Firefighters say it's a bad idea to store a loaded gun in your oven. Here's why.

    CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Virginia (WTVR) -- A loaded gun stored in the oven fired rounds and sparked a house fire, according to Chesterfield County firefighters. While the fire reported along the 5000 block of Glen Tara Drive on Thursday caused minimal damage, it did allow firefighters to share an important message.

"Make sure your guns are locked up and secured in a safe location. I would not say an oven is a safe location," Chesterfield Fire Bat. Chief Sal Luciano said. "There's a fire hazard of storing anything in the oven. We see this, where people put items in the oven for storage, forget they're in there, turn it on to preheat, and we get a call for smoke in the building, in a house, in an apartment, Could be just even like pans. They have nowhere to put these pans. They stick them in the oven, you preheat them, and they heat up extremely hot. They start putting out, you know, some nasty smoke."

Luciano said the number one cause for fire-related calls in Chesterfield is cooking-related.

Typically, he said, it's people stepping away from the stove while cooking, falling asleep, or cooking with grease are the culprits, not guns stored in the oven.

"It's not something we typically deal with. It's not usually an issue. I'm thinking in this case maybe because the heat was right on that weapon, there was no air movement, it was kind of sealed in a oven, is my is why I kind of suspect that was an issue," Luciano said.

Ultimately the oven-stored gun fired five rounds.

The gunshots damaged the oven and fortunately, the bullets did not strike anyone inside or outside the home.