My point being... and I want to be clear on this...
People get into habit patterns and routines. They do stuff almost autonomically, not giving proper thought to simple basic things at times because life gets repetitive and routine
Exactly! And this is why we as gun owners have to be more disciplined than anybody. This is why we should treat every gun as if it was loaded, and why we should teach and reinforce that same lesson to every young shooter we bring to the sport. This is why, if I hand my elderly Dad my newest toy to examine, the first thing he'll do is open it and make sure it's unloaded. If I assure him that it's unloaded, he'll say, "In God we trust...I'll double check." His mind is still very sharp, but if I do the same ten years from now, he'll do the same out of the lifelong habit, pattern, and routine you spoke of. He drilled the same into my head before the first time I touched a gun, and he made me understand that if I screwed up even once, I would not be trusted to go shooting or hunting with him or my Uncles and cousins. I believed him, and more than anything, I did not want to jeopardize that. The NRA Certified Instructors who supervised the indoor range in my high school taught us also to treat every gun as if it was loaded, and to never point it at anyone even after we verified it was unloaded. They too let us know this was a zero tolerance rule. There were thousands of round fired in my school every week, but never a problem. Now guns are demonized to the point that a 5 year old girl gets a 10 day suspension for having a Hello Kitty Bubble Gun, and a 6 year old boy gets suspended for pointing his finger and saying "bang bang". That's why it bothered me to see the opinion that a snap cap is nothing more than a time bomb. We hear much the same from the anti's who say that a gun in the home is an accident waiting to happen. Yes, there are gun accidents, but virtually every one could be prevented through safe gun handling habits. And safe gun habits will naturally become routine and unconsciously automatic. We have to be extra careful because of the times we live in. Every time someone is killed or injured by an accidental discharge, the anti's seize upon that incident. But when someone backs over a kid on a tricycle in the driveway, no one will call for outlawing cars. Snap caps don't kill people. People kill people.
