Unloaded surprise

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At least 2 of my local gun shops have a mason jar or some similar container that have all the rounds pulled from "unloaded firearms" that have come in. The shop I visited today has a 5 gallon bucket sitting on the counter that is about half full.
 
the gun is always loaded. that phrase has to be in the back of your mind every time you handle a firearm, or are around others handling a firearm. don't be the guy that believes the "don't worry it's not loaded" adage. always treat all guns as if they are loaded.

luck,

murf
 
Scary thing is Glocks can fire with magazine removed, unlike some other guns.

That’s not the scary part.

The same person that doesn’t realize the consequences of their actions have children that drown in swimming pools or even bathtubs because they pay no attention, kill thousands on the roads every year because they pay no attention to what they are doing, forget about the millions of meals that are burned, ok maybe even some fires started because of people being stupid, idiots or complacent.

The really sad news is that we have all been there at some point!

I have been to thousands of matches over the years that have a triple redundant safety system. The person is done shooting and they unload and check to make sure the firearm is unloaded, #1. #2 the RO looks into the firearm to confirm that it is in fact unloaded. #3 the firearm is then lowered (empty, by conformation by two humans) and (supposed to be) dry fired in a safe direction, into a berm generally.

I am sad to say, I have seen more than a few go “bang” vs click.
 
Worst one I have seen was recently. I asked to see a pistol in the gun case. It was in the rear and right where the door opened. Shop owner dropped mag and unchambered a round. Apparently he just keeps one of the pistols loaded in the case in case he gets robbed. At least he knew which one it was, but he has employees that probably don’t know which one is hot and which one is not. As if this isn’t bad enough, I decided to trade in a gun I disliked to offset the cost a bit, and he gave me a very fair tradein for mine. In a congested but rural area he stepped outside, propped the rifle up on the GASOLINE PUMP and then fired a .308 off into the air 3 times. I won’t be going back.

I was once given an RG 22 revolver at a gun show. It was in the “broken box” but it was complete and somewhat serviceable. I pulled the cylinder and it had a mix of spent and live cartridges in it. Table was very busy and the dealer claimed to have never seen that particular gun before. That was when I was probably about 20. Now I wonder how he got his disposition logs to match up because something legitimately screwey happened, either he acquired without logging or he dispositioned without logging. I doubt that he legitimately had a gun in his box that he hadn’t seen. That gun was eventually given to a friend who moved away for work and lived in a rough area.
 
God (or luck) watches over idiots.....be they intentional or otherwise.


I was just having conversation with my wife about teaching our kids firearm safety. She mentioned that she was never "taught" firearm safety, and that's not horribly unusual. My dad gave me the basic don't point it at stuff, treat it like it's loaded, and know where your rounds are going....that's it.
Still there's only been two accidents that I'm aware of, both were people mistaken for animals.
Guns are handled A LOT, and almost every gun is loaded. My take is familiarity and luck has done a good job of preventing real issues.

I'm positive the local gunsmith has cleared whole magazines worth of rounds on guns brought to him.

Where I live now, there'sonly a couple stores I ever bring guns into, and it's just to show them off. Every time I've cleared them infront of the staff, and they have also cleared them before playing with them. Guns on the rack are cleared to, and from customers.
I've never seen a round fall out of any of them, but it honestly wouldn't surprise me horribly if it happened, especially when other folks bring in guns to consign or show off.
 
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Scary thing is Glocks can fire with magazine removed, unlike some other guns.
More of a feature than a bug. Having used to 1911:s the Browning High Power issued to me some 30 years ago was a slight culture shock, ie. dropping the magazine before firing the last round in the chamber wasn't going to happen. I routinely disable mag disconnect from all my guns. The whole notion of "no mag -> can't fire" may well be an accident waiting to happen when people who assume it being an universal feature handle guns that don't have it in the first place.

YMMV.
 
I was just at an indoor shooting range over the weekend where the clerk was checking the gun of a guy that said he had never been there before but had “lots of shooting experience”. The clerk asked to check his firearms to see if they were unloaded. The man said “Yes, they’re unloaded.”

The clerk pulled back the slide on the man’s pistol and out popped a 9mm cartridge. Without missing a beat the clerk laid down the pistol with the slide locked back, snatched the round off the counter and says “Lots of experience shooting. We get that a lot.”
He then walked over and picked up a square plexiglass box that was about 15”w x 12”h x 4”d that was half full of cartridges. On the side it read “Yes, it’s unloaded”. He plunked the box down in front of the guy and dropped the cartridge from him “unloaded” pistol into it. He then proceeded to check the man’s other gun.

The man was very embarrassed, but I will bet that doesn’t happen to him again. ;)
 
And this is why all of our guns out for sale have trigger locks. Also, a call can go to voice mail before I'm walking away from a customer with a gun out of the showcase.
The employees at the local gun shop actually will hand me a gun and walk away, and even out of sight while running my background check. However they know me as a regular reoccurring customer who doesn't screw around in their shop. So while I won't say they "know" me, they know me well enough to not do anything truly stupid.

I've been looking at guns at a few big box stores and the clerk handed me a gun, and then wandered away to answer a phone. They do NOT know me from Adam, so I find it surprising every time. Though typically, those individuals don't work there very long. It gives me pause though, because even though I know I know not to even touch ammo at those times, do other customers?
 
We tacked an extra $50 on to the gunsmithing fee if it came in with a round in the chamber, and it wasn't mechanically stuck there. (A rare occurrence, but there were a couple) Seemed to jog people's memory to correctly unload it the next time.
I used to have a recurring nightmare in which someone came in the first shop I worked at and looked at a Baby browning, whipped out their own magazine, popped it in racked it, and emptied it into my belly. I would wake up about the time I had smashed their head in with the buttstock of the first shotgun I could grab out of the rack, as I was passing out from blood loss.
I re-entered the field of optics shortly after. When I again worked at a gunshop, it was mostly downstairs at the smithing bench. Ironically, it was me who shot me there, test firing a .30-30, part of the bullet sheared off and ricocheted back and hit me in the forehead. (Solid bone, couldn't hurt me there..)
The two loudest sounds on Earth are a bang when expecting a click, and a click when expecting a bang.
 
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We tacked an extra $50 on to the gunsmithing fee if it came in with a round in the chamber, and it wasn't mechanically stuck there. (A rare occurrence, but there were a couple) Seemed to jog people's memory to correctly unload it the next time.
Seems fines can jog peoples rememberers.

I used to have a recurring nightmare in which someone came in the first shop I worked at and looked at a Baby browning, whipped out their own magazine, popped it in racked it, and emptied it into my belly.

I had heard, back in the mid 70's, of this happening with a 1911. Urban legend? True story? Dunno....

The two loudest sounds on Earth are a bang when expecting a click, and a click when expecting a bang.

Some truth there.
 
Go to the indoor range our LGS. Bullet holes in the ceiling, floor. Worst is the ones in the lane dividers
 
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Wow, free round 9 mm. Back in the early 90's I purchased an Enfield No 4 from a friend. Got it home and removed it from it's case. Saw that it was cocked so I opened the bolt. Out came a nice 303 round. Mag was full as well. Happens to the best of them. Good thing you checked, checked, and double checked.
 
I asked to look at a revolver in a local pawn shop. Clerk took it off the rack and handed it to me. I opened the cylinder and found a single live round.

This is, unfortunately, too common in my experience.

Why do so many people assume a gun is unloaded if they haven't checked? I think that the good colonel had a pretty good handle on human nature when he wrote Gunsite's first rule.
 
I asked to look at a revolver in a local pawn shop. Clerk took it off the rack and handed it to me. I opened the cylinder and found a single live round.
Glad you have a brain and had proper training.

This is, unfortunately, too common in my experience.
Why do so many people assume a gun is unloaded if they haven't checked? I think that the good colonel had a pretty good handle on human nature when he wrote Gunsite's first rule.

It's the first thing my father taught me when he handed me the first real firearm I ever touched. He showed me how to open the cylinder and look for myself regardless of what anyone said about the loaded condition of the gun. It was underlined by my time in the Army, although I didn't need it reinforced, it's always a good reminder, again, it's why I made this thread.
 
Yeah, I can relate. My brother in law inherited quite a few guns when his father passed. He decided to store them at my parents place. He had moved multiple times with them, but decided that he would store them at my parents place rather than move them again and felt it was safer since he had kids. My brother in law was not a gun person, so probably a good move. You guessed it - I was doing an inventory and valuation for my brother in law and as always, I was checking the guns, one of them was fully loaded. Multiple moves, kids in the house, and no one else had thought to check them when handling them until little old me came to save the day.

I am in the habit of checking them every time a gun has left my grip and my sight, no matter how short of time. Better safe than really sorry.
 
Elmer Keith said every gun he had was always loaded, period. The reason was that accidents happen when a gun is loaded, but the person handling it believes it’s not, so he took away that possibility. Everyone knew that any gun in the house was loaded, and best act accordingly. He also said cap guns and any other toy guns were not allowed, and kids could not pretend to shoot at each other/things even with pointed fingers.

I might have a few of the details off, since it’s been a while since I’ve read Six Guns, but that’s the gist. I follow the same idea in our cabin, but we live very rural so it might make a bit more sense since firearms are more frequently used and a tool on our farm, but I wonder if this practice wouldn’t work in other situations.

Edit: there are clearly times a firearm should be unloaded like when handing them to a shop employee for service/trade in.
 
My gun is always loaded. Even when the mag is out and the slide is locked back and my finger is in the chamber it is loaded. The only time the muzzle of my gun has ever pointed at a human being is when the gun has been field stripped and the slide / barrel is no longer attached to the frame.

That may change if I encounter someone I might have to shoot, but since that hasn't happen so far my gun has never pointed in unsafe direction.

I know there's no logical reason to be that overly cautious, but there is a psychological reason: I don't need the think whether it's safe or not safe to control the trigger and the muzzle. I just do.
 
I know there's no logical reason to be that overly cautious, but there is a psychological reason: I don't need the think whether it's safe or not safe to control the trigger and the muzzle. I just do.
Good principles and logic behind conditioning yourself to this. However, when S H's T F, it's incredibly difficult to force yourself to act differently. Muzzle pointed at a human being (well, if you can call an armed felon one), clear sight picture, a round in the chamber, safety off and your finger trying to decide whether it should move inside the trigger guard or not. Been there once, one of the most frightening and confusing moments in my entire life.
 
Twice over the last 40+ years, I've been in a gun store and someone came in with an "unloaded" gun that had one or more rounds in the chamber. The first one was back in the late '70's, a guy came into the store near my house with a Beretta 92. He tells the clerk he wants to sell it. The clerk asked him, "Is it unloaded?", and he said, "Of course!". The clerk pops the mag out and then racks the slide back and a round pops out and hits the glass counter very loudly. "Oh Jesus!" the customer says. The clerk looked at me like, "See what morons I deal with?".

The second time, some guy comes in with a nasty looking old Ruger P89 and it's not only loaded, it was fully loaded, a full mag and one in the chamber. It was a very old guy and he says, "Oh boy, I thought it was empty!". I wanted to ask him,. "Why would you think that?". Just the weight of it should have given him a clue. I think half the reason they offered him as much as they did was to get it away from him before he cranked a round off "by surprise". He walked out with some cash and no gun. That gun was in their used case marked at exactly the same price they gave him for about a year, and suddenly it was gone.
 
I've seen that happen numerous times when I worked in a gun shop. In fact, I've seen 2 guns discharged inside of gun shows.
 
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