Now I live in a country where it's all but impossible to own a firearm these days but as a young man I used to use shotguns a lot and when I lived in Australia (before Port Arthur massacre) I had a couple of rifles. So I'm not a complete know-nothing where safety's concerned. I was originally taught to completely unload - removing cartridges - before, for example, climbing over a fence or stile - irrespective of whether safety was on. So throwing a semi-automatic (I've owned one, albeit a 22) out of a helicopter with a magazine in place, irrespective of whether the user thinks there's a chambered round or not - and it seems highly probable in this case that there was - looks plain idiotic to me.