This past weekend, ToddG had a student in class that shot himself (in the leg). Todd relays the story here, not to chastise but to point out to everyone the importance of having an emergency plan in place and ensuring all students in the class know where first aid materials are and how each person in the class should react should something occur (e.g. you call 911).

The reason for the discharge? The student admits he had his finger on the trigger when he went to reholster.

I wanted to relay this because while the 3 classes I helped with this past weekend went pretty well, the worst thing I saw, overall, were violations of the two cardinal safety rules. I don’t care if you follow Jeff Cooper’s rules or the NRA’s rules, the two key rules come down to muzzle awareness and direction, and trigger discipline (and keeping your finger off the trigger when it shouldn’t be there).

In terms of muzzle awareness, people get slack about awareness at “off” times. That is, when it’s time to shoot they know to point the muzzle downrange. When it’s a not-shooting time, that’s when muzzle awareness and discipline falters. People would go to rack their slides and muzzles got pointed in all sorts of directions, typically somewhere to their left (for right-handed shooters). Many times people would be in a ready position with the muzzle pointed up… not straight vertical, but enough of an upwards angle that if a shot fired from that angle it would go over the berm. Most of this was unconscious action — the student wasn’t aware they were doing it. You cannot not be aware. You must always know the direction of your muzzle, and take steps to ensure your muzzle is pointed in a safe direction.

In terms of trigger discipline, when the muzzle is properly on target and you are ready to shoot, the finger can be on the trigger. Else, the finger is off the trigger and indexed along the upper part of the frame or slide. Helping people gain such trigger discipline was probably the biggest thing done throughout the course of the class. Unless your muzzle is on target and you are explicitly going to shoot, finger must not be on the trigger and must be indexed along the slide or upper frame. That’s all there is to say.

Violation of one of these rules is bad. Violation of both of these rules is what leads to tragedy.