How Should Firearms Be Transported In A Boat? – Carry Guide

If you plan on a boat trip and want to take your guns with you, it pays to research prior.

This article hopes to answer the question of “How Should Firearms Be Transported In A Boat?” to aid you in your journey and make sure that you don’t make any mistakes that you’ll regret, so read on!

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Photo by Tim Donovan (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

How Should Firearms Be Transported In A Boat?

For a firearm to be transported in a boat, it needs to be out in the open for important personnel to know where it is. You can also break it down into essential parts, and this is entirely up to your call as to which method you think yields the most safety. The safest spot for a firearm is at the front of your boat and a muzzle headed away from other passengers.

Doing this serves the three main purposes of proper firearm care on boats:

  • To prevent accidents caused by the firearm.
  • To prevent others from having access to your firearm.
  • To keep the firearm in good shape if you need to use it. Thus the location and the disassembling of the firearm should be followed closely. 

But if you want to ensure utter safety, you will need to know how to clear the gun and keep it properly. 

#1. Clear The Gun:

Each type of gun has its procedure for clearing – the act of ensuring that there are no live rounds to be shot from the device. Clearing the firearm makes sure that the chance of a firearm producing any shots is an absolute zero, so it is a necessary skill for all gun owners.

If you do not know how to clear the firearm either due to lack of experience or dependence on guiding manuals, we are here to help. Here are the steps on how to clear a gun:

Take out the magazine from the gun’s body:

This is to prevent new bullets from entering the fray. Lay the magazine aside; we can deal with that later.

Pull the handle back to the furthest position it can go:

This should effectively eject all remaining bullets in the gun’s firing chamber. Do not put the handle back in its place, but instead leave it in the back position for safety. 

Inspect the chamber carefully while the gun is in this state, as bullets stuck in the chamber can still fire and need to be properly removed. If you are not entirely sure if all bullets have been ejected, you can use your hand to examine the chamber. 

Pull the trigger once last time:

This is to be completely sure about the gun’s firing state. You should only do this with the gun facing in a direction where it cannot injure anybody and cannot hit any hard surface (bullet fragments are still very dangerous). The safest place to pull this step off is in a shooting range.

Flip the safety switch on your gun:

Or you can activate any specific safety mechanism for the gun model.

All these steps should render your gun useless as a weapon, and that is what we want to see in something taken around on a boat. Moreover, unloaded and unfireable guns are the standard for any type of gun delivery, according to the military

Even when you think that the chance where a gun could fire upon impact is slim to none, it is still a chance that you do not want to happen. Besides, even if the gun does not get shocked and fired, it can still be accidentally fired by other people – especially minors – when they hold the device.

#2. Keep The Gun In A Safe Lock:

Keeping your firearm somewhere only you can access a sure way to prevent any mishaps from occurring. The lock should be able to keep the gun in one place, stopping it from damaging itself and firing upon impact as well. You can use the tool cabinet at the front of your boat to store your firearm, but even then, you should wrap it up carefully.

How To Transport Many Firearms At Once?

If you have any firearms on board, you should know how to care for all of them equally and safely. Here’s how you can do that:

Clear, unload and disassemble all firearms:

Please follow the guide that we have provided above. If you are extra careful, you should also put the firearms in their respective cases.

Distribute the firearms throughout the boat: 

Do this rather than piling them all up in one cupboard/cabinet. The guide on avoiding shock and personnel locking is the same as before to prevent unwanted accidents and unauthorized use.

Relocate passengers to the back seat:

Every important personnel should have a map of firearm storage and their typical map of seats on the boat. A smart way to plan seatings is to have the passengers stay behind where you store firearms, as all firearms will be pointed forward. All these extra planning steps are to ensure maximum security and property handling.

The method of transporting multiple firearms on one boat should be as careful as delivering just one gun as before. So make sure you have people you trust on the crew to handle the task of taking apart the guns and putting them all in safe places.

You should also think about how to put away ammunition. Usually, storing ammo in the same casing they were sold in is already safe enough. 

But if you want to ensure further safety, keeping your ammunition in the dark, cool, and dry cabinets/areas should suffice. Ammunition can still explode when exposed to too much heat or pressure, so being light-handed and store ammo right way during the transportation is a must.

Related: Can I Carry A Gun In My Car? Let’s Find Out!

How To Transport Firearms In Long Boat Rides?

If the trip is long, you should not solely rely on your cabinets on board to store your firearms. On extended rides, what you need is a gun safe. The more specialized the lock, the better. 

The gun safe should provide your gun(s) with the ideal condition to stay in top shapes, such as protection against dust and water and gun locks to keep the firearms in one place.

Gun cases can also be used in tandem with gun safes, as they both are the industry’s attempts at keeping guns away from sudden impact. Gun cases can also keep your parts undamaged when disassembled as an extra layer of security. 

So, all in all, if someone must use their firearm on boats, they will have to open the safe, open the case, assemble the gun, put the magazine in, turn off the safety trigger, and then shoot using scope

In the absolutely thin chance that something like that happens, you can rest assured that you will be able to catch the person doing it red-handed.

In Sum

That should be all we have on “How Should Firearms Be Transported In A Boat?”! We hope that you and your firearms have a safe voyage after reading this article.

If you have any further questions about this topic, please contact us, and we will gladly help you with your inquiries!

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