The Four Rules don't have to prove themselves. Their utility has been well established. They have been in use for a lot or years, and they seem to work just fine. They have the great benefit, for teaching purposes, that they are short, direct, to the point, and easy to remember. Every so often someone wants to come along and change them, but nothing else really has anything like the successful track record of The Four Rules.
Remember that they are first and foremost rules for safe gun handling. If a gun is in a holster, it's not being handled. If it's in your safe, it's not being handled. If it's in a case, it's not being handled.
Those of us who have trained with the Rules, and teach with them, understand them as safe handling rules. We know and teach their proper application and context. So --
- If you hand me a gun, don't bother telling me it's not loaded. Because I follow Rule One, 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 One since it is a gun it is loaded, and you should have conducted yourself accordingly.
- And wherever you are, if your gun is in your hand, you jolly well need to find a safe direction for your muzzle until you've actually got something to shoot at, and you're about to be shooting at it.
- And if you're not actually shooting, your finger needs to be off the trigger, whether you're using your sights or not.
- And you need to know your target and what's behind it even in a self defense situation. No one is going to pat you on the back and tell you what a splendid fellow you are for wasting poor old Mrs. Smith when trying to avoid getting mugged yourself. (If you ever have a chance to train with Louis Awerbuck, he will have you engaging targets with "non-combatants" in front of behind the "BG" target. It will be up to you to move or place your shots (or in his moving target class, time your shot) to avoid hitting a non-combatant.)
Jeff Cooper insisted, and the way Rule One is stated at Gunsite and most other schools and by the many instructors who were influenced by Cooper and Gunsite, it is simply, "All guns are always loaded." When one merely treats a gun as if it were loaded, or pretends that the gun is loaded, one mentally admits the possibility that it is not actually loaded. That invites sloppiness and carelessness.
People complain about Rule One. They say that they know there are unloaded guns. But the The Four Rules are rules of gun handling and intended to avoid injury. So as far as I'm concerned, when I pick up a gun, there is no such thing as an unloaded gun, and I conduct myself accordingly.
So what do you do if you have a gun in your hand and you don't want it to be loaded? Well you clear it, of course. So that's what you would do if, for example, you wanted to dissemble if for cleaning or enclose/lock it in a case for legal transportation if the law requires that the gun be unloaded. But while the gun is in your hand you still follow Rules Two, Three and Four. And if the gun is out of your control, Rule One again applies -- so you conduct yourself accordingly and personally verify/clear it if you don't want it to be loaded. (And of course anyone one who uses a gun for practical applications, such as hunting or self defense, in any case needs to be able to handle a loaded gun properly.)
One may choose to quibble with the Four Rule, but they have still been around for a long time, are ubiquitous and have been shown to be very effective for teaching and promoting gun safety.
