gun range train shoot pistol woman
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If you follow the big gun control orgs’ accounts on social media, chances are you’ve already come across a post like this one . . .

That’s right, the Giffords civilian disarmament operation has unilaterally declared this Gun Owners for Safety Week and are using it to push their message of gun control under the guise of “gun safety” and “standing up to the gun lobby.”

So, in the spirit of Gun Owners For Safety Week, I think we need to amplify responsible gun ownership, too. That’s always a good idea. If you aren’t already familiar with them, here are the four rules of gun safety that every gun owner should know and practice.

But we all know that groups like Giffords aren’t really concerned about actual firearm safety as much as as they are control those who own guns. Even if every single armed citizen was the very model of gun safety, never doing anything even remotely questionable and only using firearms outside of a range for and clear-cut cases of self defense, that still wouldn’t satisfy them.

That’s why they’re pumping messages like this one . . .

The real goal here, of course, is to push and pass restrictive laws — think: universal background checks, gun owners licensing, waiting periods and “safe storage” mandates — to the point where lawfully-possessed guns aren’t only mostly useless for armed self-defense, but are utterly worthless against a tyrannical government, too.

Reducing their usefulness as defensive tools against the kind of criminals the average citizen is likely to encounter is just a happy side effect of their real objective: making life safer for illiberal governments and their enforcers.

But they know we know this. They’re not trying to change our minds here. They want the general public — the majority who don’t know much about the issues surrounding firearms and gun rights — to rethink what “safety” is. Instead of being about the practices an individual should adopt for basic firearm safety, they want people to think that “gun safety” comes from the imposition of “commonsense” gun control laws.

They want John and Jane Q. Public to think that gun owners don’t give a damn about safety, when precisely the opposite is the truth. We all started out dumb about guns at some point and were corrected by a parent, an instructor, a range safety officer, or a mentor. Some of us have had worse experiences that woke us up. But the general public hasn’t had that experience. They don’t know (and don’t want others to know) how seriously safety is taken as a normal part of the gun culture.

That’s why a lack of basic, fundamental gun safety practices isn’t tolerated in the gun-owning community.

To spread that message even further, we need to be reminding people of three things:

  • What actual gun safety really is
  • That we take it seriously
  • That passing laws can’t make bad owners or criminals into good ones

What Real Gun Safety Is

Real gun safety doesn’t come from collective action. It doesn’t come from laws. It doesn’t come from firearms design (assuming the design isn’t seriously defective). It doesn’t come from your gun shop, or even from a firearms instructor. Ultimately, gun safety lies in the hands of the individual holding a gun. Everyone else can do everything right, but if you as the owner don’t adopt safe practices, none of that matters one little bit.

negligent unintentional discharge training range
Courtesy Jeff Gonzales

That’s why, long ago, various groups of firearm owners and gun-carrying professionals came up with safety rules which we’re all expected to know and practice. While the exact wording differs, the Four Rules cover things really well . . .

The Four Rules of Gun Safety

If you take any basic class given by a reputable instructor, you will start off with gun safety before ever going to the range. Beyond what’s contained in the Four Rules (or the NRA’s 3 rules, if that’s what you learned), there are other safety considerations to know including . . . .

  • The gun needs to be safe to operate
  • You need to know how to use it safely
  • Use the correct ammo
  • Wear eye and ear protection
  • Never use alcohol or drugs while shooting
  • Keep guns away from unauthorized people (children, thieves, etc.)
  • Range safety procedures and rules

As a community, we take these rules seriously. To be told by gun control advocacy operations — of all people — that they’re the ones who really care about firearm safety is not only false, it’s downright insulting. We need to make sure everyone hears this.

 

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

35 COMMENTS

  2. No matter how hard the sneaks try when it comes to Gun Control they cannot put lipstick on a pig when history confirms Gun Control in any shape, matter or form is rooted in racism and genocide.

  3. i did my part last night.
    2 hours as instructor & range safety officer at local youth 4-H rifle program.

    • Being a range master is all well and fine however if you failed to define the 2A by its history and you failed to define Gun Control by its history for your understudies you might as well been giving instructions on how to operate a band saw.

      • Here’s how it works Debbie Downer: teach the safe use and understanding of the tool; inoculate the youth from the lies about “guns,” and the 2A lessons will not fall on deaf ears. I have taught my share of Tench Coxe editorial & US v. Miller

      • The same 9mm that will “take out a lung” will obviously do the same to a brain… who spoon-feeds her the words she spews?

        • Probably RocketBoy (her spouse) who hopefully is one of the “dummies” strapped into the seats for the upcoming Moon launch. I say hopefully because it’s a new unproven design and probably won’t have oxygen being pumped into the capsule

  5. What is clear in this article and should be obvious to all is that these Anti-Gun organizations never speak out against the criminal illegals coming into the Country which includes drug dealers, drugs, human traffickers, and a host of other unsavory people who destroy the lives of thousands of American Citizens and not one peep out of them. The anti-gun agenda has nothing to do with safety. It is exclusively to disarm the public so we cannot fight back against the kind of Dictatorial Government that is currently emerging in this Country in unabashed arrogance. So make sure they understand the people are not buying their narrative and we intend to fight back against them and law enforcement if necessary, when they violate their Oath to the Constitution and obeying the laws of the land themselves. Everyone has a line in the sand and they have tried to cross it far too often for the American Citizens to tolerate that much longer.

  6. It’s not just about gun safety it’s about total control of our lives. We have to be disarmed for the one world government to take complete control. Why do you think they are trying to starve us by taking away fertilizer? Why do you think they want to know about any transaction for more than $600? Why do you think they want to do away with cash? Let crime run rampant, then tell us if we do away with cash there won’t be any more crime. There won’t be any freedoms either. They can program digital currency as to what you can spend it on. They can take it away from you when ever they want. Remember what Trudeau did to the truckers?

  7. “If you follow the big gun control orgs’ accounts on social media …”

    Why? I don’t swim in the sewer.

  9. In addition to trying to mislead the ignorant masses into group think (their group) one thing that isn’t brought up much is how much of a money maker this stuff is for the ones playing the useful idiots. Same with blm, tree huggers, you name it. There are dupes and suckers around every corner.

  10. Golly. Gee!

    I must be doing something right. That little P365 I have on me right now as I work the keyboard, as well as just about every place I go, has never gone BANG! on its own, nor injured anyone. Ditto the loaded AR 300 Blk sitting by my bed, as well as ____s of other firearms I own. Of course that’s an everyday thing, not something I only do during some idiot-conceived week set up to bring “awareness to the obvious”.

    So how about it, Gabby? Can you mail me a gold star or something?

    As far as safety concerns for politicians are concerned, however: The pols could help matters immensely if quite a few of them didn’t go far out of their way to insult, degrade and mock about half of the American people on a regular basis. Just sayin’…

  11. In order to not unnecessarily be rude
    I don’t give a Rat’s ass what the puppet says.
    Shameful for him for using his brain damaged wife for his purpose

  12. For some reason our local anti-gun idiots are not so interested in gun safety when we invite them to our ranges to see first hand at how safe things are. We invite them and tell them for their safety they will be provided a special VIP florescent orange bulls eye vest to ensure their visibility, but they never take us up on the offer.

  14. You can’t be a responsible gun owner if you have one of those people killing weapons of war like an AK-15 or .9mm automatic handgun around. Who needs those to kill a deer anyway, they don’t wear bullet proof vests. Just go turn those guns in at a buy back, and please, vote for Beto!

  15. Quote————–The real goal here, of course, is to push and pass restrictive laws — think: universal background checks, gun owners licensing, waiting periods and “safe storage” mandates — to the point where lawfully-possessed guns aren’t only mostly useless for armed self-defense, but are utterly worthless against a tyrannical government, too.———quote

    None of the above is banning guns except of course to criminals and maniacs who should not have them. And some States who have waiting periods also have emergency permits if you have proof you are being stalked for an attack so there is not argument about not having waiting periods.

    The Brady Bill in just the first 20 years of its existence stopped over 2 million attempted gun buys and for those who got caught up in a clerical error they still could buy a gun if they appealed.

    The Brady Bill falls way short because at the last minute the NRA blocked its being able to vet second hand gun purchases between private individuals which let any criminal or nut case buy all the firepower they want

    There can be no sane argument against any of these laws as all civilized nations have them and their much lower homicide and crime rate with firearms are irrefutable proof that they not only work but work outstandingly well. No law is fool proof but not to have them is pure insanity and the 42,000 gun deaths yearly in the U.S. prove what an insane country the U.S. is to live in.

    And one more important rule: If you carry a striker fired gun that has no manual safety you must carry it with the chamber empty or you risk an accidental discharge when handling it, carrying it, or attempting to holster it. The graveyards are full of people who did not do this and tragically so are a lot of children and especially toddlers who picked them up when the deadly weapons were left unattended by irresponsible parents. I might add this is more proof we need mandatory safe storage laws “Its for the children”.

    • “None of the above is banning guns except of course to criminals and maniacs who should not have them.”

      Do you need to be reminded that there are already dozens of laws at the federal level, in every state and in many large urban areas that already make it illegal for your listed people to even possess firearms?

      Laws and regulations only affect the law-abiding, the ones who would observe and obey them. Your list either doesn’t care, has learned to make a decent living breaking laws, or for some reason don’t have the mental capacity to comply.

      The only way for the government to come close to insuring the safety of the public is to separate those on your list from the general public. Despite what you may personally believe- this is NOT a new revelation, and it works anywhere it’s tried.

      • quote————-Do you need to be reminded that there are already dozens of laws at the federal level, in every state and in many large urban areas that already make it illegal for your listed people to even possess firearms?———quote

        Your comment is a total falsehood. State and local laws are meaningless when states with lax laws funnel in thousands of second hand guns into states with tough laws and numerous studies have proven it. There is even an “Iron pipe line” that does this as verified by law enforcement. Harvard studies as well as two Chicago studies proved this as well. And there were many more studies that also came to the same conclusions.

        quote———–The only way for the government to come close to insuring the safety of the public is to separate those on your list from the general public. Despite what you may personally believe- this is NOT a new revelation, and it works anywhere it’s tried.———-quote

        And this statement is your most asinine of all as it does a dead victim no good at all even when the felon is captured because he is already dead.

    • –universal background checks, gun owners licensing, waiting periods and “safe storage” mandates —

      “None of the above is banning guns except of course to criminals and maniacs who should not have them.”

      Lie. None of the listed measures will affect criminals in any way. It will infringe on the rights of citizens to exercise their 2A guarantees. The goal of the listed measures is not to reduce or prevent crime.

      “The Brady Bill in just the first 20 years of its existence stopped over 2 million attempted gun buys …”

      Lie. Post your source for this; show your work.

      “…second hand gun purchases between private individuals which let any criminal or nut case buy all the firepower they want…”

      Lie. Criminals will not submit to background checks.

      “There can be no sane argument against any of these laws …”

      Lie. There are plenty of supportable arguments against the measures; you just won’t consider them.

      “If you carry a striker fired gun that has no manual safety you must carry it with the chamber empty or you risk an accidental discharge …”

      Lie. You don’t know how firearms work.

      You’re a proven liar — I took you apart point-by-point on several threads in the past few days, the most recent being your lies about the Cincinnati FIB assailant shooting at the building with a rifle.

      So what is it with you? Are you stupid? Mentally incompetent? Or just a practiced liar?

      • Klingon you never cease to make a complete fool of yourself. You run off the mouth before researching anything.

        quote———Lie. None of the listed measures will affect criminals in any way———quote

        Like most of the deraigned and paranoid Far Right you ignore the History of gun control, especially the laws of Europe which have those laws and because of them much lower homicides with firearms and mass murders with them. The Stats are there for all sane people to see and accept.

        “The Brady Bill in just the first 20 years of its existence stopped over 2 million attempted gun buys …”

        Lie. Post your source for this; show your work.

        https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/02/28/2-1-million-gun-sales-stopped-by-background-checks-in-20-years-brady-report-finds/

        quote————-“…second hand gun purchases between private individuals which let any criminal or nut case buy all the firepower they want…”

        Lie. Criminals will not submit to background checks.———-quote

        I will explain this to you on the 5th grade level. Universal Background Checks would make private sales illegal and it is second hand gun sales between individuals that provide such guns to criminals. The average law abiding citizen would never risk going to prison , being fined heavily and be banned from ever owning a firearm again. So yes, the majority of all second hand sales, which amounts to tens of thousands of second hand guns would go through a background check. Now junior what part of this elementary explanation do you still not understand?

        quote———–“There can be no sane argument against any of these laws …”

        Lie. There are plenty of supportable arguments against the measures; you just won’t consider them.———–quote

        Only a deraigned paranoid of the Far Right will constantly scream “Do not confuse me with the facts of history because I refuse to believe them”. The Stats have proven you wrong decades ago.

        Quote————“If you carry a striker fired gun that has no manual safety you must carry it with the chamber empty or you risk an accidental discharge …”

        Lie. You don’t know how firearms work.—————quote

        It is you who just made a complete fool of yourself as it is you do not understand how they work. Even a child can understand that when a weapon is cocked and ready to fire that it will fire if it does not have a manual safety which prevents an accidentally snagged trigger from firing the weapon and wounding or killing someone. Try again genius boy you never cease to make a complete fool of yourself.

        quote————-You’re a proven liar — I took you apart point-by-point on several threads in the past few days, the most recent being your lies about the Cincinnati FIB assailant shooting at the building with a rifle.———quote

        Now you are denying not only U.S. news reports but international news media reports as well. Yes the nut case had an AR15 and died in a shoot out with it with the police. Everyone accepts those reports but you who will claim they never reported that.

        quote————The suspect was believed to be armed with an AR-15 rifle and a nail gun, a federal law enforcement source told CNN, and was wearing body armor, according to officials in an Ohio county.

        “Well, I thought I had a way through bullet proof glass, and I didn’t,” the user posted at 9:29 a.m. Thursday. “If you don’t hear from me, it is true I tried attacking the F.B.I., and it’ll mean either I was taken off the internet, the F.B.I. got me, or they sent the regular cops while.”

        https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/12/us/fbi-cincinnati-office-armed-suspect-what-we-know/index.html

        Try again Klingon you are out of your league.

        • OK, asshole, I’ll try again.

          I wrote: Lie. None of the listed measures will affect criminals in any way. It will infringe on the rights of citizens to exercise their 2A guarantees. The goal of the listed measures is not to reduce or prevent crime.

          You: “The Stats are there for all sane people to see and accept.”

          The stats that you cherry-pick from unreliable sources and present as unvarnished fact? There’s no way for you to prove that European gun laws would reduce crime in the US. We already have over 20,000 laws on the books regarding firearms. If laws prevented crime, we wouldn’t have any crime. Making more laws of the categories that you mentioned will not reduce or prevent crime. They will only serve to infringe on the right of the law-abiding because criminals are not law-abiding and do not follow the laws. But this concept is apparently beyond your ability to grasp.

          You: “The Brady Bill in just the first 20 years of its existence stopped over 2 million attempted gun buys …”

          That information is from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Gee, I wonder how a gun-control advocacy group comes up with the count? It doesn’t matter, because any figures produced by a gun-control advocacy group are unreliable.

          What’s more important is this: what effect did the law have in reducing deaths? NONE.

          > The Brady Bill, the most important piece of federal gun control legislation in recent decades, has had no statistically discernable effect on reducing gun deaths, according to a study by Philip J. Cook, a Duke University professor of public policy, economics and sociology. “The Brady Bill seems to have been a failure.” <

          https://www.law.virginia.edu/news/2003_spr/cook.htm

          Lie. Criminals will not submit to background checks.

          You: “…Universal Background Checks would make private sales illegal and it is second hand gun sales between individuals that provide such guns to criminals. The average law abiding citizen would never risk going to prison …”

          What part of “Criminals will not submit to background checks” do you not understand? Apparently every word of it.

          You: “Even a child can understand that when a weapon is cocked and ready to fire that it will fire if it does not have a manual safety …”

          > We must be clear, though, that there is a difference between “safeties” and manual safeties. Glock firearms, for instance, are referred to as “Safe Action” pistols and they contain three mechanical safeties—a trigger safety, a firing pin safety and a drop safety—but no manual safety. So, to be clear, when we discuss safeties we are strictly referring to manual safeties—a bar or lever that must be moved to allow the gun to fire. <

          https://www.nrafamily.org/content/manual-safeties-on-carry-guns-pro-vs-con-2/

          You’re a proven liar — I took you apart point-by-point on several threads in the past few days, the most recent being your lies about the Cincinnati FIB assailant shooting at the building with a rifle.

          You: “Now you are denying not only U.S. news reports but international news media reports as well. Yes the nut case had an AR15 and died in a shoot out with it with the police.”

          He did not shoot at the FIB building with his rifle.
          No news source stated that he used his MSR until he left the building grounds. He did not shoot at the building.

          You lied.

          My questions stand:

          Are you stupid? Mentally incompetent? Or just a practiced liar?

        • to Klingon

          quote————–There’s no way for you to prove that European gun laws would reduce crime in the US. ———quote

          Graph source: IHME/Scott Glen
          Age-adjusted firearm homicide rates in the US are 13 times greater than they are in France, and 22 times greater than in the European Union as a whole. The US has 23 times the rate of firearm homicide seen in Australia.

          The trend continues for percentage of child deaths caused by firearms. Including physical violence, suicide, and unintentional injury, gun violence accounts for over 7% of deaths in the US among those under age 20, a figure that stands far above peer countries. When excluding infants, who have higher rates of death from neonatal causes, that number jumps to nearly 15%.

          quote————We already have over 20,000 laws on the books regarding firearms. If laws prevented crime, we wouldn’t have any crime. Making more laws of the categories that you mentioned will not reduce or prevent crime.———–quote

          Even a child could understand that U.S. laws are meaningless when states with lax laws funnel in thousands second hand guns into states with tough laws. Police tracings prove there is an iron pipe line and two Chicago studies proved the average age of a gun used in a crime was 13 years old and was second hand and had been resold many times without a background check.

          https://www.healthdata.org/acting-data/gun-violence-united-states-outlier

        • Asshole, what about the other points that I addressed? Where I proved that you’re a liar? You conveniently skipped over them, didn’t you?

          “Graph source: IHME/Scott Glen”

          The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is out of their lane when commenting on criminal violence. In fact, they don’t do all that well in health metrics, either.

          “This is Why You Should Ignore IHME’s Forecasts —
          “IHME’s forecasts in the past have been inaccurate by as much as several hundred percent. In many cases, their forecasts have literally been worse than no forecasts at all because they created such misleading ideas about where the pandemic was headed.”

          https://towardsdatascience.com/this-is-why-you-should-ignore-ihmes-forecasts-4634a4db0e85

          “Doubting the IHME claims about excess deaths by country —

          “The issue with the IHME report is that it uses extremely partial data when much more encompassing (such as World Mortality) exists, the issue is that the country-level estimates they showed publicly are incredibly different than known ones (mostly higher) and that they purport to accurately estimate excess deaths where data simply does not exist – this undermines a tremendous effort currently underway to improve and collect vital data in many countries.”

          https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/05/09/doubting-the-ihme-claims-about-excess-deaths-by-country/

          > “Even a child could understand that U.S. laws are meaningless when states with lax laws funnel in thousands second hand guns into states with tough laws.” <

          Interesting that the states with the most stringent gun laws are also the states with the highest rates of criminals using firearms — if the problem really was the states that have "lax laws," then those states should be experiencing higher rates of crime than the states with stronger laws. Your argument is counter-intuitive. Besides, you blame the states — but who are the individuals supposedly transporting guns across state lines? Criminals.

          Even a child could understand that criminals are not law-abiding and do not follow the laws. As you’ve repeatedly proven, apparently this is beyond your comprehension.

          Answer this: did the Cincinnati FIB assailant use his rifle to shoot at the building, as you lied?

          If that’s too tough, here’s a multiple-choice query:

          Are you stupid? Mentally incompetent? Or just a practiced liar?

        • to Klingon

          quote———– if the problem really was the states that have “lax laws,” then those states should be experiencing higher rates of crime than the states with stronger laws.———-quote

          Only a paranoid simpleton like yourself would draw such absurd conclusions.

          There is more crime in big cities because of the high poverty level and high population density, it is simple mathematics (way over your head).

          On the the other hand states that are rural generally have less population, therefore less crime and less gun control making it easy for gun runners to buy up used guns and then run them to high crime cities.

          Again police tracings and accredited studies all came to the same conclusions and that is that when we do not have a uniform Federal Gun Control law the various state and local gun laws are useless as second hand guns are run into states and cities that have high crime rates and they come from states that have less gun control.

          Again only a far right nut case like yourself that is suffering from advanced paranoia would reject all the statistics.

          quote———-Even a child could understand that criminals are not law-abiding and do not follow the laws.——-quote

          Again your paranoia prevents you from any sane or logical thinking. True, criminals do not obey laws but when they do not have guns to buy your statement is meaningless when you try and claim that Universal Background Checks would not dry up to a great degree the vast pool of unvetted second hand guns being sold to criminals. Again even a child can understand this and no amount of lying and trying on your part to twist the truth will work.

          quote———–The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation is out of their lane when commenting on criminal violence.———-quote

          You are simply saying that since you do not agree with their finding you do not believe them and you have no data to prove that what they said was not accurate.

          Quote—————“This is Why You Should Ignore IHME’s Forecasts —
          “IHME’s forecasts in the past have been inaccurate by as much as several hundred percent. In many cases, their forecasts have literally been worse than no forecasts at all because they created such misleading ideas about where the pandemic was headed.”———-quote

          Again wild lies and the view of a simpleton. Much of what they reported was accurate and it must be remembered that as the pandemic went on new medical data was coming in all the time which of course was then used to modify the then known existing data.

          Try again simpleton you really fell into the outhouse on this post.

        • Asshole, you’re a liar. You’re a cowardly liar. You lie about your lies.

          You have no credibility and we laugh at you.

  16. I have a story on gun safety. A long time friend from high school days, 1974 forward finally got into guns. I’ve been a gun guy….forever with formal training. So now it’s August of 2022 and he wants to take his bright shiny bran new AR9 and go to Sharp Shooting here in Spokane and shoot it. I was going to be in the area anyway so I said I’d stop in and watch through the glass. Note: he has NOT had any instruction or training. So I’m watching though the glass as he fumbles around trying to load magazines and figure out how to shoot the thing. It’s a Strike Industries lower and takes GLOCK Mags. He fired a shot and it jammed.
    This is where I cringed and left Sharp Shooting shortly. After that jam, he fumbled around not having a clue what to do and was pointing the weapon all over including at the next stall which had a shooter occupying it, instead of keeping it pointed down-range!! Then he dangled the weapon beside his leg pointing it both at his leg and foot with his finger on the trigger. I was watching CLOSE.

    I could have done a lot of things including going and getting some hear protectors, going in and taking charge of the idiocy I was witnessing but instead I left. I had just plain seen enough retardism for the rest of my life.

    I never said anything to him until Tuesday of this week when he wanted me to go shoot with him. Valuing my life, I told him his range safety skills had a lot to be desired. He stated he realized he was making some mistakes but also continually mentioned not using the mechanical safety on the weapon. I’m not sure if I’ll go but if I do I’m going to really take charge and hammer on him. The biggest safety is the one between your ears not the one on the weapon. It was a first hand example of why I don’t like going to ranges.

    • possum:
      Gee, I’m appalled to know that. And to think that the week isn’t even half over yet. Let’s see, it’s only the second day of the week (starting yesterday), so there should be at least 60,000 casualties by August 24th. And all of that is because of evil .9mm Glock brand glocks randomly shooting people in the legs! And the country must have already run out of space in hospitals with emergency rooms! The horror of it! I think I’ll go hide in the cellar until “gunm safety week” is over.

      • “.9mm”

        There’s your answer. The wounds were so small that the victims thought they had been bitten by mites.

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