It sounds a lot like the case involving Judas Priest a few years back. US kids, UK band.
Rules of gun safety:
- A gun is always loaded until you have personally verified with your own senses that it is not.
- Notwithstanding Rule #1, a gun is still loaded even if you have confirmed that it is not.
- Don’t point a gun at anything that you don’t want to get shot.
Those might be your three rules, but they are not the three commonly taught to everyone else.
Well, yeah, but “the gun is always loaded, even when it’s not” is really just a pithy way of stating your rules #1 and #2. It’s not meant to be taken literally.
Then it’s a bad rule.
Firearms are serious tools, and you’ll accidently kill someone if you don’t understand the rules. There should be absolutely no ambiguities in the safety rules; the rules must be simple, clear, concise, and interpreted literally.
I always thought the rule about “treat the gun as if it is always loaded” was about building a safety habit. If you always act as if the gun is loaded and able to fire you are less likely to thoughtlessly do something stupid with it. You’re training your muscles and muscle memory routines to only handle the gun in a certain manner, to the point that doing anything else feels “off” and you’re uncomfortable doing it.
I don’t know what Jeff Cooper’s original intent was, but that hits on one important thing. Accidents can happen, although the more trained you are the less likely this is. But even if there is some small chance that one of the rules is violated, as long as you are sticking to the other three a tragedy is averted. If, for example, the dog brushes past a hunter and accidentally hits the trigger, things are safe if the hunter is always aware where his muzzle is pointed. Or even if you are cleaning a gun and are 100% sure that you unloaded it last time but neglect to double check, if you’re practicing safe trigger control and not pointing it away from others things are much safer. But you should still aim for all 4!
And more & more people are falling into that category… 
Oh, for heaven’s sake. “The gun is always loaded” is just another way to say “Treat the gun as if it’s always loaded.”
The point is, you can’t treat every gun as if it were loaded. Unless you were deranged you wouldn’t stick a brass brush down the barrel of a loaded weapon, yet you can’t clean one without doing it.
Treating every gun as if it were loaded until I have verified that it is not, and it remains unloaded only as long as it is in my sole and exclusive control is a a better rule. A rule you can’t follow every time isn’t a rule at all, it’s a guideline. I can always follow my rule. I don’t have to violate my rule to clean and maintain my guns, but the “Gun is always loaded people” violate their rule all the time.
Guideline, rule. It should be a habit. When cleaning my guns, when I am absolutely sure they are not loaded, I still never allow the barrel to point in a direction that could cause injury.
Yep, you need to look down the barrel, but it is a deliberate act. Otherwise the gun is always pointed away.
I was on a jury a few years ago. One piece of evidence was a rifle (an SKS if anyone cares). The idiot cop while handling the rifle painted the whole damn room and everyone in it with it.
The rifle was later laid on the table in the jury room by a bailiff. Pointing right at the heart of the juror next to me.
I don’t care. Yes it was unloaded, but you just don’t do that. I immediately picked up the rifle and put it in a safe location.
I think the “gun is always loaded people” know exactly what they’re doing and they’re probably exactly the same as you, they just don’t feel the need to be ridiculously pedantic about their “rule”. My rule is “don’t be an idiot with a gun”, internally I know that it covers a whole raft of things, but I don’t feel the need to explicitly state them all otherwise I’d drown under the weight of my own internal monologue.
I often have friends over to shoot. Whenever I see a muzzle pointed my way I shout, “Hey! Watch your muzzle!” Most of the time they acknowledge their error. But every now and then I will get, “But it’s not loaded!” :rolleyes: As if that matters.
I don’t have a problem with this as long as it’s not loaded. After all, when I’m walking around a gun show, there are hundreds of guns laying on tables that are pointed at me. But I do have a problem when the firearm is in someone’s hands and the muzzle is pointed in my direction…
For your first point, I don’t understand how people keep sweeping each other. I mean, I’ve seen it happen—I really don’t understand how gun store employees manage not to lose their jobs from all of the muzzle-related idiocy—but how hard is it to make sure the thing’s pointed at the ground, the sky, holstered, or otherwise not at one’s fellow shooters? It’s just common courtesy.
As to the second, I do have a problem with it. How hard is it to zip-tie the action open, have a trigger lock mounted, or have a chamber flag in it? When the cures are so cheap and easy, I don’t understand why people don’t use them.
There’s probably a good reason I’m not understanding.