Don't forget rule number 1

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Sheepdog1968

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Per Cooper, "all guns are always loaded." Per Clint Smith, "I painted the signs, the other three are for the slow and dimwitted :)"

Decided recently to take a recently purchased shotgun (that mirrors the home defense one and will now be the training mule) to have the LOP shortened to what I have on my other shotguns.

Out of routine habit and pointing it in a safe direction I check the chamber and magazine tube. I was surprised to find it loaded. Then I recalled I had decided that I would also keep this one loaded as well.

There was no drama or bang or danger. Rule 1 and checking when picking it up again after several months showed me it was loaded. Good rules to follow and another reminder why we don't do silly things with firearms.
 
Sheepdog1968 said:
Per Cooper, "all guns are always loaded."
Click to expand...

How bout "know the condition of your gun"? How are you supposed to clean or maintain your firearm if "it's always loaded"? I know this is potentially contentious, but there are training drills that involve pointing your unloaded gun at people. My guns are not "always loaded".
 
I am not sure why there is so much contention over this one. I've seen members of the Board of Directors of my shooting club (of which I am one) come to the point of resigning over the rather less than insightful argument over the difference between the phrases "ARE always loaded" and "as if they were always loaded."

Totally hung up on the phrasing, ignoring the VERY SIMPLE concept that BOTH phrases intend to convey. And which both phrases do a perfectly fine job of conveying without ambiguity. We aren't computers. We do not need utter precision in syntax in order to process a concept or instruction. We, for the most part, are human beings with minds flexible enough to understand concept, context, and application.

Good grief, if we're going to be machine-language literal about EITHER phrase, we'd "treat every gun as if it was loaded" and when we'd fire our last round and the slide locked back we'd continue pointing the gun at the target and pressing the trigger! The gun is LOADED or I've got to TREAT IT AS IF it was loaded, so my instructions force me to continue attempting to fire... right? :scrutiny:

Either of those phrases is direct and to-the-point and unmistakable in meaning -- without instilling any confounding paradoxes like, "but I can't clean it," or "I can't reload it" or "it stopped going bang and the bad guy killed me."

"Know the condition of your gun" is so ambiguous as to be pointless. Sure, it could mean "know if it is loaded." It also could mean, "is the safety off?" Or, "is it too hot to pick up because it's been sitting in the sun?" Or, "is it dirty or clean?" Etc.

You know what? I DO treat every gun (as if) it is loaded right to the point that I've disassembled the mechanism rendering it merely "parts."




And if you've attended training where they required or even ALLOWED someone to point an (oh, sure, unloaded) firearm at another person, spread the word and let the community of shooters and trainers deal with them. That is COMPLETELY unacceptable and is such poor training practice that any trainer who persists should be out of business before they get someone killed.

There are training guns (blue guns/red guns) and inert solid plastic "barrels" for guns, and other techniques by which this training can be accomplished perfectly without pointing real, functional firearms at other people. To do otherwise is grossly negligent practice.
 
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Yup, don't forget the rules. I've done something similar in the past, like you said because we always check it there was no story to tell but it does give you a little mental, 'oh wow forgot about that' lol.

I still use the term always treat a gun like it's loaded even though I know there are situations you don't but when bringing new shooters to the range there's no need to make it confusing for them. The point of the rule is to get them in the habit of making sure they don't sweep someone even when their gun is unloaded because one day they can think it's unloaded and it won't be.
 
I do not keep any long guns loaded. I have a carry pistol which is always loaded (reasonable exceptions apply). Usually when my son and I go to the range it's for rifle shooting.

My son and I are the two 'enthusiasts' in the house. We check each other on "the first thing you do when you pick up a firearm is to clear it". I want it to become habitual for him -- and I appreciate it when he calls me out when I forget to clear (like Sam1911 said, we're not robots).

One day I placed my carry pistol in its IWB holster down on the dining room table in between changing pants. My son picked up the pistol and cleared it just as I was walking back into the room. I saw him pull back on the slide ejecting the chambered round, let the slide go forward then drop the magazine.

I asked him to, without doing anything with the mag, clear the pistol again. Slide goes back, out pops a round.

We looked at each other for a few moments.

He said "I'm sorry", restored the pistol to the condition he found it in and walked out of the room.

I think he learned two important lessons, the second being don't mess with another guy's kit.
 
Back in 1992 a cousin stopped by. He asked to see my shotgun I kept loaded in the corner of my room (I was 16 so still lived with mom). I picked it up cleared it and handed it over. As soon as he left I reloaded (duh).
The next day he came over and while he was there another friend came by. I went to speak with my buddy on the porch to talk about a party that night. About that time my cousin learned Rule #1 with a kick in the pants... literally. BOOOM. I found mom in a crouch my cousin in the fetal cradling his jewels and my bedroom light was obliterated as were 2 tiles of the drop ceiling. Fairly cheap lesson learned considering.
 
bearcreek said:
How bout "know the condition of your gun"? How are you supposed to clean or maintain your firearm if "it's always loaded"? I know this is potentially contentious, but there are training drills that involve pointing your unloaded gun at people. My guns are not "always loaded".
Click to expand...

I don't think I would remain present for any training drills that involved intentionally pointing a real gun at people. That's what blue/red guns are for. Or at the very least, some of the brightly colored plastic training barrels that literally don't even have chambers.

There have been training drills where unloaded guns being pointed at people ended with someone being shot and killed.

There are multiple overlapping rules for a reason. It's so that being human and screwing up one, just once, doesn't result in catastrophe. Intentionally violating a rule because you think the other ones will cover you removes that safety net and is begging for disaster, eventually.
 
When I teach the 4 rules, I state rule #1:

Consider all guns to be loaded until proven otherwise.

And sub-rule 1A:

In order to prove a gun is not loaded, you have to understand how it mechanically stores and feeds ammo.
 
Rule 1 as stated by the Op is fine for those of us with firearms experience, BUT it is completely meaningless to someone who has never been around firearms.

Are they supposed to run screaming from the room, as some anti-gunners will claim the gun is so dangerous? Are they to "not touch" it? Do something else? No positive instruction of what to do, or not do, is conveyed to them.

First teach the parts of the firearm, then tell them 1:"Don't point the muzzle at anything they don't want to destroy"; 2: "Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot." 3:"Keep the action open until ready to use the firearm." (Carrying for personal protection is "using"). Specific instructions which are easily understood and followed.
 
patmccoy said:
Rule 1 as stated by the Op is fine for those of us with firearms experience, BUT it is completely meaningless to someone who has never been around firearms.

Are they supposed to run screaming from the room, as some anti-gunners will claim the gun is so dangerous? Are they to "not touch" it? Do something else? No positive instruction of what to do, or not do, is conveyed to them.

First teach the parts of the firearm, then tell them 1:"Don't point the muzzle at anything they don't want to destroy"; 2: "Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot." 3:"Keep the action open until ready to use the firearm." (Carrying for personal protection is "using"). Specific instructions which are easily understood and followed.
Click to expand...

It's a bullet point list of rules, not an NRA First Steps course.

If you just read off the 4 rules to a total newbie and then say okay, you're good to go...you're in no position to be dealing with gun newbies
 
Rule #1: All guns are always loaded.
Whenever you pick up a gun, long or short, the very first thing you should always do is check its status. If I watch someone clear a weapon before handing it to me, the very first thing I do is clear it myself. Any time I take a gun from the safe, first thing I do is check for a magazine, and then open the action and look in the chamber. I never hand a gun to anyone until I've removed the magazine and opened the action and checked the chamber.
 
I believe the concept meant to be conveyed by "rule #1" is to respect the power of the firearm by not engaging in unsafe/lazy gun handling. To try to take it literally, as some people try to pretend they do, as Sam mentioned, is physically impossible.

As a guy who has never popped off an AD in my life (knock on wood) what works for me is to simply check any gun that has been out of my possession, any time I pick it up.

After that, I don't treat it as if it were loaded, and point it at things I don't wish to destroy, which is anything in my house.
 
I drill my granddaughters:

"Is that gun loaded?"

After they try to guess, I tell them, "ALL guns are loaded -- until YOU prove they are unloaded."

Then I have one granddaughter check the gun, and she says it's unloaded. I ask the other granddaughter, "Is that gun loaded?"

And once again, I tell them, "ALL guns are loaded -- until YOU prove they are unloaded."

The fact that Cassie checked it doesn't mean Sam can assume it's unloaded.
 
What Vern said

Rant on;

You are teaching a mindset and a behavior. It is not hard to understand and nobody thinks you are clever for debating it.

Rant off.
 
bangswitch said:
Rule #1: All guns are always loaded.
Whenever you pick up a gun, long or short, the very first thing you should always do is check its status. If I watch someone clear a weapon before handing it to me, the very first thing I do is clear it myself. Any time I take a gun from the safe, first thing I do is check for a magazine, and then open the action and look in the chamber. I never hand a gun to anyone until I've removed the magazine and opened the action and checked the chamber.
Click to expand...
Agreed.

I always took "all guns are always loaded" as "treat all guns as loaded." That means muzzle awareness, checking if loaded whenever handling (even if someone else just checked it), etc.

Even if you checked a gun right in front of me, made sure it was cleared, and handed it over, I'd still do the same in front of you and check it. Rounds can be sneaky and a less than effective pull of a slide could still leave a round in there. Weird things happen.

There's just no room for error, as the results can be so severe. Best to be as safe as possible at all times.

I think people get too worked up over the phrasing and need to just adopt a safe mindset with the intent of the rules - be mindful of what you're doing when handling firearms. Just takes a Youtube search to find what some people do with them...it's frightening.
 
Wow, guess I stirred a bit of a hornets nest with my response. I haven't had good internet for a while so I'm just reading this now. Let me clarify something. I understand that the NRA is not intending for that rule to be taken completely literally. Otherwise, like Sam said, we'd stand there pulling the trigger on an empty gun like a doofus. The question then is, why do they want to have such a semi ridiculous sounding rule? That would be like a mechanic insisting on putting a seat belt on every time he sits in the seat of a car when working on it because "you should always treat a car as if you're driving it, so wear your seat belt". Thats ridiculous, you should always wear your seat belt when driving, not when just sitting in the car.

Sam, maybe you've heard of a place called TDI? Tactical Defense Institute in southern Ohio? Arguably the most well known and respected shooting school in Ohio. I'm not going into a bunch of details but part of the handgun training they do involves pointing "roped" guns at people.

In short, I think the NRA rules not very accurate and potentially somewhat misleading.
 
You put a string or piece of weed whacker line down the barrel and out the chamber and the close the slide.
 
I had a DEALER hand me a loaded revolver to check out a few weeks ago. First thing I did was to open the cylinder and saw 6 rounds. I handed it back to him with the yoke open. He said "Oops, I took this in on trade...I meant to unload it".
 
Rule 1 is properly stated, "All guns are always loaded", and we'll see Jeff Cooper's explanation later.

In any case, our group of instructors (we teach monthly NRA Basic Handgun classes) find the Rule to be helpful and quite well understood by the complete beginners in our classes. Of course since we're all NRA certified instructors and we're teaching the NRA syllabus, we focus on the NRA three rules. But since we're all Gunsite alumnae, we bring up Jeff Cooper's Rule 1, "All guns are always loaded." This is how we explain it:

  • If you hand me a gun, don't bother telling me it's not loaded. Because Rule 1 applies, I won't believe you and will personally verify/clear the gun.

  • If I criticize you for pointing a gun at me, my spouse, my cat, or anyone/anything else I value, don't bother trying to excuse yourself by telling me that it's not loaded.

  • If your gun fires when you didn't intend it to, don't bother trying to explain yourself by saying anything like, "I didn't think it was loaded." You should have understood that under Rule 1 since it is a gun it is loaded, and you should have conducted yourself accordingly.
Remember that the Four Rules describe an appropriate mindset and attitude for safely handling a loaded gun, as well as specific ways of acting. Rule 1, especially, is about mindset and attitude. If you accept Rule 1, as stated, and burn it into your consciousness in that form, you can not hold a gun in your hands, believe it to be unloaded and wind up doing something dumb with a gun that is actually loaded.

It doesn't matter that Rule 1 might not actually always be true. That's not the point of Rule 1. The purpose of Rule 1, as stated above, is to define for you your state of mind whenever you have a gun in your hand and thus define how you behave with a gun in your hand.

If someone fires a gun unintentionally, he apparently didn't think it was loaded; but since the gun fired, he was wrong. Anyone one who uses a gun for practical applications, such as hunting or self defense, needs to be able to handle a loaded gun properly.

Whenever I take a gun in hand, I know it is loaded and conduct myself accordingly.

Let's see what Jeff Cooper had to say.

  • Jeff Cooper's Commentaries, Vol. 6 (1998), No. 2, pg. 8.
    ALL GUNS ARE ALWAYS LOADED
    The only exception to this occurs when one has a weapon in his hands and he has personally unloaded it for checking. As soon as he puts it down, Rule 1 applies again.
    Click to expand...
  • Jeff Cooper's Commentaries, vol.9 (2001), No. 6, pg. 29:
    ...We think that "treat all guns as if they were loaded" implies with the "as if" qualification a dangerous choice of assumptions...
    Click to expand...
  • Jeff Cooper's Commentaries, vol.11 (2003), No. 13, pg. 64:
    ...A major point of issue is Rule 1, "All guns are always loaded." There are people who insist that we cannot use this because it is not precisely true. Some guns are sometimes unloaded. These folks maintain that the rule should read that one should always treat all guns as if they were loaded. The trouble here is the "as if," which leads to the notion that the instrument at hand may actually not be loaded....
    Click to expand...

Then as As John Schaefer, another student of Col. Cooper, puts it:
All firearms are loaded. - There are no exceptions. Don't pretend that this is true. Know that it is and handle all firearms accordingly. Do not believe it when someone says: "It isn't loaded."
Click to expand...

And at that same link, Mr Schaefer quotes John Farnam in part as follows:
...The correct philosophical approach to serious firearms training is the "the condition doesn't matter" method. This was first articulated by Uncle Jeff in his four rules, but all four can all be rolled together in the universal admonition "DON'T DO STUPID THINGS WITH GUNS!" The "hot range" concept logically flows from this philosophical conclusion. Now, we handle all guns correctly, all the time. We don't have to "pretend" they're loaded. They ARE loaded, continuously, and all students need to become accustomed to it....
Click to expand...

A short time ago I received the following (quoted in part) in an email from another Gunsite alumnus:
Negligent discharges that result in injury are the result of 1. IGNORANCE, and/or 2. COMPLACENCY and/or 3. HABIT that is inappropriate to changed conditions.

Proper training with the universal rules can only address #1 and #3.

...The great deficiency of much NRA civilian training ... is that muzzle and trigger discipline are not rigorously enforced except when on the range when the line is hot and sometimes not even then. Change the conditions to carrying a loaded gun at all times and adverse results are predictable.

EXAMPLE #1: Trap and skeet shooters often rest muzzles on their toes and point them at each other. They have almost no accidents on the range because guns are unloaded until just before they shoot. ...CHANGE CONDITIONS to a duck blind with loaded guns and the results are predictable....

One thing that Jeff Cooper said ... made a big impression on me. It is seldom repeated. To address complacency he said that every morning when he picks up his gun he says to himself "somewhere today someone is going to have an accident with a gun - not me, not today".
Click to expand...
The current Four Rules grew up on a hot range where it is customary to indeed go about with one's gun(s) loaded and where people are trained who will indeed be going around with loaded guns out in the world and about their normal business.

Gunsite is a hot range. The pistol in your holster, or the rifle or shotgun slung over your shoulder, is expected to be always loaded. So this is posted on every range at Gunsite:


IMG_0944-2.jpg ​


Let's all remember that real life in the real world is a hot range.

Warp said:
It's a bullet point list of rules, not an NRA First Steps course.

If you just read off the 4 rules to a total newbie and then say okay, you're good to go...you're in no position to be dealing with gun newbies
Click to expand...
An excellent and important point. When we teach our classes we don't just tell the students the Rules. We discuss them and expand upon them. Then the short, easily remembered bullet point statements of the Rules will trigger the memories of those discussions.

Gun safety is not just a matter of rules. It's a matter of mindset, attitude and habits. When taught properly, the short, easily remembered bullet point statements of the Rules become associated with and reinforce the proper mindset, attitude and habits.
 
bikerdoc said:
What Vern said

Rant on;

You are teaching a mindset and a behavior. It is not hard to understand and nobody thinks you are clever for debating it.

Rant off.
Click to expand...
You may find this funny. I got a cordless mouse at work. The off switch position shows red. Completely throws me off each the as red equals hot, ready to fire. Red is dead. I've taken a sharpie to the red color. No way in the world I want red on a switch to be different than a firearm safety m
 
I understand that the NRA is not intending for that rule to be taken completely literally. Otherwise, like Sam said, we'd stand there pulling the trigger on an empty gun like a doofus. The question then is, why do they want to have such a semi ridiculous sounding rule?
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Because of all the reasons Frank stated. If someone wants to get hung up on the sticking point of why it sounds "ridiculous" in some circumstances, they're missing the point and probably doing so deliberately.

Every person likes to discover those "ah HA!" moments of insight where they see the trick, discover the hidden flaw, and are smarter than the average bear. In this case, yup, that person can rightly claim they've proved how "dumb" Cooper and the NRA were by missing these obvious and glaring exceptions.

Unfortunately this ISN'T insight. It's merely blinkered narrowness of mind, allowing themselves to miss the truth and elegant simplicity of the big picture message. Being tripped up on their own cleverness in finding niggling flaws.

That would be like a mechanic insisting on putting a seat belt on every time he sits in the seat of a car when working on it because "you should always treat a car as if you're driving it, so wear your seat belt". Thats ridiculous, you should always wear your seat belt when driving, not when just sitting in the car.
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And if there was a chance that every time any person SAT in a car, it MIGHT jump to 50 mph and crash into a tree in an instant, that would be a wise way to proceed.

Since cars aren't quite so instantaneously lethal as firearms, the simple, universal handling of that safety function is not so important. Guns can "just go off" in a fraction of a second with very lethal consequences. No need to start them up, put them in gear, get out on the highway and up to speed in order for someone to die from a mistake. Just a moment of inattentiveness will do it.

Hence a much more brute-force rule needs to apply. No need to look for wiggle room. No need to point out the exceptions. Treat EVERY GUN (as if) IT IS LOADED at ALL times. If that means you clean the gun and still keep the barrel pointed in a safe direction, even though the bolt is out? GREAT. Fine. Good job. If that means you don't point a gun at yourself or others even if the slide's locked back? Great! Wonderful. If that means you don't do training that requires you point a real firearm at another person? You won't be one iota less well trained for having skipped that exercise.
 
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Sam, maybe you've heard of a place called TDI? Tactical Defense Institute in southern Ohio? Arguably the most well known and respected shooting school in Ohio. I'm not going into a bunch of details but part of the handgun training they do involves pointing "roped" guns at people.
Click to expand...

No, I can't say that I have. I won't denigrate them or insult them or dismiss what they're trying to teach, but I will say that ANYTHING they need to do with an improvised bore flag down the barrel can be done just as well with a blue/red/orange gun, or one of the safety training "barrels" you can get, or airsoft guns, or Simunitions, or other means.

I'm having a very hard time imagining the reasoning for doing what they're doing aside from cheapness. And that's a poor, poor excuse for dancing anywhere close to any safety violation.

It certainly is not training that I would engage in, and many, many others would avoid it as well. But I suppose I should reserve any further negative comments until I've seen some demonstration of their practices. Unfortunately it is pretty easy to ruin a good reputation in the training world with creative errors like this.
 
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Per Cooper, "all guns are always loaded."

My problem with this version of the rule is that for the inexperienced it gives the impression that ALL guns Should be loaded. For that reason I prefer the Tread as IF version.

Not all guns should be loaded but they should be treated that way.
 
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