A good idea when buying and hunting with a rebounding locks hammer gun is to check the condition of the rebound system. It often goes out of order unadvertingly to the gun owner - the gun keeps shooting OK, it just isn't safe any more, but you will never know it until you have an accidental discharge. Remove the barrels, press a piece of soft wood (a hexagonsal pencil works fine), draw the hammer to just a fraction from where it cocks and let it fall without pressing the trigger. The goal of the rebound system is to catch the hammer from striking the primer; if you see an imprint of the firing pin on the pencil, the system is out of order and the gun would have gone bang if there were a live round in the chamber. Have it fixed, don't tempt fate. On non-rebounding locks the same test shows if the half-cock sear is strong enough to catch the hammer and don't let it go bang.
