Safety Rules (AS Is Always Safe)
Appleseed shooting activities always carefully follow the 4 Rules. The 4 Rules, as taught by the Appleseed Project, are:
- Always keep the muzzle in a safe direction.
- Do not load until given the load command.
- Keep your finger off the trigger until the sights are on the target.
- Make sure those around you follow the safety rules.
These rules are slightly different than Jeff Cooper's 4 Rules, causing some longtime shooting experts such as Massad Ayoob to have slight cognitive dissonance when participating in Appleseeds. Cooper's four basic rules of gun safety are:
- All guns are always loaded. Even if they are not, treat them as if they are.
- Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy. (For those who insist that this particular gun is unloaded, see Rule 1.)
- Keep your finger off the trigger till your sights are on the target. This is the Golden Rule. Its violation is directly responsible for about 60 percent of inadvertent discharges.
- Identify your target, and what is behind it. Never shoot at anything that you have not positively identified.
Read more about this topic: Project Appleseed
Famous quotes containing the words safety and/or rules:
“Can we not teach children, even as we protect them from victimization, that for them to become victimizers constitutes the greatest peril of all, specifically the sacrifice—physical or psychological—of the well-being of other people? And that destroying the life or safety of other people, through teasing, bullying, hitting or otherwise, “putting them down,” is as destructive to themselves as to their victims.”
—Lewis P. Lipsitt (20th century)
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And when he happen’d to break off
I’ th’ middle of his speech, or cough,
H’ had hard words ready to show why,
And tell what rules he did it by;”
—Samuel Butler (1612–1680)