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Tom Mauser Promotes Unsafe Gun Use

by Ari Armstrong, June 11, 2003

Anti-gun activist Tom Mauser promotes the unsafe use of
guns, yet he believes he is sufficiently knowledgeable to
formulate laws that limit the civil liberties of peaceable
gun owners. Ironically, despite his decidedly unsafe
advice, Mauser used to act as spokesperson for the anti-gun
lobby organization Sane Alternatives to the Firearms
Epidemic, the name of which likened gun ownership to a
disease and assumed the acronym “SAFE.”

In a June 8 column in the Denver Post, Mauser writes,
“Recently Colorado was shocked by the tragic accidental
shooting of 11-year-old Sahil Ahmed. He was shot and killed
by a friend who thought a handgun was empty because the
magazine was removed. This tragic mistake has occurred
before, and many times manufacturers have been urged to
change designs so a bullet doesn’t stay in the chamber after
the magazine is removed – or to at least place an indicator
warning that a bullet is in the chamber.”

So, according to Mauser, the “mistake” made by the
15-year-old who shot Ahmed was to incorrectly believe a gun
with the magazine removed is unloaded. Hmm. And all this
time I thought his “mistake” was to point a gun at his
friend’s face and pull the trigger.

Mauser’s implicit message, then, seems to be that it would
be entirely reasonable to point a gun at your friend’s face
and pull the trigger, so long as you first checked the
“indicator warning” that’s supposed to tell you whether “a
bullet is in the chamber.”

Before we address Mauser’s errors concerning gun safety, we
might look at the specific facts of the case he mentions. I
have seen no evidence that indicates the teen who shot Ahmed
actually considered whether the gun he misused contained a
magazine. There’s no indication that his thought processes
followed a line something like the scenario Mauser lays out:
“I’m going to point this gun at my friend’s face and pull
the trigger. But first, I’m going to carefully examine the
gun to make sure the magazine has been removed.”

Gabrielle Crist of the Rocky Mountain News describes
something of the situation: “Sahil was pretending to be a
gangster and was pushing the boys, who would jokingly fall
to the floor, according to Bill Rapson, the attorney for the
15-year-old shooter and his family. One of the boys grabbed
a gun from a dresser drawer, Rapson said. Sahil, a
sixth-grader at Thunder Ridge Middle School, was shot once
in the head.” This is not at all a tragedy caused simply
because a teenager “accidentally” made a “mistake” about the
operation of a gun.

Let us assume the 15-year-old did actually check the gun and
note its magazine had been removed before he pointed the gun
at his friend’s face and pulled the trigger. Mauser would
have us believe that somebody ignorant about the basic
functions of a gun would nevertheless have properly
understood the function of an “indicator warning.”

By encouraging people to rely on mechanical “indicators,”
Mauser promotes the unsafe handling of firearms. If one
follows the basic rules of gun safety, such devices are
entirely irrelevant.

The 15-year-old who shot Ahmed violated every single rule of
gun safety. Those rules (quoted here from the NRA’s Basics
of Pistol Shooting) are worth reviewing.

1. Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.

2. Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to
shoot.

3. Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.

And the fourth rule: Treat every gun as if it were loaded.

If the teen had followed even one of the safety rules, the
horrible tragedy would have been avoided. If he had
followed all of them, the tragedy would have been
impossible. At age 15, certainly he is too old to claim he
didn’t know any better.

The fundamental mechanism that insures gun safety (and the
safety of all other tools) is the human brain. When that
mechanism fails, bad things are bound to happen, and no
mechanical “indicator warning” is going to change that.

I believe chamber indicators are inherently dangerous. I
don’t think gun manufacturers should install them even
voluntarily. First, any mechanical indicator can fail.
More importantly, gun owners should never get in the habit
of relying on these artificial mechanisms. There is only
one legitimate way to make sure a self-loading gun is safe:
while keeping the gun pointed in a safe direction and while
keeping your finger off the trigger, remove the magazine,
then pull back the slide and physically CHECK the chamber.
Anything short of that is unsafe.

It is indeed unfortunate that the boy’s parents failed in
their responsibilities by not properly educating their child
about gun safety, and that the teenager ignored all
strictures of common sense. YOU DO NOT POINT A GUN AT YOUR
FRIEND’S FACE. EVER.

It’s helpful to think of these “indicators” as
“false-security indicators.” If you rely on them, you have
a false sense of security. (In fact, I’m not even a big fan
of “safety” switches and buttons, though they can be helpful
when used appropriately. No so-called “safety” switch or
device installed in the gun can compensate for a failure to
abide by the rules of gun safety.)

I agree with other commentators that the adults in the home
were apparently irresponsible for keeping a firearm where
irresponsible persons could gain access to it. Colorado law
already provides penalties for instances of child abuse,
and, while the prosecutors decided not to bring charges
against the parents, they could have done so. However, when
I called Michael Knight, the public information officer for
the 18th Judicial District, he insisted there wasn’t enough
evidence to charge the parents, and he suggested I not rely
entirely on the reports of the “mass media” to form an
opinion. Perhap some factors are unknown that would alter
my evaluation of the case.

Let us review the third safety rule, then: “Always keep the
gun unloaded until ready to use.” If you are carrying a
concealed handgun for self-defense, obviously you “ready to
use” it at any time in self-defense. Thus, it is
appropriate to keep the cartridges in the cylinder of a
revolver, or in the magazine of a semi-automatic. (Some
people carry a semi-auto with a cartridge in the chamber and
the “safety” on, but I have a strong preference against
this.)

Obviously, if you carry a handgun concealed, the gun is
necessarily inaccessible by irresponsible persons. Thus,
the practice of concealed carry can be an excellent way to
keep a gun out of dangerous hands.

What about in the home? Yes, gun owners have a moral and
legal responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of
irresponsible persons. What constitutes “safe” storage of a
firearm depends on the context: in a home without any
irresponsible children around, a loaded gun can be kept in
the home, “ready to use,” in complete safety. In other
situations, different approaches are required.

What’s important to remember is that a gun is only useful
for self-defense if kept in a manner that allows it to be
fired relatively quickly. The correct approach
simultaneously keeps a defensive gun out of irresponsible
hands while at the same time allowing access in an
emergency. Falsely named “safe-storage” laws generally
require a gun be rendered useless for self-defense, and thus
they are counterproductive.

Another of Mauser’s points is that guns should be regulated
more heavily by federal agencies. Mauser provides no
evidence that guns, when used as intended, are unsafe — and
that’s precisely because modern guns are very safe indeed.
But Mauser believes gun manufacturers should be held liable
for the actions of criminals.

Somehow, Tom Mauser believes he is qualified to determine
safety guidelines for the manufacture of firearms. This
from the man who once said he wants to put “bullet
indicators” on “semiautomatic revolvers,” thereby
demonstrating his utter ignorance of the subject matter.

The new controls Mauser promotes are in no way analogous to,
say, seat-belts for automobiles. Seat-belts keep you safer
in the normal operation of a vehicle. However, mandated
mechanisms such as “chamber indicators” do no such thing.
They in no way increase the inherent safety of using a gun,
and, as I’ve argued, they actually encourage unsafe gun
handling.

What, then, is the goal of the national anti-gun lobby for
which Mauser so willingly serves as a mouthpiece? The goal
is to allow federal agencies to ban effective, safe firearms
over whatever pretext they wish to invoke. The goal is to
artificially increase the cost of firearms so more people
are priced out of the market. The proposed language of the
“reforms,” combined with the fact that the changes would be
counterproductive, allow for no other interpretation.

The Colorado Freedom Report–www.co-freedom.com