The most important safety rule is and always will be the NRA’s first rule of gun safety. Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction. If you never followed any other gun safety rule this would be the one to burn into your vast cranial space. All the other rules are important but this one takes care of all the others.
Muzzle Direction is your Responsibility
Safety rule #2 always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot ?? Â Let’s say you slipped for a moment and violated rule number 2 if you have followed rule number 1 you most likely will not injure anyone or destroy any property that you did not intend. You have just had an embarrassing gun safety moment. You can live with a little embarrassment from time to time, but can you live with injuring or even killing an unintended victim.
Remember Gun Safety is contagious
Gun Safety and safe gun handling are contagious you teach someone the safe way, and they teach someone the safe way, and pretty soon everyone has caught the disease. Safe Gun handling is a disease and only you have the cure.
In my last couple of tours as a range safety officer at Pueblo Municipal Shooters, I noticed that most people without some type of current gun safety training tend to violate the muzzle direction rule. In my training sessions, I always do a little pre-test on gun safety and loading/unloading and more times than not a trainee will violate either the muzzle direction or the finger on the trigger rule. These gun safety rules are without question the most important things you can understand about gun safety.