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C-dub wrote:One thing that I've never understood was storing a gun with an empty mag inserted. Am I missing something? Gun shops do this and it bugs me a little. What if you, somehow, don't completely unload a magazine and then manage to load a round thinking that the gun is unloaded?

I think gun stores do it so they don't lose or mix up mags... they usually pull mags out and press check or lock open when they hand one to a customer... Although good timing on this- just yesterday I had a salesman hand me a 1911 w/o pulling the mag or checking it. I dropped mag and cleared visually before proceeding to admire.

Part of clearing a weapon is to visually confirm. If you drop mag, rack a few times and then slidelock open and visually inspect it's empty, you won't have a hole in your carpet. I see lots of people skipping this step when unloading semi auto handguns, and have seen people do it out of order and rechamber a round from the mag as they "clear" it.

The reverse is also true- even if I just cleared a weapon and set it down, if I pick it back up it gets re-verified. SOP.

Never assume anything... As we all know, the "unloaded" guns are often the ones that hurt people.