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“You are responsible for every round you fire.” I really get tired of hearing that. It just sounds so pretentious to my ears. The most annoying part is that it also happens to be true. And that is something you have to think about when you handle your firearm.
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A gun is perfectly safe.
Until someone handles it. It can sit on a shelf or in a safe forever and it will harm exactly no one. Can’t do it. Not possible. It will never, ever fire itself. It’s metal and plastic with no will.
Once it’s being handled, though, things change, don’t they? Say you’re the one who just picked up the gun. You just picked up a responsibility: a burden, even.
Not everyone can handle this burden. There are a great many people who are simply afraid of guns. Or are they? Maybe they’re afraid of themselves. Perhaps they think they can’t handle the responsibility of gun ownership. So they don’t have one. If you meet one of those people you should congratulate them for having the self-awareness to know that. Not literally; that would be condescending as hell.
Storing the gun.
I’ll admit that I have this one much easier than most. I live alone. I have few visitors; they all know I have guns so there will be no surprises. My visitors have no children. I don’t tend to leave them laying about, anyway. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m more of a carry at home type of guy than one who has them stashed around the house.
On this topic I have to mention some of the complete and utter nonsense that’s out there. I pulled this from a site that I won’t link to because they get no traffic from me.
“Guns should be stored unloaded, uncocked and securely locked out of sight or reach. Lock ammunition up separately from your gun.” I’ve read statements like that too many times to count.
So, first, if it’s unloaded who gives a damn if it’s cocked or not? A hammer that falls on an empty chamber will fire exactly zero rounds. I can see concerns over mechanical stress on the gun, but safety? Come on.
I’m also for locking up guns when not in use. Again, for me, it’s not a real issue but for a lot of you it’s a big issue, especially if you have kids. I do have to deal with this at times when I’m visiting family in FL. I have two grand kids that I have to think of. Portable lockboxes are my friend. Long guns are trickier but locking up the magazines and/or trigger locks still work.
I also take them shooting regularly to remove the mystery. The older one likes rifles but the youngest is a handgun girl.
Storing ammunition separately.
You have got to be kidding me. An unloaded gun is a club. And probably not a very good one, either. I have a rifle that’s all wood and steel; no polymers to be found. That might make a decent club but most modern rifles are not. And pistols are just awful.
So if I need a gun to defend my home I’m supposed to:
- Unlock the safe with the gun.
- Go to the second safe with the ammunition.
- Unlock that safe.
- Put the magazine in the gun (only because it never occurred to them to tell me I can only have loose rounds.)
- Rack the slide and now I can, finally, defend myself.
Yeah, no.
If you see a gun at my house, it’s loaded. Even the .22’s. Handguns have one in the chamber, long guns do not. Mainly because shotguns are not, as a rule, drop safe. I have a few rifles that are drop safe but some I’m not sure about so nothing in the chamber. It’s a consistency thing for me.
I’m pretty unlikely to grab a .22 for defense. Why do I keep them loaded? Consistency again. I never pick up a stored gun at home and wonder whether it’s loaded. It is.
Carrying.
There are stories pretty much every day, if you know where to look, where normal citizens carrying guns have intervened to help others. I’m not saying I agree or disagree with all of those people’s actions; they are just examples.
At least one of the stories involved chasing someone down to recover property. I wasn’t there and so shouldn’t judge too harshly but I just don’t see myself doing that.
Just like I don’t see myself intervening in an armed robbery if one unfolds in front of me. Do I really want to start a gunfight over a few hundred dollars of an insurance company’s money? In other words, do I want to take a bad situation and potentially make it worse? I do not.
Intervening in a situation where someone’s getting hurt could be another story. In that same armed robbery, if the robber(s) decide to kidnap or shoot someone on their way out then I might get involved. Assuming, in my judgment, I can do so effectively.
I not only have to think about myself and the criminal but all the others around me. I’m pretty confident of my marksmanship but what about his? Is he a spray and pray kind of guy? Are there people behind me that could be in danger?
I’m sure you noticed there are a lot of questions and few answers in this section. That’s because until I get there and evaluate the situation I can’t make any hard and fast rules.
My point, though, is that we need to get our brains thinking about this kind of thing. I, personally, do not see myself as a white-hatted do-gooder trying to right the wrongs of the world. I see myself as someone who carries for self-defense and, in certain circumstances, defense of others You may have a different point of view of yourself.
It’s about responsibility.
As I said at the beginning, a gun is a piece of plastic and metal. How it’s used is good, evil, or neutral. And that’s up to us. I try to think about these things so that I’m caught less off-guard if something happens. The more I can think the more likely I am to make the right decision.
While you can’t prepare for every eventuality, planning and forethought are the responsible options.
