Soccerdad1995 wrote:Syntyr wrote:treadlightly wrote:
The mother's warning was don't play with loaded guns. Footnote - they are all loaded.
Yep! Learned my lesson when I was handed a 12 gauge shotgun. I started to pull the pump back to check and the guy who handed it to me got offended and said "its empty I checked it!" I paused looked and him and finished pulling the pump handle back and what do you know but a 12 gauge slug popped out onto the floor. All I got was an "oopps". Yeah big OOPPS!
My now 17 year old daughter has been going to the range with me since she was 7. Whenever I hand her a gun, I drop the mag (if applicable) and rack it first right in front of her, then tell her it's unloaded. She never fails to immediately point it in the safest possible direction and then check for herself. This is something that I have taught her, and it should be as natural as checking the fuel level in a vehicle before you start to drive. It needs to be an ingrained habit that is done reflexively. Every time. If someone gets offended by me doing this when they have handed me a gun, then they are a moron.
The NRA has three basic safe gun handling rules.
Always keep it pointed in a safe direction.
Always Keep your finger off of the trigger until ready to shoot.
Always keep guns unloaded until ready to use.
Follow any of the three and nothing bad is going to happen. Follow them all and you'll never have a gun related accident at all.
They are all so intuitive it's hard to believe so many people still do stupid things with guns.