I’ve not read all the comments yet, but will weigh in.
I won’t get into the rules of gun safety since it’s been done on this thread. What I will say is something I don’t think has been covered (maybe touched on). Gun familiarity goes beyond just, “being familiar with the gun”. A person can be around guns and shoot for over 30 years, but many people fall into that category who do not shoot more than a couple hundred rounds per year, if that much. Beyond that, they just don’t handle guns all that much.
Knowledge (includes familiarity) is not enough. Training is vitally important. I’m not saying that you need to go to Gunsite. I’m saying that you need to train with your weapon enough that your safety habits become natural. That could just mean dry firing it every night, or sending rounds down range.
Here’s an example:
When I’m in a gun shop and ask to look at a gun, the clerk will usually remove the gun from the case, drop the mag, perform a chamber check, re-insert the mag, and hand me the gun. Now, I just watched the clerk clear and safe the gun. Immediately after doing that he handed it to me (under my watchful eye). There is no way that that gun became loaded while I was watching this during the brief seconds that this happened. I also was able to see that the gun was safe when he did this.
Does that mean that I don’t need to perform a safety check? Absolutely not. Even though I saw and confirmed that he made the gun safe, I still perform my own safety check by immediately pointing in a safe direction, droping the mag, and checking chamber. The reasons for this are twofold. First, one should always do a chamber check on any firearm they handle, every time they handle it. Checking the chamber (even though I just watched someone else do it) insures that the person before me didn’t make a mistake, and that the gun is indeed clear. Second, it helps to instill and keep good habits, while at the same time avoiding bad habits. Every time I pick up a gun, I practice the cult of the ridged finger (trigger finger indexed rigidly along the slide to keep it out of, and off of the trigger guard), I point in a safe direction, and I clear the action (includes first dropping the mag on an auto). I do this not only because it’s proper, and safe gun handling, but also because, “I don’t want to practice bad habits, and picking up a gun without performing a chamber check is a bad habit.”
Many people are around guns all their life, and still don’t do these things. They use guns every year for hunting season, or they go to the range every week. Do these people perform chamber checks every time the pick up a gun? Many don’t. Do they keep their finger out of the trigger guard? I’ve seen people index their trigger finger on the trigger guard. Granted, it’s out of the trigger guard, but why not just get into the habit of rigidly indexing it along the slide where there’s less chance of it slipping into the trigger guard?
Someone mentioned that this is a result of the gun not having a safety. As with “familiarity”, a safety might have been a factor, but it doesn’t take away from the more important issue, and that is a lack of proper, safe gun handling. . It’s like I said to someone just last week. “Guns are supposed to go of when you pull the trigger.” If the safety is there, that doesn’t stop the person from keeping their trigger finger out of the trigger guard. The OP just needs to exercise his gun handling.
If your not comfortable with a real gun, then spend $40 on a cheap Airsoft gun to practice your (safe) gun handling skills.
There’s one thing about Glocks that I commented to someone about when I first acquired one. That is, because of the fact that I have to actually pull the trigger in order to take the gun down, it has a tendency to make me safer, because the alternative is drastic, and unforgiving.
