Why YSK: Even if you don’t own a gun, there is a chance you can encounter one at the home of a friend or family member. These are the four core rules of gun safety, but the same can be used with airsoft/paintball guns, nerf or even chemical spray bottles!
First, treat every firearm as if it were loaded. Even if it was clear the last time you saw it. If looking at a gun with someone else and they assure you it’s not loaded, you can respectfully ask them to clear it in front of you before you handle it yourself.
Never point a gun at anything you are not willing to destroy. Pretend there is a lazer beam coming from the barrel. Don’t let that “beam” point at anyone. That is known as “flagging”. In nearly all cases keeping the barrel pointing down between your feet is a good move.
Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire. This includes the whole trigger guard area. Most people keep their finger on the frame well above the trigger guard, pointing their finger in the same direction as the barrel. This is known as “trigger discipline”.
Finally be sure of your target and what’s behind it. Bullets can still travel a long way even after they pass through a target. If you are target shooting make sure there is a solid backstop. If in a real life situation you must positively ID the threat, no shooting at shadows or noises.
You must log in or # to comment.
cough Join SRA cough
Does every gun store have a jar for rounds they found in guns that have been handed to them?
Maintenance should probably be in there too: A poorly maintained firearm is potentially dangerous to the user.
Doing proper maintenance is more applicable to someone who owns or is responsible for firearms. I think the rule for the casual finder would be adding something like “assume moving any part of the gun may cause something inside to explode”.
I’ve never so much as touched a gun and I know all of this. I suppose I’ve just absorbed it through constant contact in my peripheral. Recent movies are getting trigger discipline better, but TV shows still get it wrong.
deleted by creator
Also, couldn’t most of this also apply to things like industrial paint guns or grease guns given the very real possibility for a horrible death by high-pressure injection with those?
I practice safe handling with the handheld barcode scanners at the hardware store checkout.
-
Do not point the scanner at anything you do not intend to scan.
-
Keep your finger away from the trigger until you’re ready to scan.
-
Be aware of your surroundings including what is behind your target.
I would extend it to any gunlike, or vaguely gun shaped object, even those that cannot cause harm. Don’t become complacent with safety practices even when it doesn’t matter.
#AllGunsMatter
-
industrial paint guns or grease guns
So all guns then…?
“High pressure injection” made me think of some gruesome deaths from paint and grease that I’m certainly sure can’t be what you mean 😬 vivid picture though.
There is a good Hydraulic press video of high-pressure injections into clear ballistic gel, and it’s fuckin wild. You can have something that looks like a little dribble of water coming out of a flexible line. Grab the line to remove it and bam, you just had a bunch of hydraulic fluid shot into your bloodstream, which will create an oil embolism and kill you.
That’d have to be at close range though, to create some sort of a temporary seal, right (as far as my physics intuition says)? Otherwise it should behave roughly similar to water in an open environment, where it would have to be the speed of the jet hitting you that does the raw damage.
Yeah, you pretty much need surface to surface contact.
Hard pass on that Jesus.
Some years ago I acted as crew on an ultra-low budget film. We didn’t have the budget for simulated firearms so we had to use real ones. Everyone involved in the project agreed that extreme care was warranted. We made certain that there was no live ammunition anywhere near the set. Firearms were locked up unless they were being held by a trained crew member or an actor. The actors were all taught the basics of how their firearms operated and how to check the chambers. The prop handlers and actors checked every firearm every time it changed hands, even when they had just watched the person who handed it to them check the chamber.
With all of that in place, we still insisted on following the other rules as well. Trigger discipline was maintained at all times, including while filming scenes. Camera angles were adjusted so that firearms never had to pointed at anyone or anything that we were not willing to damage. Actors were careful to keep their firearms pointed in the safe directions that had been arranged, even when simulating their use.
It was a fair amount of trouble and it added time to a very tight operation, but there were absolutely no incidents, or near incidents, or concerns that there might be an incident. That is how everyone who handles firearms should treat them in real life. It takes a little time and attention, but it isn’t difficult. And following even one of the safety rules makes it impossible for anyone to be hurt accidentally.
Learning and following the safety rules is a cheap investment for the benefit of not accidentally killing someone.
Someone should have told Baldwin
With reading this I’m always amazed that incidents like the rust movie still happen.
If you set things up like this where everyone checks each other as well, it becomes really hard to somehow get a bullet on set, and then in a gun…
We were fortunate to have a producer/director who felt strongly about safety and was willing to spend the extra time necessary. A lot of the time, especially for productions that are running on a shoestring, everyone is pushed very hard to reduce the time and cost to an absolute minimum. The low pay selects for inexperienced armorers and the time constraints means that the armorer is constantly being pressured not to “waste” any time. An armorer who is believed to have “slowed down” a production may be fired and will have trouble finding more work. That is what happens everywhere when money is more important than people.
In other words :
- Gun can go bang ! Scary.
- Point gun at bad guy, never good guy.
- Fingy behave until bad guy show up.
- Good guy close or behind bad guy ? No bang !
(This is meant to make the rules easy to remember, not to make fun of them)
…… And don’t go out in the woods during deer season because there’s always someone treating a deadly weapon all too casually and don’t think those rules apply to them
Let me summarise it in just one: never touch the gun
That’s actually not a good one. For example if you are at a playground and you see someone left their gun you definatley want to move it somewhere where kids aren’t going to get it. Its up to you if you call the cops.
I found a tazer at a bus stop once and I callled the police. It wasn’t until they got there that I learned it was a tazer (I didn’t want to open the holster it was in for fear of getting my fingerprints on a murder weapon). If I knew it was a tazer I would have just put it in my backpack and owned a tazer.
And if you must touch the gun, please consider: instead maybe don’t
These are good practices for anything that shoots projectiles, not just weapons. I replaced some baseboard trim in the house a few months ago, and was extremely careful regarding where I pointed the air nailer, particularly when it was under pressure.
Paintball guns can easily remove an eyeball, yet the way people handle them at open games should make us all terrified for how unaware and and careless people are around dangerous devices. We need far more training and preparation on a nationalized, standardized level for preparing people for the real world.
Lastly, secure your firearms you uncultured swines that don’t.
Not only for your safety, but the safety of your children if you have some. I hate that people don’t follow this rule.
also the safety of the children and general community what live around you (if they enter into your calculations). when i was growing up, the neighbor was a professor at the prestigious university down the way. they thought it was enough to teach their kid gun safety and store the gun in a safe place in their room and for their house it was. problem was some dipshit who wanted to roll with the norteños across the way. broke into the professor’s place, took their gun, shot at some other dipshits and was fortunately a terrible shot. ditched the gun, the police recovered it and brought it back. fortunately we were already paying our bribes so when they came around asking and i told them i didn’t know, they believed me (they knew my tells already when i lied: we played poker for halloween candy thursdays after
karatebribe practice and i suuuucked at poker😘)Saw an article recently about this 10 year old who shot his dad in the head while the dad slept next to the mother. Kid found the key to the gun storage when searching for the Nintendo Switch his dad took away from him, and he was angry at the dad, found the gun… Now he has no dad. Mom woke up to a loud bang and the sound of liquid pouring on the floor.
Devastating read. Really tragic.
That’s horrible! That’s why I went for a safe with a fingerprint reader. Easier access for me and harder access for the kids.
This is the way. Store your ammo separately too.
Where I grew up you had to store weapons in two distinct places, like part of the firing mechanism in one.
But I’m not usanian so I don’t need to dream about grabbing a GUN and fight off The Bad Guys. I don’t even have a firearm.
Does that come with a backup generator in case they cut off electricity?
It doesn’t need backup power. It’s just a small gun safe for a pistol.
Thieves love those. Just by looking at it, you know there’s a gun in there. They’re light and small enough you can pick up and steal the whole thing, no problem. Then, you can smash it open when you get somewhere else with no tools required. If you spike it like a football with both hands onto concrete and concentrate the force onto one of the lid’s corners, it’ll pop right open after a few tries. Most of the hinges can also be easily attacked if you have some basic tools and need to be quiet.
Does it have its own battery then? What does the fingerprint reader use to draw power?
It has disposable batteries and a charging port. It’s similar to this model.
Boy he’ll really regret using an electronic safe when the world runs entirely out of batteries for six straight months
I’m thinking if that happens, there will be enough reason since a while back to already have taken the gun out 😅
They come with keys too, lol.
In hindsight it’s a small miracle neither I, my siblings, or my cousins ever got ourselves or someone else hurt with the guns that were casually left out at my grandparents’ house. It was drilled into me to never touch them without someone watching me first, but what if I’d just not given a fuck, you know? I can’t imagine doing the same with a kid today. Different times.
For sure all this, one note, rule 0 is
encounter one at the home of a friend or family member.
If you don’t know what to do (RE: these other four rules and how to operate that specific firearm) or are nervous, don’t goddamn touch it unless you have to. If it’s a safe situation and not something out of the ordinary like kids or burglars are around and the owner is dead, go get the owner of the gun or someone who is experienced enough to handle them safely.
Yeah. I used to work in a destination outdoors store that sold sometimes hundreds of guns in a day. Once every few years we would find an unattended firearm in the store - usually in the bathroom. People would have a gun in a holster, and when the belt came off and slid down they’d lose retention and slide behind the toilet.
Even though every employee from the janitor to the cashier to the finance people were required to be trained on how to safely handle a firearm, we had a small list of managers that were allowed to handle guns that had been left unattended.
Out of 200 employees there were 8 of us allowed to secure a weapon.
The worst case of abandoned guns we had was someone who bought a concealed-carry purse, decided they didn’t like it and returned it. 2 weeks later they came by to ask if they’d left their gun in it.
I found it in the purse on the sales floor. The customer service team got a very stern lecture on another reason why we always inspect returns.
sigh the number of coworkers who I’ve had talk about their couch guns…
I’d offer this as well: if you don’t have to pick up a gun, don’t pick one up.
So just leave it there for some kid to find?
What if the kid needs it?
good point
That’s an example of when the gun needs to be picked up and secured. Also the kid may have the proper firearms training.
Then it’s the kids problem
The most important rule of firearms safety is to keep away from the US.
Yeah, I love these posts by Americans. I once tried to explain to them, that I don’t need to know how to handle a gun as I never saw one in my life and probably never will. They couldn’t comprehend.
