The Four Rules

[BarryinIN]

I was at the club range today and thinking about this, then came home and read a thread by Pablo on BITOG that made my mind up.

It's time for a post on the subject everyone gets bored with immediately: Safety

I'm going to post The Four Rules.

It's sometimes handy to have them on the tip of your tongue.

The beauty of these rules is their simplicity. Jeff Cooper worked these out when he started Gunsite/American Pistol Institute. He planned to train greater numbers of people than anyone before, ranging from complete novices to what is sometimes worse- assumed experts. Safety was paramount. With only a few days to get them more skilled than the vast majority of shooters, time was precious. Spending all of Training Day 1 on safety wasn't possible, and people wouldn't remember more than 20 minutes of it anyway.

So he condensed gun safety into a set of rules. Originally there were three rules, but later a fourth was added.

1- All guns are always loaded.

2- Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.

3- Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target.

4- Be sure of your target.

Just about anyone can learn these in minutes.

They cover just about anything.

While you shouldn't break any, you almost have to break two to cause injury.

Their simplicity is wonderful. A couple of years ago, I got a fat envelope from my gun club. Inside was a new set of range rules. All members were required to read them and sign a paper attesting to that fact. This monstrosity was 11 pages long and had almost 40 rules. If anyone besides the people who made that list read all of it, I would be surprised. If anyone can repeat more than two or three of those rules today I would be equally surprised.

The Four Rules could have replaced nearly all of the rules on the list. In fact, aside from the ones about shooting hours and signing in, I bet The Four Rules could be directly substituted.

Firearm safety doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to be sensible.

[wwillson]

Those four rules are rules to live by. Very simple, yet complete. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Thanks!

Wayne

[Pablo]

Good post. Great post because these rules flat WORK.

I posted the 1911 thread on BITOG and not here, because it is more of a "pop" story. Hopefully some public yayhoo will read it there and be a bit more safe.........

http://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=308156

[BarryinIN]

Thanks guys.

Yeah, you're right, Pablo. I would guess the people who need to read that are more likely to be on a forum that isn't for people deep into the gun culture.

Then again, people get too comfortable sometimes.

Everybody has a gun safety story, which is why I didn't add mine to the string over there, but this one illustrates how people get all caught up in so many rules they miss the most important ones:

I was at an IDPA match one time, and as I finished shooting a stage the wind blew part of it down on us. In the ruckus, the SO (Safety Officer) had me holster hastily and did not have me empty it and show clear. None of us noticed in the commotion.

This is a cold range (no loaded guns except when actually shooting). I head off to the next stage with a loaded holstered gun. This is how I go around every day, but ironically it's a no-no at a shooting range- go figure.

Since we were shooting the classifier and some side matches, things were a little different than usual and the SOs (Safety Officers) didn't move with squads of shooters. They stayed at the stages so you saw different people each time. Also, to speed up the slow-going Classifier, they had two identical courses set up at each Classifier stage so two competitors could shoot their strings then we would go downrange and score both.

So I'm at my next stage, waiting my turn as another guy shoots, when I see he is sweeping his hand every time he draws or reholsters. He was reaching across with his weak hand and putting it on his holster each time, so the gun passed over his hand each time.

The SO and scorekeeper didn't seem to notice, so I went over and told the SO (who I sorta knew).

"Yeah, I thought I saw that". I think to myself: Ummm, you thought he was trying to shoot his hand but you didn't say anything? But then...

The scorekeeper said "Yeah, he did that the first string too". Oh, so he knew it for sure and didn't say anything. I was so stunned I walked back to my spot without saying anything myself. They did tell the shooter to stop that, and he thanked me for pointing it out.

Then the SO and scorekeeper come over to me and it's my turn to shoot.

I get the command to load, take out a mag, bring it to the mag well and it stops with a "clunk"...as it hit the mag that was already in place.

Uh-oh.

I'm mumbling to myself about what happened at the last stage, and when I look at the SO, I see he is deep in thought. He's debating DQing me. By the rules, I should have been DQ'd, and told to pack up and go. But he heard me say what happened at he last stage, was mostly aware of it anyway, and said to go ahead and unload and reload to shoot.

But here's the odd thing:

While I'm doing that, I jokingly remark that maybe I should have been more concerned with myself than the other guy. Serious as a heart attack, the SO says:

"Yes, what you did is a lot bigger deal".

And he meant that too.

He really believed that having a loaded gun on a shooting range, but violating club rules, was worse than repeatedly pointing a loaded gun at yourself a fraction of a second before pulling the trigger.

I can't really blame him for thinking that way. That is the mentality that results from having 40,000 rules beat into people, few of which have anything directly to do with not shooting ourselves. There was no rule in the books saying word for word "Don't sweep your hand by placing it around your holster mouth on the draw" but there is one against loaded gun when not shooting.

[BarryinIN]

I shot my third IDPA match of the year this weekend, and observed something (again) that illustrates how we need to stay "switched on" about safety at all times on the range.

This was an IDPA DMG match. DMG stands for Defensive Multi-Gun, which is like regular IDPA with the addition of rifles and shotguns. Since you have to lug two long guns plus your pistol and other gear, you see a variety of methods to get that done. For the most part, people use either a gun cart of some sort or carry their long guns cased.

Some people are nervous about carts ("what if the gun falls off") but there is usually one or more case user who scares me during the course of the day. I always see people handling cased guns as of they are suddenly rendered safe once they go in the case. They walk with them pointed at the guy in front of them or swing them around and sweep everyone. That quarter inch of padding and canvas or plastic in front of the muzzle won't stop a bullet.

But my real pet peeve comes when the gun is put into the case.

It's a lot easier to show this than to describe it, but if you watch next time you are around someone casing a long gun, I bet you will see it demonstrated. People tend to hold the case open with one hand, then pass the gun muzzle over that hand as they feed it into the case. And when doing this very act, there is a pretty good opportunity to catch the trigger on a case latch, zipper, handle, etc. Its the perfect storm.

If they start by holding the gun above the case before opening it up, it's bound to happen. If you hold the gun to the case, then reach over it to spread the case open, you can put the gun inside without shooting yourself in the wrist.

The reason this bugs me so much is because often when this happens, it is with someone I've just observed being extra safe. But when it's time to put the gun away, they switch off early. They dropped their guard. Instead of being constantly on their toes about this, they have two modes of thought, and that can get dangerous. It's still a gun whether you are on the line about the shoot it or transporting it.

I was a Safety Officer at the match yesterday and brought this up when we finished the first stage and before we cased guns to move to the next one. When we got to the next stage, there was a squad of shooters finishing up. As they started to case up and move, I saw half the guys in my squad couldn't decide whether to watch them do what I just described or watch me to see the reaction. Sure enough, the very first one to case his shotgun passed the muzzle across his left wrist, as did every one of them with a soft case.

I knew most of those guys to some degree and know they are safe shooters for the most part. We do things like this and never think about it. We should, though.