>Upon reflection, I can see a case for some LCIs. Some service
>pistols (the Walther P38 comes to mind) have tactile ones, so you can
>tell if your sidearm is ready to fire without having to look at it,
>which I guess could come in handy in some field situations. Marketing
>that kind of thing as a safety device, though, I think is a
>dangerously misleading thing to do.

Yeah, one use, and that being "hot situation, can't risk having to open my gun and check when I might need it." As you noted, everything else is iffy, at least in terms of that false sense of security.

>Anyway, back by the house at the firing line, he had an old picnic
>table with a couple of sandbags on it, for testing sight adjustments
>and the like. (I assume their customers used it to sight in their
>deer rifles as well.) We started there, shooting from the sandbags
>with a .22-caliber bolt-action rifle he had cut down to a sort of
>kiddie size for my aunt Dot when she was little. The rifle had no
>magazine, just loaded and fired one round at a time, but otherwise
>operated in much the same way as your average WWI infantry rifle, on a
>smaller scale.
>
>I don't remember now if it was on the first shot, but at some
>point early in this lesson, I fired, then left the rifle where it was
>and made to get up and go see where I'd hit the target. This was what
>I'd been instructed to do, except in my excitement I'd left out a
>step. I was pulled up short as much by the urgency in Gramp's voice
>as his actual words as he barked, "Open that bolt!"
>
>So yeah. I, uh, don't leave chambers in Uncertain Condition.

I've been trained to fire bolt action rifles, actually, back in my own Elder Days Story Time (at scout camp they had a firing range). I can see that being excellent training on the "don't leave chambers in uncertain conditions". You always go ahead and eject the empty after the shot, and otherwise you go ahead and unbolt to check once you're done.