Firearm Safety

The following is a very timely and thought provoking article, especially 
with hunting season upon us.

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Craig Medred: Rifle check would have prevented hunter's death

By CRAIG MEDRED
Anchorage Daily News

Published: October 2, 2005
Last Modified: October 2, 2005 at 01:35 AM

One schoolmate climbed into a tree to look for deer, reached behind to pull 
up his rifle and blew away his forearm. He'd left a cartridge in the 
chamber. Another sought to unload a recoil-operated, semiautomatic Browning 
shotgun by manually stroking the barrel. He put his palm over the muzzle, 
pushed down and blew a neat, round hole through his hand. The shell in the 
chamber had gone off even though he thought he had the shotgun's safety on.

These were the kids around whom I grew up in the '60s and '70s.

Between their accidents, my father's constant harping about the dangers of 
firearms, and the gun safety class the state of Minnesota required of 
youngsters who wanted to hunt, I learned lessons that became habits:

" Never point a gun at anything you don't intend to shoot;

" Don't place loaded guns in cars, boats, airplanes or houses;

" Never trust a safety;

" Always double-check to make sure a supposedly unloaded gun is really 
unloaded.

The latter eventually turned into an obsession that has irritated more than 
one hunting acquaintance. Some people are offended when you instinctively 
double-check the chamber of the weapon they have just told you is unloaded.

But my concerns about being shot outweigh any reservations about offending 
others, so I keep on checking. No one has ever been shot by an empty 
firearm. Supposedly empty firearms are another matter.

And on at least two occasions that come immediately to memory, opening the 
actions on supposedly empty firearms has resulted in the ejection of live 
rounds of ammunition.

I thought about this upon reading of the death of Thomas Parker. A 
39-year-old hunter from Wasilla, he was loading rifles into a canoe near 
Tyone Lake in the Nelchina Basin in September when one discharged. A bullet 
struck him in the upper leg, according to official reports. He bled to 
death hours later.

His hunting partners claimed they did not know whose gun fired.

"We don't want to know whose it was,'' Clint Nunley, Parker's 
brother-in-law, said. "To know would devastate them. It was a tragic 
accident.''

These emotions are easily understandable. Knowing that it was your gun that 
discharged and killed a friend is the kind of thing that could haunt you 
for a lifetime. I sympathize with all of the hunters involved here.

But there is one thing about this shooting everyone needs to understand.

It was no accident. It was a terrible, tragic, deadly mistake.

If everyone in the hunting party had checked to make sure his weapon was 
empty, knowing those firearms were going in the boat, Parker would be alive 
today. Or if Parker had checked each firearm to make sure it was empty 
before putting it in the boat, he'd be alive today.

Instead, he's dead, and it's hard to avoid wondering why, why, why?

Hopefully not because someone put trust in a safety, although news reports 
might lead one to that conclusion. It has been reported that Parker's 
hunting buddies did "not know if someone forgot to remove the cartridges 
from the rifle's firing chamber or if the safety malfunctioned."

Suggesting that this shooting could be attributable to a malfunctioning 
safety indicates a serious misunderstanding about the safe handling of 
firearms. Firearm safeties are simply not designed to make weapons safe for 
transport.

Most firearm safeties are little more than a switch. They snap on and they 
snap off just that easily. They are designed only to prevent a person from 
accidentally pulling the trigger while holding the firearm under control. 
Were it otherwise, safeties would never be used.

You wouldn't, for instance, want to be wrestling with a difficult to 
release safety when a grizzly bear charged or when you finally got within 
range of that big bull moose. In those circumstances, you want a safety 
that will easily click off so you are ready to fire in less time than it 
took to read this sentence.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to design a safety that is easy to release 
yet able to prevent a firearm from discharging when tossed into a boat, 
canoe, airplane or closet. This is why one should never trust a safety, and 
why one should always unload firearms before transporting them.

"I just shudder to think people are carrying hunting rifles loaded in 
boats, cars, airplanes, etc.,'' one Homer hunter e-mailed me after Parker's 
death. "When I hunt with relatives or friends, I insist firearms are always 
unloaded in vehicles, boats or airplanes. When hiking with a partner, we 
always keep chambers empty. And I always show my partner that my chamber is 
empty.

"It may be nerdy, but I think the only sane way to carry firearms in a 
group is with an empty chamber. If I find myself in a worrisome situation, 
such as worrying about a bear attacking my backside while carrying meat, I 
might load the chamber. But then I am carrying the rifle in a 'ready 
state,' not carelessly flipping it around."

He wanted to know if I might write something about firearms safety. But I 
don't think that's necessary now. He summed it up as well as I ever could.

Daily News Outdoors editor Craig Medred can be reached at 
<mailto:[email protected]>[email protected].



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