It's always FUCKING LOADED.
I went deer hunting one afternoon with my uncle, carrying my 12ga pump.
Didn't see anything, came back up through the corn field, taking out the 3 shells I had loaded in.
Put my finger in the chamber, no shell. Racked it twice, nothing came out, totally empty.
Pointed it at the ground, and pulled the trigger to let the hammer down and take the tension off the spring, since I wasn't going to use the shotgun again for months.
BAM! Blew a big old hole in the dirt. Scared the hell out of me and my uncle.
What did I learn that day? It's always FUCKING LOADED.
The value in these stories is not the fact that some dude on the internet screwed up, because barring any form of spacial displacement, that's exactly what happened. The REAL value is showing instances where someone trained and safety conscience (just like you!), makes a mistake when they're absolutely positive that it was unloaded. Mistakes happen to us all, no matter how absolutely positive we may be, but mistakes when handling tools that have the power to kill are unacceptable. There's a reason why there are 4 rules of firearm safety, and not just one. Learn the rules, live the rules, and check the chamber again.
It's still fucking loaded!
4 comments:
Something's fishy, my friend. You can SEE the rim of the shell in the chamber, can't you? I know _I_ can. This sounds like a 'made for AP' story full of BS to make non-gun owners worry.
Regardless, when you are trying to make sure a gun is empty for storing or whatever, I've no doubt you shoot it once towards a place that can cause no harm, right?
Never point a gun at anything you're not willing to destroy.
As for the validity of the story, real or no, the story is of someone who was completely sure the gun was empty, yet it was loaded. This means the user missed something. The user made a mistake. Mistakes happen to everyone, no matter how trained or experienced, which is why it's important we follow all 4 rules of firearm safety to the best of our ability.
As for the fishyness of this story, were it 'made for AP' I'm sure the story would have ended in him shooting someone. Instead, he pointed the firearm in a safe direction while dropping the hammer on a gun he knew to be unloaded, and learned very inexpensive lesson about firearm safety.
I had the same thing happen with a lever action .22 once. I took out the tube and emptied all the shells, worked the lever a few times: nothing. Then for some reason I opened the action one last time and looked and there was a shell in the chamber staring back at me. I'll not forget that lesson.
Opinion unchanged. This is story is typical California lame reporting, of the type that suggests that people should not have guns because they are too 'compicated'. Unless you are a little uninitiated kid, or an idiot, you know to leave an empty gun in the uncocked position.
Please admit that you shoot an empty gun towards the sky as SOP before putting it away. I'm not even a hunter (though I love to shoot stuff), but Dave Boyd should be ashamed. Not only for including the 'J' initial in his name, but any hunter worth half his salt knows how to test whether his gun is empty or not. He clearly failed that test.
For those new to the game, don't shoot at the ground, shoot at the air.
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