To take this a bit further: don’t touch it at all. You don’t know where that gun has been or what it’s done. If you touch it, you become a suspect in whatever crime was committed.
I don’t typically advocate for this, but in this case, call your local LEO and move away from the weapon. But make sure nobody else (kids especially) don’t come grabbing it up after you.
I haven’t touched a gun in a decade. When I did, it was an unloaded demo beretta used by the navy.
When commenting on the Internet about safe gun handling in regards to the Alec Baldwin trial, I professed “Well, safe gun handling is not always obvious for all firearms. For instance, the methods to safely handle and unload an old fashioned revolver, the kind often on TV, when it’s already loaded and its hammer is back, is ridiculously complicated. Only a professional should handle that.”
This comment resulted in a reply from a gun nut insisting I was a moron, and had no idea what I was talking about. Feeling 80% sure of my knowledge of revolvers, I looked it up on YouTube, and boosted it to 100%.
To explain: If a revolver’s hammer is cocked, the cylinder is locked and you can’t just open it to take out the bullets. Plus, any gentle trigger motion or even hard knock will loosen the hammer and fire the bullet (supposedly, some newer revolvers are safer, but these don’t show up on TV shows). The stupid thing is, there’s no special switch or motion to release the hammer in a clear, safe way. So, the only way to unload the gun starts with blocking the hammer with a finger, then pulling the trigger, releasing it. Then you can open the cylinder.
But the aggravating headline was me, a pure gun commenter who only knows about them from video games and internet debates, knowing more about their safety than a self-professed gun nut.
B) Don't touch a real gun capable of firing real bullets unless you know how to (or have someone to instruct you on how to) do so safely with that firearm.
C) All guns are always loaded.
D) Never point your muzzle at anything you're not willing to destroy.
E) Keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot
F) Know what is in the foreground and background of your shot.
G) Don't be the producer of the show letting all this unsafe shit happen
H) Don't say "I'm just an actor, I can't be expected to learn" as a piss poor excuse. I taught an 18yo kid (new employee) the safety rules last week and he got it, you telling me some kid is just smarter than any actor other than Keanu Reeves? No, Baldwin didn't want to learn, and this is what happens. Guns aren't toys and shouldn't be treated as such even between shots on a set.
But most importantly, don't hire scabs. The union armorer staff walked off the set of Rust due to repeated safety violations. Instead of fixing the issues, management hired unqualified scabs and continued.
What I described is a problem with B. On a set, there are also problems with D, and E.
Even with brief safety lessons, I would not want/require every actor to ever touch a gun to know the insane revolver process described above in which you must pull the trigger to safely unload a gun and make it safe - and to check that the blank rounds are actually blank. If a “gun nut” didn’t know that process, there are liable to be countless other processes an actor won’t know.
Additionally, guns are used on set for dramatic effect. Actors WILL point guns at other actors for the sake of a shot, and WILL have their finger on the trigger to make their character seem real mean. So D and E, while good lessons, must be suspended on TV sets.
All the rest of the lessons are for the arms master of a set to handle. They are the ones that should be ensuring weapons anywhere near a set are loaded with blanks only when needed, and all otherwise follows full safety precautions. Hence why my opinion on blame for that incident was on Baldwin as the producer responsible for negligently hiring a shitty arms handler, not on Baldwin as the person holding the gun that went off.
I went through the comments, and I'm still lost. What is the punchline here? Is a long string of bad gun safety decisions by multiple people funny, or am I completely missing the joke?
As a European, I fucking fear to go to the USA (the country of school shootings). You just don't know how safe we feel here.
Here, you can only get guns after a training, psychology test, you cannot show it in public, etc.. Or you can get a weak gas something that cannot kill people, but can shoot birds.
It's so crazy. Literally anyone can go to a store and buy one. I no joke saw a store the other day called "Dave's guns" and the logo was the American flag on a cross. Reminds me of a certain quote regarding facism.
It's scary knowing everyone else has guns, however the good news is, everyone on the correct side of history can also buy them..
Honestly working class people should all be educated in basic gun safety. Its pretty fucking simple
Things like operating a safety,
Checking to see if there is any live ammunition in the chamber,
Racking the slide to clear the chamber after removing the magazine,
Emptying the magazine.
Even field stripping and cleaning/ lubrication of a firearm.(if that’s too much for you just stick to revolvers and bolt action long guns)
But since nixon and reagan(who was the first American politician to push for gun ownership restrictions with support from the NRA via the mulford act after the black panther party was making strides advocating for civil rights by participating in protests open carrying long arms and side arms)
Killed American education standards to prevent a highly educated proletariat now a majority of Americans cant even handle basic diy car maintenance let alone know how to use a firearm.
And today neo liberal centrists are the primary definition of what right wing maga morons consider leftists to bewhen in reality true leftists want guns to prevent the fascist takeover of our society we have slowly witnessed and were attempting to warn all of our fellow Americans about despite those warnings going ignored due to ignorant or intentional downplaying.
Our gun problem in the usa is a symptom of our problem with deteriorating conditions caused by the deregulation of capitalism. The school
Shooting phenomena is not new, it first manifested as the “going postal” phenomenon but now with both parents having to work and kids having shitty support structures because they are being bullied by other kids starved of proper parental guidance/nurturing these kids are getting to their parents guns and taking out their frustrations mostly on people that have bullied them and anyone standing in their way or who did nothing to stop the bullies. It doesnt take a genius to see the reality here. There was a very good documentary i saw in the last decade or so pertaining to the phenomenon.
Asking the government to be a paternalistic nanny state and protect us from
Ourselves a short sighted naive way to deal with the issues.
Also most of the guns have concentrated into the hands of fascist sympathizers because democrats have been brainwashed by centrism/ neo liberalism
And think its a leftist ideal to want to disarm the nation and let police continue to murder people with impunity and give citizens even less recourse to protect ourselves. And also the economic environment we are in has punished true leftists with abhorrent economic conditions snd most of su struggle to survive and afford housing nevermind be able to afford a $1500+ rifle and ammunition and we just rely on grocers and the industrialized murder industry of livestock to provide our packaged dead animal for nutrition so many are so far removed from reality and if things fell to shit in a revolution most neo liberal’s would not last a month on their own probably even less than that if they have renounced gun ownership and taken up pacifism as their answer for the deteriorating state of western neo liberal
Democracy (which lacking economic democracy and blatantly opposed to it is actually an undemocratic class dictatorship)
But keep telling yourself everything will be ok and bow down to accept the bloodless right wing coup the heritage foundation project 2025 authors have planned and has obviously been in the works for the last 4 decades at least.
There's unfortunately no possible way for the government to solve this issue. They can't go door to door and take people guns. And people won't willingly give them up because then they are vulnerable to attack. It's sadly unsolvable. Higher regulations for new purchases would help but thathat doesn't stop all the existing weapons.
How about we dont let the concentration of power skew even more towards the hands of fascists than it already is? I mean it must be nice to live in delulu lala land where we can eliminate guns from society but so long as inteligent people exist and 3d printers are consumer goods (not to mention a thriving black market) there will always be ways around laws. I think the world would be a much better place if the mulford act never passed and if the wild west OK panhandle mentality of everyone has a gun persisted. Disarmjng the working class so that police and bureaucrats more than willing to enrich themselves with bribes from capitalists can be the final arbiters of who should and should not posses the means for self defense is just such idealistic nonsense. The world would be a better place if wall street military and prison industry profiteers were scared of the workers instead of the other way around as we have today.
It's really easy to get a drivers license, yet there are still idiots on the road killing each other and themselves by driving cars.
The ones that think they're good drivers are usually the worst.
Educating people on gun safety and giving them reason to believe that they're good with guns... Yes, it's a recipe for having a lot of idiots with guns.
The only gun safety that actually works is not having guns. Guns are designed to kill and that's what they're gonna do when used.
Removing guns from citizens will only allow them to concentrate into the hands of the wealthy, and their militarized forces.
Neo liberalism has failed the working class and parroting the idea that we must restrict peoples freedoms to protect them from themselves is not only dumb its disingenuous and patently false.
If people weren't educated on using cars they would be EVEN WORSE drivers. Also all the restrictive rules on driving like artificially low speed limits actually make it less safe for good drivers.
We killed education standards in this country to make things more conservative and thwarted leftist populism to allow full devolution into authoritarian fascism.
now remind me, did drug prohibition/ restrictions result in decreased supply and demand or did it instead just increase the black market value of these still in demand products while funneling people a majority of which are marginalized poor and working class, into prisons so correctional corporations could siphon tax dollars into their profits and simultaneously profit off of legalized slave labor? How will restrictions on gun ownership be any different?
More people die from Vehicular manslaughter every year than guns, should we further restrict automobile use?