The difference is the explanation is simply defining the terms that I used. With Cooper's rules the explanation includes clarifying and describing all the times when the rules don't actually apply or aren't accurate.....
You keep going back to "accurate", but in doing so, you're missing the point. We're not talking about instructions for assembling furniture from Ikea.
Rather it's about attitude and mindset -- inculcating an attitude and mindset promoting safe gun handling on a hot range. If one carries a gun for protection, or keeps a loaded gun for protection at home, in his office or in his car, he is effectively on a hot range. A disciplined approach to gun handling safety suitable for a hot range would certainly do for a cold range. And if someone on a cold range forgets, he has turned the cold range into a hot range. The idea is to lay a solid foundation for good gun handling habits.
A lot of people have been shot with a gun thought to be unloaded. But it wasn't, was it? So when someone is holding a gun he thinks is unloaded he must be more inclined to be managing it incorrectly. If one's attitude and mindset is that the gun in his hand is a loaded gun, he will be [we hope] less inclined to do something dumb with it.
As a life member of the Amateur Trapshooting Association and having shot competitive trap for a bunch of years, including regularly at our State Championships and one year at the Grand American, I have to say that I'm embarrassed by the poor gun handling of some of my fellow trapshooters. Of course the Gunsite Four Rules aren't part of their culture, but nonetheless, I find it sad that some of them seem to have adopted standard practices inconsistent with those Rules of gun handling.
I recall an unintended discharge at my gun club in which the errant party wound up firing his thought to be unload, break action trap gun and spraying the clubhouse with number 7.5 shot. Fortunately, no one was standing at the service window of the clubhouse. If someone had been there, he would have been injured.
The shooter was a very competent, experienced, 27 yard handicap, registered competitive shooter. But he had not, apparently, been sufficiently inculcated into the mindset that all guns are always loaded, and thus forgot himself.
The fact is that the Gunsite Four Rules have proven themselves. They've been around and in use a long time in many places by many instructors. They have been the cornerstone of the safety mindset for thousands of students at Gunsite over the years. They have been embraced by top instructors. Every so often someone comes along to quibble about them, most usually with Rule One; but nothing ever seems to catch on.
You keep telling us that the Four Rules are wrong and don't work. Yet they have been ubiquitous and working well for perhaps forty plus years. Perhaps you should be asking why. Real life experience seems to indicate that they not as flawed as you contend. Maybe the disconnect is simply that you can't understand why do indeed indeed work.
And while you harp on accuracy, let's look at this inaccuracy in your construct:
...Generally speaking it's best to keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target, but getting a sight picture is not always possible. Anyone who has done any close quarters gunfighting training will know what I'm talking about. If you can get your sights on the target, then by all means do so but there is not always a guarantee that you will be able to use your sights.....
But the Rule says nothing about using or seeing your sights.
If you are going to shoot something and expect to hit it, your sights will be on target -- whether or not you are looking at your sights. Your bullet is going to go where your sights are aligned even if you're not looking at your sights. If your sights are not aligned on the target you will miss.
The reason I like the simplest phrasing of Rule #1, is that it is very easy to use the "unloaded" mentality as an excuse for poor habits.
The army relies heavily on empty weapons for safety, and it creates a general attitude of complacency and carelessness. How I try to explain it, is that you always have to handle all guns the same way. There are not separate "loaded" and "unloaded" activity lists for guns.
Correct and well stated.
