Even the best-trained, most-experienced, most-cautious people in the world are still... people. In the world.

People make mistakes. There has never been designed a zero-error human.

The world conspires to distract even the most attentive person.

If adequate training was all that is necessary to avoid NDs, guns would not have trigger guards. After all, if you're "careful enough," the trigger would simply never get caught on anything but an intentional finger.

Of course, the definition of 'careful enough' is circular - - you're only 'careful enough' prior to your next accident. At which point you clearly weren't.

The takedown lever is an elegant solution to human error that is all too common even among the experienced, and thus far I have seen no supported 'downside' to it. Have yet to see a case where malfunction of the takedown lever prevented intentional firing of the weapon or caused unintentional firing.

But you'll never catch me dangling my precious pinky down inside the chamber; I like it too much. I have way too good an imagination of what it would be like to have the chamber slap shut on it in case of 'mistake.'

Luckily, many common gun-cleaning tools will reach it just fine, including a Q-tip.

Murphy was an optimist.