If you carry a hot gun, and if you use the safety ever- use the safety always. Do not have one set gunhandling for when it’s loaded, one for when it’s unloaded, and one set for when it’s stored.
Empty guns, clearing barrels, sometime use of the safety and sometimes not, and guys habitually dropping the hammer without wanting to fire (dry or live) are the greatest cause of ND’s in the military.
Law Enforcement as well.
There are cops who hate to qualify (a lot of them, actually), because of their firearm skills level, including gun handling. Others just do the minimum to get by. The only intensive firearms training they get is during the academy unless they're part of a special unit, and they train, train, and train some more.
If you store your AR as I, and some others here do, the first thing you do upon picking it up is run the charging handle and put the safety on. THEN you do the other things, not before. Muzzle and trigger finger discipline are paramount.
If you are expecting a round to have been placed in the chamber when you ran the charging handle, do a "right load/left load" check of the magazine. That will tell you immediately if you have chambered a round or not. The safety never comes off nor the trigger finger gets close to the trigger.
It's really not any different than the method you were talking about insofar as safety is concerned, and it's not one way of gun handling when it's loaded (or so one would think) versus unloaded (again, so one would think) since the first step on picking it up is to determine, without a doubt, the status of the chamber and immediately apply the safety.
When downloading for storage, or to hand the AR to another person, the FIRST thing you do is drop the magazine, lock the BCG back, LOOK and FEEL the chamber to make sure it's clear, then, and only then, with muzzle control being maintained and ejection port left open, do you hand the AR to another person.
With all of these things, irrespective of your preferred method, always do it the same way. Unconscious competence is what you are after.
Ed
