[High Praise! to Cheezburger]
Let’s review the 4 basic rules of gun safety, which should be habits that are as much a part of you as breathing:
1. Treat every firearm as if it’s loaded.
2. Never point a firearm at anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Always be sure of your target and what is beyond it.
4. Keep your finger off the trigger until you are on target and ready to fire.
Number 4 is being obeyed, and it is protecting the man in this picture. A gun will not spontaneously discharge from being tipped upside down.
There is one way and one way only to check a bore. That is to look down the barrel. You can check for obstructions by running a cleaning rod through but you can only inspect the bore by shining a light at one end (sunlight works) and looking through the barrel. That is what he appears to be doing to me.
sure, but without an open chamber to let in light into the other end, you’re not going to see anything.
It looks like he has safety glasses on. So he’s got that going for him….
The gun looks like a modern day muzzle loader. I’ve had to get a jammed ball out of one of those before. I knew how to do it safely and I was still scared. I still wouldn’t look down the barrel like that.
“A gun will not spontaneously discharge from being tipped upside down.”
You’ve obviously never heard of the Remington model 700. That gun is the whole reason for rule 4.
@5 – Not An NSA Spy – No I haven’t. Now I have:
http://www.fieldandstream.com/forums/guns/rifles/remington-700-accidental-discharge
@6 Harvey I was also unaware until I was about to buy one last year and started researching it. I ended up not buying it.
That is indeed a modern style muzzleloader. There is no breech to open, Hence the term “muzzleloader”. It is perfectly safe in this position if there is no percussion cap on the nipple. The exception would be if the hammer previously dropped on the cap and the rifle is potentially experiencing hangfire. Then this is very, very unsafe.
In the interests of safety and liability, I should add that the way one usually checks if a muzzleloader is loaded is to use the ramrod which should have the unloaded length marked on it. If it is loaded more of the rod sticks out. This should be done observing normal safety rules: muzzle pointed in safe direction, no cap on nipple, gently inserting the rod, and never if in hangfire.
so for my own education…if there’s no breech how do you extract a stuck bullet if you loaded wrong and can’t get it to fire?
blarg
http://www.trackofthewolf.com/List/Item.aspx/574/1
Cheers