Perhaps it seems silly to go all the way back to the basics and cover the four firearms safety rules. Except that they are the basic building blocks we build all firearms training upon, and no level of mastery can be achieved without a thorough understanding and application of the basics. Ultimately too, we this is an area where we don’t get to make mistakes, so it’s not silly.
- Treat every firearm as if it were loaded.
- Never point a firearm at anything you are not willing to put a bullet through.
- Keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you are on target.
- Be aware of your target, what is in front of it, beside it, and beyond it.
It is not a long or overly complicated list. As you read the rules, you now can understand that usually it takes a violation of multiple rules at once to cause a safety issue. Not that this gives you an excuse to violate the rules. Meaning if I only broke rule three, but the firearm was pointed in a safe direction. This would be less of an issue than if the firearm were pointed at someone.
The difficulty in mastery comes from the amount of time it takes to adhere to every rule without the need to think about them. Time again is the key, the more time spent carrying a firearm through an environment, the more natural and instinctive it becomes. The more time you consciously think about your actions, the more they become a natural extension and subconscious action.
It may seem redundant, but it is one of the most important basics that cannot be dispensed with, as we go through training this is one of the prisms that our actions must go through. Meaning if the drill or actual use of the firearm is not safe we have to adjust it to adhere to these principals.
-Joe
Outpost 95 