Gun pointed at me

[11Charlie]

Yep I been known to take some off topic at times

NOOOOOO not the king blurbs and no punctuation!!!

 

[teflon6string]

Pointing and sweeping becomes a very emotional discussion that can bring out the online spelling/grammar coach in anyone.

I, for one, feel an intense desire to repeatedly punch the face of anyone who thinks it's okay to point a red or green laser dot anywhere on my person. But that's just me.

 

[Caveman Jim]

Yep I been known to take some off topic at times

Noooo, not you?

 

[thorborg]

However "unloaded" guns do discharge, and there lies the rub.

No, unchecked and presumed unloaded guns discharged.
Not an unloaded gun.
There is no rub, just hyperbole as mentioned by @Mainsail , which obscures reality and responsibility.
Ultimately, the gun is always enemy #1, not the person holding it. This continues the degradation of society where less and less people, especially politicians, are being held culpable for their actions.
I was taught "always assume a gun is loaded until you have personally checked it". This places the burden solely on the person ('s) and does not allow the bleeding liberal the opportunity to denigrate all guns on the basis they are dangerous regardless of who has them.
If there is a "rub" it is "hyperbole", which numbs reality, detours logical thought, deflects responsibility, and obfuscates "truth". Maybe even justice and the American way

 

[Koda]

Im with IronMonster on this one...
No person has ever been accidentally shot with a loaded gun, every single one of them were unloaded or it wouldnt been an accident.

You can call it hyperboli if you want but there is a truth in it and a point to be made thats way more importand than technical grammatical accuracy.

There are plenty of news stories and cases of accidental shootings and in every one of them it is well documented the shooter claimed the gun was unloaded.... and thats no hyperboli...

 

[IronMonster]

No, unchecked and presumed unloaded guns discharged.
Not an unloaded gun.
There is no rub, just hyperbole as mentioned by @Mainsail , which obscures reality and responsibility.
Ultimately, the gun is always enemy #1, not the person holding it. This continues the degradation of society where less and less people, especially politicians, are being held culpable for their actions.
I was taught "always assume a gun is loaded until you have personally checked it". This places the burden solely on the person ('s) and does not allow the bleeding liberal the opportunity to denigrate all guns on the basis they are dangerous regardless of who has them.
If there is a "rub" it is "hyperbole", which numbs reality, detours logical thought, deflects responsibility, and obfuscates "truth". Maybe even justice and the American way

You guys are completely missing the point, I have read dozens if not hundreds of news stories about "accidental" shootings where the gun was "unloaded" meaning through some fault or negligence on the part of the operator it was either assumed to be unloaded or a round was chambered after it was cleared or some variation thereof. It is not hyperbole, which is an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken seriously. It is a factual statement, the gun was thought to be unloaded, but in fact was not, thus the quotation marks around "unloaded" meaning it was actually loaded and was pure negligence that resulted in the shooting. This is the common thread I see in accidental shootings. "Yeah, I pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger but I thought it wasn't loaded" or "I took the magazine out before I handed it to her thinking that would make it safe" or "I never keep it loaded so I never thought to check when I handed it to him" or whatever... Time after time it's always the "unloaded" gun that is mentioned in the story.

We as gun people know there is no such thing as an unloaded weapon. All are to be treated as loaded 100% of the time... And we STILL make mistakes. There was just a guy here local to me that was a firearms instructor and avid firearms enthusiast with 50+ years of experience, He shot himself in the leg with is "unloaded" pistol while cleaning it. He had a brain fart and during disassembly and did not physically look in the chamber (he went through the motions to clear it, however for whatever reason it did not extract the chambered round) He had it pointed roughly ground-ish when he pulled the trigger to remove the slide, a personal defense .45 round will do quite a bit of meat damage if it just grazes you.

He was shot with an "unloaded" gun, one he thought was clear.

As far as your other comments go there is no less responsibility or reality when you are the person who pulls the trigger "unloaded" or not. If you pull the trigger, that bullet has your name on it and I don't care who you think you are or what you know. Even the guy above who thought he cleared the weapon. He still owns that.

The "unloaded" gun is the biggest risk we face as a community. Until you can educate people to understand that when it comes to muzzle and trigger discipline there is no such thing as an unloaded gun you will continue to see news stories where people get shot with "unloaded" weapons.

 

[Koda]

Rule # 2: Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. (For those who insist that this particular gun is unloaded, see Rule 1.)

 

[Tundra18]

It's bad enough when this happens with a place like a shop.A couple decades ago some kook drunk who lived across the street went off one day. His kids called police, he (turns out was not in the house) would not come out. So here come the heavy armed ones to set up. As they are "looking for clown" with all the neighbors watching they fan out. At that time they were armed with Ruger Mini's. A couple of them swept my Wife and I as we were watching. Since I have to assume they were carrying the rifles loaded I told the Wife lets get the hell away from these idiots. She had not even noticed what scared me. This to me just showed some VERY poor training of these guys. If these guys were not in uniform and had done that at a range? They would have been tossed from the place. I have to hope they are given some far better training these days on how to handle the long guns they carry. They must since now days this would be caught on tape and would be all over. Still makes me cringe when I think back on seeing it right in front of me. They were not just sweeping me and my Wife but each other. As tense as they all were I can just imagine what would happen if one accidentally shot one of the others.

All I could say is it's not fun to be in front of a muzzle watching it sweeping across me. my heart actually skipped a beat when I saw that.

 

[Mainsail]

We as gun people know there is no such thing as an unloaded weapon. All are to be treated as loaded 100% of the time...

When I take the cartridges out of my gun it IS unloaded. So there is such a thing as an unloaded gun that I treat as an unloaded gun.

The ironic thing is SO DO YOU. You can claim that you treat all guns as though they are loaded 100% of the time but we both know that you DO NOT. I'd offer to bet but that seems to trigger you.

It's not semantics. Pretending things is how the accidents happen. I know I do not and cannot treat my guns as though they are loaded 100% of the time because I would never function check a loaded gun, or clean a loaded gun, or dry-fire a loaded gun; yet I do all of those things with my guns.

This was my point all along; a rule must be a rule, or else you have people pretending they have a rule while routinely breaking the rule. That causes complacency, which causes mishaps.

There was just a guy ... 50+ years of experience,... shot himself in the leg with is "unloaded" pistol while cleaning it

That was a violation of two rules. His gun was presumed to be unloaded, but was at no point unloaded. He simultaneously disregarded rule 2 about not pointing the gun at anything you don't want to shoot.

 

[Bushman]

I was at Cabela's today checking out a piece I was thinking of getting. After 5 mins, my number was called. A guy came over, told him I would like to see this pistol in the showcase. He took it out, safety check it and show me the chamber was empty. Before he handed me the pistol, muzzle was pointed me, then as he handed me the firearm, the muzzle now pointed directly at the guy standing next to me. First thing came to my mind, these guys should know better, right? They are supposed to be experienced with handling firearms especially in a gun shop. When I was done looking at it, I put it down, making sure the muzzle was pointed at a safe direction, the guy pick it up and again pointed the pistol at me again. As he was fiddling with the pistol to put it back in the shelf, he again pointed the muzzle at me and the guy next to me again. Where is the common sense here. Comes to find out he was new. Just started 2 weeks ago.

Those guys are making what, $11 an hour maybe? I'm guessing the vast majority of those guys aren't the brightest...and I'm also guessing none of them have a PhD.

 

[Tundra18]

Those guys are making what, $11 an hour maybe? I'm guessing the vast majority of those guys aren't the brightest...and I'm also guessing none of them have a PhD.

They just want to make the sales and get a small commission out of it. That is the ultimate goal for these guys. Who cares about safety...

 

[Bushman]

They just want to make the sales and get a small commission out of it. That is the ultimate goal for these guys. Who cares about safety...

Except safety and muzzle awareness (point of thread and part of safety) doesn't cost them the sale. My point is these guys are generally not that intelligent.

As a tech VP I had stopped going out. My GF did all the shopping and mostly still does. I just could not deal with the morons anymore. I pay more in taxes than two of the guys at the Cabelas gun shop combined GROSS in a year and then some....And don't get me started on the cashiers at grocery stores. It's like I'm dealing with children. The reality of it is a lot of your low level service people are idiots. I'm sure this will ruffle some feathers here and I'll get flamed, but it's really just those people self identifying...If these people had the intelligence and education to do something else, they would...It's not like people don't like making six figure salaries or something...

 

[Koda]

I treat my guns as if they are loaded 100% of the time and that includes cleaning.

More semantics I suppose? .... but I cant think of anything I need to do to maintain or operate a gun that requires me to violate Coopers 4 rules...

 

[Certaindeaf]

When I take the cartridges out of my gun it IS unloaded..

Yeabut what if it's ghost loaded, smart guy?





















lol

 

[thorborg]

Somehow the WordNet people get it:



The word "thought" nullifies my objection; without it, is "hyperbole" at least, to me.

 

[DenimChicken]

I've never seen so many people arguing about semantics over something they agree on.

 

[11Charlie]

You guys are completely missing the point, I have read dozens if not hundreds of news stories about "accidental" shootings where the gun was "unloaded" meaning through some fault or negligence on the part of the operator it was either assumed to be unloaded or a round was chambered after it was cleared or some variation thereof. It is not hyperbole, which is an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken seriously. It is a factual statement, the gun was thought to be unloaded, but in fact was not, thus the quotation marks around "unloaded" meaning it was actually loaded and was pure negligence that resulted in the shooting. This is the common thread I see in accidental shootings. "Yeah, I pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger but I thought it wasn't loaded" or "I took the magazine out before I handed it to her thinking that would make it safe" or "I never keep it loaded so I never thought to check when I handed it to him" or whatever... Time after time it's always the "unloaded" gun that is mentioned in the story.

We as gun people know there is no such thing as an unloaded weapon. All are to be treated as loaded 100% of the time... And we STILL make mistakes. There was just a guy here local to me that was a firearms instructor and avid firearms enthusiast with 50+ years of experience, He shot himself in the leg with is "unloaded" pistol while cleaning it. He had a brain fart and during disassembly and did not physically look in the chamber (he went through the motions to clear it, however for whatever reason it did not extract the chambered round) He had it pointed roughly ground-ish when he pulled the trigger to remove the slide, a personal defense .45 round will do quite a bit of meat damage if it just grazes you.

He was shot with an "unloaded" gun, one he thought was clear.

As far as your other comments go there is no less responsibility or reality when you are the person who pulls the trigger "unloaded" or not. If you pull the trigger, that bullet has your name on it and I don't care who you think you are or what you know. Even the guy above who thought he cleared the weapon. He still owns that.

The "unloaded" gun is the biggest risk we face as a community. Until you can educate people to understand that when it comes to muzzle and trigger discipline there is no such thing as an unloaded gun you will continue to see news stories where people get shot with "unloaded" weapons.

Perfectly said! If that doesn't clear it up for those in doubt then you are just not going to get through to them. Those are the same people I will never share a range with.

 

[IronMonster]

You can lead a man to knowledge, but you cannot make him think.

Er... Wait. Is that the one about the horses

 

[Certaindeaf]

I've never seen so many people arguing about semantics over something they agree on.

It's almost like a bowl of hyperbolic boll weevils.

 

[SUPER X]

Just Who says they're experienced??? From what I've seen they're simply the minimum wage yo-yo you will find working behind any retail counter. It would be nice if they could do more than feel rain and hear thunder but it doesn't seem to be that way. Especially at Cabela's.

Most employees are young and are somewhat up on the modern trends of firearms. But otherwise have no idea . I was In a big 5 and asked for some ammo .the guy behind the counter said they did not have it and never heard of it. IT was right on the shelf in plane site .