I'd like to say I'm one of those perfect people who's never had an incident. But I'm human and I have had some learning experiences. I've been been handling guns since I was 6, hunting and shooting un-supervised since age 7. I'm 51 now and I've had three "accidental" discharges in my life, two were in my younger years and one recently:
One of these was a definite ND. I was about 13yrs old, was cutting wood with my grandad's High Standard .22 pistol in a full length leather holster. I pulled it out and fired about 4rds to kill a Copperhead and put it back in the holster. When I got back to the tractor I was using, I pulled the gun out of the holster to replace the spent ammo and it went off. The safety was a little loose and, either from my error or from jostling around while cutting wood, the safety was off and my finger hit the trigger as I un-holstered it. The round gouged the end of the holster a bit and went in the dirt a few feet away. I had been tought well to keep my finger off the trigger, just didn't do it this time. This did heighten my attention from then on to be sure about my finger placement.
The second time was about 15yrs ago. I had just emptied a mag in my new M&P 9mm, put a new mag in, racked the slide and it slipped out of my hand. I don't know if my trigger finger moved from the from the unexpected motion when the slide slipped out of my hand or what happened. My finger was definetly not on the trigger when I grabbed the slide, but the gun fired when the slide closed. It was very hot that day and my hands were sweaty, so I think my finger or thumb brushed the trigger, but without video, I'm not 100% sure. The gun was pointed in a safe direction, so that habit payed off. So yet again, this caused me to double down on taking my time and being aware of where my booger pickers are when handling a gun
The most recent incident was a total accident due to a defective trigger and I posted about it here:
I was sighting in my friend's Rem 700 , 22-250.
I had just loaded it, safety was on, when I closed the bolt, it went off just as the bolt rotated, bolt handle still securely in my hand right hand and forearm securely in my left hand.
Again, having it pointed in a safe direction payed off.
It had one of the defective triggers that had been recalled by Remington, but he never knew and didn't get it sent back. I didn't let him have the gun back until we replaced the trigger. I destroyed the defective trigger after taking pics of the problem area in sear/trigger engagement.
I'm sure some of the perfect people here will have some comments about this. But that's fine, I've learned from my mistakes and will continue to. Hopefully others can learn from my mistakes also, but here are a couple notes that I hope are retained by readers:
In all three of my mishaps, having the muzzle pointed a safe direction minimized the outcome.
Two of my incidents were from complacency with my handling of the weapon. This must be practiced just like every other aspect of shooting. Everything becomes habit with enough practice, but these safe handling habits must also be mentally brought back to the front of your thoughts every time you handle a gun.
I used to have a picture posted of a man who blew his hand to bits while cleaning his gun. It got misplaced the last time I reorganized my gun room, I need to find it and put it back up.