Rcmodel and KodiakBeer dboth bring up a good point. I am with rcmodel in that I am not terribly comfortable relying solely on the safety of a SxS shotgun with loaded chambers. On the other hand (and I have to go by memory here) the Spartan/Baikal guns are interesting. Many of Baikals longer barrel models have hammer-mounted firing pins but the coach guns have spring-loaded firing pins which are struck by rebounding hammers. (If I said that all right.) I got this information by looking at the exploded views of various models on the Baikal Russian website and examining my Spartan coach gun. Personally, I think the coach gun method is, indeed, safer, but I am still leery of the fact that there is nothing to block the gun from firing should that hammer slip from its sear and strike that firing pin. They also have good coil springs, however, so there should be no reason to not leave a loaded gun slightly broken open to prevent an unwanted discharge. The Baikal coach guns also lend themselves to a variation on a method I read about from Beretta which is to remove the fore-end on an uncocked gun, break it open and load the chamber, close it, replace the fore-end. You have an uncocked, chamber-loaded gun which only needs to be cracked open (and put off-safe) to be ready for use. It works because the spring-loaded firing pins do not protrude into the chamber when the gun is uncocked. If there is something drastically wrong with that procedure, I hope one of you will point it out.
