SnapGlow.TV: Modern Gems Galore! Steelers spokesman Dave Lockett yesterday declined to comment on the incident, saying: "This is the first I've been told of any of this."
A state police union official declined to comment.
Lt. Taylor said former Maj. Frank Monaco, now police chief in Plum Borough outside Pittsburgh, organized the gun party. Monaco couldn't be reached for comment.
State police superiors have several ties to last year's Super Bowl-winning team and to pro football.
Former Commissioner Col. Jeffrey Miller left the state police in July 2008 to direct the National Football League's strategic security program. Miller didn't return a call for comment.
Former Lt. Col. Coleman McDonough's father played for the Steelers in the early 1940s; the younger McDonough, now chief of the Mount Lebanon Police Department, said yesterday that he hadn't heard of the shooting party and was last stationed at Greensburg in 1989.
Several Steelers also helped raise money for slain state police Cpl. Joseph Pokorny's family and other officers killed in the line of duty.
The NFL has a guns and weapons policy that prohibits players from possessing a gun or weapon "at any time you are performing any service for your team or the NFL."
The policy does allow players to use firearms and other weapons for sport or protection, but says "we strongly recommend that you not do so. Any weapon, particularly a firearm, is dangerous - especially so when it is in a vehicle or within reach of children and others not properly trained in its use."
Some photographs show players milling around the firing range carrying firearms, with children - reportedly the offspring of some troopers - nearby.
At the Daily News' request, a National Rifle Association-certified training counselor and firearms instructor examined the photographs and detected multiple "dumb and dangerous" safety violations.
"The photos show generally unsafe gun-handling techniques," said Paul Raynolds, a chief range-safety officer from North Jersey. "The players look to be poorly supervised. Basic firearm-safety rules are not being followed."
One "sacrosanct" gun-safety rule ignored in the photos is the safe-direction rule, Raynolds said.
"It doesn't matter if a gun is loaded or not; all guns are to be treated as if they're loaded at all times. So whenever you're handling a gun, it should always be pointed in a safe direction - unless you are getting ready to shoot somebody," Raynolds said.
"Here," he added, referring to the group portrait, "you have [a player] pointing this straight at his [another player's] skull. [Other players] are pointing the gun directly at the other guy and the cameraman. That's just negligent beyond belief."
Further, visitors to a firing range should not handle firearms anywhere but at the firing line, Raynolds said. In the photographs, players stroll around the range with firearms in hand, aimed in multiple directions.
Raynolds laid responsibility for the unsafe gun-handling techniques on the state police.
"[Each player] is at a police range. He's with police officers. He has to assume that whatever he's doing is OK, unless he's told otherwise," Raynolds said. "All they're [police] doing is teaching them bad habits - and potentially endangering them, because what if there's a round left in the chamber?"
Ralph Cindrich is a former professional football player and current sports agent who advises his clients - who include Farrior - not to carry guns.
While he agrees the safe-direction rule is inviolable, he said the Steelers' outing to the Greensburg barracks is "of low concern."
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