My gun safety lesson
Xavier has been doing his excellent “Idiots with Guns” series for quite some time, and in that spirit I thought I’d pass on my little gun safety story.
This happened about a decade or so ago, I’m not exactly sure when, but it’s sometime between the rash of criminal attacks on people with rental cars in Florida, and the rash of criminal attacks on people who rented cars in Virginia. I remember this because in both cases, the attacks on out-of-state tourists happened immediately after the respective states had adopted “shall issue” carry laws. Gee, people arriving from out-of-state usually don’t have carry permits. Our free and fair press never connected the dots, however.
I was over at my buddy’s farm, shooting on the back forty with another friend. He had brought a number of guns, including a S&W model 63 J-frame, in 22 long rifle. That little revolver was the last thing shot for that day. I remember he drew it form his holster, fired off the whole cylinder, and reholstered it, saying something about keeping the empty cases in the gun to act as a poor man’s “snap cap”. [1]
So anyway, later on we’re at his house, watching the idiot box. He’s drinking some kind of barley pop. I’m drinking my standard cerebral enhancing cocktail consisting of caffeine and yellow dye #5. Someone like Senator Dorothy Doxer comes on the screen. My buddy whips out the S&W, and “dry fires” six times towards the screen. Then, being the polite guy he is, he grasps it by the cylinder, muzzle downward, and offers it to me.
I’m a firearms newbie, and I’m trying to stick to all the rules. I grasp it by the handle, and then immediately swing open the cylinder and dump out the cartridges. In my hand are 5 spent rounds of brass, and one live round of ammo. The live round had gotten at least one primer strike on it (probably two, but in the same place) and just had not gone off. Y’all can just figure the odds of that round going off, had I also practiced my dry firing at his TV with his gun, without checking the cylinder first. I’m guessing it would be around 100%.
Not knowing a damn thing about “hang fire“, I picked up that round and took a good close look at the primer strike. I got to keep my eyeball that day. Should have kept that round as a souvenir too.
The Four Rules
1. All firearms are loaded
2. Never let the muzzle of a firearm point at anything you are not willing to destroy
3. Keep your finger off the trigger unless your sights are on the target
4. Be sure of your target and what is behind it
[1] A “snap cap” is a device that prevents damage to a firearm when it is “dry fired”, which means fired without a live round of ammo inside.
