The Unloaded Gun

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Kleanbore

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Many decades ago, the son of a business friend of my dad was in a school play about the Revolutionary War. They had some old flintlock muskets from the period for use as props.

The kids were playing with them when one discharged, striking a boy in the leg. Fortunately, the wound was minor.

Back in the 1960s, a friend who worked part time in a sporting goods shop had two Ruger Super Blackhawk revolvers. One was kept loaded in the bedroom. The other lived in a western belt rig and came out on Saturday nights as the owner tried to outdraw James Arness and Arvo Ojala. His wife strongly disapproved.

One time, the big CRT color TV disintegrated, some bricks and insulation behind it blew out on the yard, and much of the big picture window came down in shards. Wrong gun! My temporarily completely deafened friend next saw a pantomime of his angry wife screaming and gesturing at him.

The guy who ran behind the gun counter at the store repeated over and over that Marshal Dillon's livin' room deppity should not be allowed to own a gun.

Some days later, the gun counter guy was unboxing some new Remington 870s. He checked each shouldered it, and pressed the trigger before putting it in the rack.

BLAM!

The butt-stocks of several Browning A-5s in the upper rack were destroyed. The man took them to the Browning repair facility in Arnold, MO. He related what had happened, without owning up to the responsibility.

The guy at Browning said "that guy should never be allowed to touch a gun".

There is a reason for the saying "treat every gun...".
 
I have a dedicated range gun that is exactly like my carry gun. The carry gun is always loaded and almost always on my side. The range gun is almost always unloaded and put away. This situation can be a booby trap. None of the rules can be broken when switching carry gun for range gun. No assumptions can be made about which gun I have in my hand at any time. I treat them both as if they are loaded at all times.

Dry fire practice is another tricky situation. Focus cannot be lost with two identical guns where one is usually not loaded but the other is. Treat them both as loaded.
 
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GNP said:
My Dad always said an unloaded gun has killed more people than any other kind. I have always followed that advice...if I watch you unload a gun before you hand it to me, I'm going to check it again.
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Beat me to it.

Every “accidental” shooting I’ve gone to, or read the reports from, involved the trigger-puller believing that they held an unloaded gun when they pulled the trigger. Every. Single. One.

I did respond to a shooting where some knothead was playing Russian Roulette. I don’t call that an unloaded gun shooting, nor do I call it accidental. That now-deceased clown deliberately pulled the trigger on a revolver he knew had a round in the cylinder somewhere. o_O

It’s your responsibility to check for yourself when picking up a firearm or when you’re handed a firearm, even if the person handing it to you checked for themself five seconds earlier.

Stay safe.
 
The rule is simple, check any gun you pick up.

Had a buddy at work want to show me his new carry gun, a Walther PPS M2 just like my wife carries. He hands it to me and says "Its loaded". I drop the mag and lock the slide back. Apparently his idea of loaded was a loaded mag as there was nothing in the chamber.

But I have seen several other cases of other folks doing the same thing and nobody ever checks anything, they just hand it around and fondle.

Repetition forms good habits. I shoot competition and every time I start a stage I check at the "load and make ready" before putting a mag in and clambering a round, even though at the end of the last stage there was a visual check by me and the RSO before I reholstered.

Its become so second nature for me its ridiculous. So I have no worries at home when I'm handling/cleaning/shooting guns.
 
  • There was recently a you tube video in one of the reloading posts of a guy talking about reloading. Every time he picked up the rifle he checked to see if it was reloaded. I watched the video and didn't think anything about him doing that as I would do it as well, until a post further down commented on the guy doing it every time. Just something I learned to always do.
 
Mark Twain thoughts on the matter...
“Don’t meddle with old unloaded firearms. They are the most deadly and unerring things that have ever been created by man. You don’t have to take any pains at all with them; you don’t have to have a rest, you don’t have to have any sights on the gun, you don’t have to take aim, even. No, you just pick out a relative and bang away, and you are sure to get him. A youth who can’t hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three-quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his mother every time at a hundred. Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been boys armed with old rusty muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the other army had been composed of their female relations. The very thought of it makes me shudder.“
 
Shanvanvocht said:
Jeff Cooper said: "The only gun that is unloaded is one I have personally checked, and which has not left my hand since. Do not tell me a gun is unloaded--I do not believe you, nor should you believe me!"
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If only Alec Baldwin had followed this......

I don't care if they have Armorers on set that "are supposed to take care of that."

4 Rules, everytime.
 
I have never seen an unloaded firearm fire. I have seen more than a few that were thought to be unloaded fire.

Several at matches where the shooter unloaded, showed clear to the RO and the fired into the berm, dropping the hammer. I always thought the RO should be DQ’ed with the shooter as nether looked into the chamber as they should.

I find people treat loaded guns better than ones they think are unloaded.
 
I asked to see a revolver at my LGS. The employee checked the cylinder then handed it to me. I opened the cylinder and checked it myself. The employee who handed me the gun turned to an older guy seated and said, "Nice!"

We talked about it and he said, in a frustrated tone, "Very few check."
 
My question is, do they still use live rounds at any time on any movie set? And if they don't then why were live rounds even on this movie set and who brought them to this site? This gun which I assume was an 1873 type single action revolver had to be hammer cocked before pulling the trigger to fire. Did this happen during a rehearsal or a live shooting? This is all so strange but Hollyweird is naturally a strange place to begin with.
 
Old Sandman 71 said:
Mark Twain thoughts on the matter...
“Don’t meddle with old unloaded firearms. They are the most deadly and unerring things that have ever been created by man. You don’t have to take any pains at all with them; you don’t have to have a rest, you don’t have to have any sights on the gun, you don’t have to take aim, even. No, you just pick out a relative and bang away, and you are sure to get him. A youth who can’t hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three-quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bag his mother every time at a hundred. Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been boys armed with old rusty muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the other army had been composed of their female relations. The very thought of it makes me shudder.“
Click to expand...
I just spent 10 min looking for that quote so I could get it correct. Didn't find it so gave up. THANKS for sharing
 
rdmercer said:
This gun which I assume was an 1873 type single action revolver had to be hammer cocked before pulling the trigger to fire.
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Might well have been an 1877 Lightning which looks a lot like the 1873 but is, actually DA (the first) an simpler for an actor who is not familiar with guns to manipulate. You rarely see the actual cocking in a movie.
 
entropy said:
If only Alec Baldwin had followed this......

I don't care if they have Armorers on set that "are supposed to take care of that."

4 Rules, everytime.
Click to expand...

Exactly! If Alec Baldwin and the rest of Hollywood wasn’t so rabidly anti 2A and had a working knowledge of firearm, especially Firearms 101, with the number one rule being “treat every gun as though it were loaded”, I’m confident this tragedy would never have happened. The other big rule is, of course, never point a gun at someone unless you intend to kill them, hopefully only in self defense. Of course, this isn’t always possible in Hollywood, but at least ensure the firearm is unloaded or loaded with blanks to be fired at a considerable distance away.

But if Alec Baldwin possessed a working knowledge of firearms, and respected them, instead of being rather ignorant about them, he would have immediately identified a live round before handling this firearm to the point of pulling the trigger.
 
Shanvanvocht said:
Jeff Cooper said: "The only gun that is unloaded is one I have personally checked, and which has not left my hand since. Do not tell me a gun is unloaded--I do not believe you, nor should you believe me!"
Click to expand...

I agree wholeheartedly, my Dad drilled into me two basic rules of firearm handling, in this order: 1) Point it in a safe direction 2) Open the action and check to see if it is empty. All the other rules that different organizations have are good but those 2 rules will keep someone from getting hurt.

It is tragic what happened up near Santa Fe.
 
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