Liberty wrote:A couple of these rules seem outright silly.
My guns are always loaded. An unloaded gun is pretty useless. Like a car out of gas.
I rely on my guns to keep my family and and seek safe. Failure when needed could be disastrous, I also stake my life on my cars mechanical condition.
I'm not sure where these rules come from, but I have some suspicions Mr. Fudd may have had something to do with it. They obviously didn't come from anyone self defense orientated.
Rules are conceived to be universally applicable to the initiated and the uninitiated alike. To you, a practiced gun owner, being told that a gun should be treated as if it is always loaded, all the time may seem silly......because
of course you treat them that way anyway, because
of course they
ARE loaded. It seems redundant. But to the first time gun owner/first time shooter, it is
not obvious. I have had a student sweep me with a gun and reminded them that they shouldn't point it at something they're not willing to destroy. Their answer was, "it's ok, I saw
you unload it." My reply was, "did you
verify that it was unloaded?" Their answer: "No." Me: "OK then, that is A) why we treat all guns as if they are loaded, and B) why we never point a firearm at something we're not willing to destroy." To you or me, that is obvious. But it isn't to the beginner and gun safety is an
acquired habit.
Now, I could tell you about the time that I, an experienced gun owner at the time, shot a hole in my bedroom ceiling with a .44 Magnum revolver that I had
just then "unloaded".............and did permanent damage to my hearing in the process. That was the lesson that taught me that all guns are loaded all the time,
even when we think we have unloaded them. A significant portion of negligent discharges happen to gun owners who believe themselves to have some familiarity with their firearms, and a significant portion of
those involve guns that the experienced owner believes to be unloaded. It gets worse when you are talking about noobies.
Two weeks ago, I taught a basic handgun class to a couple of ladies. One of them had her own Walther P22 that her dad had bought her, but she had never fired the gun, and hadn't handled it since it was purchased. She brought it to the range so that I could teach her how to run the gun. She handed me the box; I removed the pistol, observing the rules, and the first thing I did was pull the slide back to check the chamber. Lo and behold, it was loaded!
She didn't load it, and she had no idea that it was loaded. Her dad must have loaded it............she is a single mom and she has an 8 year old girl running around the house.
It was
my treating the gun as if it was loaded that averted the possibility of a disaster. You might think some of the rules are silly because they are so simplistic and easy to understand, but they
do save lives when practiced.........even the lives of experienced gun owners like you and me. They say that "assume makes an ass out of you and me," but the truth is more like "
assume with a gun, and it will kill somebody."
I mean you no disrespect in this post, but whenever I hear an experienced gun owner say things like that, I become afraid for them because I know from personal experience that it is the
momentary complacency that kills. I'm like you. All of my guns are loaded if they are not locked up in a safe, because an unloaded gun is a club, not a gun. They have little or no usefulness if not loaded. So of course I treat them as if they
are loaded, and because they
are, I never have to wonder if the gun I pick up to defend myself is loaded or not. But because of this, and because of my own previous experience with negligent discharge, I have become downright paranoid about complacency. So, meaning this in the very best way, please be careful, and don't minimize the importance of these rules even for an experienced gun owner such as yourself. Other people, including raw beginners, read these pages.
How many times have you read a post on this board over the years that says something like this:
n00b wrote:Hi everybody, this is my first post here. I've been reading these pages and there seems to be a lot of knowledgeable people here. I am a complete beginner, and I have never even owned or shot a gun before, but I want to get my CHL because [insert reason here] and I'm hoping you guys could help me pick the right gun and carry method for me.
People who
aren't experienced do read these pages. We have a responsibility to not make light of these basic rules of gun safety for
their benefit, if not for our own.
Again, I mean no disrespect. I am just passionate about gun safety.
MasterOfNone wrote:Whether you sum it up in four rules or twenty, success is measured not by memorizing the words but by demonstrating the behaviors.
I would say that it isn't about memorize the
words, but rather it's about memorizing the
principles. For beginners, that means reading and memorizing the
words which express those principles. But the trouble with trying to translate those words into instinctive behaviors is that accidents happen at the point where conscious thought parts ways with instinctive behavior. If you are not
thinking those principles to yourself at the same time as you are demonstrating a behavior, then you are a negligent discharge waiting to happen, perhaps with tragic consequences.
