The four rules, and why experienced shooters break them first

Ask anyone who has run a range for a few years who worries them, and they won't say the first-timer. The first-timer is terrified and does exactly what they're told.

It's the man who has been shooting for thirty years, who has stopped thinking about it, and whose muzzle drifts while he is talking to you.

The four rules

They're stated slightly differently depending on where you learned them. The substance doesn't change.

1. Treat every firearm as loaded. Not "check and then relax". Treat it as loaded after you've checked, and after the person who handed it to you checked, and after you checked again. The phrase "I thought it was unloaded" appears in the report of nearly every negligent discharge ever written.

2. Never point it at anything you aren't willing to destroy. Muzzle discipline is the rule that makes the other three survivable. If rule one fails and rule three fails, rule two is the reason nobody is hurt.

3. Finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target. Outside the guard, indexed flat along the frame or receiver. Not resting on the guard. Under stress, and particularly during a stumble, the hand does what it has been trained to do — and a startle response closes the whole hand at once.

4. Know your target and what's beyond it. A bullet that misses keeps going, and it keeps going a very long way. This is the rule that matters most in the field, where the backstop is whatever happens to be behind the animal, and it's why shots across a ridgeline are refused.

Why they're redundant on purpose

Four rules to prevent one outcome isn't clumsy design. Each is a layer, and an accident needs at least two of them to fail simultaneously.

That's also why "I only broke one" isn't the defence it sounds like. Breaking one habitually means you're one failure away, permanently, rather than two.

The complacency curve

Competence doesn't make you safer indefinitely. It makes you safer for a while and then, if you aren't deliberate, it makes you casual.

The tell is when handling becomes automatic — when you rack the action without watching the chamber, sweep a muzzle while turning to speak to someone, or rest a finger on the trigger while glassing. None of those feel like anything at the time.

The correction isn't more knowledge. It's treating the fundamentals as something you practise, out loud, every single time, in front of people who will tell you.

Say it when you see it

The hardest part, and the one that actually changes outcomes.

If a friend, a relative, or a man twice your age sweeps you with a muzzle, say so. Plainly, immediately, without softening it into a joke.

Nobody who is any good takes offence at this. The ones who do have told you something useful about whether to hunt with them again.

Storage

Separate from handling, and just as much the point.

Secured, unloaded, and locked, with ammunition stored separately, and stored so that nobody in the house who shouldn't have access can get it. That means a safe or a lockable cabinet — not a high shelf, not a drawer, and not "the kids know not to".

Storage requirements are a matter of law in a great many places and the specifics vary widely. Look up what applies where you actually live, and then do better than the minimum.

Firearms law, licensing, transport and storage requirements differ by country, state and province. Nothing here is legal advice — check the rules that apply where you live and where you're hunting.