Joe, I dunno about the Marlin 60. Have to go get my hands on one and play with it a bit to maybe figure out what the deal was on those.
One of the things that deeply surprised me were how many NDs I found with people dry firing revolvers. Nearly all of them were instances where the user looked at the cylinder but did not count the empty chambers. It's surprisingly easy to swing a cylinder out far enough that it looks/feels completely open, but isn't open enough to show
all the chambers.
Like this:
It's really, really easy to miss seeing something we don't expect to see.
(For the record, the photos don't cheat. The gun in the first picture is every bit as loaded as the one in the second picture.)
That's why I strongly suggest people who use revolvers should make a lifetime habit of counting the holes with a fingertip every time they unload. It's too easy for eyeballs to lie.
I think, too, the old-timer's habit of counting the rounds in the hand (rather than individually checking the chambers) caused quite a few of the issues. In one case, the guy was already holding one round so when he unloaded his revolver and then carefully counted the rounds in his hand, he thought he was good to go because "all six of them were there". Loud noise followed.
Speaking of old timers, here's what car seats looked like when I was a little girl.
We had one like that, I think. But I don't think my parents used it much. My favorite place to ride was on dad's lap in the driver's seat, "helping" him steer. People used to do things like that. I can also remember lying down in the back of the family station wagon, playing cards with my brother in the cargo space. Or stretched out in a sleeping bag on the floor of the van, or letting the wind blow through my hair as we rode in the open bed of a pickup truck. All of those things were normal when I was a kid — and all of them are pretty much unacceptable parenting practices now.
We might smile when we remember things like that and say, “Oh, we survived those ‘dangerous’ practices, so they must not have been so dangerous after all!”
But when we say that, we’re being very foolish, because you know who we can’t ask? All the children who died before they got to be as old as we are. Check this out:
In pretty much the same way as motor vehicle crashes have gotten a
lot safer for children because of changes in both technology and behavior, firearms ownership and use has gotten a
lot safer for nearly everyone because of changes in both technology and behavior.
More guns are drop-safe than ever before.
Holsters now routinely cover the trigger and trigger guard area of the gun.
More people (though still not all and that needs to change) lock up their firearms when they are not under the conscious control of a responsible adult, which reduces unauthorized access by children and clueless people.
More people consciously follow all four of the most basic gunhandling rules, all the time.
And look at what's happened to the death and injury rate:
(That image came from
this link, which has all the information a person might want about where the numbers came from and what they might mean.)
So while I deeply respect the experience people older than I might have had with firearms during their formative years, I'm also acutely aware that the changes in 'best practices' have saved many, many lives.
The key is to learn from other people's experiences, and not insist on making all of our own mistakes.
pax
If you have two ways of handling guns, one for ‘loaded’ guns and one for ‘unloaded’ ones, you will default to the wrong one in a moment of stress or inattention. – Chuck Haggard
.