's really all there is to it. Again, most modern guns are extremely simple. In order to reassemble it, of course, we just put the pieces back where we found them. There are four rails on the pistol. You'll see right here. And what we're going to do is we're going to line that slide up on those rails. And we're going to gently pull it all the way back, give it a function check, and the gun works. A couple other things to note. On some pistols, you can have a removable back strap. So this piece right here can be removed and replaced with a different piece if you like a thicker or smaller back strap. This is a personal preference thing. And again, most modern guns are going to fall into that category. For this particular gun, I have replaced the sights. That's always an option to do with most of your guns. And then I have a light on this gun that did not come with it in case that's not obvious. On all guns, it's going to have stamped the caliber on the weapon. You want to make sure that the bullets you put in it match the caliber stamped on the gun. Make sure that the caliber stamped on the gun matches the caliber stamped on the casing of the bullet matches the caliber stamped on the box. If all of those three things match, you're going to be safe and you're not going to accidentally load the wrong bullets in your gun, which nine times out of ten, they won't fit anyway. But if you were to fit the wrong round in there, you could potentially have a problem. Some other things to note. Your handgun may or may not have a safety. Usually that's located right around here in this area. For example, here is a Ruger SR-22 and this particular pistol has a safety, which is located right here. This one's a little weird because up is fire and down is safe. Most modern guns, up is going to be safe and down is going to be fire. But if you do have a safety in your particular gun, this is where it is located. If you decided to take a travel back in time and decide to purchase a revolver, things are even simpler. Really, there's one button that's right here on the side. It will be some kind of lever either you push down or push into the gun or something and that will release the cylinder. The cylinder, of course, is where you put bullets in the gun. You close the cylinder and you're good to go. Revolvers don't have safeties or anything like that. You may have an exposed hammer here that you can cock if you like. Don't do that. That's not American and revolvers are meant to be fired in double action. Revolvers do have an ejector as well. This is going to eject any spent casings once they've been fired. Other than that, revolvers are super simple. There's no buttons or switches or slide releases or magazine releases or anything. Trigger and somewhere to open the cylinder. Well, that's it. There's really not that much to modern pistols. They're pretty simple. You put a box of bullets in, you charge it and you keep it going. One thing I do want to talk about is running the slide. That's something that you do on a semi-automatic pistol, a fair amount. All that means is we're going to place our hand over hand on the weapon. We're going to pull the slide back and release. When I say charge the weapon or run the slide, that's what we're talking about. Like I said, modern guns are extremely simple. We're going to put boxes of bullets in the bottom of the gun. We're going to run the slide and the weapon is ready to go. There's really not that much to them anymore, thankfully. I will make part two to follow this video, which will discuss how to hold the gun and some basic, real easy dry fire you can get in on your weapon right when you get it. Do brave deeds and endure.