Gryffydd
Member
I think this is an excellent point. What you do while thinking will eventually be what you do without thinking.I don't check it to confirm the obvious, though, I check it to reinforce the safety procedure.
This perfectly illustrates one of the concepts I was hoping this thread would explore. My thought being that the best safety rules and practices are based in reality and follow the rules of logic.There are circumstances in which a competent gun owner must be confident of the ability to clear and unload a firearm, open the action, visually and manually check the chamber, and then behave safely in a way that would be unsafe if the gun were loaded.
I'm not against "Always treat a gun as if it were loaded until you have personally verified that it is unloaded (and you know enough about guns to safely make that judgment), then you can safely perform certain necessary functions that wouldn't be proper with a loaded gun, while still following the rules of muzzle control as much as is practical in order to reinforce safety habits" being shortened down to "Always treat a gun as if it were loaded" for casual conversation. But when it's the specific topic of conversation among a group like this I'd expect to see a bit more common sense applied. Maybe its a personality trait of mine, but I'm much more apt to follow a rule that actually is based in reality than one that has been sensationalized in order to scare me into being safe.