Gun Safety: How to Check If Your Gun is Loaded

Series Summary

”Gun” is a generic term for anything that projects an object at a high velocity. There are many different types of guns including a rifle, machine gun, handgun, musket, tank guns, pistol, shotgun, and paintball guns. Handguns are divided into two groups depending on the location of the chamber. Revolvers have a chamber that revolves and the chamber on a pistol is integrated in the barrel. Rifles and other long guns are bigger, harder to conceal and generally used for game hunting. Rifles have a stock and barrel with spiraling grooves cut into the interior of the barrel.

In this series of informative videos, you will learn more about gun safety and specific handguns and rifles. Watch as our expert describes and applies the “safety.” You should never leave a loaded gun lying around the house. Our expert explains how to look at a gun to make sure it is not loaded and how to handle a gun safely. After learning how to handle a gun safely, watch as or expert demonstrates how to clean a gun. Get an introduction to a few classic guns in these clips including the 22 Automatic Pistol, Rifle and a small Pistol 38 Special.

Video Transcript

"Hi, This is John. Today we are going to talk a little bit about what I have in my gun collection and how to tell if a firearm is in a safe mode. What we have here are two revolvers and two automatics. This is a Smith & Wesson 500 Magnum, this is a 38 Special Revolver, a 22 automatic pistol and this is a 22 automatic rifle. The easiest way to tell if a revolver is loaded or not is to open the cylinder. This is accomplished by pushing the cylinder release button on the left hand side and look to see if all the chambers are empty and you can proceed to lay this gun down and check the other ones. On an automatic all you have to do is pull back the slide, look in the chamber and make sure there are no rounds in the chamber and then you can let the slide go forward. An automatic rifle such as we have here you can pull the slide back, there are no rounds in the chamber. If you are not familiar with any firearms do not ever pick it up. Last place to find out if a firearm is loaded and you don’t know how to work with it is when it goes off and injures yourself or kills someone. Remember, think safety first any time you are around a fire arm. "