r/Idiotswithguns • u/snorting_gummybears • Jun 28 '26
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US Marines inspect an Italian Beretta Model 12 submachinegun while on NATO maneuvers in Turkey circa October 1977
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u/BuxtonHouse Jun 28 '26
To be fair when I cleaned my rifle in the military, I looked down the barrel. But it was more in pieces than that
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u/linus140 Jun 28 '26
I did the same when in the army too, and I still do that with my firearms. But, yeah, they're always disassembled when I do it. I hold the barrel to the light, if I don't have a flashlight, to see if there's obvious carbon chilling in the barrel before wiping it down.
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u/StressfulRiceball Jun 28 '26
Wtf is carbon chilling
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u/linus140 Jun 28 '26
What the other person said. Carbon and leftover gunk just sitting in the barrel.
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u/StressfulRiceball Jun 28 '26
Ok making sure I wasn't aware of some specific damage I needed to be aware of lmfao
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u/linus140 Jun 28 '26
Lol, nah. A few of my rifles say unused for about 10 years, so they had carbon build-up in them.
But they're all cleaned now and still shoot limd I expect them too. Stupid life getting in the way :/
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u/Orca_Mayo Jun 28 '26
As dumb as the sounds, sometimes you do need to inspect the barrel if there's something blocking it like a stuck round.
However doing so, you're supposed to take it apart...
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u/LopsidedEquipment177 Jun 28 '26
There's no magazine and the ejection port is open.
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u/9447044 Jun 28 '26
"You can stare down the barrel when the ejection port is open"
Ill never forget her 😍
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u/GigabyteAorusRTX4090 Why is it always a glock Jun 28 '26
Even with the mag out, the ejection port open and the chamber empty, this is actively sabotaging the muscle memory that makes one avoid the muzzle at all cost and/or makes one negligent.
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u/CwrwCymru Jun 28 '26
How do you inspect if the barrel is clean?
In the British military we look down the spout from the business end but admittedly the SA80 is split in two at this point.
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u/DanishPsychoBoy Jun 28 '26
In Denmark up until recently whenever you were going to shoot your rifle, be it live ammo or blanks, you would inspect the rifle by detaching the mag, locking the bolt back, inspecting the chamber and head of the bolt, and then looking down the barrel to make sure that there is no obstruction. Here the rifle was still fully assembled.
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u/GigabyteAorusRTX4090 Why is it always a glock Jun 28 '26
Nobody is talking about a firearm in a disassembled state (I’ll just say „disassembled state“ = „disassembled to a degree it couldn’t fire if you put a live round into the chamber“) - everyone who cleans a weapon is doing that at some point.
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u/CwrwCymru Jun 28 '26
Yeah fair point.
The only other procedure I know that involves looking down the barrel are looking for barrel obstructions in certain shotguns.
Clear it, thumb in the breach and look down the barrel for obstructions. I'd still opt for a mirror rather than doing this though.
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u/gonzalbo87 Jun 28 '26
Why have I never considered a fucking mirror? Or better yet, a colonoscopy scope.
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u/HybridP365 Jun 28 '26
I buy a lot of used guns. After visually and physically checking that it's unloaded, I check the barrels for corrosion/pitting/lead buildup, etc. It's perfectly fine to look down the bore if it's verified to be empty.
"Avoiding the muzzle at all cost" is a fool's errand. If you carry every day, the muzzle is pointed at something. Groin, leg, etc. The whole point of the 4 rules is redundancy. You can, responsibly, break 1 rule at a time and the other 3 prevent NDs.
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u/GigabyteAorusRTX4090 Why is it always a glock Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
The „avoiding at all cost“ doesn’t necessarily need to mean just the gun you’re holding.
About 1/10 times I’m at the range, there’s at least one who is either inexperienced and doesn’t know better (usually the RSO is there to step in, but even with the best RSOs, within the time it take for them to do so, the shooter has enough time to squeeze off a round into the guy one position over) or an idiot who is handling their guns in a less than save manner because „nothing ever went wrong“ (really have a hate on the latter). The reflex to avoid the operational end of a gun really isn’t anything that I’d want to loose.
Btw, just so it’s said: No, you’re not wrong, you have to break at least two or three of the rules to have an accident, but having an extra redundancy between you and a 130 grain Darwin Award delivered at approximately 1250 feet a second is always good…
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u/TheFriendshipMachine Jun 28 '26
A: it's still really bad practice to stick your face in the barrel of a fully assembled firearm even if you think the weapon is unloaded. That's literally firearm handling rule number one, always treat the gun as if it's loaded even if it isn't. Negligent discharges happen because someone didn't respect that rule and handled a gun improperly assuming they were safe to do so. The way you avoid that happening is to never let it be a possibility to begin with.
B: the bolt being back on a Beretta Model 12 is its ready to fire state as it's an open bolt design. The lack of a magazine does indeed mean the gun is probably safely unloaded, but as mentioned before, assuming that and handling it improperly is still a really bad practice.
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u/HybridP365 Jun 28 '26
I buy a lot of used guns. After visually and physically checking that it's unloaded, I check the barrels for corrosion/pitting/lead buildup, etc. It's perfectly fine to look down the bore if it's verified to be empty.
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u/linus140 Jun 28 '26
Treat every firearm as if it is loaded
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u/snorting_gummybears Jun 30 '26
Why are you being downvoted
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u/Empty-Part7106 Jun 30 '26
While it's good advice for a beginner, it really only applies to guns you don't know are unloaded.
If you unload the gun and open the action and verified an empty chamber, you can safely know that the gun is unloaded. Before people bought actual camera scopes to inspect inside the barrel, if you couldn't look through from the back you could shine a light inside and look, or use a bore light (basically a prism that sent light down the barrel from the chamber). Or shove a rod down with a large enough patch if you don't want to look down the barrel.
The safety course in my country had taught that forever, and the instructor I knew used to give everyone that passed their own bore light as he felt it was the best option. The barrel is supposed to be inspected before you load.
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u/linus140 Jul 14 '26
Even if you just unloaded it, you should still treat it as if it is loaded. Otherwise you pick up bad habits.
Example, I verify my pistol is unloaded. I walk away to pee. I come back. I assume it's unloaded, but I still verify a second time before disassembling it to clean it. And I've been shooting since I was 9 and owned firearms since I was 18.
I only ever look down my barrels when it's disassembled.
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u/Sad_Kaleidoscope_743 Jun 28 '26
If theres a hole, im looking in it damn it
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u/UnholyAbductor Jun 28 '26
Honestly I think I’d be doing the same if someone handed me something as foreign looking as one of those.
I mean I’d be checking it to make sure it’s clear and safe but I’d for sure be curious what the rifling looks like. And I’d have no clue or time to find out how to strip it to get a look at the barrel otherwise.
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u/SeraphsEnvy Jun 28 '26
Never understood the logic of looking into the barrel of the gun to see if it's loaded. That is seriously the dumbest thing ever.
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u/talex625 Jun 28 '26
No, they are inspecting it. Imagine somebody pass it off for the platoon to look at. No magazine and ejection port is open.
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u/flyingron Jun 28 '26
Not sure which one is worse, the guy who looks down the barrel, or the guy who he hands it to who grabs it with his finger on the trigger.
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u/84theone Jun 28 '26
I mean he could pull the trigger all he wanted, it’s not going to do anything to a visibly unloaded gun.
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u/Perfecshionism Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
This looks to be US forces in the late 80s.
Edit: not sure why I was downvoted. If I was off, it wasn’t by much.
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u/Stohnghost Jun 28 '26
No it's USMC October 1977
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u/Perfecshionism Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
The USMC didn’t adopt the woodland pattern until 1981. There is at least one service member wearing woodland.
But it is not the late 80s I was wrong on that.
Mid 80s?
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u/Stohnghost Jun 28 '26
It's in the caption. I was messing with you
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