Safe gun handling

What you need

• A secure locking device or a locked case
• A cleaning kit
• Your licence and the current regulations

How

1. Treat every firearm as loaded, every time, including the one you just unloaded.
2. Never point it at anything you are not willing to destroy.
3. Finger off the trigger and outside the guard until the sights are on the target and you have decided to fire.
4. Know the target and what is behind it. A bullet does not stop at the animal.
5. Prove it safe every time it changes hands: action open, magazine out, chamber checked by eye and by finger, then pass it over open.
6. Unload before it goes in the truck, the boat, the cabin or the house.

Watch for

Notes

Storage and transport are set in law and the wording gets amended, so read the current federal regulation rather than anybody's memory of it. The short version at home for a non restricted firearm is unloaded, with a secure locking device fitted or locked in a container that cannot be readily broken into.