Shot Myself/ Negligent Discharge

[otisrush]

Trent:

So sorry to hear about your Uncle. I can only imagine what it must be like to not only deal with that, but clear out his collection as well.

OR

 

[CZguy]

#3: Look through magazine well (if possible on that design, otherwise get in the habit of putting a finger in to the well to feel if it's empty - tactile feedback will almost always cause your brain to go "WHOA STOP!").

Excellent advice Trent,

In Aircraft Maintenance we do the same thing. The idea is, that if you are used to seeing the same thing (machinery) that touching it will add two inputs to your brain, and if they don't agree you can catch it.

 

[mickeyblueyes]

Thank you

I will remember your video every time I handle a fire arm, I thought I was careful ,but you can never be too careful. At this point I ,ll bet you are glad you had the the 40 not the 10mm everyone is claiming to need.

 

[FruitCake]

Black butte, I was at the hospital when the local authourities went to my house and my wife was there. They told her that they have to seize the weapons while they "Investigated" when I got home about three hours later she told me what happened and I immediately called an attorney. And informed him of the situation and he said not to worry because I have a clean record and to make a long story short he made a phone call to the investigating officer to inform him of the mistakes that they made during their illegal search of the house, seizure of all the weapons(including my bbgun) and lying to my wife to enter the house and the investigation was dropped and about 6 days later my weapons were returned including my very dangerous Daisy BBgun.

 

[PT92]

Thanks a million for the posting--It takes a real man to 'man-up" if you will in an attempt to prevent such from happening to others.

-Happy New Year

 

[2WheelsGood]

Field stripping a Glock (and I believe an XD, too) requires pulling the trigger.

Not true of the XD... well, assuming it's the same as an XDM. When you flip the takedown lever, the striker resets itself without pulling the trigger. Also, the slide must be locked back to flip the takedown lever.

 

[Fred_G]

I would like to thank the OP for posting this. And I wish a speedy recovery for you. It only takes a second of carelessness to do some serious harm to yourself, or even worse, someone else.

Good reminder to take your time, and be safe.

 

[Martin51]

Shot Myself/Negligent Discharge

Trent #125 has the right idea. In our classes we teach students to confirm the empty chamber with their finger. None of us has X-ray vision to see through the side of the chamber, and looking at the breech might not work if someone is using dark laquered steel cartridges. Of course that won't help if you get the steps out of order, and check the chamber after pulling the trigger. Fully engaged, aware, and undistracted is the ideal, normal life is an approximation of that.

 

[suzukisam]

Hey op glad your not too badly hurt. godspeed on your recovery.

I don't know if any of you guys heard about the young girl that got shot in Joplin MO, right after christmas this year or not, but I'll make it short you can google the whole story if your interested, but there were three girls all aprox 14-15 and the dad or another male figure in the house had gone shooting and left his handgun on the piano. the three girl were practicing for choir and got curious about the pistol. The story ended with one girl being shot in the face and dying. my bro new the family. I completely understand all the many things that went wrong for this situation to occur. But for all of us who have kids it's just one more reminder to lock 'em up and not leave 'em loaded. You can never spend enough time putting gun safety into your kids head... it was a bad situation, and many things went wrong for this to happen.. if the gun wasn't loaded...if they hadn't picked it up.... if the one just hadn't pointed it at the other.. but unfortunatly the stars aligned that day and all the right mistakes were made.. anyway thought I should share.. it was sad

 

[graysonbornhunter]

Just purchased my first handgun a few days ago. Thank you for sharing the personal information you did with us and hope the recovery goes well.

 

[Ryder]

I remember when I was young enough to believe a ND would never happen to me. As it turns out I average one every ten years. I take no comfort in the fact that I believed the guns to be empty. I am however glad to have always maintained safe muzzle control (even when empty).


Hopefully my last -



Get well soon.

 

[Trent]

Wanted to come back and post on here, after I thought on it some. One thing I picked up somewhere in this thread that I don't normally do .. when dropping the hammer on a "cleared" weapon, I need to get in the habit of intentionally pointing it in a safer direction - corner, etc. After clearing a weapon I've got in to the habit of nonchalantly (and almost absent-mindedly) pointing it at the floor when dropping the hammer.

But if I'm checking weapons upstairs, that means I've got two levels of house and people under me. If I'm in the basement, that means I've got a concrete floor with a ricochet danger under me. Aiming at a wall, floor, or ceiling.. doesn't do you a lot of good if you don't know what's on the other side, and I last I checked, I don't have x-ray vision.. So If you have to drop the hammer for any reason, even after just clearing the action, that fourth rule still applies - "always know your target and what's beyond".

I can't imagine what fragments a high powdered rifle would send in to your legs / feet if it discharged in to a concrete floor directly in front of you, but I imagine it wouldn't be much fun. Dirt makes a good reliable back stop, not much else does.

So when clearing weapons, there's no more absent-minded pulling of the trigger. Each time I drop the hammer from this point on there will be an intentionally sought after backstop in front of the sights. I reason that if I get in the habit of doing that, it'll be safer.

 

[kyletx1911]

sir i will fess up i almost shot my beloved wife it was my first 1911, so i was stoked,
loaded (of course) I went to clean it as stated stuck on stupid went to let the hammer
down on a live round. And YEP BANG right through the tv into the wall, into the dresser
and mirror momma was on the other side.

No one hurt THANK YOU JESUS (Me before all you guys start yes my fault no more no less yes i almost KILLED MY WIFE but GOD WAS AND STILL IS WITH ME) i really dont need how all of you are so safe. This was a lesson for me. So sir i am glad you are safe
and still with us. So now everything is clear clean and safe. We all have our lessons to learn and grow from. May you recover and grow and move on. ON YOUR FEET TROOP.
AND GOD BLESS

 

[Paul47]

What is the obsession with dropping the hammer?

Well, if you don't, your safe will be full of guns with the hammer back. That itself is a problem, if you think about it. The safe position is hammer down. The way it gets there is what is important. Better for you to be doing it in a controlled environment, than someone else less trained or less careful doing it later.

Anyway leaving the hammer back for long periods of time weakens the hammer spring and makes the gun unreliable.

Bottom line is simply muzzle control. When the muzzle is pointed in a safe direction there cant be an injury. Forget all about the other 3 and dwell on muzzle control.

An amazingly irresponsible statement. The way Cooper's rules protect us is through redundancy. You have just eliminated that by throwing away 3 of the 4 rules.

Also, the one about muzzle control cannot protect us perfectly. Every time you switch from muzzle up to muzzle down, you have to transition through muzzle horizontal. If you do that with your finger on the trigger, you might find yourself hauled up on manslaughter charges some day.

He put the muzzle in the dirt.... I looked back and he had the bbl sitting on the end of his shoe. I told him you know better than that. I turned away again. Directly I hear a boom.

Unbelievable. This is a thirteen year old! Sticking the muzzle in the dirt would have meant the end of hunting that day, if it were my son. Resting his muzzle on his boot would have called for a much more severe response.

As for the OP, I believe this is the old-fashioned way of making a pistol safe, which is very unforgiving:
1) Drop mag
2) Rack slide
3) Point in safe direction
4) Pull trigger

All it needs to become fatal is swapping 1 and 2, which is very easy to do if you are distracted or have become a bit careless through being too familiar with firearms, followed by a shading of 3.

It should be something like:
1) Drop mag
2) Lock slide back (or hold back if no lock)
3) Inspect chamber and mag well
4) Unlock slide
5) Point in safe direction
6) Pull trigger

Notice this method cannot lead to the classic pistol goof as mentioned in the OP, even if you forget to drop the mag first! The old way of pistol clearing must be eliminated!

 

[jojo200517]

Everyone has coached or bashed this guy for doing this, blamed the gun design or anything else. I'm pretty sure he knows he screwed up, i'm sure he knew right as he heard the bang and felt a sharp pain in his foot.

Its called a Negligent discharge for a reason, I think he's trying to show people what can happen if ya screw up and try to let everyone else know to be safer.

Only question I have is does the original poster have the bullet they pulled out of his ankle?

I'd totally wanna keep it. Maybe carry it around in my range bag, every time I seen someone doing something unsafe pull off my shoe and sock show them the scars and the partially expanded hollow point and tell them what happened and make it very clear that it was painful experience.

 

[rajb123]

Sorry about your injury.

I have owned guns for most of my life - 55 yrs. and I ALWAYS try to keep safe.

About 15 years ago, I picked up a 20 Ga. O/U while in the house and pulled the trigger.....BANG! the gun fired and the discharge took out the tiles on three walls in the bathroom. Fortuntately, no one got hurt.

To this day I'm not sure how the gun became loaded without my knowledge but it happened.

I violated the rules of safe gun handling and paid the price.

I have always been careful around guns but since the "accident," practicing safe gun handling is more like religon to me now.

 

[skarr]

I'd assume if you took a .40 hollow point to the ankle you probably have acquired a new found respect for firearms and what they are capable of. I've always abided by the laser beam and backstop rule, whether loaded or allegedly unloaded. I can't tell you how mad I was when I walked into my buddies house and found a fully loaded shotgun with the safety off laying under his desk. I know that doesn't apply to Glocks, but same principle. Be careful man and good luck on your recovery.

 

[gatopardo]

Sad and painful experience, one more of those "one in the chamber" mismanagement.

There is no amount of advise anyone can give to fix this one, fortunately none got killed.

Talk about living dangerously.

 

[KBintheSLC]

Sorry to hear/see your troubles. It's always good to remind ourselves that guns are real, and can do real damage if not handled properly. Best of luck for a speedy recovery, and welcome to THR.

 

[HKGuns]

For anyone who thinks this can't or will never happen to you, wake the heck up. All it takes is a very bad day at work where you aren't concentrating as you normally would.

It CAN happen to you and with the attitude that it can't, it almost certainly WILL. You've become so comfortable in your "safeness" that you will eventually make a mistake.

 

[9X23WIN]

I'm sorry to hear about your accident and hope you're on the way to a full recovery. But I'm also glad you had the courage to share this incident with us as I know it wasn't an easy thing to do. Many of us here have years of firearms handling experience, but after a while, we can get complacent. Your incident has brought gun safety back to the forefront and hopefully we all can learn from it. Take care.

 

[Pat M]

Not to change the subject from dry firing on an empty chamber, but has anyone ever had a ND when dropping the slide to chamber a round? That makes me nervous when loading in the house. Perhaps pointing into a 5-gallon bucket of sand might be a good idea in both situations.

 

[lucky-gunner]

I'm glad you are alright. It's very easy to have a ND. I would like to thank you for posting this as it will help me remember not to take the safety rules for granted.

Thank you for sharing your story. I'm sure it hasn't been easy dealing with the repercussions of shooting yourself.

There is a video of a girl that cut her ankle up with a samurai sword. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXeJbxucF_0&feature=player_embedded

 

[JDGray]

Ryder,
To much lead.....

 

[kyletx1911]

For anyone who thinks this can't or will never happen to you, wake the heck up. All it takes is a very bad day at work where you aren't concentrating as you normally would.

It CAN happen to you and with the attitude that it can't, it almost certainly WILL. You've become so comfortable in your "safeness" that you will eventually make a mistake.

nuff said