Administrative Gun Handling

Administrative gun handling is essentially what we do every time we handle our firearms. A lot of us do this every single day. Unless you rarely remove your mag, unchamber/chamber a round, holster/unholster, clean or dry fire with your gun, then you likely administratively handle your gun MORE than you actively train with it. Yet, which activity do you pay more attention to? Have you considered that you may be statistically more likely to harm yourself (or others) handling your gun at home than on the range? Did you know that approx 77% of accidental gun deaths happen in the home*? I bet you those people weren’t in the middle of live target practice in their living room. They were likely performing one of the mundane tasks you perform almost daily as a concealed carrier.

Wayne Dobbs said, “Every time you touch a firearm you are making a life, death, and financial decision and needs to be taken seriously.” Keep this in mind as you go about your administrative gun handling. Mastering the fundamental firearms safety rules is an absolute must here. People forget the “treat all guns as if they’re loaded” and “don’t point your muzzle at anything you do not wish to destroy” rules all the time. When you are cleaning your gun, is there ever a time that it’s pointed at you? When holstering a gun? Drawing a gun? Do you load and unload your weapon while it’s pointed at something that will stop a bullet (i.e. a concrete floor or wall), or is it pointed at a window looking out to your neighbor’s house?

Take as much care with your gun when it’s “unloaded” as when it is loaded. We are inherently flawed creatures. If you treat your gun like it’s loaded, then you’re golden; if you don’t, and it is, you or a loved one could wind up fatally wounded.

The information that @ballisticj and Darryl Bolke put out has majorly influenced my thoughts on this topic. Go give @ballisticj a listen and check out Darryl on his Facebook page “DB’s Shooting Adventures”.

What measures do you take to minimize risk during administrative gun handling?

*The above statistic includes children who gain access to firearms (that’ll be another post)