Every range you go to will have a list of safety rules that will apply to that ranges use. Some ranges have so many rules as to be impossible to remember them all.
These Four Safety Rules are what I consider the Four Commandments of Firearms Safety and apply no matter the when or the where.
1. Treat every firearm as a loaded firearm, always.
2. Never let the muzzle cover any direction that should the firearm discharge would cause a human injury.
3. Keep your finger off the trigger until you have made a conscious decision to fire an intentional shot.
4. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
The Four Stages
1-Unconscious Incompetence
The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it.
2-Conscious Incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.
3-Conscious Competence
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.
4-Unconscious Competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes "second nature" and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned. Most can reach the 3rd level fairly quickly with practice and training..problem is, that is where they remain..
Next, lets throw in the Fear, Anxiety, Stress factors. If you are operating at level 3 or less it is a recipe for disaster when the SNS kicks in..
To use a simplistic explanation, fright and exhilaration begin as virtually identical emotions, producing similar physiological responses until the mind intervenes. The mind will make a judgement about the experience, usually based upon the outcome of past experiences, and this in turn generates the emotion. Based on that judgment, an unconscious decision will be made as to how it wants the body to behave. If the decision is that the experience is "fun" the adrenaline rush adds to the enjoyment. If the decision is that the experience is "frightening," then the sympathetic nervous system kicks in and all hell breaks loose in Hormone Central, dumping well over a hundred different chemicals into the bloodstream to mobilize the body for survival. This is when skills practiced to merely the Conscious Competence level begin to deteriorate, or possibly fail altogether.
(Conscious Competence: After training, practice, and repetition, he can shoot well if he pays attention to of the necessary fine motor skills he has just learned. As he becomes more technically proficient, he can begin to add additional complexities such as time constraints, target movement, target discrimination, etc etc.)