…what’s the thing that springs to mind immediately?
If someone who didn’t have a clue about guns (like me) asked you, what’s the most important thing you think they should know in order to handle a firearm safely? Let’s say you only have time to impart one thing before you have a game of strip poker with supermodels, or however you fill your time.
Also included an ‘other’ option in the likely event that I forgot something.
Do not point any gun at anything that you do not want to kill/destroy.
EDIT: Is there supposed to be a poll?
I thought the first rule was “treat all guns as if they are loaded until you confirm otherwise”, and many people would argue with the “until” part.
Never point it at anyone.
Apologies for the delay, was looking for my gun.
Treat it like a rattlesnake
don’t touch it until you know how to handle it.
A gun may not harm a human being, nor by inaction allow a human to come to harm.
…No, wait, that’s not it.
Yeah, that’s how I heard it: “A gun is always loaded, all the time, no matter how many times you have verified that it is not”.
Maybe I’m too literal-minded, but that version of the rule makes things like cleaning and dry-firing pretty difficult. 
I don’t want or need a gun but as I view them as a dangerous weapon, I went with option 2. If I saw one one unattended I would find someone call the police.
I agree with Crotalus on this, a gun is always loaded until I have verified that it is not. It remains unloaded only for as long as it remains in my sole and uninterrupted control. If it leaves my possession even for an instant I treat it as if it were loaded until I have verified it is not. If I leave the room in an empty house to take a leak when I return I recheck the weapon. An unknown intruder may, in a moment of whimsy, have loaded the weapon as a joke. It probably has happened, but not to me.
My answer before opening the thread was, “Never point a gun at someone, even if that gun isn’t loaded.” So I voted for number three although properly speaking it’s a subset of number two.
“Always bring it to a knife fight”.
Regards,
Shodan
I know the big 4 rules (the top 4 in the poll), but I never learned them in any sort of order. I said #3, although it goes hand-in-hand with #2.
On reflection, I think the official word is that #2 is the first rule, but that #3 is the second one.
Which is ultimately why a lot of us chose #3 as the first rule! 
I answered ‘something else’, to wit: keep the damned things off the streets.
“Something else” here too: Don’t touch that thing, it’s more likely to hurt you than anyone else.
Actually, there is a way of playing a (non-certain-death) version of Russian Roulette with an automatic. I won’t describe it here, though, for ethical reasons.
I heard someone once say that if you don’t watch it, the gun sometimes maliciously loads itself…a succinct way of saying treat it as if its always loaded. A corollary to that is never point it at anyone unless you are planning to shoot them.
I think they all are a subset of number two.