First rifle season opens October 14. The safety lesson behind it applies at 2 AM in your hallway.
Colorado’s first rifle season opens October 14. Thousands of people will walk into the timber with high-powered rifles, in low light, surrounded by other people they can’t see.
And almost nobody will get shot.
Before Colorado required hunter education in 1970, the state averaged around ten hunter deaths a year. Since then it has averaged less than one, with roughly half a million people in the field each season.
That isn’t luck. It’s one rule, drilled into every hunter until it’s automatic.
Plenty of people who keep a pistol by the bed have never drilled it once.
The rule
I teach the four Marine Corps weapons safety rules:
- Treat every weapon as if it were loaded.
- Never point your weapon at anything you do not intend to shoot.
- Keep your finger straight and off the trigger until you are ready to fire.
- Keep the weapon on safe until you intend to fire.
I add a fifth, and on every list I teach it belongs right after them:
- Know your target and what lies beyond it.
The first four keep you from shooting something by accident. The fifth keeps you from shooting the wrong thing on purpose. Off the range, it’s the one that matters most.
What hunters do that homeowners don’t
A hunter doesn’t shoot at movement. They don’t shoot at a sound, a shape, or a patch of brown in the trees. They wait until they can see what it is, confirm it’s legal, and check what’s behind it. If they can’t do all three, they don’t shoot. The animal walks away, and that’s an acceptable outcome.
They also wear fluorescent orange, because the person most likely to be mistaken for a target is another hunter.
Now picture the same person at home.
It’s 2 AM. A noise downstairs. They grab the pistol from the nightstand and go looking. The hallway is dark. There’s a shape at the bottom of the stairs.
Everything a hunter would demand before pulling the trigger is missing. No light. No identification. No idea what’s behind the target. And the stakes are higher than in the woods, because the people most likely to be in your house at 2 AM are the people you live with.
A teenager coming in late. A spouse home early from a trip. An adult kid with a key who didn’t call ahead. A relative up for a glass of water.
I once had a client who had a teenage son at the time. One night, the son was out with friends, and things did not go so well. The boy planned to sleep over at a friend’s house, but they got into an argument, so he headed home. Because it was late and he didn’t want to wake his parents, he didn’t call. Once he entered the home, the father was there with a pistol waiting, and thankfully he was awake enough that he identified his son and did not shoot.
What lies beyond
The second half of the rule is the part people skip.
Greg Ellifritz, a firearms instructor and retired police officer, reviewed a test of handgun ammunition fired through interior walls. The weakest defensive load in that test still went through five sheets of drywall. That’s more than two interior walls.
So when you picture the shot at the bottom of the stairs, picture what’s behind the target, too. The living room. The kids’ bedroom. The neighbor’s townhouse on the other side of a shared wall.
Ellifritz’s conclusion is the right one: don’t try to fix this by buying weaker ammunition. Fix it by hitting what you’re shooting at, and by knowing before you fire which directions have people behind the wall.
Every round is yours until it stops.
What to do this week
1. Put a light with the gun. You can’t identify what you can’t see. A handheld flashlight or a weapon-mounted light goes wherever the gun goes. If your nightstand has a pistol and no light, fix that tonight.
2. Walk your house in the dark, without the gun. Flashlight only. Start at your bedroom door and walk the route you’d take. Notice where the light washes out, where the shadows are, and how long it takes to tell who’s standing at the end of the hall.
3. Draw your floor plan and mark where people sleep. Then stand at your bedroom door and look at it. Which directions have someone behind the wall? Those are directions you can’t shoot. Most people have never looked at their own house this way.
4. Decide whether you’ll search at all. For most families, the safest plan isn’t hunting through the house. It’s gathering your people in one room, calling 911, and letting whoever comes through the door come to you, where you have light, cover, and a backstop you chose ahead of time.
5. Make a family rule: announce yourself. Anyone coming home late, or moving around the house at night, says their name out loud. Teach it to everyone with a key. It costs nothing, and it removes the most dangerous guess there is.
6. If you’re hunting this fall, you already know this rule. Bring it home with you.
The standard
Hunters don’t follow this rule because they’re more careful people than everyone else. They follow it because they were trained, tested, and reminded every season until it stopped being a thought and became a habit.
Nobody does that for the gun in your nightstand. You have to do it yourself, and you have to do it before the night you need it.
That’s what I teach: not just how to hit the target, but how to be certain it’s the right one.
John Rader
Colorado Tactics, LLC
Slow is smooth… Smooth is FAST!
720-464-SHOT | 720-464-7468
Sources
- Kiowa County Press, “Colorado hunting seasons open with new regulations for 2026,” September 3, 2026 (2026 rifle season dates and the fluorescent orange requirement, from Colorado Parks and Wildlife) — kiowacountypress.net
- Denver Gazette, “Colorado’s hunter education is responsible for low fatality rates,” November 12, 2020, updated July 18, 2025 (CPW figures: ~10 hunter fatalities a year before 1970, fewer than one a year since, ~500,000 hunters) — denvergazette.com
- Greg Ellifritz, Active Response Training, “Handgun Bullet Penetration Through Interior Walls,” October 18, 2021 — activeresponsetraining.net