Why is it unsafe to point an empty gun at someone?

[Gary Johnson]

Is it unsafe to point an unloaded weapon at someone? No.

Other than scaring them to death, pointing an unloaded weapon at someone places them at no greater risk than pointing a length of water pipe at them.

Is it unsafe to point a weapon at someone if you think it's unloaded? You better believe it!

Ask anyone who has ever had an AD, unbagged a loaded weapon in a safe area, forgotten their anniversary, or locked their keys in the car.

People get distracted and make mistakes.

We treat all weapons as if loaded because we lack the ability to keep track of loaded / unloaded status with absolute reliability. If we try to gage the risk of sweeping someone based on our ability to remember if a weapon is loaded one of us will forget. Try it enough times or try it once in a sufficiently stressful environment and you're going to have trouble.

[Jim Norman]

Is it me or are we all missing the part of the question that said a "LOADED SHOTGUN" in a case or bag.

I think that while we have no way of knowing if a cased gun is loaded or not, we can GENERALLY ASSUME that it presents a far lower danger threshold than an uncased gun.

I would ask, if I or no one else has, "Why is the gun loaded if it is cased?" Are you planing on jumping into a Hot LZ and you want to be ready to go the instant your feet are on the ground?

Jim

PS. Is it also just me or was there a significant drift that occured here. I read the posts above this and thought I was in the other thread. I think the same criteria apply and the same rules.

[Skywalker]

Is it me or are we all missing the part of the question that said a "LOADED SHOTGUN" in a case or bag. ...

I read the posts above this and thought I was in the other thread.

Probably you are.

Nobody here spoke about a loaded shotgun.

The post title is "Why is it unsafe to point an empty gun at someone?".

[Jim Norman]

Luca,

I see where I went astray. Neil's post appears here and in the other thread. Both refer to the carrying of a loaded shotgun in a case.

Jim

[Jim Norman]

A further and I hope applicable comment here.

If the gun is bagged, be it pistol or long gun, how would you contol muzzle direction?

I can see that potentially you could carry a long gun case pointed vertical, but if I bag my pistol and place said bagged pistol into my range bag, do I now need a range bag that is tall enough to accomodate my Open gun in a vertical position? Is that to be the only acceptable postion? Do we all toss out all of our range bags?

No, I am not trying to sound rediculous here. If we are considering a rule, we should consider all of the consequenses. We would all need range bags that are in the neighborhood of 14" tall and designed to carry and cussion a pistol vertically if it is determined that a bagged gun can be considered as being pointed at the crowd.

I think that we can all agree that IF the gun is in the case, it is to be considered as "Safe" When we are called to the line to unbag or we go to a safe area to unbag, the safe direction should apply. Example, i place my hard case on the tabe and open it, I see that the muzzle is facing back away from the berm, I should close the case and rotate it so that when I remove the gun, it is facing the berm. AD, into the berm, no problem except for a DQ and soiled shorts. Same goes for the handgun, when you go to the table, handle the gun so that the muzzle is always in that "SAFE" direction, even though you are the one that bagged it.

True story, I had a DOD Security guy come to a match with his Glock. He was borrowing a holster for the match and also needed a Safety Check. Since it was raining we decided to do the initial verbal part in the sign-up trailer and also to declare the trailer table as a Safe Table for the sole purpose of confirming that his borrowed holster would work. Imagine my surprize when I racked the slide back on his G17 and a round popped out. At that point I also ejected the fully loaded magazine. A valid case in point why you always treat every gun as loaded. NEVER ASSUME!

Jim Norman

[Neil Beverley]

Thank you all for your responses.

Actually I’ve had this theoretical discussion before but usually with both the thread concepts linked together from the start. I’ve been curious to see if the responses changed by breaking up the discussion.

It’s not leading to any proposals to change the rules or any sinister motive. I was just curious as to how experienced and knowledgeable shooters from this forum would view the scenarios. It’s been a bit of a pet subject for me over the years and I see it as an anomaly with contradictory logic being applied.

Previously I have asked other shooters if they are happy with other shooters carrying shotguns and rifles around horizontally in a case or slip. Mostly they are.

In the discussions I have found:

• If a gun is not bagged or cased they are almost always very strongly against having a gun pointed at them, even if proven unloaded. They support the reasons stated above by a number of you i.e. treat the gun as if loaded.
  
• They automatically assume the gun in the case/slip to be unloaded.
  
• Because they assume the gun to be unloaded, actually few of them are concerned about having a gun that is case or slip pointed at them.
  
• None of them would be tolerant of having a known loaded gun, in a case or slip, pointed at them deliberately.
  

I find this attitude very contradictory. Indeed if the gun is out of the case you can usually see if the bolt is open or closed, you can see the chamber flag (if fitted) and for some guns you can see if the mag is attached or not. There is more information.

In a case the bolt could be closed on a loaded chamber, the magazine could be filled and fitted, the safety could be off. Who knows for certain? I've witnessed 2 guns taken out of cases that have been loaded. I would suspect that others here have as well.

I even find myself more accepting of having a handgun pointed at me if in a glove or case than a long gun in a slip or case. And that’s illogical as well.

Any further thoughts?

[Neil Beverley]

Gun Geek, Gary, Jim, All

I think just about all the comments made in this thread have been valid and useful (except possibly some of mine. ).

I don't think it's remotely feasible to create a rule to carry handguns in range bags muzzle down. It is possible for long guns, but I was asked not to.

Damm! Even that's illogical. Not that I was asked not to but that I would prefer it if we did for long guns but wouldn't expect it for handguns.

[BDH]

Neil, great dialog you started! While I think the BE members stated my thoughts, I will add one thing from the stage that Jay Worden, Erik Warren and I worked at the 3 Gun Nats (the shooter had to abandon two UNLOADED guns uprange of us, and we had to work backwards to clear everything)....

SHOOTER: Why can't we start downrange? After all, those other guns are unloaded?

CRO: XXX, so, how many UNLOADED guns kill people every year?

Nuff said......

[dv8]

One way of viewing this is to replace Safe/Unsafe concept with More Safe / Less Safe concept. In the safety-critical engineering the concept of multistep operations is very commonly employed. It does not completely remove a possibility of a human and/or system error, but it makes a failure less likely to occure. One can overengineer a system to a point where the system becomes unusable because of too many checks, or there could be insufficient checks that will make a system too dangerous to use.

In our case we have a pretty good set of rules of guns handling that is easy to follow and seems to be efficient enough, so that even though ADs do occurr, we don't see many injures or worse. I think we are doing pretty well as long as we continue paying attention to safety ourselves and educate newcomers to the sport.

And, I couldn't agree more that it is just plain rude to point a gun at someone - there is no excuse to that.

[rhino]

One way of viewing this is to replace Safe/Unsafe concept with More Safe / Less Safe concept.

That is a most excellent point.

Bravo!

What we need is (early 1990s businessman's cliche to follow) . . . a paradigm shift.

Life is inherently unsafe and to think in absolutes is folly. Safer vs. Less Safe is exactly way we should approach this.

[SiG Lady]

A business associate of mine once said, "Life is, at best, a risk." I haven't forgotten that.

[Vince Pinto]

Hi guys,

For those of you out there on the teaching side of the desk, I hope this explanation will assist.

No, pointing an unloaded gun at somebody is not in and of itself unsafe, but this is an example of our "multiple redundancy" in respect of safety. Since all responsible firearm owners observe the "Four Rules Of Gun Safety" credo, even if we're sure that the gun is unloaded, by not allowing it to point at anybody, we add a further element of safety, as does keeping our finger off the trigger until we're actually ready to fire a shot.

A car analogy is bumper bars and crumple zones and seat belts and air bags etc. Hopefully (at least) one of these will help you survive in the event of brain fade, and the same applies to "Four Rules Of Gun Safety".

As somebody said earlier in this thread, you'd need to break two or more of the four firearm safety rules to create a dangerous situation.

[SiG Lady]

Can we close this thread now....?...

[BigDave]

I have a dear friend who spent nearly a year in jail and know a girl from high school who suffered brain damage from an "unloaded handgun".

Guns are always loaded. Period. Treat them accordingly.

[rhino]

When I think of "pointing" a gun, I presume that it's being "handled" outside of a holster or case so that it's possible for a finger or other object to depress the trigger.

I do not think that a gun in a case or a holster where the trigger guard is protected is the same as "pointing" a gun at someone, whether it's loaded or not.

I'm not saying it's a good thing to have a cased muzzle covering your tender bits, but it's not the same as having Joe or Jane Bagodonuts waving their pistola around and sticking the muzzle in your face.

[Nik Habicht]

When I think of "pointing" a gun, I presume that it's being "handled" outside of a holster or case so that it's possible for a finger or other object to depress the trigger.

I do not think that a gun in a case or a holster where the trigger guard is protected is the same as "pointing" a gun at someone, whether it's loaded or not.

I'm not saying it's a good thing to have a cased muzzle covering your tender bits, but it's not the same as having Joe or Jane Bagodonuts waving their pistola around and sticking the muzzle in your face.

Rhino,

Counterpoint: consider a cocked and unlocked 1911, with a 1.5lb. trigger pull, in an old and washed off gun rug. Now consider that the person waving the rug around has one or more fingers in the trigger guard area ---- still as confident?

My two cents: it's less risky to try and remember to point the muzzle end of the rug at the ground.....

[dv8]

I still think that our current rules combined with common sense are sufficient. We can't make up a rule for every possible scenario out there. I also think that the shooting community as a whole has enough common sense to keep safe, and the fact that we are discussing these questions on this forum is a good example of it.

BTW, just out of curiosity, has anyone witnessed or heard of an AD out of a bagged firearm? If so, can you describe how that happened?

[rhino]

Counterpoint: consider a cocked and unlocked 1911, with a 1.5lb. trigger pull, in an old and washed off gun rug. Now consider that the person waving the rug around has one or more fingers in the trigger guard area ---- still as confident?

I'm not sure how that's a counterpoint. Are implying that it would be safer for some dweeb to be waving it around?

And if you read carefully, I specifically stated that the case or holster would protect the trigger guard. A burlap bag with rolls of dimes in it probably doesn't fit that description.

I still think that our current rules combined with common sense are sufficient. We can't make up a rule for every possible scenario out there.

Don't get crazy with the common sense and the logic!

You could not be any more right.

[Jim Norman]

Unfortunately Darwin Awards often result in large monetary awards for the descendants of the winner. Most likely said award would come out of one or more of our pockets. Also, whilst the precipitant of the incident might be the one to deserve the award, it would be likely that one or more of us might be in the way of the just presentation of said award.

In other words, If you put a loaded gun in a loose bag and wave it around, it is very possible that things will go BANG, the bad news being that someone other than the idiot that created the situation is likely to be on the receiving end.

Jim Norman

[rhino]

In other words, If you put a loaded gun in a loose bag and wave it around, it is very possible that things will go BANG, the bad news being that someone other than the idiot that created the situation is likely to be on the receiving end.

In those cases, you are pretty much "handling" the gun, only with random "fingers" looking to press that trigger!

Of course, with a 1911, it would have to depress the grip safety as well as the trigger at the same time to go bang ... redundancy can be good.

[Jim Norman]

Rhino,

Can I assume that you like me have an active grip safey on your 1911? I assure you that there are more than a few people out there that have shaved the grip safey off or pinned the thing down.

Jim

[Nik Habicht]

Dang, I keep forgetting about grip safeties ---- they're like the primary safety on a glock --- depressed by proper use. No, I'm not suggesting that we need more rules ---- but I'm suggesting that we all ought to be more cognizant of where the muzzle is pointed when the gun is cased or bagged.....

I'm a big believer in redundancy --- especially where safety is concerned....

[warpspeed]

If a gun is cleared and checked by an RO and the hammer has been dropped to further prove that the gun is empty, why is it considered unsafe to point an empty and theoretically safe gun at someone else?  Why does it matter?  Is it really so unsafe?

All guns are loaded all the time. There is no exception. There are no "safe" guns.

If the RO checks it, it goes in a bag or holster. Empty & unloaded. If the individual then handles it outside a safe area, he is breaking the rules of the range and likely to be sent home.

Here is the reason that this action is unsafe.If we allow this "one" exception it won't be long til there are 235 exceptions. It's sort of the slippery slope argument or the one about how it is only a little lie. Unsafe is unsafe.

Remember, we are talking about a game here with a timer and score keeper. If there are inconviences created or procedures that make things take longer, that's just the way it has to be.

[dv8]

...

No, I'm not suggesting that we need more rules ---- but I'm suggesting that we all ought to be more cognizant of where the muzzle is pointed when the gun is cased or bagged.....

I'm a big believer in redundancy --- especially where safety is concerned....

Nick,

I can't say that I can fully share your concern. May be I just never seen a gun bag through which I could reach the trigger. I don't know why would I bag a loaded(1), cocked(2), unlocked(3) gun into a bad bag(4), and then wave that bag around(5) to somehow cause the gun go off(6,7,8,9...???). This is how I see redundancy at work here. I assume that you had some experience that made you cautious of this scenario, have you seen something similar actually to happen?

It may be just a lack of experience on my part, but I never felt unsafe around bagged guns.

[Nik Habicht]

Are you comfortable with the idea of someone violating at least two of the primary four safety rules and pointing an unloaded gun at you? I'm not. Why would anyone assume that a bagged gun is unloaded with the hammer down on an empty chamber? Why couldn't the gun just as easily be hot? Or have one or more of it's safety mechanisms disabled so that it doesn't make much of a jostle to make the hammer drop?

About 1998 I took an NRA gun safety course. One of the questions I asked was how reliable safeties were on modern firearms. The instructors answer came in the form of a question: "Would you feel comfortable with me pointing a loaded gun at you safety (ies) applied, and pulling the trigger?" Hmmmm, point made.

All I'm suggesting is that people should exercise as much care with muzzle direction on cased guns as they would with uncased ones. To me that translates to sticking the gun rug into the rnage bag so that the muzzle points toward the ground, or sticking long gun cases into the cart with the muzzle pointing down.

It's simply polite.