Firearms instructor Brooke Cheney walks through how to confirm a semi-automatic handgun is unloaded. She covers the magazine release, slide lock, racking the slide, and visually inspecting the chamber. The video emphasizes treating every gun as loaded and keeping the muzzle pointed safely.
Hey, it's Brooke Cheney, and I just want to stop in and say yesterday I created a video on how to unload a gun, and it was pretty quick and it was decent. However, now I've looked at it, I just want to point out a couple of things. So if you haven't seen it yet, it'll only take you less than 2 minutes to go watch it. I'll put the link down below in the, in the comments if you'd like to click there. But we're gonna go through it a little bit, and after I did it, I realized there were things that were missing. So this video is it's gonna be a little bit longer because it's gonna have all the pieces that I realized after I watched it, what I missed. Hey, welcome to a Great Start Shooting Schools how-to video. This is our first one, so bear with us. My name is Brooke Cheney. I'm a firearms instructor and competitive shooter, and all I care about is safety, safety, safety. Okay, so not so bad yet, right? But wait a second, I just showed you a gun, but I didn't say anything about the safety rules for having a gun, touching a gun, any of that. So we're going to insert those here because that's super important that you understand what the safety rules actually are. And what I have up on the screen are going to be both sets of safety rules because people say there's— ask about safety rules, but they usually quote one or the other. I wanna make sure that you have both sets. All right, let's talk about these safety rules real quick. Number 1, always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. Number 2, always keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot. Number 3, always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use. In this video, we're showing you how to make sure a gun is unloaded. So that's one set. Now, the other sets, which I have to read, cause they're right in front of me, so hold on, are Jeff Cooper's versus the NRA. So number 1, always treat firearms as if they are loaded at all times. So here's the thing. One of the things I always want to tell my students, if anyone ever points a gun towards you and says, "Don't worry, it's not loaded," they've already missed rule number 1, which is always treat firearms as if they're loaded at all times. 2. Never point a firearm at something you are not willing to destroy. To me, this goes back to NRA rule number 1: be sure that your gun is pointed in a safe direction. 3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on your target. And 4. Always be sure of your target and what is beyond it. We'll get into all of these in another video. We don't really want to take the time to do that right now. Let's go and look at the rest of the video. This is a gun. What would you do if you found this gun? Why, yes, that's the first question you should be asking. Is it empty? And let's find out. So those absolutely seemed as if they were the right questions to be asking. However, when showing this to a friend of mine, they said, well, yes and no, because here's the deal. I'm assuming as you're watching this video and you're learning how to unload a firearm, you are legally allowed to do do so. The other part of this is, if this were a child watching the video, the answer is no, stop, don't touch, leave the area, find an adult. And then if adult comes and doesn't know what to do, then yes, they also need to stop and don't touch and find someone who does know how to handle it. So as much as I thought that was a great idea, I made a couple of assumptions that you were already legal to handle the firearm and that you already knew those safety rules that we just went over. So let's see what else there is. It's relatively simple. You want to look for two important things on a semi-automatic: your magazine release and your slide lock. When you push the magazine release in, the magazine actually comes out. The slide lock is the next part. You're going to push that up in order to hold the slide back. What part is the slide? Oh, it's right here. That's the slide. Now, while you're holding the gun with your left hand, put your thumb on the slide lock, then find homes for all the rest of your fingers. Now grab the slide from the top and push in opposite directions while your thumb is pushing up to hold the slide back. Once the slide's back, it's time to look to see if your gun is really empty. These are dummy rounds that you get to see in the chamber. When it's empty, this is what it should look like. Nothing in there at all. That's your goal. Congratulations! Alright, so that part really wasn't that bad. However, when I was making the video, I realized there is so much that goes into racking a slide, and if I went into everything, this would have been a 15-minute video instead of a 2-minute video. So the good news is there'll be more videos coming, and we'll get into stance and how to grip and how to move stuff. So for now, I think that's kind of it. And thanks again for watching, and have a great day, and be safe always. Well, thanks for watching. It's quick, it's dirty. You may or may not have caught everything that I just taught, so by all means Go to agreatstartshootingschool.com or agsss.com and book a class for me. I look forward to seeing you.
