I agree with everything being said about not scoping another person, tresspassing or not, it is unacceptable unless that person is putting you or someone else in Danger. In Oregon we can't even use a firearm to protect personal property. A life needs to be in danger to legally justify the use of a firearm.
The 4 basic principles of gun safety are critical, and I agree that none of them should be completely ignored. However, 100% compliance to all 4 rules 100% of the time is near impossible when handling a firearm in the field. At some point while crossing through, around, or over obstacles your muzzle will sweep in a direction that IF it went off and IF an unintended target where in the path it COULD be hit. This is where the 4 rules of gun safety work together, along with a little common sense, to prevent accidents.
The best example I can think of is the protocol for crossing through a fence with a firearm by yourself, which is taught in every hunters safety class. One part of this process requires passing the firearm through the fence, where at some point the barrel will be parallel to the ground as it is placed down on the other side. In most cases, the range of a rifle far exceeds your ability to see any potential targets it may hit if it is discharged while being passed through the fence. As a result, additional precautions need to be taken to make sure it can be done safely. Specifically, making sure the firearm is unloaded before passing it through the fence, crossing through at a location away from the firearm, and not reloading until you are safely on the other side. Following the letter of the law, rules number 2 and 3 were just violated while passing the firearm through the fence, but since extra care was made to ensure number 1 and 4 were followed we are able to do it safely.
This is just one specific example, but there are many times in the field your firearm is pointed in a direction where you can not verify everything that is potentially in the path of your bullet if the gun were to discharge. In fact anytime you are in the mountains, a rifle pointed in just about any direction could impact an opposing ridge, draw, or valley if fired. Yet, we still manage to hunt safely because we are smart about making sure a round is not chambered and handle the firearm in a way that does not engage the trigger.
I did not see the show, and I'm not advocating the use of a rifle scope in leiu of binoculars. However, there is a big difference between using a scope to glass a bear and pointing a firearm at a person. Even when binos are used to identify a target there is still some inherent risk in positioning the firearm to take the shot, which is why we need to be aware of how all the firearm and hunting safety rules work together to prevent accidents.
