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Accidental Discharge of Gun...

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  • Phoebe Ann

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    After reading some stories on this forum about guns accidentally discharging, it got me thinking. How many have had this happen? Sometimes it's due to stupidity, sometimes gun malfunction. I'm sure no one on this forum has had it happen due to stupidity but...have you ever had an accidental discharge of a firearm?

    My story:

    I was at a friend's house about 15 years ago. He took his pistol out in his yard and was showing his sister-in-law the gun while they were sitting in the grass. He "unloaded" the gun and then, as she sat wide-eyed with curiosity, he pointed the gun at their feet, pulled the trigger and BOOM! Missed her foot by an inch. That was my most memorable lesson in gun safety and I have never forgotten it.
    Hurley's Gold
     

    Texas1911

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    There really aren't any "accidental" gun discharges, baring then gun mechanically failing without human intervention, which rarely occurs. They are almost exclusively due to negligence. It's a bit of semantics, but the term negligence paints a more realistic image on what happened.

    There have been a few people on the forum that did something stupid, and as a result, had a negligent discharge. Luckily, to my knowledge, no one has been hurt beyond a bit of self-image and hearing loss.

    It's like anything in life, sometimes you just do something stupid. You live and learn, and no one is perfect. So long as you maintain the gun in a safe direction, know whats beyond the target, etc. you will mitigate any damage.
     

    JKTex

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    +1 to what Texas1911 said.

    However, your friend didn't have a ND or an AD. You knew this was coming....

    He aimed and pulled the trigger. What your friend had was a moment of good old stupid. Hopefully that incident found him not only discarding his soiled shorts, but also that bit of stupid.
     

    GM.Chief

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    Nothing of the sort as of yet...and I hope I never will. However, smarter people than me who have spent their whole lives around firearms have, so I continually try to remind myself how "easy" it really is to make a mistake. I try to keep myself paranoid in that respect in hopes that I don't end up with a "stupid moment" as JKTex put it. All it takes is one bad moment to ruin your (or someone else's) life. I guess that's why there's the Golden rule "Always treat a firearm as though it's loaded even if you know it's not."
     

    Bob Loblaw

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    smarter people than me who have spent their whole lives around firearms have
    +1
    it's always in the back of my mind because of this. Family members have holes in gunrooms and floorboards, and my uncle wonders why I went apeshit when he pointed it at one of my dogs and pulled the trigger. Hell, I've actually had a friend killed under the aforementioned conditions "Is it loaded?" "No, watch." It's negligence, pure and simple, None of my guns have a safety because they're always loaded! Even when they're not.
     

    TexasRedneck

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    Many, MANY years ago (I was about age 13) I was headin' out into the pasture to bird hunt. Was loading the shotgun, and racked the slide to chamber a round. I was between the barn and another outbuilding - cows in one, chickens in the other.....

    Anyway - I was just starting to rack when something said "up!!!!" - glancing up, I noticed I was under the rain cover, so I pointed the barrel downrange....BANG! Pulling my undies outta the crack, I headed back to the house to find Dad. I didn't TOUCH the slide - left it just where it was, because while I wasn't sure WHAT had happened, I knew I didn't want it to happen again!

    Turns out that for some reason, the firing pin had jammed, so the second that sucker got close to being in battery, it fired.
     

    Shorts

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    I have not had an ND or AD - thankful & vigilant!

    +1 Texas 1911's post

    I adhere to the Four Rules every time I handle a gun. I feel the time I let my guard down and get lax in the rules is when something bad will result.
     

    Big country

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    The only AD I had was when I caught the loaded gun and it went kaboom in the house and I was deaf and I was scared and I will never catch a loaded gun again if it falls it will just have to hit the ground. That is as in detail as I can get right now. I'll try and make a link with the old Oops thread.
     

    ambidextrous1

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    I've had two negligent discharges: Both with a .22, at the range, with no injury or property damage. The first was about 15 years ago, with a small piece of junk that wasn't feeding well and making me impatient. The second was about two years ago, with a nose-heavy long barreled (silhouette) Buckmark. Both rounds went downrange, but wide of the target.

    Yes, I had my finger on the trigger before I should have, both times; but I was observing the other three rules. No excuse!!
     

    Texas Solo

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    I guess my only incident was a mechanical failure?

    During a CMP Hi-Power rifle match....
    rules state that during the slow fire relay, you must load one round at a time. I was prone, manually inserted a round and closed the bolt on my AR15. BANG! I saw the dirt fly about 20 yards in front of me. Muzzle was of course pointed downrange. I must have had a high primer. Still, it gave me reason to pause and be grateful that I had been safe in my muzzle direction before closing the bolt.
     

    MadMo44Mag

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    Well lets just say that many, many years ago I found that hunting from the rail/road tracks could cost you some toes.
    Luckily I still have all mine!
     

    Big country

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    I use to work with a guy who had a bolt action 270 that would fire every time they closed the bolt after the first time it happened. The way they tell it they were in an old Chevy hunting truck and the rifle went off and killed the engine and the transmission, all in one shot. Always in a safe direction when ever the rifle is out of the case.
     

    TriggerTime

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    Yep, I've done it. Thank God no one was hurt -- or even there to see it. I don't drink anymore. I've had zero incidents since then.

    As mentioned above, the rules have never changed so far as I know -- treat every gun as if its loaded and never ever point it at anything you don't intend to shoot. If we follow that rule every time, nothing tragic will ever happen.
     

    SIG_Fiend

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    I'm obsessive compulsive when it comes to firearms safety. I don't actually have OCD or anything, I just choose to be this way with firearms for safety. ;) Often I will re-chamber check a gun I still have in my hand and already chamber checked just 2 minutes prior. Even when I'm handling an airsoft gun, bb gun, or even a friggin water pistol, I am very OCD about not muzzle sweeping people, finger off the trigger and at the limit of it's extension indexed along the frame or pointing up into the ejection port (as a tactile reference point), etc. Doing things like this, never growing complacent, never saying "Oh well this unsafe thing is okay this time, I'll just remember not to do it next time" or things like that is beneficial I think. Through repetition of safety, never allowing yourself to falter, can really build that unconscious competence to where you just don't think about it and do it automatically. I do. I have yet to have a ND. I'm still human, and it can happen to me, but I'm still going to be OCD about safety and trying to prevent negligence every single day so that it hopefully never happens. I look at safety as not some undesirable, annoying thing, but yet another one of the many aspects that needs to be mastered in order to master the firearm. You can be the best shot in the world, understand every component in the gun, how it works, how to maintain it, how to disassemble and reassemble it, etc etc but, if you don't have a handle on firearms safety than your skills are still incomplete.
     

    Texas42

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    I use to work with a guy who had a bolt action 270 that would fire every time they closed the bolt after the first time it happened. The way they tell it they were in an old Chevy hunting truck and the rifle went off and killed the engine and the transmission, all in one shot. Always in a safe direction when ever the rifle is out of the case.

    I think I'd have tossed that POS where it belonged. At the bottom of a very deep lake.
     

    Big country

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    I'm obsessive compulsive when it comes to firearms safety. .................................... You can be the best shot in the world, understand every component in the gun, how it works, how to maintain it, how to disassemble and reassemble it, etc etc but, if you don't have a handle on firearms safety than your skills are still incomplete.
    1st comment, I am now.
    2nd, After the gun went off and I new it was my fault I had a rebirth of firearms safety. It was an accident, But if it were not for my intervention, the weapon would not have fired. NEVER TRY AND CATCH A FALLING GUN!

    I think I'd have tossed that POS where it belonged. At the bottom of a very deep lake.
    He sold it to ... a gunsmith or a pawn shop I think. He told them about the problem and they said it can be fixed and they would fix it and then sell it. Something to think about when you buy a gun second hand. And also for those of us who have older bolt action's, this is apparently common among the older bolt guns. It was a major manufacturer to. (Remington, Winchester etc..)
     

    M. Sage

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    Somewhere around here I've got a 7.62x25mm case. The primer barely has a tiny dimple on it. It's a Wolf Gold case that formerly housed a JHP bullet. The gun fired on slide closing. Scared the crap out of me.

    I also was shooting a friend's POS shotgun, some old thing he got cheap. He couldn't get it to feed reliably, so I treated it like every other old pump shotgun I've ever used and racked it with "vigor". It slam-fired into the ground about ten feet in front of us.
     

    DRod

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    Guy I know at work rearranged the molecules of his foot with a 12g shotgun. He put his foot up on a stump to tie his laces and put the muzzle on the other foot. Pow. Blew the bottom of his foot out. Hes got some pretty expensive replacement metal bones and screws in there now.
     

    jfrey

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    I can only think of 2 occassions where an AD was possibly involved and both were mechanical caused. I used to hunt with an old man who was with me in a stand one morning and had his BSA .243 on a doe out about 300 yds. He was ready to shoot and when he flicked off the safety - Kaboom. The same rifle did it again when he was in camp and released the safety to unload it. He was smart enough to anticipate it and had it pointed up into the air. He never used the rifle again.

    The second time happened to me recently shooting my son's Springfield M-1A. I had what is referred to as a slam fire. You shoot the first round and when the bolt cycles, it sets off the newly chambered round. As usual, I had complete control of the rifle and both shots actually hit the target about 8 inches apart. I know what causes it but I'm not quite sure why it happens. This was in a new rifle, not some worn out piece of junk.
     
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