The secret truth of gun safety you won’t hear.

Imagine a game of Russian Roulette. Can you picture it?

I imagine a dingy basement, or the musty lower-deck of an old ship. Men you wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley sit across from each other at a rickety wooden table strewn with playing-cards and alcohol bottles. The only light in the room coming from a rusty lamp swinging to-and-fro overhead; the lamp’s beam reduced to a faint, hazy glare by the decades of tobacco smoke clinging to the bulb.

Now imagine you’re one of the men in this scene. The goal of your game is simple.

Load a single round into one chamber of a revolver, give it a good spin, and snap the cylinder into place. You have no way of knowing whether the chamber that wound up in the firing position has a live round in it, or a few square centimeters of harmless air.

You put the gun against your head, hoping your last minute prayers will be answered, and you pull the trigger. 

CLICK.

*Silence*

You’ve done it. You’ve won this round.

There’s a good likelihood that you could play this game for hours on end, and with the numbers being so heavily in your favor, (typically 5 to1 that you land on a safe chamber) you could come out of it without a scratch, brain intact.

The thing about Russian Roulette, much like a game of “Poke The Bear”, is that the game doesn’t care how many times you’ve won, eventually the house will win. And unlike you, the gun only has to win ONE TIME. The day your “luck” runs out, that’s it for you. You were engaging in a game with no second chances whatsoever.

Winning that game 1,000,000 times over IS NOT evidence that you were playing a safe game, much less a smart one. You’ve just been lucky enough to both figuratively and literally dodge a bullet, not getting yourself killed YET.

That, in a nutshell, is the game everyone plays when they ignore firearm safety rules. Now let’s take a look at what we can do about it.

If you are new to our blog I am going to be asking you for some un-earned trust here. But read on..

Welcome to our small, but growing community! We’re glad to have you and I hope you get everything out of being here that you’re looking for.

Read what follows with an open mind and take what I’m about to say to heart as much as possible.

The foundation for the next generation of safe shooters won’t come from listing a few sentences worth of rules (don’t worry, I will tell you what they are.) It will be from changing the mindset of how we address the idea of gun safety.

Now..

What you are about to read is not revolutionary. It doesn’t fly in the face of conventional wisdom or shake any established firearms foundations. 

What it does is address is the critical missing link in teaching firearm safety to new shooters. It is not the gun, it’s the shooter that is the most effective safety device ever made. The true “safety” on your gun is you, and how you look at firearm safety.

I’ve found after decades of shooting, that shooters both new and old can fall into the habit of unsafe behaviors and my goal here is to address the root of the problem and hopefully help some of us avoid the pitfalls along the way.

But first, what are the Universal Firearms Safety Rules?

Or, put a slightly different way (courtesy of the NRA):

1. Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.

2. Always keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot*.

3. Always keep your gun unloaded until ready to use*.

*The NRA makes sure to emphasize the distinction between the words shoot and use. A gun that you’re carrying concealed, or leaving on the nightstand for home protection is “ready to use” at any moment and may be loaded of course, while the term “ready to shoot” is in reference to the moment you are going to press the trigger and fire the gun.

Here’s the kicker..

These rules are NOT solely designed to ensure the safe condition of the gun in your hand, THEY ARE ALSO TO ADDRESS the safe condition of the SHOOTER of that gun.

Lives LITERALLY depend on you not only following these rules, but understanding them.

The SOLE PURPOSE of these rules is to ensure that you develop indelible and unconscious patterns of safe behavior that, when established, may very well save your life or the life of another when you INEVITABLY make some sort of mistake while handling a firearm.

That’s it. It’s not any more complicated than that. If you value your life and the lives of others you will adhere to these rules dogmatically, without exception, in even the easiest of times. Safety needs to become so ingrained in you as a shooter that the idea of acting UNsafely doesn’t even cross your mind.

Simply put, we can’t guarantee that we will never make a mistake. But following, without exception, the safety rules outlined, will help to minimize the damages incurred if and when a true accident takes place.

You, as a new shooter, may move through a period of time where you feel uneasy as you watch yourself stick to these rules while you watch others (some more experienced than yourself) around you ignore them.

You will, with time, reach a level of confidence in yourself where you stop believing that their disregard for these basic rules is somehow a sign of their superiority.

You will see that it is, in fact, a sign of just how far they have to go until they understand the awesome responsibility they’re taking on when they handle a gun.

Always check your safety techniques and adherence to all the rules. Test yourself, ask a friend to watch, and correct even the smallest safety issues immediately.

We have to constantly focus on our safety training. Safety’s continuous application is an aspect of our training that will never be completed. We will never be a certified perfect safety machine. We need to continually challenge ourselves to get better in this; it’s the most important aspect of the shooting world.

Can you guess why?

Because mistakes don’t discriminate! They happen to new shooters and professional law enforcement alike! We’re all playing a wonderful and dangerous game where the margin of error is ZERO. See below:

*Note: NO ONE is fatally injured in the videos below.

Bottom line, there is NOT a perfect being on this planet.

All you can do is always follow these rules NO MATTER WHAT. Hold yourself, and those around you, to the highest safety levels. Teach these rules to others and don’t allow yourself the leeway to be lazy with them – ever.

THAT WAY..

That one day when your slide-stop fails and chambers a round before you’re ready, it won’t matter (your handgun is already pointed in a safe direction.)

When your hand cramps up spastically before you’re even on target with your loaded gun, it won’t matter. (you are still safely pointing it downrange).

When your shooting buddy loads the gun while you’re not looking and you pick it up swearing it’s empty and go to put it away, it won’t matter. (because you check your gun EACH time you pick it up.)

You follow all the safety rules and your mistake, at worst, will be a moment of embarrassment and not a life threatening event. 

Take a moment and do your best to try and understand what I mean by all of this before reading on. If you can learn the rules listed above while looking at them through the lens of “These are to be followed 100% of time time, without exception” – you are well on your way to being a safe shooter.  

Because here is the secret to why so many people fail to follow even the most basic firearms safety rules.

(Besides ignorance of the rules, having never had them explained properly.)

Even the very best among us have been conditioned since the age of reason to look at rules and regulations and dissect them; to break them down to their basest components. Having done so, we decide whether or not they need to be followed based on our own experience, bias, morals, so on.

We have been taught, once we break down each rule, to figure out what the “goal” of a rule is.

Example: “Don’t jump on your bed”

The goal here is to make sure I don’t fly off the bed and bump my head on the ground and get hurt.

We then see if that rule and it’s “goal” line up with our view of the world, our beliefs, etc. and if it even deserves to be followed at all. If it does, we try our best to achieve the “goal” of the rule and ignore the rule as long as we believe we won’t get caught and punished for doing so. 

Continuing with the above example: “I’ll just put a bunch of pillows on the floor and jump on the bed anyway. All mom and dad want is to keep me from bumping my head on the ground, now that I won’t, I’m going to go ahead and jump on the bed.”

As long as we’re still being a good, honest, decent human being, our system has worked. It has saved us some time, gotten us what we wanted and not hurt anyone, we believe.

While this is a normal process (and one that is sometimes necessary in our over-regulated society), firearm safety rules cannot be looked at that way, at all.

As both a trainer and a range safety officer I see safety violations on a daily basis. The lion’s share of them happen not because of malice on the part of the rule-breaker, but stem from either IGNORANCE or OVERCONFIDENCE with a thought process that goes something like this:

“The reason they tell you all those rules is to make sure no one gets shot (that’s the “goal” of the rule we just talked about), and I know what I’m doing with a gun, and I know it’s not loaded so it doesn’t matter if I point it at that guy for like a second, I’m just putting it away.”

Absolutely harmless right? The gun, in that instance, was actually unloaded. It was an inert piece of metal completely incapable of magically growing its own cartridge, chambering it, and shooting it at the person it was pointed at.

That’s NOT REMOTELY the point. 

When you point that “unloaded” gun at someone because you know it’s unloaded, you are training yourself to trust your lying eyes and developing long-term bad habits!

How so?

Because when you point that “unloaded” gun at that person, you’re subconsciously training yourself to try and follow what you think the “goal” of the rule is instead of following the rule itself!

And that is playing Russian Roulette.

When we ignore the letter or the spirit of these firearm safety rules, we’re robbing ourselves of good habits. Habits that will one day serve as our fail-safe. A system of checks that are critical in guarding against an honest, and possibly fatal, mistake.

In short, we rob ourselves of the most important thing a new shooter can have; a proactive safety mindset.

We need to fight that urge to make our own rules, and stop trying to “logic ourselves” around those that have been laid out by the experts and professionals.

I hope you see what it is I’m trying to say.

You don’t need someone to explain the literal gun safety rules to you, they’re 5 sentences long. What I hope you’re seeing is the why behind them, and the dangerous pitfalls lying in wait for you as you begin shooting.

At the risk of belaboring the point here, let’s review and expand on the cardinal rules of gun safety before we go.

1. Treat all guns as if they are loaded and always know the condition of your gun.

Translation: You get no time off from any of these rules. The very first rule takes away the MOST COMMON excuse I hear time and time again. “Well it wasn’t even loaded.” IT DOES NOT MATTER. Even if I did trust you (which I do not) and even if you did trust your own safety checks (which you never should) you’re still in violation of the very first rule of gun safety, and you’re training yourself to make exceptions to these rules because you THINK you know better than the rules, and the day you screw up, there will be ramifications you can’t begin to believe.

2. Never point a gun at anything that you are not willing to destroy.

*See here for an example of someone who chose not to follow this rule

Translation: If you point your gun at anything, it had better be something you’re completely fine with shooting. Why? Because every gun is loaded, and mechanical accidents happen. This one is easier to follow than almost anyone believes. It takes a moment more consideration and not being lazy to make sure you always follow this rule. If you’ve got a gun, it doesn’t matter what condition you THINK it’s in. You never point it at anything you aren’t completely fine with shooting. Period.

3. Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re on target and have made the decision to shoot.

Translation: You have no business putting your finger on the trigger if you’re not ready to shoot. All the trigger is good for is shooting the gun. If you get in the habit of putting you finger anywhere near the trigger when you’re not on target, you will one day shoot the gun when you do not intend to. So you will NEVER have your finger on the trigger until it’s go-time. Period.

4. Be sure of your target and what’s beyond it.

Translation: From the time you load that cartridge into your gun, you and only you are responsible for what it does, period. Whether it was a complete accident, or you were shooting a mugger who was trying to kill a nun, what that bullet does once you shoot it is all on you 100% no exceptions. Whether it goes through walls, bounces off the ground, hits what you were aiming for but goes through it and hits something else, or miraculously reverses in midair and hits someone behind you that you did not see, it is 100% your responsibility. So you will take the time to know what lies beyond and around your target.

Conclusion

Firearms safety is all about you. No amount of mechanical safeties and cool gadgets can substitute for you taking complete responsibility for your firearm. It’s not enough to learn these rules and parrot them back to your instructor. You can’t only follow them when you think there’s a range officer looking so you don’t get yelled at.

Have more respect for yourself and the people around you. Be the example to others on the range, it is not hard. You will not seem like a teachers pet, you will seem like a mature adult, beloved by every single Range Officer you encounter.

As a new shooter, you’re setting the tone, building the muscle memory, and setting the neural pathways that will dictate how you handle firearms for years to come. Do it the right way for your sake and the sake of others.

You can go anywhere and read these basic rules. I hope this helped shed some light on the why.

Send me an email or leave a comment with any firearm safety questions, I’d be happy to help. Don’t forget this week to tag @cobaltfirearm in any range pictures you take, especially if they’re examples of great range safety!

If you’re thinking about taking a picture or video of poor range safety, put away the phone and go fix the situation. Be the change that is needed on the range.

Stay Smart, Stay Safe, and Never Stop Improving.