Do’s and Don’ts with Lever Action Rifles

Do’s and Don’ts with Lever Action Rifles (Levergun Tricks for Practical Use) video from Ivan's Journal. 

Summary:

Set two lever guns side by side. Walnut stocks, exposed hammers, both looking like they rode out of the same western. Now read the manuals that came with them. One says you can carry it fully loaded with the hammer down. The other says never carry it with a cartridge in the chamber at all.

The lever action is sold to us as the simple rifle, the grandpa gun, the one nobody needs a class for. It is not foolproof. It is honest, and it tells you exactly what you did wrong.

So nobody writes in about it, here is where I stand. I have owned lever guns most of my adult life, Marlins from three different eras and a couple of Henrys, and I have watched a lot of people run them at the range. I love these rifles. That is exactly why I stopped saying a lever gun is a lever gun.

The scariest moment I ever watched with one did not happen when somebody pulled the trigger. It happened when a man was trying to make the rifle safe. Hammer back, thumb sliding off a wet spur, muzzle drifting somewhere it had no business being. Nothing happened that day. But for a moment his thumb was the only thing holding that hammer, and he believed the simple rifle did not have rules.

What we go through:

Why Henry says hammer down on a loaded chamber is fine and Uberti says do not dare, and how the transfer bar explains it When Marlin and the Winchester Model 94 picked up their safeties, and why the era of your rifle matters Lowering a hammer on a live round, and the habit that removes a whole category of risk Why pointed bullets do not belong in a tube magazine, and the exception Hornady engineered with LEVERevolution Short-stroking, the most common lever gun jam, and why the rifle is usually innocent Cheap 38 Special in a 357 Magnum lever gun, double feeds, and the ring of crud that put one Marlin on a gunsmith's bench The Henry front-loading tube people laughed at for years, and why Henry kept it when the side gate finally came Topping off through the loading gate, and the thumb bite everybody pays for Cleaning a Marlin against a Winchester pattern, and why you never flood the action with solvent Big loop levers, spin-cocking, optics, and the federal short-barreled rifle line JM, Remlin and Ruger: how to read a Marlin by its serial number and markings before you read the price tag Transport, storage, and why an empty chamber over a full tube may not count as unloaded

Said plainly on safety: if you do not need a round in the chamber, do not keep one there. Follow the manual for your exact rifle, not somebody else's, and the rules of your state and any state you drive through. Practice the full lever stroke with dummy rounds, rifle pointed in a safe direction. Clean only an unloaded rifle with the chamber and tube checked and the ammunition somewhere else. Anything past normal field stripping is a gunsmith's job.

There is no secret trick in any of this. There are good habits. It is only that nobody gets famous telling you to read the thin little booklet that came in the box.

Tonight, take out your lever gun, unloaded, and find out exactly which rifle you own. The maker, the era, the safety, the markings on the barrel. Then dig out the manual and read it like it matters, because it does.

Tell me in the comments what lever gun you shoot and how old it is. And tell me this: what is the one lever gun mistake you made early on that nobody warned you about?

The notes I have gathered over the years on the small mistakes that cost people money, or worse, are in my book at ivansjournal.com