Adding a "fifth" rule to firearm safety

K

kraigwy

New member
This is reference to an incident that happened in our local Law Enforcement

Read Friendly fire: http://www.newslj.com/ You have to have a subscription for the whole article to come up.

Basicly, a supposed firearm instructor was working on a department firearm, it says doing maintance but not what the maintance was. What happened he pulled an empty magazine out of the to be worked on pistol. Then he removed a loaded magazine from his duty pistol and laid it on the table. He then mistakenly put the loaded magazine in the Maintained pistol and it discharged into the break room next door.

I added a "fifth" rule, Never clean or work on a firearm when ammunition with live ammo in the area.

Normally I don't second guess incidents if I'm not there or am not in the investigation of the incident, but this is different, my step daughter was in the room next door.

I don't know Glocks, maybe they have to have a magazine in the chamber to drop the hammer. But you still have to rack the slide to get it to chamber a round.

Anyway here is a letter I wrote asking for more firearms safety training for the safety involve. I know in the department I worked for, I'd be in quite a bit of trouble. This guy, gets nothing but a new room to work on firearms.

So opinions, does my letter cover my points on this incident?

Letter to the Editor: Ref: Gun fired in Law Center Dec. 8th 2011
I address this not to condemn anyone involved but in hopes of preventing future incidents.

I’m a retired police officer from an out of state agency. Part of my duties was a firearms instructor, and was certified by the Alaska Police Standards Council as such. A certification which is still valid as I still instruct both LEOs and Civilians in firearm use and safety.

Some points to consider: There are Four Basic Firearms Safety Rules, which if followed no accidents resulting in injury could occur.

1. All Firearms are treated as being loaded.
2. Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction
3. Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot
4. Always be aware of your target and background

However, after reading the article, I wish to add another. You never work on any firearm with ammunition in the work area.

I do believe a firearm safety training session should be provided to the officer involved. I’m basing my assessment on the News Letter General article. I wasn’t there.

Several if not all of the above four safety rules (plus my added fifth) were violated.

1. The gun was loaded. You don’t need a round in the chamber to function check a service pistol. According to the article, the officer inserted a magazine into the pistol to function check it. I don’t know what pistol was involved, some require a magazine into the pistol before it can be fired. It is not necessary that a round be chambered for the hammer to fall. I can’t understand from the article how the round got into the chamber. It has to be manually loaded by racking the slide.

2. Had the firearm been pointed in a safe direction, in this case the ceiling, it wouldn’t have endangered anyone in existing rooms (there was no indication anyone was in the adjoining room but I’m not sure if the officer knew this.) A round through the roof would create less danger to others than a round through the wall.

3. Unless the pistol was defective, it could not have fired unless the finger was on the trigger.

4. See #2

5. The rule I added, if the loaded magazine wasn’t in the area, or remained in the officer’s pistol in his duty belt it could not have been accidently inserted in the other pistol.

Again I write this not to condemn anyone, and am thankful no one was injured. I do believe a firearm safety program should be provided. I write this in hopes others, Law enforcement officers and civilians alike, take into heart the Four Rules of Firearm safety, and if you clean or work on firearms, add the fifth rule.
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Yesterday, an employee of a LGS around here was cleaning a gun and put a round through the store wall and into the eye of someone next door. Pretty damaging from the news story on the tube.

In front of a bunch of kids too.

PS - the employee was reported to be unloading a Glock when it discharged.
 
I don't know Glocks, maybe they have to have a magazine in the chamber to drop the hammer.
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They do not.


Whether or not the gun is known to be loaded, you still never touch the trigger unless and until you have picked out the safest place in the area for a bullet to land, and have pointed the gun in that direction. (That's what "until you are ready to shoot" and "be sure of your target" actually mean!)

If the department would frown on live rounds going into the ceiling, and if the armorer's squad mates would frown on live rounds crashing through the wall and landing in the break room, then the department needs to install a safe backstop in the gun handling area. A bucket of sand would do it, and wouldn't break the budget. If you want to be fancy, make it a Safe Directions product of some sort. Slap a target on it and remind everyone involved that they don't touch the trigger, regardless of the reason, unless the gun is pointed at a target.

Glad your daughter is okay.

pax
 
I'm with you Kraig.

Even if he picked up the magazine and inserted it with the slide locked back. He would still have to release the slide stop and then pull the trigger.

Like you say, we weren't there and there are no witnesses.

However, it sounds to me like another uncleared firearm having its trigger pulled to me.
 
Fine with me and;

He already violated the four "basic" rules and adding another won't make much difference. In the past, I have seen 14, 11, 10, 7 and of course the four that you have listed. We teach the basic four as the more you add, the more folks tend to forget. I saw a video where Jeff Cooper stated that if you follow these four, you will never get in trouble. I thought that was questionable but you really only need one and that is muzzle control ...... ;)

We routinely review past shooting/hunting accidents, in the unpredictalbe hunting enviremoment and all were caused by not following the four basic rules.

Most of the time I'm doing gun work on my bench, there is no live ammo on my bench but fairly close by. There are times when I function check but do those with "Dummy" ammo. The rare times that live ammo is on the bench, a little bell goes off in my head and I stop to separate the two. .... ;)

Be Safe !!!
 
/shrug

You can make 30 rules, or 100, and folks will STILL negligently discharge firearms.

It's not about the rules, it's about the discipline needed to abide by them.
 
Don't take for granted it would be safer to shoot into the ceiling. It might be a multi-storied building, and if older, not have concrete between the floors.
 
Sorry, but I give the "5th" rule a thumbs down. Here's why. I work on many of my guns. I have limited space in which to do this. I have ammo cans filled with ammo in the area in which I work on my guns. Also, when I take a loaded magazine out of a gun, I leave that magazine near by. Why not? I always check the chamber of every gun as soon as I begin to handle it and right before I put it away. And, as others have said - always have the muzzle pointing in a safe direction, always keeping your finger off the trigger unless you check the chamber. Whether the loaded magazine is one foot from the gun or 70 feet from the gun makes no difference. That's not what matters. Checking chambers OFTEN and at the appropriate times is what matters.
 
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I'm with Skans and the others,,,

Strict adherence to Rule #1 makes a 5th rule unnecessary.

As a professional educator I say,,,
Keep the rules few and simple.

Aarond
 
I understand your rationale and agree with the intent but I also agree with the others that if you can't follow the first four whatever comes after them will not be relevant either.

The complacency that some exhibit around such deadly devices is astounding to me. I have a Glock and it FREAKS ME OUT to pull the trigger to function check or disassemble the gun. Not "freaks me out" like I think it shouldn't be neccesary or the design is flawed but like every time I go to do it I go "WHOA! WHOA! You are about to pull the trigger on a firearm! Are you REALLY sure it's unloaded!"

I never pull the trigger without identifying the removed magazine, ejecting the round, visually verifying empty chamber with the slide locked back, dropping the slide, reopening it enough to visually verify the empty chamber AGAIN and then visually and physically checking the loaded chamber indicator.
 
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aarondhgrahm said:
Strict adherence to Rule #1 makes a 5th rule unnecessary.
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As an aside, for me personally, if I don't obey rule one I could very likely have an AD. The reason being that all of my firearms are loaded. Yes, all of them, chambers loaded.

If anyone tries it, I guarantee you'll obey rule #1, or else you'll wish you had.
 
I really enjoy firearms. At the same time, they do scare me a little. I treat them gingerly and I always assume a gun is loaded, even after I have emptied it and checked it thrice. A little fear is a healthy thing. Some people will say it's just an object, nothing to fear, but I guess i just have it lodged in my subconscious. And I grew up the kid of a cop/FFL and was constantly around firearms- shot my first M60 when I was 12.

I feel the same way about cars. Well, not quite. I don't care for cars beyond their ability to get me between two points. But I do consider them exceedingly dangerous and drive as carefully as I may, to the general unhappiness of all those passing motorists. A car is a deadly, deadly weapon.

If you assume that both a car and a gun can kill you a moments notice and treat them with that respect, you'll never have a ND. Maybe an AD, not an ND. I have never had an ND and I have never had an accident on the road (I I have put 350,000+ miles combined on 4 different cars).

Rule #1 is the key.
 
It's not about Rule One. It's about the other three rules, which idiots throw out the window as soon as they've checked, double checked, and done whatever dance to the moon gods they think is necessary to get the gun unloaded and keep it that way.

If you throw out 75% of your multiple, redundant layers of safety, eventually you'll shoot someone or something you shouldn't have shot.

And then you'll go online and claim it was just "one moment's inattention" and "just ONE little mistake" that bit you... when in fact it was a lifetime of overconfident but stupid gunhandling that did you in.

https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/ccm-columns/features/the-other-three-rules/

pax
 
At a LGS the owner was inspecting a customers 1911. He racked the slide several times without looking in the chamber and assumed the weapon was clear. He pulled the trigger and unleashed a 230gr FMJ into the shop wall which ricocheted off the wall and struck one of his employees in the stomach. :eek:

He has a nasty scar but he is alive. At least the owner had it pointed in a "safe" direction rather than pointed directly at him. The results may have been even worse.
 
I like Steve Wenger's 5th rule. http://www.spw-duf.info/safety.html

5. Maintain control of your gun.

Arizona Attorneys Michael Anthony and Robert Brown have researched civil litigation involving firearms and found that most successful lawsuits against gun owners involve incidents where someone other than the owner has accessed and misused the gun.

As a result, I have accepted their suggestion and now teach this fifth basic rule of firearms safety.

Make sure that you keep the gun within your control when you carry it. Guns in purses and other means of off-body carry are difficult to control, as are guns being shown to friends, stashed between couch cushions, placed in desk drawers, etc.

When you must store a gun that you are not carrying, take reasonable steps to limit access by unauthorized users. If you must simply disable it with a lock, a cable lock is preferable to a trigger lock - most trigger locks violate Rule Three.

A caveat to this rule concerns dropped guns. Modern handguns are designed not to fire when dropped and people have shot themselves trying to catch guns that have slipped from their hands. If you do momentarily lose control of a firearm, let it fall to the ground.​
 
I like my rule#5 better, NEVER dry fire a gun without double checking the chamber visually at least twice. I keep ammo around my gun cleaning desk all the time, loaded magazines too so I can manually test how it cycles after a good cleaning but the double check rule (knock on wood) has not failed me yet.
 
Autoloaders with a "magazine disconnect" require that a magazine be inserted before the action will operate. As a result, you'd have to insert a magazine to function check the gun or to drop the hammer or striker (assuming of course it did not have a decocker).

Some refer to this device as a "magazine safety" but this is one example of who this can make the gun less safe.

I won't mention how a lost or damaged magazine would render the operator defenseless. I suppose that is "safe" for the attacker but not so "safe" for the operator.

In the final analysis the only reliable "safety" resides between the ears of the responsible gun owner.
 
It's not about Rule One.
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I disagree. Yep, I think you are flat-out wrong.

If you follow rule #1, the other rules must follow. MUST. FOLLOW.

If I assume the gun is loaded I will always keep it pointed in a safe direction. I will keep my finger off the trigger. I will make sure that if I do point it somewhere, I am aware of my target and my background.

Obviously, if you are a dope and do not understand what a loaded gun entails, Rule #1 is pointless. But if you are a dope, all rules are pointless. I'm not advocating dumping the other 3 rules but if you truly understand what a loaded gun can do, Rule #1 is all you need.

The other 3 rules work really well with my 10, 8 and 6 year old. If an adult needs the other 3 to understand what a gun is, you've got bigger problems.
 
SwampYankee,

That's the same song, second verse.

Check how many posts (in this thread and others) say something like, "Double check!!" as if the simple checking to be sure it's unloaded is all that's required before they then point the gun at something stupid and pull the trigger.

It doesn't matter how many times you've checked it, or how thoroughly: the other three rules still apply.

People treat Rule One as if it means "All guns are loaded (until you've checked the gun, then you can do something stupid with it)." That's not what it means, as a certain number of numbnuts find out all on their own every year.

pax
 
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