Mr. DAY. The rifle was resting on the floor.
Mr. BELIN. What else did you do in connection with the rifle at that particular time?
Mr. DAY. Captain Fritz was present. After we got the photographs I asked him if he was ready for me to pick it up, and he said, yes. I picked the gun up by the wooden stock. I noted that the stock was too rough apparently to take fingerprints, so I picked it up, and Captain Fritz opened the bolt as I held the gun. A live round fell to the floor.
It makes good sense to me that one of the first things that should be done when picking up a firearm is to see if it is loaded. Based on that basic safety precaution, that most of us are taught to always do, and Day’s bolded testimony above which appears to indicated that they did indeed do just that. It appears to me (in the Alyea video) that the rifle was held by Day with the muzzle pointing towards the floor while Fritz opened the bolt. If that is indeed what happened, then the position of the bolt when the rifle was found can only be seen during the brief period immediately after Day picks it up off the floor. And after I received and reviewed a copy of the Lost Tapes DVD that James Hackerott used in his work, I have changed my opinion again regarding the position of the bolt. Instead of just one static image in which camera angle relative to the rifle angle can play tricks on our perception, I have now seen clearer images of all the frames in which the bolt position is visible. And now I believe that the bolt handle is not all the way up as far as it can go. Instead, it appears to me that the bolt handle is only part-way up from the full down position. And therefore the bolt must have been fully closed. Additionally, with the rifle muzzle pointing down, gravity would help hold a cartridge in the barrel. And the cartridge would not fall to the floor without the extractor having had pulled it out of the barrel first.