Safety, especially newbies; and especially single actions

The Winchester 94 and a big winter glove! Shot holes in the ground in front of my foot a few times over the years when careless loading or unloading was the problem. That hammer wasn't made for gloved hands! Chris S

I made a mistake just last night that could have set up  an unintended noise. Sorry but it was with a DA revolver.
I was going to compare the weight of two guns unloaded, the one I was wearing and the unloaded one with the cylinder open on my desk.
As I opened the cylinder my wife knocked on the den door and while we were talking I umped the cylinder into my hand and put the rounds in my shirt pocket.  We finished talking and I hefted the guns. I was going to try the trigger pulls by aiming at my "safe spot", but being tired I slipped my belt gun in it's holster and headed toward the door, but, sticking to my rule about not wearing an unloaded gun I pulled the ammo out of the shirt pocket to reload.
 
"Whaaaa????
There were only five rounds in my pocket but the gun was a sixshooter. I checked the pockets. the chair I sat in, the floor, everywhere .....but....yup, the missing round was still in the cylinder. I had taken my eye off the ball while talking to my wife .
 
I hope that, had I decided to dryfire, I would have followed my long standing rule with a "carry gun" of counting the rounds in my hand and counting the holes in the cylinder "six rounds, six holes" before dryfiring, I have a feeling that the time I broke that rule would be the day I broke the rule about visually inspecting the cylinder before closing it. Probably why I have two rules or rituals, one is the backup for the other.

There might be extenuating circumstances. For in stance, if my wife came to my office door wearing a see-through nightie, I might have had a hard time counting the rounds. Pun intended.
Knyuckk
Mike

Me, 45 years ago. And Olga.

That may be a bit exaggerated but I don't think we count bullets anymore, they teach 'em to shoot into a barrel now to be sure the gun is empty???? Could have something to do with school curriculum, modern math and such! Chris S

From what I've seen of the curriculum it isn't important how many rounds there are, it's how the student feels about the rounds and not being critical if they count them incorrectly as long as they feel good about the answer.

I don't think the three "R's" (readin, ritin and rithmetic) are taught anymore. Chris S

I think it's heinous what they have done to firearms because folks are too removed from reality. The crossbolt safeties on Winchester and Marlin rifles are an example.
The best one is the one on the nice Chinese coach guns. They have a tang safety AND a crossbolt. A yo-yo at a gun shop tried to tell me the tang safety was so you could lower the hammer "more safely". I took the gun, cocked it, then broke the action open and lowered the hammers. I asked him "What could be more safe than that?"
"Well, a lot of people don't know to do that"
"If they can learn to use the crossbolt why cant they learn to open the action?"
"Well the crossbolt has the red indicator on it and people are used to that telling then if it's ready to fire or not".
"People, who need a piece of red plastic to tell them if the gun is dangerous should keep their *&^&(% mitts off of guns."
 
(BTW the good Chinese coach guns are great and you can deactivate the crossbolt and lock it in the fire position )

When unloading one of my SA pistols, I remove rounds, then turn the cylinder to check each chamber to make sure it is empty. It has been done so often, it is second nature.

Of course that's the correct way, Huh. And we all learn to do that after we make fools of ourselves.
Mike

I'm new to the forum, but not new to revolvers, any time I'm ever ever unloading live rounds or spent brass from any revolver I look at all of the chambers to make sure they're empty, I figure I can't possibly have an  accidental discharge if every chamber is empty.

Once I did clean a WASR-10  ak though, and like an idiot I put a loaded magazine back into the rifle, then put the bolt carrier group and recoil spring back in, and proceeded to dry fire it, or so I thought. What really happened was the round in chamber shot a long, fat tear in the almost new tin on the barn roof. I felt extremely lucky that I didn't hurt myself, or someone else, and it taught me a lesson that I'll never forget, I always try to be careful, but I slipped up that time, and I'll be extra careful to never do it again.

In my experience, that is the way a lot of us have had an epiphany about unloaded guns.
I always thought that God gave us brains so that everybody didn't have to make the same mistakes. I guess he needs to rethink that. Too bad, it was a good premise.

Mike

I agree that we shouldn't all make the same mistakes, but I think a lot of us are either too stubborn to listen/learn from others, or they just don't realize that they're messing up. I'm a high school agriculture teacher, I just recently started teaching, but I've already noticed a lot of my students making the same exact mistakes in the shop, even when I've warned them over and over, but for most of them it takes actually having a close call, or getting hurt, for the concept to stick in their mind. 
When I'm teaching Hunter Education to my 9th graders I'm stressing the firearm safety and hunting safety part of the course, I sincerely hope that they'll listen to what I'm trying to teach them in that part of the class, even if the don't get anything else from it.

......a kid!  I know, bad cliché!!! I had a good friend and we often went hunting together. I had a pump 12 and he had a bolt action 12, you know the rarely recognized but often used Mossberg's or the like, and one night we were walking back home after an afternoon partridge hunt with our shotguns unloaded(?) and on our shoulders when a loud roar blasted past my ear and dazed me for a minute. We both faced each other in disbelief wondering what had happened. I knew my gun hadn't gone off, the slide was back and the action was open but my friends bolt gun was closed. He swore it was empty and didn't know how it had gone off! Upon opening the bolt an empty case flew out and his face was fifty shades of red! Mine was pale white and I was thankful for the fact his barrel had been pointed past me and not at me......We never spoke of this again but from that day on I often hunted solo....Chris S