Let this well known and common-sense saying be your guide
and you will not go far wrong
NEVER EVER LET YOUR GUN,
POINTED BE AT ANYONE
CLICK IMAGE
NEVER point your firearm at anybody,
EVEN if you are SURE it is unloaded
ALWAYS treat ANY firearm as if it is loaded.
THE RESPONSIBILITY LIES WITH THE NUT BEHIND THE BOLT !
Please read on below:
Taken from "Punch, or the London Charivari" October 4th. 1873
SPIRITS AND FOOLS
WHAT more than has been already said a thousand times over can be said of
the "shocking affair" which, in substance,
has happened times out of number related, as below, by a contemporary, under the heading of "Fatal Foolishness ? "
Six navvies were assembled at a house in Bettws Garmon, a hamlet near Carnarvon.
Their day's work was over, "and they commenced to play games with each other". Two played at soldiers:-
"One of them, a member of the Carnarvonshire Militia, named CHARLES WILLIAMS, a native of Carnarvon, took up an old gun and began to go through the drill with a companion, who was also a militiaman. WILLIAMS was ignorant of the fact that the gun was loaded. He cocked it, brought it up to his shoulder presented it at his comrade's head, took steady aim, and fired. His comrade fell down a corpse, the ball having passed through his head. WILLIAMS voluntarily came on to Carnarvon and delivered himself up to police."
It may be thought that the foolishness of this kind of act, which fools keep repeating, as the moth and the daddylonglegs repeat that of flying into the candle, cannot possibly be further set forth than it has repeatedly been. Perhaps that is so; but there is a folly in connection with it which, those who are likely to commit, or may be able to prevent at least, have not had so frequently pointed out to them.
That is the folly of leaving a gun about loaded, which is conditional to the foolish act of letting it off. A gun could hardly be fired, in foolishness, at a companion by one fool, if it had not been left about loaded by another fool.
The fool who leaves about a loaded gun, and the fool who pulls its trigger,
or the trigger of any gun, whether loaded or not, whilst the gun covers anybody
whom he does not mean to shoot, are nearly as great fools, one as the other.
But the latter of those fools is something worse than a fool; for covering anyone
with a gun and drawing the trigger even knowing it to be unloaded, is shooting
that person in idea, and that idea is a vicious and criminal one in itself,
and ought, perhaps, in act, to be rendered more punishable than it is.
Vol. LXV.
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