In India, a young man and woman get married. The bride is waiting in the car to go to the reception, the groom is on his way. The groom’s uncle wants to celebrate the occasion so he takes out his gun to fire it into the air. Apparently as he was loading it the gun fired accidentally, the bullet striking the groom in the head killing him. Story here.

What a way to turn a most joyous day into a most horrible day.

If the story is correct, there was no accident — only negligence. If the gun fired while it was being loaded there’s only one way for that to happen: the uncle had his finger on the trigger. Yes, perhaps the gun was mechanically unsafe, but that’s unlikely to be the case. Even if that was the case, to continue to carry and use an unsafe firearm is well… bad! So the first rules violation was finger on the trigger. The second rules violation was where the muzzle was pointed — certainly it was not pointed in a safe direction. Even firing into the air is not safe because what goes up must come down.

Whatever gun safety rule set you want to follow, in the end it breaks down to two things: where the muzzle is pointed (safe direction), and keeping your finger off the trigger (on target on trigger, off target off trigger — that simple). Both of those fundamental rules were broken and it created a horrible, tragic day for these families.

Some rules may have been made to be broken, but not these rules.