> That's why you're "never supposed to point a gun at something you don't want to shoot", right? The logic there is that it could always go off unintentionally.
I'm going to take you at your word that you're not trolling and treat this as a legitimate good faith question/argument.
The logic of that is emphatically not that guns randomly go off on their own so you do that for safety. They're not supposed to (obviously), and if you're looking at modern firearms it really only happens due to damage or massive design flaws (which would cover the 320).
The logic is that it's a Swiss cheese threat model that is designed to reduce the odds of a negligent discharge and reduce the damage should one happen (which in 99.99999% of cases is someone pulling the trigger unintentionally).
1. Treat all guns as though they are loaded - if you're ever handling a gun, the first thing you're supposed to do is visually and physically check the chamber and the magazine well that there is no magazine and an empty chamber.
2. Don't point the firearm at anything you don't want to destroy - even immediately after checking a firearm if you flag someone with it a lot of gun stores will kick you out. Even with no magazine and the slide locked back it's incredibly poor form to point it anywhere close to another person.
3. Be sure of your target and what's behind it - pretty self-explanatory and a borderline repeat of #2. In a self-defense type of scenario this also means "don't shoot at unidentified things."
4. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot - the only purpose of the trigger is to send a round downrange so there's zero reason to be messing with the trigger otherwise (one notable exception not really worth discussing here).
So it's really not "don't point the firearm at stuff you don't want to shoot" because guns occasionally go off on their own, magically, it's really "people make mistakes, the Swiss cheese model of accident causation is real, and this is one more thing to mitigate the impact of accidents when they inevitably happen."
All of those rules exist in order to prevent an unintended killing. They would not be necessary without a machine designed for killing. I don't know why this is so complicated. No gun present, no gunshot. Gun present, possible gunshot.
I'm not trolling. You can have all the "safety" protocols you want, but at the end of the day it still won't stop every unintended killing due to a killing machine.
If I had to guess I'd say less trolling and more "my chosen political faction doesn't like guns and therefore there is nothing any human being on earth could say that would make me think they're okay, or even morally neutral."
The problem is people use these objective facts (none of which are in dispute so far as I know) to make completely asinine arguments like "just make some guns illegal" or "just take away everyone's guns." So that makes it very difficult to have level-headed discussions.
I'm going to take you at your word that you're not trolling and treat this as a legitimate good faith question/argument.
The logic of that is emphatically not that guns randomly go off on their own so you do that for safety. They're not supposed to (obviously), and if you're looking at modern firearms it really only happens due to damage or massive design flaws (which would cover the 320).
The logic is that it's a Swiss cheese threat model that is designed to reduce the odds of a negligent discharge and reduce the damage should one happen (which in 99.99999% of cases is someone pulling the trigger unintentionally).
1. Treat all guns as though they are loaded - if you're ever handling a gun, the first thing you're supposed to do is visually and physically check the chamber and the magazine well that there is no magazine and an empty chamber.
2. Don't point the firearm at anything you don't want to destroy - even immediately after checking a firearm if you flag someone with it a lot of gun stores will kick you out. Even with no magazine and the slide locked back it's incredibly poor form to point it anywhere close to another person.
3. Be sure of your target and what's behind it - pretty self-explanatory and a borderline repeat of #2. In a self-defense type of scenario this also means "don't shoot at unidentified things."
4. Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot - the only purpose of the trigger is to send a round downrange so there's zero reason to be messing with the trigger otherwise (one notable exception not really worth discussing here).
So it's really not "don't point the firearm at stuff you don't want to shoot" because guns occasionally go off on their own, magically, it's really "people make mistakes, the Swiss cheese model of accident causation is real, and this is one more thing to mitigate the impact of accidents when they inevitably happen."