Firearms Instructor War Stories: Gun Safety & New Shooters
Last updated: May 25, 2026 · Originally published: September 15, 2021
With the surge of new gun owners out there, it’s important to circulate as much information regarding safety as possible. If you spend enough time around guns you are bound to find yourself in a situation that is not the ideal model of safe gun handling. New shooters don’t know what they’re doing wrong yet, while more experienced ones have become too complacent with firearms. Let’s take a look at some of the things that happen (and won’t happen) when we encounter such individuals. Hopefully, a “war story” or two will raise a little awareness in this piece.
Doing most of my shooting and a good portion of my training on public ranges, I have looked down my fair share of muzzles. In time you develop a sense of what to watch for and you start to notice unsafe muzzle movements before they make the full 90-degree wave down the line. For those of you familiar with the NRA’s 3 rules to safe firearms handling, you will recognize this as the golden rule of gun safety “Always keep your muzzle pointed in a safe direction.” The key word is ALWAYS.
Most of us have no problem keeping the muzzle downrange when we’re in the process of firing a shot. The target’s downrange and we want to hit it. No, most offenders of the golden rule generally break it during average handling and manipulation of the firearm. I’ve noticed rifle shooters tend to “flag the line” while casing and uncasing their long guns. Conversely, pistol shooters are known to have a mishap with muzzle control when it’s time to lock the slide back. While we’re on the topic of pistol shooters let’s remember that muzzle control has two components. The first component is making sure you don’t point the gun at anybody else. The second is making sure that you don’t put any part of yourself in front of the muzzle!
My first statement to a new shooter is this: “Firearms can be rolled around their line of bore 360 degrees safely. This gives you access to every square inch of it without having to take the muzzle off of target.” To drive it home I do a full field strip and reassembly of an M1 Garand without the sights leaving the berm. If you find yourself with someone who really doesn’t get it, have them imagine that it’s a flame thrower… You wouldn’t point that at the rest of us, would you?
If you spend enough time around public ranges eventually your hearing with adapt to hear critical phrases. Today, no matter how loud the range, no matter how busy, I can always hear “relax dude, it’s unloaded” in crystal clear clarity. Friends, learn to identify this behavior and always intervene, the life you save may be your own. Mark my words: There will come a time in every shooter’s career where they will pick up a gun they weren’t expecting to be loaded AND IT WILL BE! I have a story to illustrate most of my scenarios.
My famous story comes from the time when I visited a certain big-box outdoors store. This particular store keeps their guns out on the showroom, which is nice for when you want to see a few different guns and don’t feel like bothering the guy behind the counter for an hour. This would be a solid idea except that this same store keeps ammo the next aisle over. After picking up a nice-looking used hunting rifle, I opened the action (as all of us always should) and what do you know…. a shiny fresh cartridge plopped out. If somebody with poor trigger discipline picked that up before me the story may have ended in catastrophe.
My second illustration is an instance after a class. I had a fellow instructor “help” case up the rifles. Before packing the car I noticed that one was cased upside down, putting undue stress on the optic. All I had to do was flip it over and zip the case back up, however, by habit I opened the action and what do you know? LOADED!
I took the next three actions in these steps:
- I finished unloading the gun.
- I fired the instructor.
- I called their credentialing association and reported the incident.
Rule number two kept these scenarios from ending in tragedy. This rule is simple, keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot. Take notice next time you are at a gun store, how many people have their finger on the trigger? What if these guys picked up a mistakenly loaded gun? What if it was pointing in your direction? Maybe it’s just best to assume it’s loaded at all times, no?
Moving along, rule number three is equally simple, “Always keep your gun unloaded until you are ready to shoot.”
Now given that “ready to shoot” can mean something different in every scenario, allow me to elaborate. At a static target range, we are only ready to shoot after our target is hung, our eyes and ears are on, and the range officer has called the line hot. Any time you put your firearm down you want to make sure it is free of ammo, even if it’s just to take a short break or adjust something. Loading a hunting rifle shouldn’t happen until you are in the woods (no need to load it in the cabin), and once loaded it should remain in your hands or on your shoulder via a sling. As for your defensive firearm, well, it needs to be ready to shoot 24-7, but that isn’t an excuse to leave a loaded gun sitting around your house. If you look close enough all of the preceding examples have one thing in common: When they are loaded they are 100 percent under the users’ control. So once you load your defensive firearm it should immediately be holstered or locked in an isolated quick-access safe.
So as you can see it doesn’t take much to be safe with your guns. In a typical course, I cover everything you just read in about eight minutes, and it is seldom misunderstood. Let’s welcome the newbies to the world of gun ownership and provide them with some gentle education. Should you notice an infraction I urge you to always take some time to inform them of what they are doing wrong.
My worst incident without an AD occurred on the line when a frail uniformed officer used the barrel of her revolver to assist her from kneeling position to standing I was about to start the standing position when I looked at her weapon and saw dirt hanging from the muzzle. I grabbed the top of the weapon asi saw the hammer begin to fall. I got the web of my hand between the nose of the revolver and the frame . The skin stopped the pin from entering the frame and locked up the weapon. I stopped line and made the weapon safe and removed the officer from the line and medically removed her from full duty status. That was the closest I came to have a weapon explode on the line. I had to take a rod and clear the bore of the weapon. Retired Federal Firearms Instructor
While I respect everything you have said here and it is completely relevant to range shooting, there are those of us who are or were law enforcement officers (retired in my case) for which the world is a bit different.
Our weapons ARE always loaded unless cleaning them etc. The norm is a loaded weapon., So are the those we seize from suspects. I imagine this is also the norm for people carrying a concealed weapon.
I remember great amounts of concern that law enforcement officers remember to re-load their weapons before leaving the range. My kids growing up knew that my guns were always loaded. As soon as they were old enough, I trained them properly in how to shoot properly and safely.
In the world of personal security and law enforcement, an unloaded firearm is a club.
Sorry I just thought that needed to be said.
Hard agree. I used to do both (security/LE) and yeah, I’ve been habituated to always being loaded. And we always have to treat our firearms as loaded anyway. It’s the other 3 basic safety rules that must be obeyed to avoid disaster. Muzzle discipline can be practiced during dry-fire with a bore blocking safety rod (better than snap-caps because you can visibly confirm that the firearm has been safed. My fiancee and I are longtime LE/security vets and train together in all aspects; we watch each other to insure everything is in proper form from basic safety to completing dry-fire movement drills. In every instance of injury-related ND’s that I looked at, at least two or three rules were violated.