TexasCHLforum.com

Firearms Should Be Unloaded When Not Actually In Use.
Okay. I just got this booklet back with my Ruger Security Six with the 10 rules of firearm safety.

It goes on to say in elaborating on number 2:
"Unload your gun as soon as you are through. A loaded gun has no place in or near a car, truck or building. Unload your gun immediately when you have finished shooting, well before you bring it into a car, camp or home."

......okay. I am now in violation of this rule. I have not one but two, sometimes as many as three loaded guns in my home or hotel room or car or on my person at all times. I keep a loaded handgun on or about my person, sometimes a BUG, and a shotgun in my car and hotel room and home at all times.
All of us who are CHL holders or Cops or even people who just keep a gun in the house or car do.
"an unloaded gun that's cocked ain't good for much" as Rooster Cogburn reminded the arrogant yankee lawyer.


In addition to this it says (and I know lawyers have done this over the years to get money from people) in bold "IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO PREVENT CHILDREN OR UNAUTHORIZED ADULTS FROM GAINING ACCESS TO FIREARMS"

soooo....if burglar Joe Twotimefelon breaks into my house and steals my guns and ammo...it's my fault?

Now if I walk into a school room and put my loaded gun down on a table and walk away...clearly that is negligent...but sheesh, broad language like said above can...and no doubt has gotten people into a lot of trouble with ambulence chasers and gun grabbing politicans

Who wrote this rule?

I'm guessing that some lawyer at Ruger wrote it :)

The training materials I have seen from NRA safety courses also seem to be heavy on "unload the gun" as well.

I think it's a good idea to unload any guns that are not meant to be immediately accessible for self defense. I have a shotgun, 5.56 evil black rifle, and three handguns in the house. Two of the handguns are for self defense (his and hers). They stay loaded and either on our person or locked in a nightstand safe. Everything else is unloaded and locked up (but is treated as if it were loaded when it is unlocked and handled).

As far as Joe Felon breaking in and stealing your guns... I am probably in the minority, but I think that it IS a person's fault when their guns fall into criminal hands - unless they have taken reasonable precautions to secure them.

My guns are all in safes if they are not in my control. Sure, they can still be stolen, but not by a casual thief in a hurry. We also have safes in our cars for when we have to disarm. Someone will have to do more than smash a window to gain possession of my guns.

I believe that gun ownership is my right. But I also believe that by exercising that right, I also need to take responsibility and take reasonable precautions to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands.

If I haven't shot it dry, I'm not through with it yet.

So I'm supposed to be expected to have a big gun safe in my hotel room, in my car?
Thieves aren't supposed to be able to break into your house, but they do. I'm not responsible for that THEY ARE.

It shouldn't be my legal obligation to bend over backwards to keep from being sued with all these vague undefined requirements.

They can say "oh but you could have bought a bigger and stronger safe. You could have bolted it to the floor. You could have put it upstairs instead of down. You could have built a secret room to hide it in. You could have not bought any guns to begin with."

With rules as vague as "you are responsible for keeping criminals or children from getting your guns" they can always take it one step further to shift the blame to you.

I don't have a gun safe for my car...in fact my car doesn't have a lock on the console or glove compartment. It's not my fault the car didn't come with one way back when when I bought it.

Now I always follow common sense proceedings so as to not have my property stolen like locking my car and setting the alarm and not having any firearms in the car overnight.

I am personally insulted by the insinuation that I should feel some type of guilt if a gun is stolen from MY locked home or automobile because I did not find it feasable to lock it in some type of safe.

As a matter of fact, I did have a revolver stolen, along with a whole lot more, in a "kick-in" burglary in 1986. I don't feel the least bit "guilty".

I don't think a person should be under obligation to lock up guns in a typical situation. (It's different if you have small or strong-headed children/relatives/housemates, or if you have a child with a mental disability.)
I think if you have good locks on the door and make a reasonable effort, that is good enough. If someone breaks into my home and steals a gun, that blame needs to be placed on him.
My handguns stay loaded all times. Some are in the safe, but two or three remain "loose" in the bedroom or on one of us. I treat all of them as if they are loaded, because I know they always are. It makes it simple. (I also believe that an unloaded gun defeats the purpose.)

I completely agree that people shouldn't be breaking into our houses

In a perfect world, we could all leave our houses and cars unlocked because nobody would take them. I don't think any of us do that.

We all know that our home might be broken into. If we have something in our home (like a firearm) that we know will be used to further facilitate crime if it is stolen, it seems prudent to take extra precautions to prevent it from falling into criminal hands in the event that our home is targeted.

If a government agency has a database with all your sensitive information on it and hackers break in and steal it all and then steal your identity - you're probably going to be upset with the agency... especially if it comes out that they didn't take reasonable precautions to prevent it.

I'm not suggesting that anyone needs to turn their home/car/hotel into fort knox... but I think that we owe it to our communities to take a few extra precautions to minimize the chances of our guns ending up in criminal hands. A portable safe with a lanyard costs about 50 bucks and will do a good job of securing a handgun in a car or hotel room. Is that really too much to ask?

When the antis press for a complete ban on weapons, they LOVE to point out that criminals can easily steal guns from law abiding citizens and use that as justification for wanting to take ALL the guns away. Why make it easier for them?

I understand that I am going to be in the minority on this one, and I'm ok with that. I just don't think that we should try to completely avoid any extra responsibility for securing our weapons by saying, "the bad guys shouldn't break into my home in the first place." Heck... the bad guys shouldn't attack us in the first place - so why do we bother to carry guns for self defense? We do it because we know that bad guys do stuff they shouldn't do. We have taken on the responsibility of protecting ourselves from them. Why can't we also take on the responsibility of protecting our guns from them as well?

Sangiovese wrote:When the antis press for a complete ban on weapons, they LOVE to point out that criminals can easily steal guns from law abiding citizens and use that as justification for wanting to take ALL the guns away. Why make it easier for them?

I agree that we should make reasonable efforts to secure our weapons, but I think the debate is over what constitutes reasonable.

To a single person or a married couple with no children in the home, a nightstand drawer may be sufficient, especially if the residents are home. Some people may disagree with this statement. Some may say that it isn't secure enough, some may say that it's fine to leave it on the coffee table in plain view, as long as the house stays locked.


Personally, I take the middle ground. Most guns stay locked up, but I always keep a few available for quick access. Criminals don't exactly call and make appointments.

ETA: The above is my personal standard. I think if others choose to leave their houses locked and guns out of sight, then that's reasonable enough.

Here's one from p. 20 of my Taurus Millennium Pro manual. This is the page that explains the built-in security lock. I promise you that these two warnings are consecutive. It reads exactly like this:



WARNING:
Securing your firearm may inhibit access to it in a defense situation and result in injury or death.

WARNING:
Failure to properly secure a firearm may result in injury or death.



Yeah...I would say that Taurus covered its rear end quite well with those warnings.

Sarah81 wrote:Here's one from p. 20 of my Taurus Millennium Pro manual. This is the page that explains the built-in security lock. I promise you that these two warnings are consecutive. It reads exactly like this:



WARNING:
Securing your firearm may inhibit access to it in a defense situation and result in injury or death.

WARNING:
Failure to properly secure a firearm may result in injury or death.

Did you see this one on page 4 of your operator's manual, Sarah?

WARNING: Pulling the trigger of a loaded firearm may result in sudden, loud noises and/or extreme muzzle flash. Projectiles may also be forcefully expelled out of the muzzle-end of this weapon's barrel during the trigger-pulling process, caution is advised. We don't consider most consumers to be responsible enough to heed this advisory, please immediately contact our customer service department for more guidance before utilizing the installed trigger device with live ammunition.

+1 Sangiovese

Sangiovese wrote:In a perfect world, we could all leave our houses and cars unlocked because nobody would take them. I don't think any of us do that.

Right. We lock our doors, even though we shouldn't need to.

Maybe the justice system should keep the criminals locked up.

Sangiovese
If somebody steals your car and runs over somebody are you to be held responsible because you could have locked your door, or installed an alarm, or installed some other sort of antitheft devise?

If somebody steals your pocketknife and cuts somebody's throat with it on the street, are you responsible because you could have put it in a deeper pocket, or could have left it in your car, our could have put it on a chain?

See, this isn't just about guns, if you play these people's finger pointing game of "it's your responsibility" then they can always take that to the next level to win their argument on anything. This is true of guns or anything.

As far as guns go, we all know, and anybody with common sense knows, CRIMINALS ARE GOING TO GET GUNS whether they are yours, stolen from a store, bought on the black market or imported from other countries.

Now I am going to take precautions to keep anything I own of value from being stolen, but not because "it's my responsiblity to keep it from falling into criminal hands" but simply because I don't want to be robbed.

What was this thread about originally?

Sangiovese wrote:I completely agree that people shouldn't be breaking into our houses

In a perfect world, we could all leave our houses and cars unlocked because nobody would take them. I don't think any of us do that.

We all know that our home might be broken into. If we have something in our home (like a firearm) that we know will be used to further facilitate crime if it is stolen, it seems prudent to take extra precautions to prevent it from falling into criminal hands in the event that our home is targeted.

If a government agency has a database with all your sensitive information on it and hackers break in and steal it all and then steal your identity - you're probably going to be upset with the agency... especially if it comes out that they didn't take reasonable precautions to prevent it.

I'm not suggesting that anyone needs to turn their home/car/hotel into fort knox... but I think that we owe it to our communities to take a few extra precautions to minimize the chances of our guns ending up in criminal hands. A portable safe with a lanyard costs about 50 bucks and will do a good job of securing a handgun in a car or hotel room. Is that really too much to ask?

When the antis press for a complete ban on weapons, they LOVE to point out that criminals can easily steal guns from law abiding citizens and use that as justification for wanting to take ALL the guns away. Why make it easier for them?

I understand that I am going to be in the minority on this one, and I'm ok with that. I just don't think that we should try to completely avoid any extra responsibility for securing our weapons by saying, "the bad guys shouldn't break into my home in the first place." Heck... the bad guys shouldn't attack us in the first place - so why do we bother to carry guns for self defense? We do it because we know that bad guys do stuff they shouldn't do. We have taken on the responsibility of protecting ourselves from them. Why can't we also take on the responsibility of protecting our guns from them as well?

You are not in a minority...I'm with you, so that makes two...

You hit the nail on the proverbial head with your post!

I believe our ranks will grow if we all took it upon ourselves to emulate this concept...

And those that disagree, or do not go to this much trouble are not a problem either...Realistically, who are we to judge anyone who does or does not go to this much effort to secure and utilize their firearms???

I'll say it again...Over the years of discussing issues like this, I have seen a wide variety of approaches to issues like this, and no one is exactly right, or wrong on it...There are a lot more rights that wrongs here...

"I believe we all do a very good job of minimizing the risks associated with potentially a very dangerous activity/hobby/right."