News

One of the things I have decided to do is check the chamber every time the weapon enters or leaves my hand. Pulling it out of the lockbox? Check the chamber. Handing it to a friend? Check the chamber. Setting it down at the range after emptying a magazine and the slide is now locked open on an empty mag? Check the chamber. Picking it up at the range after reloading the magazine? Check the chamber.

Between this and pressing the "turn signal off" button on my motorcycle every time I go through an intersection, I am slightly less stupid.

Well there also is proper fucking training.

Always assume a weapon is loaded if you haven't checked the chamber. Even then make sure you point the barrel in a safe direction.

Or, hear me out, even the most basic firearm safety being taught before selling someone a firearm.

how the fuck does anyone have a magazine-fed gun and not know that removing the magazine doesn't unload the chamber

that's fucking scary

that said, seems like a no-brainer to mandate this magazine disconnect mechanism

If someone doesn't know removing the magazine doesnt un chamber a round then guns should be locked away from them.

ITT: people absolutely refuse to accept that accidents happen—even to smart people—and the consequences can be mitigated through non-knowledge-based precautions.

I refuse to keep a round just stored in the chamber. In fact, I think it is incredibly stupid and irresponsible to do so. But, like, just put a fucking magazine disconnect in there too, just in case I make a mistake eventually.

If you own a gun and keep it in your home, should you and everyone in that home actually know how to properly handle a weapon, should the weapon be stored safely away from children?

Yes, of course, obviously.

But the article does a great job of cataloguing situations where either some or all of that didn't occur, or someone just made a stupid, fatal mistake.

They were all instances where a fairly simple, well understood mechanical feature in firearms, a magazine disconnect, would have prevented those deaths.

... Some months back I got a bit of flack on a thread where some semi popular tiktoker game-overed himself by 'performing' to a song by pantomiming shooting himself in the head with his handgun.

He didn't drop out the mag, he didn't rack the slide, he apparently even could be seen switching the safety off.

I called him a Darwin Award winner, as, to me, someone with some actual firearms experience and training, this is a laughably stupid thing to do.

Would a mag disconnect have saved that guy's life?

No, but that isn't the point.

The point is that basically, any idiot can buy a firearm, and in all but 9 states, there isn't any actual legal requirement that you be trained in how to properly use, store, maintain, carry, etc said firearm.

https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/law/training-required-to-purchase-guns/

In most of the country, you can legally buy and possess many kinds of firearms without going through the certification for a CC permit, as long as you follow the local laws that apply when you don't have one.

This is not comparable to cars and drivers liscenses.

You need a liscense, and some level of insurance, to drive a car legally.

If we are not universally legally mandating firearm handling and safety training for everyone who lives in a home with a gun in it, I really do not think it would be that onerous of a burden on weapons manufacturers to include mag disconnects on applicable weapons produced from say the point from which some law regulating this is passed.

It would save lives, and it would cost a tiny amount.

Looking at this situation and just remarking 'wow those people were all foolish and/or their parents were foolish' is coming from a perspective that just assumes people who own guns either do or should have proper training and follow the practices from that training.

The reality is that many do not, and in 41 states, they don't even have to.

(Please do not come at me with your action hero movie scenarios where for some reason you need to be able to load single rounds into a chamber without a magazine and fire a gun.)

What a non-story. Idiots do idiot things like not rack a slide and safe a weapon, then point it at someone and pull the trigger. Holy fuck.

Then we give them driver's licenses.

In general I feel less safe handling the guns I own with a magazine disconnect than the ones without. Having to put a magazine into the gun to drop the hammer puts me on edge every time.

277 deaths in 25 years. 11 people per year.

30% of Americans own guns.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/

The population in 2000 was 282.2 million people, so roughly 84,660,000 gun owners.

11/84,660,000 = such a small number, you need to represent it with scientific notation. By 2024 it's even smaller. 11/100,470,000.

No piece of technology is going to prevent such an edge case of human stupidity, if it weren't the magazine issue, it would be something else.

That being said, there's another preventative measure, my first gun had a little red pop-up when a round was in the chamber:

There was also a red marker if the safety was off:

This is amazing and such a duh duh feature. Completely mechanical and no different than the safety but automatic. It says not all manufacturers include it so it sounds like some might. It will definitely be something I will check to see if there is an option if I ever get a gun with a magazine. Which is sorta doubtful in my case. But cool to know the option is there. For anyone who did not read its just a mechanism such that if the magazine is removed the gun won't fire in case there is a round in the chamber.

In Canada we are taught a four step process in our mandatory gun safety courses:

• drop the magazine
• check the chamber
• check the feedpath
• check the barrel with light/pencil etc. Eyeball if that's the only option.