Despite a few getting emotionally invested... everyone is free to do as they please, however for those on the sidelines-
Dropping the hammer gets us nothing other than getting in the habit of pulling a trigger when you don’t mean to fire. It’s an administrative action. Eventually it leads to a distracted action. I don’t care who you are- at some point you are going to unload or handle a firearm while distracted. When part of your administrative procedures is to arbitrarily pull the trigger: you’ve just set yourself up for an ND. And it was for no reason. There is no mechanical or safety reason to arbitrarily pull the trigger. You have to (should) clear it/check condition to handle it, so instead of pulling a trigger for no reason- apply the safety and give yourself one more layer to add some margin of error built in.
If you ever have loaded firearms around you, do yourself a favor and add redundancies to save yourself from a “bang” when you wanted a “click”. Or don’t.
I don’t own any AR’s but this reminds me of something that happened to me probably about 15 years ago. I was Mule deer hunting with my dad, brother and brother in-law. We all left camp in different directions and I was dropping down into some big fir timbered gullies and hillsides to start stillhunting. My routine if I was hiking was to close the bolt on an empty chamber, but full magazine, and pull the trigger. Then when I got serious and started stillhunting, I would load the chamber and put the safety on.
This time when I was ready to start stillhunting, I chambered a round and instead of putting the safety on, I had a brain fart and pulled the trigger. Scared the [bleep] out of myself.
I have to be honest and admit that I still keep the chamber empty and with the firing pin down when I’m hiking, although usually by holding the trigger while closing the bolt, but maybe I should have gotten into the habit of keeping the rifle cocked and safety on with an empty chamber instead.
The only good news is after scaring the crap out of yourself, you tend to not repeat the mistake and haven’t.
Just thought I’d share the story, and this is a very interesting topic even though I’m not an AR owner,,,,,yet.
