Safety first

Four rules prevent almost every firearm accident. One: treat every handgun as loaded, every time, even if you have just watched someone unload it. Two: keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction, so that if it went off, nobody would be hurt. Three: keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target and you have decided to fire. Four: know your target, what is behind it, and where the bullet will stop. The unit standard tests every one of these, and Anel watches for them from the moment you pick a handgun up.

A safe direction is wherever an accidental shot would hurt nobody and the bullet would stop safely. On the range that is downrange, into the backstop. At home it is harder. Think about who is in the next room, and remember that many walls, doors and windows will not stop a handgun bullet. If there is no safe direction where you are standing, that is not the place to handle your handgun. The unit standard asks you to define a safe direction and keep the muzzle there at all times.

Your trigger finger has a home: straight along the side of the frame, outside the trigger guard. It stays there while you load, unload, holster, move and talk. It goes onto the trigger only when your sights are on the target and you have decided to fire, and it comes straight off again when you stop. Watch Sipho in class: Anel taps his hand every time his finger drifts inside the guard, until it stops happening.

When someone hands you a handgun, check it yourself, every time, even if they tell you it is empty and even if it is Anel. Take it with the muzzle pointing safely and your finger off the trigger. Open it up: on a pistol, remove the magazine and lock the slide back; on a revolver, open the cylinder. Then look and feel that it is empty. When you hand it on, hand it on open, so the next person can see and check it too.

On his first morning, Anel hands Sipho a pistol with the slide locked open and tells him it is empty. Sipho points it at the backstop, keeps his finger straight along the frame, and looks into the chamber and the magazine well anyway. Anel smiles: that is exactly what she wanted to see. Checking a firearm is never rude, and no good instructor will ever be offended by it.

Every range has a range officer, and their word is final. Commands differ a little from range to range, so listen to the briefing, but these are typical. Cease fire means stop immediately, finger off the trigger, muzzle downrange, and never turn around with a handgun in your hand. Unload and show clear means unload, lock the action open and let the range officer see it. While anyone is downrange, nobody touches a firearm. And anyone, including you, may call cease fire if they see something unsafe.

Before you shoot, four things. Eye protection, because empty cases and fragments fly. Hearing protection, because gunshots damage hearing permanently. Be sober and alert: handling a firearm under the influence of alcohol or drugs is an offence under section 120(4) of the Act, and some medicines impair you too. And use only the ammunition marked on your handgun. You'll come back to ammunition in lesson 6.

Your turn. Sort a set of things Sipho and the other delegates did into safe or unsafe. Then answer four quick questions. Finally, look around your home and decide which direction would be safest to point a handgun, and why. Next lesson, you open a handgun up and learn what each part does.