What is the obsession with dropping the hammer?
Well, if you don't, your safe will be full of guns with the hammer back. That itself is a problem, if you think about it. The safe position is hammer down. The way it gets there is what is important. Better for you to be doing it in a controlled environment, than someone else less trained or less careful doing it later.
Anyway leaving the hammer back for long periods of time weakens the hammer spring and makes the gun unreliable.
Bottom line is simply muzzle control. When the muzzle is pointed in a safe direction there cant be an injury. Forget all about the other 3 and dwell on muzzle control.
An
amazingly irresponsible statement. The way Cooper's rules protect us is through redundancy. You have just eliminated that by throwing away 3 of the 4 rules.
Also, the one about muzzle control cannot protect us perfectly. Every time you switch from muzzle up to muzzle down, you have to transition through muzzle horizontal. If you do that with your finger on the trigger, you might find yourself hauled up on manslaughter charges some day.
He put the muzzle in the dirt.... I looked back and he had the bbl sitting on the end of his shoe. I told him you know better than that. I turned away again. Directly I hear a boom.
Unbelievable. This is a thirteen year old! Sticking the muzzle in the dirt would have meant the end of hunting that day, if it were my son. Resting his muzzle on his boot would have called for a much more severe response.
As for the OP, I believe this is the old-fashioned way of making a pistol safe,
which is very unforgiving:
1) Drop mag
2) Rack slide
3) Point in safe direction
4) Pull trigger
All it needs to become fatal is swapping 1 and 2, which is very easy to do if you are distracted or have become a bit careless through being too familiar with firearms, followed by a shading of 3.
It should be something like:
1) Drop mag
2) Lock slide back (or hold back if no lock)
3) Inspect chamber and mag well
4) Unlock slide
5) Point in safe direction
6) Pull trigger
Notice this method
cannot lead to the classic pistol goof as mentioned in the OP,
even if you forget to drop the mag first! The old way of pistol clearing must be eliminated!