Muzzle direction is the primary safety. Always has been and always will be.
–Bill Rogers of the elite Rogers Shooting School
“He told police he was oiling a handgun and had put a magazine in it and racked the slide when it fired, hitting his wife as she sat on a couch nearby.”
Man sentenced to probation in shooting of his wife
I absolutely despise the meme from Blackhawk Down that shows a trigger finger with the phrase “This is my safety.” Trigger finger discipline is a good thing but there’s a reason it’s Number 3 in the Four Rules of Gunhandling. Muzzle Direction is Number 2, as it should be in the scheme of things.
tacticalprofessor 
Timely. I was not shot yesterday because someone made a mistake, fired a round indoors, but it was pointed in a broadly safe direction, so no consequences but my ears hurting and his shame.
I know the standard / official way to teach these is they are all equal, but I think I increasingly agree rule 2 is the most important, and will keep a lot of other mistakes from becoming news stories.
If any rule is used as an excuse to violate others, we are wrong.
No one using the “this is my safety” meme knows the true history of that incident, nor the regret that “Hoot” has expressed since then that it’s been used in that manner.
I couldn’t help writing this in Spanish for our guys.
https://tirotactico.net/2019/11/20/20051/
That is heard here too many times.
If I would got 1 euro for each time I heard that, I would drive a Mercedes.
Teaching them as equal is NOT the standard way. The order has always been strictly emphasized in every professional training program I’ve attended or worked in. I memorize four words, Loaded, Destroy, Finger, Beyond. Say those over and over and over again. LDFB, LDFB, LDFB.