I think only an idiot would leave it as a possibility, myself. But leaving that aside, if the reason you sleep with a gun under your pillow is that you're worried about getting burgled or something (and what other reason is there?), wouldn't being unexpectedly awakened be kind of similar in sound to being burgled? Further, I can think of a lot of non-idiot-related reasons for being a little jumpy. For example, someone with PTSD absolutely shouldn't sleep with a gun under their pillow.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Some might say that only an idiot would leave themselves vulnerable and relay on the slow police.
That's my exact point too. You don't just wake up and start shooting.

A pistol is there for a purpose- to protect your life and your families lives.
I know many women who do the same because they are protective. Of a Lot of things...

Now if you just up and wake up shooting, you're a threat to self and family!

You must address the issue. Determine the situation.
The way I was trained in firearms was "Never point a firearm unless you are fully prepared to shoot."

I've heard that too. Another one that makes me scratch my head is, "Always keep your guns loaded." If a gun is always loaded, then you'll always treat it as loaded, ie. carefully. If a gun is loaded sometimes and unloaded other times, then one time you'll forget which is which and BAM.

Why not just assume the gun is always loaded? Because then one time you'll need it to be loaded and CLICK.

(not a gun owner, and I would never keep a gun always loaded if I had kids in the house.)

I was taught to always treat it like it's loaded. However I was also taught to not keep one loaded.

Although you treat it like it always is.

In the military as well. There was unloaded, loaded, Locked and loaded and locked and loaded-safety off.

If you get to the point where you are locked, loaded, safety off, that means you are about to take a life.

I just remember a quote in a Movie, but I forgot what it is .


"Locked & Load Baby"

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Jean
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"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einsteiin

Pic any movie with an explosion and any even slightly military character from about 1995 and on to the foreseeable future. Data even said it in a Star Trek Movie.

No idea where the first use was.

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I'm not evil.
An evil person would do the things I think up.

Yerrr right!

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Jean
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"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einsteiin

Okay, for this non-gun person, I understand that unloaded means without ammunition, loaded means with ammunition, and that safety-off means, er, the safety's off and you can fully depress the trigger and fire the weapon. But what does locked mean?

As I understand it, it means that a round (i.e. bullet) is chambered and ready to fire.

This is different from "loaded" in that you can have a clip of ammunition in the weapon but not have a round in the chamber and/or not have the chamber closed. That would be "loaded" but not "locked".

I should offer the caveat that I have not served in the military so my understanding of the terminology could be incorrect or incomplete.

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Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

No, that's right Donnie. When you insert a magazine into the weapon, it doesn't automatically feed the first bullet into the chamber (at least, not traditional firearms...could be some fancy self-loading thing out there). Even with a loaded weapon, it will not fire...or really do anything at all, if you pull the trigger, because the strike-pin has nothing to strike. And guns eject the case and load the next round powered by the "blowback" of force you have from firing a round, so it will not load a round either.

Locked means you've manually loaded the first round, which is generally by manually simulating that blowback motion, i.e., pulling the top of the gun back and letting it go, like you see on tv (or pulling the bolt back in a similar fashion on riffles...or the "check-check" thing you always see people do with shotguns).

You're just manually doing what the force of firing a round will do in automatic wepons (though most shotguns aren't of the automatic variety).

Which leads to something we've talked about in the movie cliché thread. In movies, you always see the gun-weilding characters chamber a round every time they're about to fight, even if they've already done it a few minutes prior. In real life, ones you "chamber" the round like that, every subsequent time you do so you will eject a perfectly good, unspent bullet. The only time you ever need to do the "click-clack" thing is when you are out of ammo, and then insert a new mag.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

And for some pistols, firing the last round will leave the gun with the top back, ready for a new magazine to be inserted and a round chambered without needing the manual pullback.

For some reason many movie-makers haven't realized that if the actor can work the basic mechanics of the gun correctly, it gives the impression that the character is competent much better that when they're clichéing around.

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And the "driving on the freeway on a scooter" analogy still holds true because the pilots are sitting in 7 to 30 ton aircraft o' doom and you are running around them in your very own Meatbody, Mark I. Beep, beep.
Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Police: Intoxicated Mom Found Lying On Top Of Dead Toddler

So; how did she get the children back? It's only been 6 months.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Talk about a repeat offender. Homicide is right.

You beat me to this one. I'm sure happy they decided it wasn't important to report how she had custody back, if it was just last year that she lost the children. Wouldn't want to waste time with irrelevant information such as that. (Obviously, maybe they don't have that information yet, but the complete lack of comment is annoying. "The children were taken away last year, including the one she has in her custody" is just a huge continuity problem).

Regardless, she's a real winner.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Well; that could be the case, but if they have all that information about her past legal history, I would guess that that little ditty would be part of it.
And; if it was a quote, then I blame the reporter for not mentioning an attempt to get that little fact.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Complete a alcohol education course, jump through all the trite hoops, lie through your teeth, the kids are yours.

Keep in mind a typical social services division is so undermanned and so overworked, the hope of keeping more kids out of the system often takes precedence over proper due dilligence.

Yes; but which one and when?
And; that's the very point of bringing it up... to show just how big the social services issues may be. This story is directly related.

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Numbers are not case sensitive. (me)

Literally, lock and load means lock the bolt back then insert the magazine. The bolt is the removable rear wall of the firing chamber, the part that moves in an automatic weapon, just in case someone didnt know.

Most automatic weapons have a small lever that will hold the bolt back out of the way. This is so that after the magazine is loaded the bolt can be released to chamber the top round of the magazine.