Huh, I stand corrected.
And yes, the four rules make safeties really irrelevant. I don’t give much thought anymore to the usage of manual safeties - but I am extremely stringent in my adherence to the four rules.
No. I guess did overstate the situation a little bit. Shooters may carry extra rounds at our club (and all the others I’ve been to) just like you say. What I meant, and should have said, is that no loose ammunition is permitted at the unloading station. It’d kinda defeat the purpose of the unloading inspection station if a guy had to go back to his cart to offload spare ammo before checking his guns were empty.
Sorry for the confusion. And the opportunity to clear it up.
This is the case on the Beretta 92/99 and Cougar double action pistols; the slide-mounted decocking lever also acts as a safety in the down position. When the lever is in the up (fire) position a red dot is exposed. The older or single action Beretta autos, like the Brigadier or the Bobcat have a frame-mounted safety similar to the Hi-Power and other JMB designs that functions as you suggest.
And firearm that is in battery (slide or bolt closed, cylinder in the locked position, breach/block closed) is a loaded weapon…period. Not “assumed to be loaded”, not "treat it as loaded’; it’s ready to fire.
As far as the rules that everyone is referring to, here they are:[ol]
[li]All guns are always loaded.[/li][li]Never let the muzzle cover anything you are unwilling to destroy.[/li][li]Finger off the trigger until the sights are on the target.[/li][li]Know your target and what is behind it.[/li][/ol]
If you don’t violate these rules then shooting accidents (other than the rare mechanical failure) don’t happen. Period.
I second the various statements about not handling a firearm if you have not been properly trained to do so. A firearm is a tool, but a very potent one, mechanically complex and literally capable of doing mortal damage in a heartbeat. If you have to pick up a firearm in an emergency and are unfamiliar with it’s operation, it’s already too late.
Safe gun handling, along with first aid/CPR, basic living skills (cooking, sewing, simple home repair), and sex education should all be presented in school. You may not like, own, or regularly handle firearms but you should know how to safely disarm or manipulate one if the occasion arises.
Stranger
And if they’re not, responsible parents should either teach it themselves or find another group that does. I sold all of my firearms when I had children, and put the kids through 4-H gun training as soon as they were old enough. Even though there were no guns in my house, I knew they could easily end up finding a gun in a friend’s house, and I wanted them to understand the fundamentals of gun safety early.
Of course, I covered the four rules with them long before they were old enough to attend 4-H gun training.
Thanks for the clarification, everyone. Makes sense to me.
OK, so what’s the reasoning for this?
Also, (please believe me, I’m not trying to be an ass) if you always assume that a gun is loaded. How could you possibly follow rule #2 without exception. OK, so perhaps I am being pedantic, but if the idea behind the 4 rules is to NEVER break them how could you possibly move a gun around without pointing it at stuff? Maybe the answer is to always keep it pointed straight up in the air, but what about people on the second floor? (rule #4)
You don’t point it at anything you aren’t willing to destroy. So, don’t point it at a person, a pet, or a fancy stereo system. When handling, depending on situation, it can be pointed at a backstop, the ground, into the air, etc.
I don’t find this to be a problem as far as handling a firearm, which is what the rules apply to. When the gun in a case or a holster (as it should be when being transported) then it’s not an issue; a secured weapon isn’t going to spontaneous go off. When in hand and in battery, there is no reason it should be pointed at anyone or anything valuable. If you are carrying it indoors, or around other people, it should be out of battery, i.e. slide locked back, cylinder swung out, bolt open, whatever applies, such that other people can see that the weapon is not going to fire.
Stranger
Jayrot, I’m not sure what question you are asking so I’ll answer both.
Action shooting is different than normal bulleseye shooting since the shooter’s score is based on the lowest number of seconds to finish a course of fire with penalty points added for non-safety infractions such as shooting targets out of order or from the wrong location. The course of fire usually involves things other than making bullets hit the target such as the shooter running between stations, hiding behind barricades and reloading a weapon. All of this happens “on the clock” so there is motivation to do everything as quickly as possible. This raises potential risks so the shooter is always shadowed by a safety officer not more than an arm’s length behind who can stop the shooter if he does something dangerous. Trying to pick up a dropped magazine or loose ammuntion from the ground can be extremely risky if the shooter has a weapon in his hand and there is real potential for a shooter in extreme haste to shoot himself. This is a risk even with a holstered handgun since a shooter bending over to pick up ammuntion may allow the muzzle of his weapon to point slightly behind him toward spectators. For this reason all dropped ammunition is considered dead and may not be used during that stage. I’m not aware of any sanctioned action shooting that allows this.
On a TEC-9 the safety is operated by the knob one grasps to manually operate the bolt. Pushing in engages the safety, pulling it out makes the weapon fireable.
That reminds me of a scene in a movie I saw. Down In The Delta , I think it was. An urban mom takes her two young-ish kids back to rural Mississippi, to spend time with the grandparents on the farm. The older kid is having a great time shooting a rifle, enjoying it immensely.
Granddad is teaching him about guns and what guns do. So he sets up a small paper target on a strawbale. Kid shoots at it, hits it multiple times from a good distance, is ecstatic. They go out to get the target. Behind the paper target, granddad had hidden … the kid’s favoritist teddy bear in the whole world.