Never seen a survey that comes anywhere near this outcome.
No, I won’t ‘think of the children’ in that way. My way is safer in today’s world. IMO 
And if you don’t have that option without endangering those with you? 
lol
Most guns have good ways to disassemble for cleaning, that makes them inoperative. Even for muzzle-loaders that you can’t disassemble, there are ways to guarantee that the gun can’t fire while you’re cleaning it.
I grew up in the 60’s hunting with family and taking years and years of NRA riflery classes. To this day, I cringe when I see TV and movie actors treating guns like props. Well, OK, they are props (usually) but in my experience, hunters actually take a lot more care. I’m not a soldier and haven’t been to war, so other than hunting with ex-soldiers, I can only guess about that but I sure hope they’re better than most actors!
I was, in fact, cringing when John Travolta waved that automatic around in the car, gesturing with it. Classic line: “I said I was sorry!” Sigh.
Would a moderator please delete all my posts so I do not get banned or a warning.
Get out your cell phone and call someone who does. Meanwhile, keep kids and assholes away.
That’s not an excuse for learning, but if you’re ignorant, best to let someone with a clue handle the situation. This is true for most potentially dangerous things. My suspicion is that more damage is done by people doing stupid things when they think there’s danger than if they had just keptt the situation stable until better help arrives.
Meanwhile, try to memorize the rules listed above attributed to Jeff Cooper. They’re pretty good. Mostly, that first one.
Are there official rules of gun safety?
I don’t know anything about guns except what I’ve read on this board, so I went with the third one because it’s specific about what you should/shouldn’t do. “Treat every gun as if it’s loaded” doesn’t help unless you know how to treat a loaded gun.
I voted for “don’t point it at anything you don’t want to kill/destroy” because it’s an easier rule to follow than “treat every gun as if it’s loaded.” If someone doesn’t know how to treat a loaded gun, the “first rule” doesn’t help much in that case.
People who aren’t experienced with guns have only Hollywood and the news from which to draw their understanding of how guns work. People think every gun has a safety switch that has to be flipped before it fires. People don’t understand what the chamber is, and why just removing a magazine doesn’t mean the gun is safe. People think the finger is always on the trigger when you’re holding it, because it’s the “natural” place for it to be. People think the gun is somehow directly tied to their will, and don’t realize it’s a machine that doesn’t care about what they want or intend, and works reliably every time regardless if they meant it to fire or not. People who haven’t been given instruction on gun safety have absolutely no concept of what muzzling someone is, or why its dangerous and absolutely fucking not okay.
Therefore, first rule should be “know where the fuck your muzzle is all the time, and take conscious effort to not let it ever point at something you don’t want to die.” That’s the most important behavior people need to train themselves with when it comes to gun safety, because it’s the one that comes least naturally. Nobody ever thinks of which direction their fingers happen to be pointing at any moment unless they’re purposely pointing them, and likewise nobody ever thinks about which direction the gun is pointing when they’re not aiming it.
My feeling is if you see a gun and you don’t know a thing about them then you need to leave it be. If you walk into someones house and a gun is laying on the coffee table don’t pick it up. If you find a gun laying out in the street don’t pick it up.
Call somebody who does know how to handle guns to get it.
If that is not an option and you really feel like you have to touch it
then I would say
1 assume it’s loaded
2 don’t point it at anybody
3 keep your finger off the trigger
Once I found a gun in my yard and even though I have handled guns I still wouldn’t touch it. I called the police and let them get it.
My feeling was I have no idea whose it was, it was thrown there by people running from the cops, I have no idea how it’s been used, and I don’t want my finger prints on it.
Maybe I’m too cautious but I grew up with guns, there were loaded guns in the house, the entire farming side of my family has guns.
However I was also raised you don’t touch them without a reason, you don’t play with them, you don’t pick up another person gun without their permission and if you’re not sure what you are doing keep your hands off.
In reference to the OP, someone who admits the are clueless when it comes to guns. My parting safety advice would be don’t touch it until somebody who does know what they are doing is there to show you how.
I took a hunter’s safety course in 8th grade and the first thing we learned was the “treat every gun as if it were loaded” rule.
Then one of my first jobs in high school was working the gun counter at KMart back in the 80s. It was there that I learned that for everyone 1 responsible gun owner there is a handful of gunowners that should never be near a gun much less hold one. Being 18 and trying to reason with Billy Bob that he shouldn’t be looking down the barrel pointing towards kids footwear even though “It taint’ even loaded son” will get him thrown out of the store.
“Always double tap the head. It’s the only way to be sure.”
Treat every gun as if it’s loaded
but I thought about voting for don’t point a gun at anything you don’t want to kill
Another rule that applies during a non-emergency situation:
When you pick up a gun, point it in a safe direction check the chamber. Do this every time. Make it a perfect habit. If you place the gun on a table, and pick it up ten seconds later, check the chamber again.
The reason? Most people think it’s to make sure the gun is not loaded. While this is often the case, it is not the correct answer. (Perhaps you want the gun to be loaded.) You need to check the chamber to determine the condition of the gun; you need to know if there is a round in the chamber.
If you treat it as if it’s loaded, even if you don’t know anything about a gun, some things should be obvious and flow out of assuming it is loaded. Don’t point it at anyone, don’t touch the trigger, call someone who knows about guns to make sure it is rendered safe.
You are not wrong; but there is less standardization of gun safety than you might think. For examble, I was taught when handing a gun to always check if it was empty. On top of that, if at a range with a buddy, before handing it to them, check that it is empty and show them that it is empty before and as you hand it to them. Yes, its a formal step and yes it is picky, but I was taught that using the right proceedure each an every time renforces the safety “drill” of all parties.
Conversely, when its handed back, proper respect is that they check that its empty and show you that it is empty as they hand it back. I was told by my instructor that this was how it was done because nobody ever died from safety drilling.
Later on in life, I went to ranges with people trained by different instructors and thats when I found the safety drill differences. I’ve had people think its hysterical to be shown that a gun is empty before you hand it to them at a range (and refuse to show a gun is empty when they hand it back). I’ve been told derisively at various times that my way of handling fire arms was “East Coast” or “Northern” or “NJ” or some other kind of pissing-match “I just Know there’s no bullets in there; cause I’m Psychic”.
Now, I haven’t been to a range in years (and traded in all my guns a long, long time ago) so maybe people have a more standardized approach now.
i think this is the salient point of checking even when you “know” it’s not loaded. It’s not paranoia. It’s vigilance. You don’t get a do-over if you are wrong.
The OP asks two different questions. The list of rules I’ve always heard starts with “assume every gun is loaded”, so in that sense it’s the first rule. But “don’t point it at anything you don’t want to kill” is probably more important, despite usually being listed second.
These seem to be the same rule with different wording.
This.
“You don’t talk about gun safety”?
If you treat every weapon as if it’s loaded all the time, then you don’t put your finger on the trigger (until it’s time to use it), you don’t point it at people or anything else except maybe the floor, you keep it in a safe place away from small children, etc. etc. This one rule, taken seriously and always keeping in mind that weapons are made for the purpose of killing and not, say, whipping up an omelet , won’t stop accidents from happening, but the possibility goes way, way down. In my opinion, this rule covers all the others.