Safe Handle Has Been Closed Serial Port

The Short Version The below gets into details, but there are four commonly quoted universal rules of gun safety, to which we have added three others of similar generality: • Treat a gun as if it's always loaded, especially when it's 'not'. You'd be surprised how many people were buried after being shot by a gun they or the person who shot them knew was empty. Even if you just took it apart and reassembled it and know that it's 100% unquestionably empty, it's loaded. If nothing else, it keeps you in a good habit.

I'm developing a Windows Forms App, a connector between a callCenter and a CRM. My App has: MainForm with some controls and a FlowControll Pannel which may or may not show a collection of Searc. A page for describing UsefulNotes: Gun Safety. Disclaimer: This page has been provided for informational purposes only. The authors of TV Tropes can take no.

In (way too many) gun stores they have a large closed pickle jar on the counter with pieces of ammunition inside. No, these are not free samples.

They are the rounds that are discovered in guns that people bring in to sell or have maintenance or repairs on that the weapon's owner assured the sales clerk they checked the weapon and it was empty. • Do not fire if there is anyone or anything next to or behind your target that you are not willing to hit/destroy.

• Keep the safety on and your finger off the trigger until you're aiming at your target. • Never assume the safety will save you from disobeying the other rules on this list. Even if you're certain the safety is on the truth is you might have forgotten to actually turn it on. Even if it is actually on it's a mechanical device that can fail. • Never point a gun at anything or anyone unless it is your absolute intention to pull the trigger. Another version of this is 'Never point a gun at anything you're not willing to destroy.'

• Always store guns safely: locked with a trigger lock, in a locked gun safe, or both. • Don't tamper with or misuse firearms or ammunition. • If intoxication, exhaustion, or any other physical or mental state would make you a danger to yourself or others, stay away from firearms. (See also bottom of page.) Before you start.

1) Recognize that guns are weapons. • Guns are not toys; they are tools designed to efficiently kill things. (Or, if not kill them, severely damage them, such as breaching rounds used in shotguns to destroy or disable door locks.) But then even if you don't actually kill someone, if it was unnecessary because you used it improperly, do you want to live your life knowing how you carelessly cost someone a crippling injury, or 'only' lost a finger or two? • Guns don't make their holders invincible; the only reliable way to survive gun-combat is to avoid it.

• LOCK UP YOUR GUNS. Many unintentional shootings every year are the results of children finding guns that their parents were convinced were well-hidden or that the parents didn't think to keep away from their children. Young children are curious by nature, and can often easily find hidden guns, even if you think you know of a good hiding place. Even if you have no children and no visiting children, guns are a highly valued target of thieves committing burglaries, as they're easy to fence to other criminals.

If any gun is not on your person/within your control, it should be stored in a gun safe and/or equipped with a trigger lock, or both. Even when a gun is intended for home defense and you wish to keep it loaded, you must think very carefully how you'll store it so nobody else can easily access it. The fact that you intended the firearm for your own use cannot prevent whoever broke in from stealing it, especially if you weren't/aren't at home, and an unsecured firearm is a tragedy waiting to happen. • Never aim a gun at anyone or anything unless you understand and are willing to bear the moral and legal consequences of killing or destroying that target. • Be aware of your state's or nation-state's self-defence laws. In the United States, regardless of which state, pleading self-defense does not magically equal a 'get out of jail free card,' in other words, just because you claim it was self-defense doesn't mean you're off the hook.

Local police and/or sheriffs will conduct an investigation, during which you almost certainly will be taken into custody note About the only time that you won't be taken is in cases of exceptionally obvious self defense, e.g. You're in your own home, it's 4 o'clock in the morning, you shot them while they were in the middle of your living room, your door was broken into with some device (like a crowbar) which is near the decedent, their fingerprints are on it, and the deceased has a long record of home invasions; in almost every other case you will be detained by the police and brought in for questioning, to determine if the evidence indicates you were justified. If so, you will be released. If not, you will be prosecuted for murder or manslaughter, or if they didn't die, attempted murder, and will have to prove in court that you genuinely feared for your life and didn't see other options. For example, a murder charge may just be downgraded to manslaughter charge.

Note The legal term for this is '. • State laws vary, but most states presume the shooter's innocence if the shooting took place in their own home (excluding domestic violence, of course). This is often described as 'Castle Doctrine' (regardless of whether State Law actually uses or cites Castle Doctrine) and basically means that you have the right to shoot a home invader without warning based on his implied threat to you and your family. There will still be an investigation to determine that he was not invited in (which usually voids Castle Doctrine). Also, this protection often does not extend to property outside the physical walls of your house, depending on the state. • In, pointing a gun at someone also constitutes the crime and tort of assault with a deadly weapon: the person who you pointed the gun at can both file a criminal complaint and have you prosecuted for a serious felony, which means prison time if you are convicted— even if you never pulled the trigger and never intended to. In some countries this applies even if what you were pointing at them wasn't actually a firearm - if the threatened party believed that the object was a weapon, you will be charged as if it actually had been one.

If that doesn't work out, or even if it does, they could sue you to Hell and back for both compensatory damages for emotional distress and punitive damages just because. To quote from a gun safety instructor. If you don't know 100% how to use your handgun and simply wish to threaten people with it, you deserve fully for your opponent to take your handgun by force. • A gun should not even be drawn if a potential attack is obviously nonlethal and/or can be thwarted by evasion or physical force. While in some locales, police officers may be able to get away with shooting someone who is unarmed aside from bare fists/a bottle/a held object/a stick/mace or pepper spray (and in some US court cases, the occasional civilian has) many judges and juries (not to mention ) view someone who responds to a likely nonlethal assault with lethal force as worthy of criminal punishment and social sanction.

• Firearms are not. Pulling the trigger means that you have decided you are willing to accept the legal and moral ramifications of killing the person or animal you are firing. This bears repeating: A firearm is a lethal weapon.

Never, under any circumstances, point a firearm, loaded or unloaded, at someone (or something) you are not willing to kill or destroy. • Because, as all of this has made clear, a gun is your last resort for self-defense, be sure it is not your only resort. It's much better, both for practical and legal reasons, to invest in much better home security such as gates, high fences, better locks, alarms, and the like.

Most opportunistic criminals will simply move on if they can't get in. If a criminal is more determined, it'll buy you precious time to act. • Outside the home, the gun remains your final line of self defense.

In almost no jurisdictions will your attempts (or lack thereof) to deescalate the situation or leave be ignored. Your best self-defense is to not be in a dangerous situation and to extricate yourself quickly from them when possible.

Could you end a confrontation safely by apologizing or backing down? Could you avoid violence by walking or running away? Could you have called the police or otherwise disengaged from the other party? If the answer to any of these questions, 'Yes,' you may face some serious criminal charges for drawing a gun, let alone firing it, depending on your jurisdiction. This doesn't apply just to guns, either; you may face charges for resorting to if you could have backed down.

• Know the laws about ownership, what paperwork needs to be filled out, and any registration requirements. Also, if a gun you own is stolen, report it to law enforcement immediately with all the pertinent data (make, model, serial number, etc.). Failing to report a stolen weapon can be used against you if the stolen firearm is used in the commission of a crime as an accessory to the crime. And can even make you the prime suspect in the crime if it can't be proven that somebody else did the shooting. • NEVER EVER EVER indulge in! It violates some of the most important rules on this list (You can't keep your finger off the trigger, you can't control where the barrel is pointed and so on).

When you see this trick done in films and TV it's almost certainly being done with a replica or otherwise non-functional gun. If you try this with a real gun then anybody in your vicinity would be a potential target.

You do not want a. • More generally, don't copy things you see in films or on TV just because they., after all. 2) Know your limits. • Use a gun only if you are comfortable with it. • If you are scared of wounding or killing others with firearms, or feel too inexperienced to use them, you shouldn't use them. • By corollary, if you don't feel you can handle a given firearm, you shouldn't buy it, lest you be tempted to try in some kind of 'emergency' (like a burglary). • If you have no experience with guns, do not touch one unless properly supervised.

Accept no substitute for proper instruction. Does not count as proper instruction. (And remember: proper instruction is not a substitute to keeping a cool head and being careful.) • If you have experience with guns and come across a new one, find out how it works thoroughly, either from its instruction manual or an experienced user, before using it. • Do not use a gun after drinking alcohol, when taking medication, or using recreational drugs with known mental side effects.

Ask your doctor when being prescribed medication if you have doubts. Using Guns 1) Do not shoot non-targets. • A gun should always be pointed in a safe direction. In a shooting range, this means down range. In the field, this means toward the ground, unless in a building with thin floors.

Just always be aware of the direction where the gun is pointed and what it would hit if it went off. • This rule is just as important even when a gun is not actually being used. Be wary of unconsciously waving a gun around while standing or walking around, and be conscious of where a gun is pointed when placed down.

• A useful trick: if you need to turn to one side, holding your gun in the other hand (right if you're turning left and vice-versa) makes it easier to keep it pointed downrange. • Know what is behind and what is to the side of the targets and assume they will be hit. Many bullets are still traveling fast enough to wound or kill even after penetrating something like a sandbag or a wall. Trying to shoot past somebody risks having them walk into your line of fire (or you walk your line of fire into them). • Related to the above: know where your bullet will end up if it misses or passes entirely through your target.

The most important component of any gun range — formal or informal — is the backstop: a wall, berm, or hillside meant to absorb the bullets fired there. If you are setting up a range, you need to know that there won't be bullets or ricocheting off of your backstop, and if you are shooting at one, you need to leave any round which might at home. • A common trick in rural areas is to set up targets in a valley between two hills, so that the shooters can stand on one and fire downwards. This offers two layers of safety: first, the vast majority of bullets will bury themselves in the soil, and second, the land beyond the range is sparsely populated (meaning even a freak ricochet or stray shot is unlikely to kill). • Take precautions against ricochets, spalling (shrapnel), and other such hazards. • If you look at any box of ammunition, it will tell you: never shoot at a hard surface.

If you've ever bounced a rubber ball off a hardwood floor, you know that a solid projectile won't lose much speed when it hits a solid barrier unless either it breaks or the barrier breaks — put two and two together, and you can see why a stunt like can easily be fatal. ( also has video of a incident when note Details — search for '.) • One of the hard surfaces that you might not have thought of: water. In real life, at bullet velocities, is sufficiently averted that • If you spend any amount of time shooting, you'll see the strangest things happen — on one shooting trip, a bullet fired at a polycarbonate slab (that is to say, a hunk of plastic) a dozen feet away came back uprange to bounce off of one of the people at the field. No matter how careful you and your friends are, always wear eye protection whenever people are shooting, because it can make a difference between telling a story that ends with, 'It was the damnedest thing' and telling a story that ends with, 'So that's why I'm wearing an eyepatch'. • Identify your target.

You don't want to shoot something you thought was a threat, but instead was someone innocent. The number of people every year accidentally killed when paranoid homeowners have shot at suspected prowlers, or when hunters have, is depressingly high, the mainstream and social media are full of high profile cases of misidentified people who were shot, and some of these cases have actually managed to rekindle the same old gun control and self-defense debates (e.g. The Trayvon Martin case). • Know the kickback/recoil force of the gun and be sure you or the person firing can keep it under control.

• The size or weight of a gun does not tell you how much kick it has. (This is humorously and ridiculously in the movie where K has an alien weapon about the size of a.357 magnum with very little recoil, while Will Smith's character has 'The Cricket,' a firearm about the size of a small two-shot derringer with the recoil of a field cannon.) The truth is closer to the opposite, in fact: if two guns fire the same round, the larger or heaver weapon will be more stable. This is especially important with non-shoulder fired guns (which the unaware/inexperienced user is more prone to drop) and automatic or automatic mode guns (which may keep firing even if the shooter's aim is lost or the gun is dropped. The scene in where Jamie Lee Curtiss' character drops an UZI when firing it and being surprised by the recoil, and the gun falling down a flight of stairs but still firing, is not really that far from what could happen). That being said, there are certain guns that are both very heavy and kick like a mule, with being particularly infamous for this; when dealing with guns like that, be extra cautious with anyone who wishes to test them out despite having never fired one before, especially if they're small and light in build. The kickback is enough to prove a serious problem even for large, strong individuals - more diminutive folks run the risk of literally being knocked off their feet or fracturing bones from it.

• There have been at least two fatal incidents involving Uzis being fired by minors because — while the Uzi is a lightweight enough gun for someone of relatively small stature and strength to use — its light weight makes its kickback far more pronounced, and the results of kickback + a panicked or inexperienced shooter + full-auto mode are deadly. • On that note, never give an inexperienced shooter a weapon too powerful for them to control as a prank, as is commonly seen in online videos. Not only is this a major dick move, but it also is not funny, it is not cute, and it has gotten people killed.

• In countries where shotguns have been far more common than rifles for hunting over decades, people have the tendency to treat them as nearly harmless. On the contrary: nearly all varieties of shot are still lethal even past their effective range. Shotgun range increases dramatically when firing ◊ aerodynamic ◊ types, and these large slugs (nearly.70 caliber by comparison to rifles) will cause catastrophic damage to whatever part of the body it hits. • There are two ranges for firearms: maximum range and maximum effective range.

Maximum range is the farthest the bullet will travel given the right circumstances. Maximum effective range is as far as the bullet can travel and still wound or kill. Even if you cleanly miss a target, the bullet can still kill someone over a kilometre away. One source to read further on this subject is. As a corollary, never, under any circumstances, (especially not in celebration, i.e.

When there are crowds standing outside). That bullet will come down somewhere, travelling fast enough to wound or kill. It's also a waste of perfectly good bullets. • Obviously firing blanks is a different situation, although you should be aware that discharging a firearm in city limits is often a crime whatever the type of ammunition. If your line of work deals with discharging firearms within an earshot of the public, you must call your local police department and inform them what you're doing. However blanks are not guaranteed safe. There have been numerous cases of individuals being killed by the discharged wadding from a blank cartridge, such as the late actor Jon-Erik Hexum,.

Treat blanks the way you would a live round. 2) Do not fire by accident.

• Guns don't 'just go off' by themselves. Nearly all 'accidental' discharges are in fact negligent discharges that were easily preventable with proper handling and observation of safety rules. • If you have to ask, you should not make any modification to your gun's firing mechanism. One possible outcome is making an otherwise normally functioning gun into one that goes off (possibly only) when you don't intend it to. • The best way to keep a firearm not in use in transport is in a case. If you intend to carry it outside of a case, make sure the safety is on and is in a proper method of carry (holster for pistols, strap for rifles). Keeping a gun is a very bad idea by the way.

There are holsters that go inside your pants waist, and if you insist on that particular mode of gun carrying, you should use one. • Keeping a firearm risks sleep-shooting/half-asleep shooting on instinct of yourself or an innocent person. If you feel you absolutely must keep a home defense gun by your bedside/in your bedroom, it should be in a locked drawer or gun safe with an additional trigger lock, as noted above.

This won't compromise your safety (if the intruder has already awakened you in your room, it's too late to safely defend yourself with a gun half-asleep anyway) and it will protect you from sleep-shooting as a result of sleepwalking or sleeping pill side effects as well as from instinctively shooting an innocent person who awakens you while half-asleep. • Always carry your firearm in such a fashion that you can control where it will point if you stumble or fall. • Do not put your finger near the trigger until you are ready to fire the weapon. Keep your trigger finger outside the trigger guard until you are ready to fire. • Always ensure the safety is in use and enabled until ready to fire. Do not, however, use it as a substitute for proper handling and trigger discipline.

A broken safety cannot cause an accident but it can fail to prevent one. • Many pre-World War One weapons either have a safety that's hard to use or an nontraditional safety (such as the half-cock position in pre-1870s guns). A lot of these basically prevent the hammer from dropping.

This should not be an excuse to ignore trigger discipline or otherwise. • Many firearms have safety mechanisms besides the manual safety switch, such as a grip safety or a magazine release safety. (Some, including pre-2003 Glock pistols, have multiple automatic safety mechanisms, but no manual switch.) Never assume any random gun has any given safety mechanism, and never use such mechanisms as a substitute for the manual switch when one is present. • Even with the safety on, a gun is dangerous if you handle it carelessly. There's a true story of a man who was going hunting with a friend and their dogs.

They had the guns in the front of the truck. During the drive, one dog became excitable. It managed to both disengage the safety and fire the driver's rifle, resulting in him being shot in the leg. Fortunately the dog was unhurt.

• The US Army does not refer to accidental discharges, instead using the term negligent discharges. Because the onus to prevent an unintentional discharge is entirely on the user. You are always 100% responsible for everything, from inspecting the weapon and ammunition, bringing mechanical problems to the attention of someone qualified to deal with them, maintaining the weapon, safely handling the weapon, and making sure the weapon is never touched by an unauthorized person. Blueway Air Conditioner Instruction Manual. No exceptions. Which segues neatly into the next rule: 3) Always treat guns as being loaded, even when they are not. • In the of Terry Kath of Chicago fame: context Kath was cleaning his gun and had removed the magazine. He was goofing around with the gun and put it to his temple.

He had intended to dry-fire it as a joke, but did not realize that even though the magazine had been removed, there was still a cartridge chambered and ready to fire. (Lest you laugh: found 23 percent of fatal gun accidents resulted from people treating loaded guns as unloaded. Dallas Gun and Knife Show Jan 5th 2014 Think your gun is unloaded? Here's a the Dallas Gun and Knife show found in 'unloaded' guns in their Jan 5th 2014 show) • If you are done shooting for any reason, unload the gun completely (see the next bullet point) and set it down, pointed in a safe direction. • Part of understanding the proper operation of a given firearm is knowing how to unload it completely.

• For most firearms with detachable magazines, you unload by removing said magazine, pulling the slide/bolt back to eject any cartridge in the chamber, locking said slide back, and visually confirming that the chamber is empty. These steps must be done in that order; if, for example, you were to pull the slide back on a semiautomatic firearm (ejecting the round in the chamber) without locking it back and then remove the magazine, the top bullet from the magazine would be in the chamber — having been loaded there when the slide closed. • If a gun is open bolt, the steps are slightly different: Lock the bolt back, then eject the magazine.

The reason is if for some reason the bolt is stuck against the magazine or there's some other malfunction, removing the magazine will cause the bolt to go forward, firing a round ( as demonstrated in ). • The final step of unloading any firearm is always being able to confirm that it is fully unloaded. The reason why the above procedure ends with locking the slide or bolt open is that many guns are closed bolt.

Even if the gun has no magazine inside, there can still be a bullet in the chamber, ready to fire. (For some firearms — e.g. Bolt-action tube-fed rifles — experts recommend cycling the bolt multiple times as the final step in the unloading process.) • For ease of inspection, you can also purchase flags that stick into the chamber and come out the ejection port or its equivalent. • If you are doing a dry fire test (after reassembling the weapon), remember to keep the gun pointed in a safe direction as if it were going to fire a round. • When receiving a firearm from someone, even if you saw them unload it and engage the safety, ensure for yourself that it is safe to handle (magazine ejected, chamber cleared, bolt/slide locked back) before doing anything else with it.

4) Make sure of everyone's safety when using firearms with others. • If someone shouts 'CEASE FIRE', you stop immediately.

No questions, no finishing what you're doing, just stop. • Make sure that someone knows the basics of gun safety before allowing them to handle any firearm.

Most ranges have short lists of rules (akin to the list at the top of the page) posted; if the person you are talking to cannot paraphrase such a list, do not entrust them with a weapon. • Always ask someone if they know how to operate a given firearm before handing it to them. If they don't know or you suspect they are bullshitting you, do not allow them use of the firearm until they are informed of: • Where the safety is, how to operate it, and what's 'safe' and 'not safe'. • How to insert and eject a magazine or rounds. • What to do in case of a misfire. • The force of the recoil, particularly if it's substantial, especially with non-shoulder fired guns (as the user may be more prone to dropping the gun). • When handing a weapon to someone, empty and clear the weapon before handing it over grip or butt first.

• If somebody is uncomfortable with handling a gun, whatever the reason, don't make them do it. Never try to force them to do so, or try to reassure them it's safe — even if you are 100% sure the gun is unloaded and perfectly safe. If you do so, you make them a danger to everyone. • Do not try any 'tricks', anywhere. The life that your stupidity ends may not be your own. • Do not leave a firearm unattended where untrained or unauthorized persons can reach it.

Even if it's unloaded. Even for 'just a minute'. Especially if kids could get a hold of it. • If you find an abandoned firearm by accident (for example, left in your car trunk or thrown into your yard or in a piece of used furniture.), do not touch it or even think of keeping it, even if you know how to use it. It may have been used in a crime and you may well be charged with the crime or with evidence tampering if you so much as disturb it from its place, or (in some cases) if you even call the police directly to report finding it.

The proper course of action is to immediately call a criminal defense lawyer, tell the lawyer what happened, and let the lawyer take custody of the gun and turn it over to the cops — protecting you as the finder via attorney-client privilege. This goes double if you could be assumed to know the gun was used in a crime. Yes, this will set you back anywhere from $500 to $1000. Your legal defense if you were arrested would be far more than that. Note A cheaper possible option, if you live in a place with strict clergy-penitent privilege, is to tell an ordained priest who is willing to turn it in to the police in your place. Also, in some smaller, less busy locations - usually not in major US cities where both have too high of caseloads, the local public defender's office or Legal Aid may do this for you, if you have absolutely no money at all for a lawyer.

• Do not put yourself in anyone else's line of fire. • Do not go downrange while anyone else is shooting. • During hunting season, be aware of where people may be hunting, and wear bright colors to make yourself visible and clearly not a target — because many animals have limited color vision, you needn't worry about this as it won't spoil anyone's fun (as opposed to the massively unfun experience of someone getting shot).

• An ignorant (of firearms-safety) person with a weapon is a danger to themselves and others, and must be re-educated. Failing that, they should be avoided by everyone.

• A murderous person with a weapon is also a danger to themselves and others, and should be reported to the police immediately. (There are a number of sources that can be found discussing, but like in all self-defense situations, escaping is the preferred option.) • Accidental is another problem. This happens when police officers see a gun and feel threatened.

Always ensure that: • If you are defending your home or yourself with a firearm, holster it or drop it the second police arrive. • If you are hunting, make sure to have proper permits, not to carry your weapon anywhere people might feel threatened, and possibly to dress in standard hunting gear rather than street clothes.

• If you are wearing costumes with unloaded or prop guns or using prop guns in filming, make sure you have proper permits for filming, that when not on camera all weapons have proper safety bonding and are checked into storage, and that nothing is carried off set. Consider excluding guns for cosplay and Halloween costuming, where you may have to enter public areas, because authenticity isn't worth your life.

• If you have a gun and are legally carrying it when approached by police, hold out your hands from your body in such a way that it is impossible to reach for the gun (generally straight out in front, palms up, or the pose - arms straight out to each side away from the body). When the officer feels out of danger (usually when he or she has removed the gun from you), only then mention your concealed carry permit. • Open carry is a politically contentious issue, but if you decide to do so, it is best to use a retention holster (if carrying a handgun) or a sling or scabbard (if carrying a long gun). It is critical that you maintain situational awareness and focus of retaining your firearm. • Additionally, if you choose to open carry, don't be a dick.

There are lots of stereotypes about open carry proponents, almost all of them negative, and subverting them goes a long way towards public acceptance of the practice. First off, don't be an attention whore - people can already see that you're carrying, you don't need to prance around showing it off or take a selfie or group photo every ten minutes. Carry clean, too - holstered or zipped is fine, but carrying longarm at low ready makes cops and civilians nervous, makes you look like a bellicose douchebag, and is just completely unacceptable in general. Above all, however, be nice. Be polite, be personable, and be willing to acquiesce or compromise for the comfort of others if needed. If asked by a business owner or employee to leave your weapon outside or leave altogether, do so and do not become argumentative or belligerent.

If insulted by someone on the street, don't respond with rudeness or aggression. Kill them with kindness (that is to say, figuratively) and make them look like an unreasonable asshole. Open carry is a polarizing issue that many people carry strong opinions about, and the least you can do is represent your side well.

• There were incidents with people. As in: law allows carrying the shotgun or rifle unloaded in a scabbard - guy drives the car with gun in unzipped scabbard on the front seat, bolt pulled back open, a magazine in the shirt pocket, ready to load in 2-3 seconds. While it's technically within legal limits, it still makes the cops nervous. • Even if you don't have a weapon, never reach into your clothes unless directed or under your car seat around police - there have been too many unpleasant incidents of jumpy cops making rash assumptions.

Maybe they are being an asshole, but you're still the one in hospital - or worse. It shouldn't be like that, but it is - guns can grant the holder with a false sense of security and power - and it's something that could just as easily happen if you're the one with the gun. • Lastly (this should be common sense, but when friends, family, or significant others are involved, people can wind up giving them far more leeway than they should), if you truly feel that someone is a walking liability, do not let them handle guns.

Most gun owners and users can name at least a few people who are idiots who have no regard for gun safety and have far too cavalier an attitude with something that can end a life in the blink of an eye. These people also tend to show up like a bad penny when you go to a range or a sandpit as a group, and if you find yourselves collectively going 'who the hell invited them, again?' When this person shows up to a session, you need to seriously consider just telling them that they are no longer welcome. If they habitually make you babysit them beyond what is reasonable for an inexperienced user (i.e., if you're not just giving them basic pointers and showing them the correct way to do things, but rather thinking two steps ahead of them in terms of what they can and probably will do to jeopardize their own safety and the safety of others due to their sheer incompetence and inability or unwillingness to learn and basically doing just about everything save for wiping their asses for them), they probably need to go for the sake of your safety and sanity. If they're tagging along because they're the friend, family member, or significant other of a group member and you know that even having them just sit on the sidelines is more trouble than it's worth, tell that group member that the person needs to go.

If the group member refuses, don't be afraid to take a 'my way or the highway' approach. Remember, this is not just for their own good, but for yours and your group members as well, and you do not want your inaction to be the reason why someone is in the hospital or the morgue. Other Safety Tips 1) Ammunition safety • Remember, 'guns don't kill, bullets do.'

Employ as much or more care to safety of storing and handling ammunition as you would to anything. Keep it away from children or anyone you wouldn't trust with a loaded gun. Do not, ever, 'play' with ammo or do any dumb 'tricks' of 'roasting on a grill' or ' variety. • Please note that while loose ammo has significantly less destructive force than chambered ammo (as investigated by ), this is not an excuse to treat loose ammo any less carefully. • Misfires and jams happen, even with proper maintenance, in more ways than you can imagine. Know how to safely clear a firearm. • There are three kinds of misfires: hangfire, dud, and squib.

• Hangfire means the cartridge has a delay before firing. This is anywhere from the time you pulled the trigger to about 60 seconds.

• A dud is when the cartridge won't ever fire, at least if left alone under proper storage conditions. • A squib load occurs when there is insufficient expanding gas to expel the bullet from the barrel. • What to do in case of misfire: • If a cartridge does not fire, keep the gun pointed in a safe direction for 60 seconds in case of a hangfire. Then eject the magazine, pull the slide/bolt back to eject the cartridge, look at it to see that all of the bullet is still attached, store it in a steel container, and dispose of it properly at a later time. Dud cartridges should be treated as a live, and care should be taken when handling them. (Firing ranges should always have safe receptacles for these.

If a prospective range does not, choose another.) • If there is light or no recoil, odd sound, or failure to cycle (with semi-automatic firearms), there's a good chance of a squib. Proper procedure if you think you have a squib fire is to cease firing, unload the weapon, and check whether the barrel is clear. (For weapons you cannot open to easily look down the barrel from the breech, a cleaning rod or similar object should be used.) If the barrel is not clear, clear the stuck bullet from the barrel with a cleaning rod or similar object, clean any unburnt powder out of the firearm, and ensure that there are no other issues. Note The manuals for some firearms — e.g. That of the — will advise that you bring your weapon in to a gunsmith rather than attempt to repair it yourself. If you believe someone else had a squib fire, immediately call a cease fire and inform them that you believe they had a squib.

• If there's a bullet in the casing, it's live. Even if there's a dent in the primer (dud rounds will often have a dent where the primer is). Related Some guns (for example, Russian boxlock rifles and shotguns) will not allow full release of the hammer if the gun is not 100% closed. (This is a measure to avoid an explosive breakup of the gun, as well as a side effect of the cock-on-closing firing system.) In such cases, even if the gun is apparently cocked and the trigger is pulled, the firing pin will barely scratch the primer. Can then re-open the gun, re-close it forcefully and safely, aim, and pull the trigger again, and expect the round to fire. • Always ensure that your ammunition is designed for use in your gun.

The fact that two rounds look similar, or that a given round will physically fit in a given firearm, is no guarantee of good results. • One of the examples most frequently mentioned is the contrast between the 5.56mm NATO and.223 Remington.

The rounds are almost identical except the pressure generated and the gun's chamber shape. Specifically, the 5.56mm NATO specification gives a maximum pressure of 430 MPa vs. A little less than 380 MPa (specifically, 55,000 psi) for standard.223 Remington. Because of this difference,.223 guns not designed to handle the higher pressure may react badly. Many manufacturers 'idiot-proof' their.223 weapons today by designing them to be able to handle the pressure of 5.56mm anyway, but for your own safety and your weapon's viability, you should absolutely not load a round into your weapon if you are not 100% positive your weapon is meant to fire it.

• Videos of people firing the wrong round out of a gun are not impossible to find on: Note how in all three cases the weapon fails to cycle properly. • Know where your ammunition came from. Random gun show reloads might be cheap, but replacing missing fingers is not. • Do not fire dirty or damaged ammunition. Leaving aside probable fouling of the firearm, for a bullet to fire correctly requires that the pressure generated by the burning of the powder be uniformly directed towards pushing the bullet down the barrel — if instead the path of least resistance is tearing wide a weak point in the casing, the results are unlikely to be to your liking. • Cheap military surplus ammo with steel case may be decades old when purchased, and if some moisture crept into the cartridge, the powder cements together and may explode uncontrollably. Which would ruin your day, your rifle and possibly yourself.

• Blank cartridges are not harmless, even if you are certain that they are blank. Depending on the type of weapon, it is possible for some combination of a jet of flame, particles of propellant, wadding used to seal the gunpowder into the blank cartridge, fragment(s) of brass from the cartridge itself, and/or a foreign body in the barrel to strike a person with enough force or heat to cause severe injury or death. This is what caused on the set of, and on the set of Cover Up. Never fire a blank cartridge directly at another person, or in close proximity to them. The probability of these type of accidents is why movie and TV actors today undergo actual firearms training before shooting even flash-paper non-guns on set.

A case in point: Russian 5.45/7.62x39 blanks (for AK/AK-74) have massive plastic wads that are designed to be used with special barrel attachments that fragment them and ensure that there's enough pressure for the action to work. When, for any reason, these devices aren't present, these plastic wads become plastic bullets — and there's been cases of people being fatally injured by them. Likewise, many pre-WWII European blanks have wooden bullets, the intention being to ensure they would feed just as well as regular ammo.

The ones most commonly seen today are surplus Swedish Mauser blanks. Originally the Swedish Army used them in training under the assumption that the wooden bullets would be harmlessly destroyed before they even left the barrel. It was soon determined that these wooden bullets were, in fact, potentially lethal out to about 100 feet. Thus, an adapter was created that shredded the wooden bullets into sawdust. 2) Maintenance & Modification • A new gun bought from the manufacturer will come with a manual as well as some cleaning tools. Familiarize yourself with both.

• Always ensure your gun is properly cleaned and maintained after firing. Cleaning kits are normally cheap and can prevent accidents and jams. Be aware of proper cleaning procedures if you are using corrosive ammunition. • Speaking of corrosive ammunition, it's important that when using it that you clean the firearm as soon as you get home.

Do not wait and say 'I'll get around to it,' as you won't and over time the firearm will become useless. The Mosin-Nagant rifle is famous for this. Since the ammo for it is essentially custom (the only firearm that shoots 7.62x54R ammo is the Mosin - more modern weapons in that caliber like the SVD use special versions of the round meant for use at longer ranges) and because it's designed to be cheap (Mosins were mostly made by or for Soviet-aligned or Communist countries that needed cheap arms and ammo), the ammo uses cheap chemicals and thus is corrosive, failing to clean the weapon after use can cause pitting or other worse damage to the barrel. A Mosin-Nagant with a pitted barrel loses about 30% of its accuracy. A barrel with damaged rifling loses 70% of its accuracy.

A gun that only hits where you aim it 7 our of 10 or 3 out of 10 is no longer a reliable weapon, it's a danger to anyone around it. To paraphrase Harvey Keitel in, 'Pretty please with sugar on it. Clean the fucking weapon.'

• Only use cleaning products that are safe for use in your weapon. For example, ammonia based solvents will damage nickel finishes and other products should be used instead.

Check the manual or contact the manufacturer if you are unsure if a product, tool, or technique is safe and effective to use on a particular firearm. • Before firing, double check to make sure the firearm is in good condition and properly configured.

For example The Mosin-Nagant's firing pin protrusion can be adjustable. However, it must be within a certain tolerance. Too short and the rounds won't fire. Too far and the firing pin will pierce the primer, effectively creating a backblast. • If there is significant damage to the gun, do not try to fix it yourself unless you are a certified and licensed gunsmith.

Either send it back to the manufacturer or take it to a certified and licensed gunsmith for repair and any major maintenance. • Do not customize your weapon yourself unless you are knowledgeable enough to be sure that you have done any modifications safely. If you are unsure about a given modification, take it to a professional gunsmith and ask a professional's opinion as to the viability and safety in doing so. To clarify, this rule is about doing something such as working with the gas system, the safety, or headspacing. As a general rule, the external modifications such as adding slings and accessories is fine. It's the internal modifications you need to watch out for.

• When your gun is not in use, keep it unloaded, and at the minimum, locked in such a way that it's unable to fire. 3) When firing • Always wear hearing and eye protection. Depending on the gun being fired, your everyday glasses can be used to protect your eyes. Earplugs are sold at all gun shops and should be enough to protect your hearing. If you've only ever been exposed to gunfire from a distance, or in television/movies, the actual concussion of a gunshot is about 100 times greater than you might imagine. Even one shot is capable of causing serious hearing damage, especially in an enclosed area. And silencers (which aren't really silent, anyway) range from very strictly regulated to outright banned; only in the movies can you just walk into a gun store, fork over some cash and walk out with a silencer.

• For your reference, Linda Hamilton was subjected to permanent hearing loss due to use of inadequate ear protection on the set of (the offending scene is the one where they're escaping the mental hospital in an elevator). Don't be that guy who says 'WHAT?' To everything because you failed to learn from her mistake. • Even if you are at an indoor range, always wear closed-toe shoes. For ladies it's also recommended to not wear low-cut shirts, and men shouldn't go bare-chested. Discharged casings (commonly called 'brass') come out extremely hot and can burn if they land on exposed skin. • Shooters refer to a person's reaction to red-hot brass inside their shirt as 'The Brass Dance.'

Retired US Marine Max Uriarte as 'The Dance of Our People.' • If you have long hair, tie it back.

You need to see where you are aiming. • If you are with another person at the range, be careful of the casings from their weapon. They won't kill you, but they can leave bruises and burns. That's why there's usually a divider between shooters. Never enter another shooter's 'personal space' for this reason. • Firearms operation is likely to leave you and your clothing covered in residue from bullets, propellants, and primers. Never eat at the firing range, wash your hands before eating or handling food after leaving the range, and wash your clothes soon after the trip.

(Some sources recommend having a separate change of clothes to wear while shooting). It won't give you lead poisoning and it probably won't give you cancer (no more than anything else will, anyway), but it is basic hygiene. • Similarly, when cleaning and maintaining your firearms, take precautions to avoid breathing harmful fumes or leaving residues on household surfaces. Wearing disposable nitrile gloves and working on a non-permeable and/or disposable surface can help here.

4) When transporting • Sometimes guns need to be moved from one place to another - when going on a hunting trip, for example - and you need to keep them safe then, too, just as much as you do when they're in storage. If you need to move your gun, you should buy a special transport case to hold it while you're on the way. Don't just dump it in your backpack.

No matter what you pay for the case, your hospital bills would probably be higher - and so would your funeral. There are just too many stories of people just moving their gun from one place to another with no intention of firing at all, when a misfire has occurred. Mental Health • Some 90% of suicides are impulsive, spur-of-the-moment decisions. Shooting yourself in the head with a gun has a less than 10% survival rate. Losing It Gorilla Zoe Download.