Treat every firearm as if it were loaded.

[Pat-inCO]

1. Treat every firearm as if it were loaded.

I keep hearing that as RULE#1. OK, now tell me how do you do that? The statement is a gross oversimplification that the "anti" people might think they understand but when you tell someone to to follow rule#1, where do they begin? Why not provide a list of specific things to be done (the NRA does)?

Yes, I to have an NRA Instructors Certification, and that's probably why I rant, but how does it look to newbies and non gun people when so many "gun" people can not state what they mean. :banghead:

KEEP THE GUN POINTED IN A SAFE DIRECTION (where people, etc. are not).

KEEP YOUR FINGER OFF THE TRIGGER until you are ready to shoot.

KEEP THE GUN UNLOADED UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO SHOOT

KNOW YOUR TARGET AND WHAT IS BEYOND

Are those four statements not "Treat every firearm as if it were laded"? If so, how can anyone be so complacent as to use the "short form" of those statements?

Like two other threads I had an incident at one of the local emporiums of legal gun distribution where a customer pointed a 12Ga side-by-side at my face. I immediately (and gently) deflected the end of the barrel away from me and toward the wall. The reply was "well it's not loaded" and I said "I don't care. It's impolite to point a gun at anyone you are not about to shoot." Fortunately the gun salesman smiled broadly and nodded his head and the customer was not terribly offended. His reply was "Oh, I hadn't thought about it that way. Sorry."

My point is simply that how can we, as pro gun people, make headway in educating others, if our basic message of safety is so garbled?!

 

[Chipperman]

I think you're reading too much into it.

"Treat every gun as though it is loaded" is the preamble of the other rules.

The rule you state of keeping the gun unloaded is nice, but what if someone hands you a gun? How do you know it's not loaded?


The cemetery is full of people who were shot with unloaded guns.

 

[Library Guy]

From Mark Twain:

Never handle firearms carelessly. The sorrow and suffering that have been caused through the innocent but heedless handling of firearms by the young! Only four days ago, right in the next farm house to the one where I am spending the summer, a grandmother, old and gray and sweet, one of the loveliest spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her young grandson crept in and got down an old, battered, rusty gun which had not been touched for many years and was supposed not to be loaded, and pointed it at her, laughing and threatening to shoot. In her fright she ran screaming and pleading toward the door on the other side of the room; but as she passed him he placed the gun almost against her very breast and pulled the trigger! He had supposed it was not loaded. And he was right—it wasn’t. So there wasn’t any harm done. It is the only case of that kind I ever heard of. Therefore, just the same, don’t you meddle with old unloaded firearms; they are the most deadly and unerring hings 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 grandmother every time, at a hundred. Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been boys armed with old muskets supposed not to be loaded, and the other army had been composed of their female relations. The very thought of it makes one shudder.

 

[Pat-inCO]

The rule you state of keeping the gun unloaded is nice, but what if someone hands you a gun? How do you know it's not loaded?

I have a fun "war story" about teaching a student about that.

Good point.