[ED: We last bumped this post three years ago during the Great Pandemic Gun Buying Run of 2020. But as even mainstream media outlets have had to acknowledge, more Americans continue to buy firearms at a noteworthy pace.
That includes groups that the clueless always assumed didn’t care about their Second Amendment rights and weren’t fans of gun ownership. The expansion of permitless carry to over half the country now is no doubt contributing to that.
To all of you first-time owners, welcome. We’re glad you’re here. These four basic rules of gun handling are easy to remember and will, if observed, keep you and your family safe.]
Col. Jeff Cooper furthered the cause of general gun safety by distilling and popularizing the four rules of safe gun handling. The purpose was to minimize accidents, otherwise known as negligent discharges (every accidental discharge is a negligent discharge).
There are other variations on the theme, but Cooper’s four rules of gun safety are easy to remember and communicate. You have to break at least two of them for something really bad to happen. Learn and follow the four rules and you’ll eliminate the possibility of touching off a dangerous, perhaps even deadly negligent discharge.
Learn them, live them, love them, and preach them.
1. Every gun is always loaded.
Safety demands that you treat all firearms as loaded — at least until you personally and accurately verify that a gun is unloaded. Always safety check a firearm before and after handling. Even then, you should continue to treat it as a loaded gun.
Safety check every gun immediately when you pick up…even if you had just put it down moments before. Safety check every gun before you put it down or hand it to someone else, even if you “know” it’s unloaded.
Remember: you can remove a magazine from a firearm and still have a round in the chamber. You must check the chamber.
If someone hands you a gun, make sure it’s clear. If someone says “it’s unloaded” treat the statement as utterly meaningless. It’s not unloaded until you’ve checked it yourself.
The only unloaded gun is one you’ve personally checked and it’s been secured or hasn’t left your sight since you checked it. Until and unless you’ve safety checked a firearm — and in most cases (save cleaning) even then — treat the firearm as if it’s loaded.
2. Never point a gun at anything you aren’t willing to destroy.
If you let your muzzle cover anything like an innocent person or an inoffensive inedible animal, bad things can happen. If you keep your gun pointed in a safe direction — away from innocent life — it can’t (which is why some think this should be the first rule).
Even if you somehow have a negligent discharge — which will only occur if you violate other safety rules — at least it won’t harm man or beast. What’s a safe direction? Anyplace a bullet can’t harm an innocent life should you fire the gun.
Be aware: depending on where you may be, there may be times when there isn’t a safe direction.
Bullets can penetrate walls and other barriers and travel extremely long distances. Someone living in an apartment building in an urban area may not be able to avoid the possibility of a negligent discharge causing harm.
In that case as in all others — such as cleaning, storage and transportation — always keep a gun pointed in the safest possible direction. For example, aiming a gun at the steel-reinforced corners of a building may be an apartment dweller’s best bet.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on your target.
No matter how many media reports to the contrary, guns don’t “go off.”
Yes, there are older guns that aren’t “drop-safe” or guns that are mechanically defective (an extremely rare occurrence), but in virtually every instance in modern times, someone or something has to pull the trigger for a gun to fire.
If you keep your finger (and other things) off of the trigger, you won’t create a negligent discharge.
There’s a natural tendency to place your finger on a gun’s trigger; that’s the way firearms are designed to be held. You have to train yourself to keep your finger out of the trigger guard until you’re ready to shoot.
When you pick up a gun, pause. Place your trigger finger in a safe spot (above the trigger on the gun’s frame is good). Feel your finger placement. Look at it. Lock it into your memory. Do this every time you hold a gun.
[NOTE: Even people with excellent “trigger discipline” may place their finger on a trigger in a high-stress situation. For this reason, some people choose handguns with a heavy trigger pull (e.g., revolvers) or a gun with a heavy first trigger pull followed by lighter trigger pulls (DA/SA).]4. Be sure of your target and what’s beyond it.
Again, bullets can penetrate barriers and travel great distances before they lose lethal force. You can aim at one thing and hit another, with disastrous results. You are responsible for every bullet that leaves your barrel.
Always make sure there’s no one down range, or someone about to go downrange. How far down range should you consider? As far as the eye can see — and then some.
A .22 caliber bullet can travel over a mile before losing momentum. Be sure you have an adequate backstop. Don’t forget the possibility of barrier penetration (i.e., there may be people or livestock behind a distant barn).
Also keep in mind that you may inadvertently fire well to the left, right or above your target. Imagine a horizontal line running from where you’re standing to your right and left, trailing off into infinity. Make sure there’s no person or animal anywhere ahead of this “firing line” or about to go ahead of the line.
In terms of self-defense, assess your environment, preferably before you draw your gun and certainly after. Defensive gun training courses and competitions are helpful in this regard. In any case, accuracy is a function of distance. The closer you are to a target, the less likely you’ll miss and shoot an innocent bystander.
There are other firearm safety rules (i.e., don’t drink and shoot) that gun owners should know as well. But master Cooper’s big four and you’ll enjoy a lifetime of safe gun handling. It’s easy and it’s your responsibility.
You immediately made a great point about how you should treat every gun as loaded. While I want to become a firearm owner to protect my family, the last thing I want to do is accidentally fire my weapon and potentially hurt someone accidentally. I’ll avoid that by making that my priority once I start going to a gun and ammo store for training.
Tell it to the kid who pointed the gun at the photographer.
Even if he/she walked the photo into place, there is no damn good reason for anyone to point the gun up where anyone could have innocently walked into range.
I don’t want people hear about disabled guns, the rules are the rules because stupid accidents happen.
Why don’t you take it up with the photographer? We’ve already discussed this topic ad nauseum.
“For example, aiming a gun at the steel-reinforced corners of a building may be an apartment dweller’s best bet.”
or…. a lot better…get your self a ‘clearing barrel’ set up.
This went off the rails faster than Baldwin can say quiet on the set! BOOM!
went off the rails starting in 2019 with the other commenters back then.
Agreed .40
I was thinking along the lines of this is the latest TTAG article and it already has 101 comments.
Long-time acquaintances from high school, Brian Mason (OFWG, POG) said Michelle Elliott told him she wanted a different firearm to have at her household because she felt unsafe.
Mason said he showed her his 40-caliber handgun and in the process, had an accidental discharge, which struck Michelle in the chest.” He further stated he panicked, covered her body with a blanket and left in his pickup truck, the affidavit said.
What’s your point? Obviously you had a stupid friend. What the fuck does that have to do with your stupid handle?
Right, because only stupid people break the 4 rules. No way could a regular good ol’ gun owner have a deadly negligent discharge.
You’re the perfect example of a safety hypocrite.
You’re the perfect example of a troll. Why don’t you blow?
Invented story concept, like a fairy tale, but based upon a ‘generic case’ contrivance that has its roots in at least one case only because at least one case maybe happened somewhere because accidents happen. Its reinvented over time and tailored to the situation. For example, similar accident case concepts (ending in some type of tragic accident) have happened with knives, cars, rebar, poisons, drugs, rope, punches, falling, trains, etc… Sometimes real names are plugged in and some times its an actual case, but its told like it always happens and there can never be anything else involved in accidents except this “thing” (what ever the current thing is, in those case a gun). Its basically the story of “man kind” – that accidents happen, mistakes are made, sometimes people don’t think, unfortunate things occur, and told with a “always dangerous under any situation simply because it exists” type of tone. But its always told to pose some sort of invented ‘moral high ground’ for the person telling the tale and ‘accusatory’ of others.
Its a typical left wing troll tactic, told like a scary fairy tale narrative concept always presented with the story teller having a self-conceived ‘moral high ground’ stance in their view. In scary fairy tales, they are told to children to scare them and/or warn them of dire consequences if they are not good and do what their parents say – tales of a ‘boogy man will come get you’ types – in this case these stories and concepts about “guns” are related to scare and warn people to create doubt or fear that ‘the boogy man’ (getting shot accidentally or on purpose) “will come get you” if you don’t do what the left wing says and don’t have a gun.
In some versions:
1. “Long-time acquaintances from high school, Brian Mason (OFWG, POG) said Michelle Elliott told him she wanted a different firearm to have at her household because she felt unsafe.” …. becomes “Friends said said…”
2. Person one (‘Brian Mason’) “said” person two (“Michelle Elliott”) “told him” … sometimes person one or person two are female names and sometimes “told him” becomes “told her”
3. “told him she wanted a different firearm to have at her household because she felt unsafe.” sometimes becomes “told her” (or “said”) “she” (sometimes becomes “he”) “wanted a different firearm” (sometimes becomes “wanted a gun”) “to have at her household because she felt unsafe” (sometimes becomes “because they felt unsafe”)
4. Its always person one (e.g. ‘Brian Mason’) said/told person two (e.g “Michelle Elliott”) about person three (e.g. “Michelle”, the disconnected from the narrative by “her” then suddenly identified when they get shot in this version) saying they wanted a gun for some reasons (e.g. felt unsafe in this version).
5. At some point in this tall tale concept encounter person one (“Brian Mason” in this version) whips out a gun to show this person three (e.g. “Michelle”) and ends up shooting them. Then in an apparent act of remorse person one does something ‘caring’ for the deceased (e.g. covers the body with a suddenly handy blanket) and for some reason ‘confesses’ to another person (person one in this case).
Although various versions may have their roots in actual real world cases – the story is always contrived to fit the specific narrative another wants to portray, which in this case with the name “Safety Hypocrite” intended to provoke responses by trolling to assert some sort of self-serving ‘self conceived’ moral high-ground concept in the argument contention he wants to provoke by trolling and derives some sort of perverse satisfaction from it to satisfy some deep seated emotionally deficient need. And kinda snarky flavor too, sort of like Miner49er snarky flavor.
Elmer Fudd’s First Corollary to Cooper’s First Rule of Gun Safety:
Treat every shotgun as if it is a lethal weapon even when you presume that it is only loaded with “harmless buckshot.”
I actually had a scum sucking whore of an attorney argue in court filings that my marijuana bootlegging tenant isn’t a threat to my family because he only loads his shotgun with buckshot.
Just For Your Information: contrary to presumptions made by many experienced gun owners, buckshot can retain enough energy to penetratrate a human skull at 400 yards. Many people have survived being shot at with shotguns at range only because the pattern spreads out so much that all of the projectiles miss.
I usually don’t add to 4 year old thread’s but I’m a bit of a safety not-c. And it’s rubbed off on the wife. No more muzzling,handing a gat by the barrel(!) or really any careless gat handling at all. And she now wants to shoot my rifle🙃
this is one of those “If I was a millionaire” months
I would buy a billboard of this and make sure it was posted were Alec Baldwin could see it as he resumes SHOOTING on his movie and then have a firearms safety video shown at theaters that wished to make a few extra buck on the said with that same movie as a showing BEFORE his film!
Rule number Ouch
Do not shute a bridge beam while playing rifleman with a .22.
Treat every firearm as if it’s loaded. Simple enough. Just my take on that. I don’t care if Jesus Christ himself handed me a firearm and said it was unloaded and safe. I would still check it myself and make sure of it.
Never point a firearm at anything you don’t want/intend to kill. Yes, I said kill. Not put a hole in or even destroy, but kill. Make damn sure both the novice shooter or old pro both understand acknowledge a firearm is a lethal weapon and is used to kill living things if needs be.
As I saw somewhere a while ago and shamelessly stole” Keep your damn booger hook off the bang switch until you are ready to shoot.”
Lastly, always know where the bullet is going to go if you miss. Something I always get annoyed about when I read about some officer involved shooting. A full magazine emptied and the suspect only hit once or twice. Where did those other lethal projectiles end up? If the cop was lucky, into the walls or car doors around the area and not into some innocent bystander or sleeping kid in the next room or building. Spray and pray make the cop no better than the thug doing a drive by shooting into someone’s house or car with no regard for anyone else.
cops bullets are not liable for where they land. Itsah tuff shit should ducked situation. It’s kinda what it was and what it should be, if I accidentally shutes somebody because I had to shute you, then that’s on you. That’s the way, weigh, way it should be for everyone. It is but them guys that do that are crooks or cops , maybe edit to just crooks, encompassing.
Let’s Go ,,,,,-kyyyoteee chewing on a cigarette ,,,,,
Let’s Go Brandon
1- Dont get caught with a gunm
2- Make sure what you shuted is dead
3- Dont get caught with gunm
4- Skip 2 if you had a bar b q
Those aren’t the Four Rules as handed down by the Prophet of JMB, Col. Jeff Cooper.
Leave it to the ultra-fudds at the NSSF to put their own anti-rights Redflag spin on the actual firearms safety commandments. The NSSF, just like the NRA, has faaaaar outlived its usefulness to the american gun-owners and anything that comes out of their spokesfudds lips needs to taken with a truckload of road salt.
i meant to put, “In the video from the NSSF” at the beginning of this post.
The text of this article has them listed, obviously. These are the Four Rules and Fudds like the NSSF and their “unload all guns when you aren’t using them” BS have NO place in our big tent changing things around and putting their own redflag BS spin on everything.
Welcome all new gun owners. Commit Cooper’s Four Rules to memory and engrave them into your heart and soul until following them becomes second nature and anyone breaking them nearby puts goosebumps on your hackles. Live the Four Rules -THIS is the Way.
Unwritten rule: If your crazy neighbor is shooting in his front
yard, do one of the following:
1 – install bullet and sound-proof windows and doors.
2 – move to a place not occupied by questionable foriegn “nationals”
3 – if you confront him out of frustration due to LE lack of action, be equipped and ready to respond to retaliation by said KNOWN crazy person.
4 – convince other neighbors to proactively implement the ” shoot
shovel shush ” scenario
That whole scenario is jacked up. The neighbor should have never confronted the shooter. Sad all the way around.
And as we speak, Soros talking points are being generated and sent out to paid operatives such as lil ‘d and Minor Irratant, and Moms Demand Attention is loading up a bus load of Mexicans and Hondurans to weep and snivel while telling how they knew the shooter in his youth before he bought his first AssaultingRifle 15 and it turned him into a drunken murderer….film at five
Big proponent of the late Col. Cooper’s Rules. They’ve been drilled into me, and compliance with them, since I was 7. Reading some of the comments, I get the impression that some folks are missing the point. OF COURSE there are nuances to the rules (dry fire, for example – but even that should only be done with a safe aiming point), but they were made simple ON PURPOSE. They were intended to be (i) simple mnemonics for experienced users – a mental checklist if you will – where the experienced brain already KNEW the nuances, the rule was just a reminder, and (ii) a teaching tool for noobs (who DON’T know the nuances, so absolute compliance is their safest course.
Sure, Col. Jeff could have written Rule#2 as, “Always make sure the muzzle is pointed in a safe direction, unless you are in the process of cleaning the gun, have verified that it is unloaded, and broken it down so it is no longer operable.” Very memorable and punchy, that iteration. Then it would have served neither purpose. The people who have to have the rules explained to them are EXACTLY the people who should be following them religiously.
And they are intended to be, as one commenter noted, a system of rules – each complements the others. Experienced shooters know the nuances – and should still ‘violate’ the Rules only with painstaking caution. But the Rules, IF FOLLOWED, and learned/practiced to the point of muscle memory, work. And they work, if used in that way.
FWIW, I was asked to review a draft novel, that had a section on the Four Rules, that I really thought did a good job. I am promised that the book will be released on Amazon soon. It wouldn’t be appropriate to say too much until my friend publishes, and would probably bore the hell out of you, but since so many have commented on Rule#1, I thought you might find this excerpt interesting:
“Charlotte began to recite, but I interrupted. “No, I don’t want to know if you memorized them, I want to know if you understand them. What’s the first Rule?” Charlotte recited, “Always treat any gun as if it’s loaded.” As smart as I thought Tran was, I was going to overrule her on this one. “Close, but no cigar. If you ‘treat’ your gun as loaded, that means you don’t believe it’s loaded. That will get you or someone else killed. Your gun IS loaded. All the time. Did Tran show you how to clear your gun?” Charlotte nodded. “OK, clear it.”
Charlotte did a competent job for a beginner, and properly placed the pistol on the stump that marked our firing line, barrel pointed down range. Giving an approving nod, I asked “What’s the condition of that pistol?” “It’s empty and safed.” I shook my head, “No, it’s loaded.” Charlotte looked at me like I was crazy and said, “I just cleared and safed it!” “Yeah, and you put it down. It’s not in your hand. It’s not under your immediate control. How do you know it’s not loaded?” She still hadn’t pegged where I was going. “Because I just cleared it, put the safety on, and put it down!”
I nodded and said, “Yep. I did the same thing one time, getting a lesson from a retired Marine. I cleared the gun just like you did. Turns out, this Marine was an amateur magician with a talent for ‘sleight-of-hand’. While he gave me the same lecture I’m giving you, he slipped a live round into the pistol I’d just cleared and didn’t tell me. He kept a close eye on me, so I didn’t shoot my dick off, but he let me prove to him that my pistol was ‘unloaded’ by picking it up, pointing it downrange, and pulling the trigger. When the pistol fired I was so shocked I damn near dropped it. He laughed at me and slapped me upside the head. And taught me a lesson I’ve never forgotten. A pistol is ‘clear’ only if it has been under your control since you cleared it.”
“Even then it’s not ‘clear’ – in a tactical situation, your adrenaline is pumping. You get excited, you try to think ahead, you try to keep situational awareness, you watch for threats – and you miss things. ‘I’m sure I cleared this gun, so I’m safe’ is as stupid as ‘I know I loaded and racked this gun’. Never assume anything. You lay a pistol down and the gun gnomes sneak up while you aren’t looking and load a live round. You load and rack a pistol, and the gun gnomes come along and distract you and drop your loaded mag. Your firearm is in the condition you confirm it is in, while it is in your hand, period. When you are done with a string, and want to check your target, you clear your gun, safe it, put it down pointing down range. When you pick it up again, what’s the first thing you do?”
Now Charlotte understood where I was going. “I check and clear it.”
Thought that was a pretty good explanation of Rule#1, and why Col. Jeff DIDN’T quibble with nuances and exceptions.
1st rule of gun safety DON’T let the government know you have one
…. but, but, but – I saved the $200 by filling out a confession.