It's with great shame and embarrasment that I tell this story, but my hope is that by illustrating my failure, someone else might be spared a tragedy.
My wife and I went to some friends' home for dinner last night, our first time out with them. As it turns out, he is a gun guy too. We had a very pleasant evening with dinner, drinks, and cigars. As we discovered out mutual interest in firearms, we also found we shared a "safety first" mindset and also a committment to never, ever drink and shoot.
Towards the end of the evening, he mentioned that he had just gotten his brother's collection of guns. As he went through the list, there were a number of items I'd never seen in person so we decided to go take a look. As he pulled them out of the cases, he cleared each weapon and handed it to me. I then repeated the action before handling it. One pistol, an HK, was loaded. My friend dropped the mag, cycled the round out of the chamber, replaced the mag, and handed it to me. Notice the flaw there? I didn't. I was fondlling another very cool piece at the time and only saw this happen out of the corner of my eye. Did I mention we'd been drinking?
Fingers always out of the trigger guards, guns always pointed in a safe direction. Thank God. Finally, we were done and putting everything away. My normal protocol to put away any weapon is to clear it again and then point in a safe direction and pull the trigger. We got to the HK, I pulled the slide, saw the chamber was empty, pointed to the floor and pulled the trigger. BANG!
I'd missed the fact that the magazine still had rounds in it. Now, my friend has 4 small children, and they were all within 25 feet of this when it occurred. As you can imagine, I got the shakes pretty bad. In the end, no harm was done to anything except our egos and the 9mm hole in the oak floor.
So here I am, a great proponent and teacher of the four rules of gunhandling, a dedicated adherent to the belief that booze and guns don't mix, and a genuine safety nut. What do I take away from the experience? Here are my conclusions.
1. Booze and guns don't mix, and that now extends to even the handling of guns, not just shooting.
2. Constant, repetitive training in the rules of gun safety saves lives. Even impared by alcohol, 30+ years of proper gun handling ingrained good habits such as always keeping the muzzle pointed in a safe direction and finger out of the trigger guard, avoiding potential disaster.
3. Safety procedures, followed every time, work. The redundant procedure I use to put away firearms is to clear it (make sure it's unloaded) and then point it safely and pull the trigger (verifies that it's unloaded again). Step one in this case failed, but the redundancy of step two saved the moment.
4. More attention than usual is required when handling unfamilliar firearms.
5. Never trust that the gun just handed to you is safe, even if you saw it cleared with your own eyes.
I really wanted to create another account on this forum so no one would know who I am, but I thought it best to just be a man about it and take my licks. Criticize away...
My wife and I went to some friends' home for dinner last night, our first time out with them. As it turns out, he is a gun guy too. We had a very pleasant evening with dinner, drinks, and cigars. As we discovered out mutual interest in firearms, we also found we shared a "safety first" mindset and also a committment to never, ever drink and shoot.
Towards the end of the evening, he mentioned that he had just gotten his brother's collection of guns. As he went through the list, there were a number of items I'd never seen in person so we decided to go take a look. As he pulled them out of the cases, he cleared each weapon and handed it to me. I then repeated the action before handling it. One pistol, an HK, was loaded. My friend dropped the mag, cycled the round out of the chamber, replaced the mag, and handed it to me. Notice the flaw there? I didn't. I was fondlling another very cool piece at the time and only saw this happen out of the corner of my eye. Did I mention we'd been drinking?
Fingers always out of the trigger guards, guns always pointed in a safe direction. Thank God. Finally, we were done and putting everything away. My normal protocol to put away any weapon is to clear it again and then point in a safe direction and pull the trigger. We got to the HK, I pulled the slide, saw the chamber was empty, pointed to the floor and pulled the trigger. BANG!
I'd missed the fact that the magazine still had rounds in it. Now, my friend has 4 small children, and they were all within 25 feet of this when it occurred. As you can imagine, I got the shakes pretty bad. In the end, no harm was done to anything except our egos and the 9mm hole in the oak floor.
So here I am, a great proponent and teacher of the four rules of gunhandling, a dedicated adherent to the belief that booze and guns don't mix, and a genuine safety nut. What do I take away from the experience? Here are my conclusions.
1. Booze and guns don't mix, and that now extends to even the handling of guns, not just shooting.
2. Constant, repetitive training in the rules of gun safety saves lives. Even impared by alcohol, 30+ years of proper gun handling ingrained good habits such as always keeping the muzzle pointed in a safe direction and finger out of the trigger guard, avoiding potential disaster.
3. Safety procedures, followed every time, work. The redundant procedure I use to put away firearms is to clear it (make sure it's unloaded) and then point it safely and pull the trigger (verifies that it's unloaded again). Step one in this case failed, but the redundancy of step two saved the moment.
4. More attention than usual is required when handling unfamilliar firearms.
5. Never trust that the gun just handed to you is safe, even if you saw it cleared with your own eyes.
I really wanted to create another account on this forum so no one would know who I am, but I thought it best to just be a man about it and take my licks. Criticize away...