The Must-know Tenets of Firearm Safety
By: Micha Petty
Tags: Outdoors, Safety, Gun Control, Survival, Guns

The Must-know Tenets of Firearm Safety

Regardless of your political views on the right to keep and bear arms, firearm safety and proficiency is indisputably a valuable survival skillset. Micha Petty Follow Sep 27, 2020 · 8 min read

Let me be clear right off the bat. This article isn’t meant to make you like guns. I’m not here to change your views about the right to keep and bear arms. You’re going to make your own decisions about that issue.

What I am here to do is impress upon you the importance of firearm safety in order to reduce avoidable accidents. Even if you think guns shouldn’t exist, that is no reason to ignore the fact that they are here to stay, and there is no downside to understanding the precepts of firearm safety.

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Stop me if you’ve ever heard these:

Stop, Drop, and Roll Look Both Ways Before Crossing The Street Don’t Play With Matches Never Approach a Snake You Cannot Positively Identify as Harmless Wash Your Hands After Using the Bathroom

Hopefully, you’ve known all of those basic health and safety rules since childhood, and there's no reason why you shouldn’t have. Tragically, however, firearm safety rules are often overlooked or neglected either from simple ignorance or because the topic of firearms is highly politicized.

Firearms are tools, just like saws, knives, lighters, stoves, and any number of other potentially dangerous items we deal with regularly. Whether you own a firearm or not (or whether you like them or not), you should memorize the basic rules of gun safety and teach them to your family and children.

To that end, let’s go over these rules. There is one established set of rules for adults and another set for children. Neither set is difficult to learn or understand.

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Firearm Safety for Children

IF YOU SEE A FIREARM:

1. STOP 2. DON’T TOUCH 3. WALK AWAY 4. TELL AN ADULT

As you can see, if someone too young to handle a firearm understands these rules and the importance of adhering to them, accidents from unattended firearms could be drastically reduced or virtually eliminated.

Few people would argue that children have a tendency to play with things that fascinate them. Refusing to explain guns and gun safety to children does little except to increase their mystique and consequently make avoidable accidents more likely.

No parent would try to keep it a secret that a pot of boiling water is dangerous. Not explaining how stoves work and their potential for causing burns would obviously be foolhardy. Firearms safety is no different.

Even if there are no guns in your house, that does not mean your child will never encounter one. It is your responsibility to understand and teach them what to do if that happens.

I will also say that, in my opinion, children who have toy guns should be taught to follow the safety rules for adults (shown below). Toys and playtime are learning experiences. Letting children act carelessly with a toy gun increases the chances that they will treat an actual firearm in the same manner.

Conversely, children that are taught to treat a toy gun with care and respect are far more likely to act in a safe manner if they encounter a real gun, either at home, at a friend’s house, or wherever.

Likewise, less-lethal items like BB guns or pellet rifles (and, to some extent, other items such as slingshots) should only be presented to children old enough to understand the following rules for the handling of firearms.

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Firearm Safety for Adults

(Popularized by Jeff Cooper) (Herein paraphrased)

1. Treat every firearm as if it is loaded at all times. 2. Never point a firearm at anything you do not intend to destroy. 3. Never put your finger on the trigger until you are ready to fire. 4. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

When you contemplate these rules, you realize that any one of them, if adhered to at all times, will prevent accidents. Taken together, they could make unintended and tragic discharges a thing of the past. So, let’s look at them more closely.