General Categories > Shooting Sports
What I have experienced at shooting matches
OnTheFly:
--- Quote from: jonm on October 14, 2013, 09:53:46 PM ---I was responding to your subsequent posts
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So your point is that there are always exceptions to the rules? If so, I won't argue with that, but there is a huge difference between what the shooter was doing in my example and what you may do during firearm maintenance, dry fire practice, etc with reasonable precautions.
The discussion has progressed from people sweeping themselves with a gun and thinking nothing of it, to pointing a gun at an inanimate object while taking reasonable precautions. I consider these to be mutually exclusive. When you have a situation where you have to break one of the fundamental rules, you take precautions. Hopefully, they are obsessive precautions to make sure there is no bad outcome.
Fly
JTH:
--- Quote from: jonm on October 14, 2013, 08:03:09 PM ---Yes I would and I am sure others do as well. When I look down the bore of certain firearms, if I am ever unlucky enough to have to knock out a squib, when I clean the bore of my gun
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Huh. If I ever look down the bore of a pistol, it is because I have taken the barrel out of the gun. As such, I'm not looking down the bore of a gun, I'm looking into a hollow tube.
If it was still in the gun, I wouldn't do it. Why would I need to? If there is a squib in there, that's why I have a squib rod to check. (Actually, I use a plastic wire tie, that way I can check from the chamber end.)
--- Quote --- anytime someone goes to holster or unholser with a dropped/offset holster, and I'm sure there are other normal occurrences that I didnt cover. Now I'm not saying to make it a habit to aim at family members but a little common sense needs to be applied to the rules of firearm safety.
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What exactly about the topic of this thread wasn't common sense, I wonder?
"Don't point the gun at your arm. When someone tells you that you aren't being safe because you've pointed the gun at yourself, don't be an idiot."
jonm:
--- Quote from: OnTheFly on October 14, 2013, 11:06:29 PM ---So your point is that there are always exceptions to the rules? If so, I won't argue with that, but there is a huge difference between what the shooter was doing in my example and what you may do during firearm maintenance, dry fire practice, etc with reasonable precautions.
The discussion has progressed from people sweeping themselves with a gun and thinking nothing of it, to pointing a gun at an inanimate object while taking reasonable precautions. I consider these to be mutually exclusive. When you have a situation where you have to break one of the fundamental rules, you take precautions. Hopefully, they are obsessive precautions to make sure there is no bad outcome.
Fly
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My point was that the rule is silly but it's still a rule that has to be followed. Like I said in my first post. Then you jumped on me saying "ALWAYS treat a gun as if it's loaded." The rest of my posts were in response to that. I was pointing out that it's impossible to do it ALWAYS because certain circumstances dictate it.
Now to why I think it's silly. The gun was just checked for ammo by 2 people, mag is dropped, then hammer is dropped. At that point, to me, it's just a paper weight. Finger outside the trigger guard with no ammo in it, it can't go off. The same way that a gun inside a bag cannot go off with no ammo in it. Yet for some reason the gun in your hand is still "loaded" and the one in your bag is deemed safe. Thats why I said common sense needs to be applied.
JTH:
--- Quote from: jonm on October 15, 2013, 09:38:12 AM ---My point was that the rule is silly but it's still a rule that has to be followed.
{snip}
Now to why I think it's silly. The gun was just checked for ammo by 2 people, mag is dropped, then hammer is dropped. At that point, to me, it's just a paper weight. Finger outside the trigger guard with no ammo in it, it can't go off. The same way that a gun inside a bag cannot go off with no ammo in it. Yet for some reason the gun in your hand is still "loaded" and the one in your bag is deemed safe. Thats why I said common sense needs to be applied.
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So---what you are saying is that you have no problem with how you handle a firearm (meaning in your hand) being based only on your knowledge of whether or not it is loaded?
This, by the way, is how many people each year get shot with "unloaded" firearms.
The rule is in place so that no matter what, if you have a gun in your hand, you will treat it the same way every time--with safety. If you have a habit of acting differently "because it is empty" then at some point in time, you will make a mistake in your knowledge of whether or not it is empty. Hopefully that mistake will not be catastrophic.
At USPSA, Steel Challenge, and Multigun matches, that mistake will not be made.
OnTheFly:
--- Quote from: jonm on October 15, 2013, 09:38:12 AM ---Now to why I think it's silly. The gun was just checked for ammo by 2 people, mag is dropped, then hammer is dropped. At that point, to me, it's just a paper weight. Finger outside the trigger guard with no ammo in it, it can't go off. The same way that a gun inside a bag cannot go off with no ammo in it. Yet for some reason the gun in your hand is still "loaded" and the one in your bag is deemed safe. Thats why I said common sense needs to be applied.
--- End quote ---
I work with people like you. My job is to train and evaluate others in safe compliance with company policy, federal regulations, and aircraft limitations. Inevitably there is that small group of people who think that they should do things a certain way which is contrary to years of evidence which proves them wrong. Comparatively, if you go to any reputable firearms school, I doubt they will consider acceptable what you think is no big deal. On any given day when a person is not fatigued and/or distracted, people can perform reasonably. However, when fatigue, distractions, or other factors come into play, the individuals performance suffers UNLESS they maintain standards.
It is no different with gun handling. The purpose of the rules is not to establish a set of fundamentals that cover all situations and guarantee safety individually. That would be impossible. What each rule does do is put up a wall of swiss cheese, and as you know, swiss cheese has holes. These holes will allow errors through. The hope is that the holes in each of the rules (swiss cheese) never align to allow an error to bypass all layers of cheese. The same was true when I used to instruct in skydiving, and would be true in any higher risk sport...like shooting.
There is a huge difference between a firearm in the hand that is "unloaded" with a trigger finger that can have its own mind and one that is secured in a container. Unless you are talking about throwing the gun in a container with a bunch of loose material and then jostling it around. Personally, I would prefer that the gun were placed in a good holster, but the rules of the Lincoln range do not allow guns to be open carried in holsters.
So in the face of empirical evidence, you will continue to do what you think is reasonable. It does not appear that any common sense in this thread will sway you.
Fly
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