[PippaMags]

When I was a kid playing with toy guns and BBguns my dad who lived in Alaska for several years made sure us kids understood gun safety. My nephew has nerf guns and I pass on those same lessons about gun safety. Rule #1 is know where your ammo is. Is there a round in the chamber? How many rounds in your clip? How many shots until you have to reload?

Fast forward to me as an adult, having plenty of experience working with blanks during training exercises. You train as if it is live ammunition AND your blanks are marked differently to identify them from live rounds. Whenever you give a weapon to someone else you check the chamber to expel the round that’s chambered and if you’re handed a weapon first thing you do is check the chamber - even if you just saw the other person clear the chamber - you do this so you can ensure you know what is in that chamber at all times. Same questions run through your mind like a checklist, is it the right ammo, is there a round in the chamber? How many in the clip? How many until I have to reload.

Bottom line is they SHOULD have had safety mechanisms in place to ensure the person handing off a weapon confirms it is the right ammo (blanks should be marked differently as a safety check) and the person taking the weapon should also check. Chances are none of these safety protocols were in play and the death of the person is a horrible accident BUT I would hope the industry uses this horrible outcome to implement very easy checks. It takes less time to check the chamber than it did for me to type this chat post.

it’s a person peeve when people don’t exercise firearm safety. It only takes one bullet to destroy so many lives. The person shot, the person who accidental shot them, and everyone who witnessed it. Not to mention the families - so many people impacted by a single bullet….pointless