Outdoor Life.

It’s a common sight to see someone pull the trigger on the rifle, shotgun, or pistol they just emptied, whether they are finishing up at the gun range or jumping in the truck after the evening deer hunt. The intent is to confirm that the gun is clear. But is that safe gun handling? Or is it a pointless risk?

I think the answer depends on what you’re doing. But I do know some hunters and shooters click their trigger every single time—and that’s not the right approach.

Before getting into those less-than-safe scenarios, let’s talk about when it makes sense. At every 3-gun, multi-gun, or handgun competition I’ve attended, the standard procedure after finishing a stage is to unload the pistol by pulling the magazine, racking the slide, and pointing downrange and dropping the hammer. The Range Officer managing the stage watches this process to verify that the blaster is clear to his or her satisfaction. The same procedure holds true for showing that a long gun is clear.

At a gun range, you can point the muzzle at a solid backstop. If you do produce a negligent discharge when attempting to show clear, it isn’t going to cause any problems other than a potential stage or match DQ. I’ve witnessed this myself and recently saw a video of shooter at a match crank off a round in front of the range officers after pulling the magazine and racking the slide repeatedly. Obviously, he had a round in the chamber that the extractor didn’t engage (perhaps the extractor had broken) and when he dropped the hammer the pistol went off. The fact that he had an utterly safe backstop to shoot into is what prevented it from being a dangerous situation.

Now out in the wild, the safety of the backstop becomes relative. When you’re exiting your deer stand or hopping into your truck, is it possible to have a backstop as certain as the berm at a rifle range? Sure, in theory. In practice, you won’t have that every single time.

With that in mind, dropping the hammer becomes a risk-reward scenario where it’s often better to not pull the trigger.

Years ago, I discussed this issue with Jim Carmichel, my predecessor as Outdoor Life’s shooting editor. He was firmly in the “don’t dry fire to show safe” camp. “What is it you’re trying to prove?” he said. Good point. You’re trying to demonstrate that the gun is empty—but if it isn’t you just opened a whole can of worms for you and everyone who might be around you.

Some shooters have argued with me that they’d rather have the negligent discharge happen then, rather than risk carrying or transporting a gun they thought had a clear chamber but didn’t.

My problem with this logic is that it ignores the first rule of gun safety: Every gun is always loaded. If someone hands me a firearm I don’t care if they just field stripped the thing and put it back together to show it is empty—I’m still going to check it myself. We shouldn’t consider any firearm, even the deer rifle that just went “click” in your buddy’s hands, any safer than one we just found on the side of the road. To ignore this is to become complacent, and when handling firearms, complacency kills. (It also ignores the second rule, which is to keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.)

The article goes on and you can read the rest at Outdoor Life.

Here’s what I do, and readers can weigh in as well.  This is an interesting subject and one that I’ve thought about before.

I’ll normally empty the chamber of any gun (rifle, pistol or shotgun) by removing the magazine and cycling the slide (or action) several times.  But here’s the next step.  I visually examine the chamber to ensure that it’s empty.  This is an absolutely essential step for me.  And then I do a self-check of my judgment.

I normally carry the firearm home with the action open and the spring tensioned.  I don’t see a problem with that.  It also lets me self-check my visual inspection as many times as I want.

But I don’t store the firearm with the action open and springs tensioned.  We’ve had this conversation before, but springs undergo creep.

Do not make the claim that stainless steel (like SS304) doesn’t suffer creep below the yield limit and at low temperatures.  Yes … it … does  (“In all tests at applied stress/yield strength ratios above 0.73 some plastic deformation was recorded”).

No offense, but don’t try to be an engineer if you’re not one. If you make the claim that SS304 (I presume the material of most magazine springs) doesn’t suffer from metal creep, you’d be wrong, and then you’d also be answering the question the wrong way.

The right way to look at the question is one of whether the creep is significant.  It usually isn’t, and it is less significant than for carbon steel.  It’s also not significant for applied stress/yield strength ratios lower than what the authors tested.  Where your specific magazine spring falls in this data set is best determined by the designer, not me (I don’t have drawings or any other design information).

Gun springs are an essential part of the gun, and the gun needs to function every time I pull the trigger.  On the other hand, magazines can be replaced.  I don’t leave gun springs tensioned.  I de-tension the spring before storing the weapon.  That requires that I pull the trigger while having the gun pointed in a safe direction and after visually verifying again that the chamber is empty (since I only shoot hammer fired pistols, that’s an easy fix – I let the hammer slide down smoothly, and this is also an easy fix with bolt actions).  I don’t care so much about magazine springs.  And I don’t shoot striker fired pistols.

I know that this is done different ways for different people and that multiple strategies are advocated by shooters everywhere.  If there was one answer, there wouldn’t have been an article to begin with and no conversation necessary.