# Quote for the day



## Flea (Jan 26, 2011)

My new status as a bus commuter is turning out to be very good for my education indeed.  I try to go for the classics when I can as a source of universal truths.  Take this essay on Advice to Young People, penned in 1882.



> Never handle firearms carelessly.  The sorrow and suffering that have been caused through the innocent but heedless handling of firearms by the young!  Only four days ago, right in the next farmhouse to the one where I am spending the summer, a grandmother, old and gray and sweet, one of the loveliest spirits in the land, was sitting at her work, when her young grandson crept in and got down an old, battered, and rusty gun which had not been touched for many years and was not supposed to be loaded, and pointed it at her, laughing and threatening to shoot. In her fright she ran screaming and pleading toward the door on the other side of the room; but as she passed him he placed the gun almost next to her very breast and pulled the trigger!  He had supposed it was not loaded.  And he was right - it wasn't.  So there wasn't any harm done.  It was the only kind of case that I had ever heard of.
> 
> Therefore, just the same, don't meddle with unloaded firearms; they are the most deadly and unerring things that have ever been created by man.  You don't have to take any pains at all with them; you don't have to have a rest, you don't have to have any sights on the gun, you don't have to take aim, even.  No, you just pick out a relative and bang away, you are sure to get him.  A youth who can't hit a cathedral at thirty yards with a Gatling gun in three quarters of an hour, can take up an old empty musket and bang his grandmother every time, at a hundred.  Think what Waterloo would have been if one of the armies had been boys armed with old muskets not supposed to be loaded, and the other army had been composed of their female relations.  The very thought of it makes one shudder.
> 
> - Mark Twain


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## Bruno@MT (Jan 26, 2011)

Reminds me of the darwin award for the guy who wanted to show that what his son had learned in fire arms safety was wrong. The son was told by the instructor that even with the safety on, a gun might still discharge. The father didn't agree.

So he took a rifle, chambered a bullet, put the safety on, and hit the stock on the floor.
He died on the spot when the bullet went through his head.
I don't know much about guns, but gun owners tell me that the first rule of fire arm safety is that a gun should always be handled as if a bullet is chambered and the safety is off.


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## Carol (Jan 26, 2011)

Bruno@MT said:


> Reminds me of the darwin award for the guy who wanted to show that what his son had learned in fire arms safety was wrong. The son was told by the instructor that even with the safety on, a gun might still discharge. The father didn't agree.
> 
> So he took a rifle, chambered a bullet, put the safety on, and hit the stock on the floor.
> He died on the spot when the bullet went through his head.
> I don't know much about guns, but gun owners tell me that the first rule of fire arm safety is that a gun should always be handled as if a bullet is chambered and the safety is off.



That is correct.  All guns are always loaded, even when they are not.  

In the words of Col. Jeff Cooper:  "An unloaded gun is useless, and  no one should ever assume that any piece that he may see or touch is not  ready to fire.  Would that we would never again hear the plaintive  wail, 'I didn't know it was loaded!'  _Of course, it was loaded._ That's why it exists.  Treat it so!"


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## Bill Mattocks (Jan 26, 2011)

I was taught gun safety by my father when I was very young.  I got my first shotgun as a Christmas present at age 10.  The rules were simple:

1) Always assume that a firearm is loaded.
2) Never point a firearm at anything you do not intend to kill.
3) Never put your finger in the trigger well before you are ready to fire.
4) Do not cross a fenceline holding a weapon.  Put it down, cross the fence, and retrieve the weapon.

My father promised me that if I ever violated those rules, he would not speak harshly to me, he would buttstroke me with his weapon instantly and I would awaken in the hospital with a broken jaw.  I believed him.

When I joined the Marine Corps, they added a few new rules:

1) When handed a weapon, remove the magazine and visually and physically inspect the chamber to ensure it is unloaded before handling it or giving it to another person.

2) Keep the barrel pointed downrange at the range; up in an armored personnel carrier, and down in a helicopter.

3) Use a flag safety behind lines of battle to ensure that others can see your weapon is safe.

4) Safeties aren't.

5) *This is my rifle, this is my gun*.  One is for fighting, one is for fun. 
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





All Marines are first and foremost riflemen.  No matter the skill we have been trained to perform, our primary job is that of rifleman.  We embrace that in our creed:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifleman's_Creed


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## Bill Mattocks (Jan 26, 2011)

Carol said:


> That is correct.  All guns are always loaded, even when they are not.
> 
> In the words of Col. Jeff Cooper:  "An unloaded gun is useless, and  no one should ever assume that any piece that he may see or touch is not  ready to fire.  Would that we would never again hear the plaintive  wail, 'I didn't know it was loaded!'  _Of course, it was loaded._ That's why it exists.  Treat it so!"



An unloaded firearm is a stick.  I like sticks, but when I need a firearm, a stick won't do.


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## Carol (Jan 26, 2011)

Bill Mattocks said:


> I was taught gun safety by my father when I was very young.  I got my first shotgun as a Christmas present at age 10.  The rules were simple:
> 
> 1) Always assume that a firearm is loaded.
> 2) Never point a firearm at anything you do not intend to kill.
> ...



My 4th was different, it was the rule that Dick Cheney violated:  Be sure of your target, and what is behind it.


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## Bill Mattocks (Jan 26, 2011)

Carol said:


> My 4th was different, it was the rule that Dick Cheney violated:  Be sure of your target, and what is behind it.



Good point!  I did see the son of a friend of my father's shoot out the window of a pickup truck when I was a kid; we were hunting pheasant and he tracked the bird too long before firing.  The kid was a menace.  My dad would never have permitted me to handle a weapon like that.


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## Bruno@MT (Jan 26, 2011)

Carol said:


> My 4th was different, it was the rule that Dick Cheney violated:  Be sure of your target, and what is behind it.



What makes you so sure he didn't?


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## Big Don (Jan 26, 2011)

Bill Mattocks said:


> 1) When handed a weapon, remove the magazine and visually and physically inspect the chamber to ensure it is unloaded before handling it or giving it to another person.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifleman's_Creed


Boy, is that ingrained. A buddy of mine was showing me his new pistol, he looked at me kinda funny when I dropped the magazine and pulled the slide back.


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