Worst "oops" you made with a firearm?

Trying to make the trigger on an SKS light and crisp. I took it to the range and it went full auto on me. I pulled the trigger group and smashed it into bits then went and bought a replacement and sold the rifle.

Carrying a concealed Makarov, walk into a Wally-World restroom crapper stall, and butterfinger Mr. PM on the floor unholstering to do my business. No AD, and nobody else there, lucky me!

I was practicing double taps with my 1911 and was so impressing myself as I was in the zone that day. I was doing so good that the couple shooting next to me stopped shooting and were watching my "perfect form" (lol). On about the third magazine, I went bang, bang (pause) bang, bang, (pause), bang...click. I know I loaded 7 rounds in the mag, so I tap, rack and....what the...the slide was loose and I hear laughter from the couple watching me. My bushing sheared and sent the recoil plug and spring down range. So much for my "perfect form".

My biggest "oops" was just last week. And it could have been disasterous. I had a bunch of high school boys out shooting with my bigger toys - 2 M1's, Rem700 .30-06 and a Western Auto Revelation 200 .30-30 lever (all with parents written permission). All the ammo was handloads - by me. A youth with the .30-30 called me over and said the gun went "click" - no boom. I waited a minute or so thinking I might have a hang fire. I opened the chamber and found a spent round. I thought "how the hell did a spent cartridge get cycled into the chamber?" The boy said the round went "click" - not "pop". I said things were fine, chambered a live round, handed it back to him, said it was good to fire and went to assist loading one of my M1's. A moment later he called out again and pointed down range (so I thought). I looked, didn't see anything and said "what?". He said - "look at the barrel". HOLY CRAP (not what I said btw) - the last 2" were split into three shards. The "spent" round was actually a squib - the bullet lodged in the last 2" of the barrel and the next round pushed it out while destroying the barrel. I went faint - in all my years I'd never actually seen a burst barrel - much less been responsible for it. OMG what could have happened. No one injured - all metal stayed attached. I'm pretty sure I underloaded a round. I'm in the process of unloading all the .30-30 ammo I have (60 rounds) and starting over. I told the boys if they wanted to stop shooting I'd understand (I almost wanted to stop shooting). A gun barrel I can replace (hopefully - I'm having trouble finding one). I was humbled to say the least. All the clues were there for me to see that I had a squib round - and I ignored them. Too busy with four boys on four guns. Next time - more adults, factory loads on the .30-30 and be DAMN serious and attentive when a youth raises his hands. The firearm angel was watching over us all that day.

When I was at Air Force training qualifying with the M9 I was waiting for the "fire when ready" call from the rangemaster to do some window rested shots. Trouble was that some chick down the line was having trouble with her pistol and it was taking forever so I got tired of holding the gun up and braced the gun barrel against the wooden barrier between my stall and the next one. (Gun was empty at the time and the slide was back...) I remember being confused when I got yelled at since the gun was still technically pointed "down range."

The rangemaster called me gomer for the rest of the day. Doh.

Never had an AD on a gun but I have done something completely idiotic.

Deer Hunting in a 6'x4' Building Style Blind (Real insulated walls and Plexiglas slide-out windows). Was so excited when I saw the deer that I fired my 12-gauge shotgun slug, minus the ear plugs. Luckily there were carpet walls and the end of the barrel was out the window, instead of permanent damage I just got a ringing for a few weeks.

On top of that incident less than 2 weeks earlier I had an earplug fall out on me while at the range, at the time I was sitting next to an AR-15 being spotter. I don't know how I didn't notice it but I sure as heck knew on the next shot.

Moral of the story: Earplugs, Eye Protection, ALWAYS, Check Again.

I learned the hard way that you need to clean the bolt on an SKS. droped the bolt and slam fired 10 rounds.

Mistakes

:banghead:Luckily, I haven't made too many mistakes, only one serious. When I first got my sks, I was showing some friends, and didn't realize I had chambered a round before sweeping someone with the gun. I felt like a real jerk, but it could have been waaay worse.

At the range one day, I was shooting my sporterized Mosin Nagant, and thought the round had jammed at the rim of the cartridge, and would not come out of the magazine. I jammed the bolt forward, and heard a noise and a little poof of smoke. Turns out, a round already chambered, and for some reason, it wanted to double feed. I forced the second round into the primer of the chambered round and poof. Luckily the primer went off and popped out without igniting the powder charge. Very lucky. If the entire round would have gone off, Who knows what would have been blown into my face.

I have a friend that screwed up bigtime. We went out racing when I was a teenager, out by Doty Road ( if you're from the Chicago area, it's a popular spot for street racing between garbage dumps and industrial area). My buddy brought his dad's 1911 with, and him and another friend went down the road to pop a few off. They came speeding back, jumping out of the truck, screaming "Rob shot himself!!" Turns out, they shot the gun, got in the truck to drive back, and I don't know if he was trying to de-cock it or what, but he shot himself in the hand. Went in the pinky side of his palm, diagonally, exited above his thumb. Someone else took the gun and he went to the hospital. Doc said he was very lucky, as it didn't hit bones or tendons. He still complains of his hand hurting to this day. Dumbass!!:banghead:

Worst one was last summer.
I was shooting a 12 gauge double barrel, single trigger.

During Crow Season, I was in the woods and a crow directly overhead made a U-Turn in flight and I was leaning way back, pulling the first barrel. Before I knew it, I was nearly on the ground. What I heard was one very LOUD BOOM! I thought to myself "these are the most powerful 2 3/4" Magnums I have EVER FIRED!"

I opened the action and two smoking empty 2 3/4" Magnum shell casings flew out!

I thought what the heck? I did drop the crow out of the sky, and then after a couple of days, realized what happened. My body was recoiling back, with the gun and as soon as the first recoil was letting up, my body started coming forward and the weight of my right arm was sufficent to cause me to pull the trigger a second time thus firing the second barrel nearly instantly!

I explained to my neighbor what happened and he said he had heard it and he knew something didn't sound right! My lower back was killing me for about two weeks after that!

Here's my story as I "told" it on Texas Gun Talk....

Back in my youth I used to shoot a lot of skeet and naturally, loaded my shells (thank you Lee Loader!). One hot, boring, summer day I had the house to myself since M&D were at work and I had a few friends over. Another friend, Rosebud (aka Frank), was due shortly. Unfortunately, my dad had left his paper punch laying on the desk, fully loaded with chads. One thing led to another and before you knew it, I was loading a 20 ga shell with compressed paper chads. We thought it would be pretty funny when Rosebud walked down the steps to unleash a load of chads all over him. Well.....it didn't work like that! The distance was about fifteen steps and when I fired, the wad contained the tightly-compressed chads and hit him full force in the chest. It knocked the wind out of him bigtime and he ended up with a nasty looking purple bruise right over his heart about the size of my fist.....just a little bigger than the nasty looking purple bruise he put on my left eye. I still shake my head when I think how bad this could have turned out.....a head shot would have likely been much worse.

I learned a good lesson that day: bored, unsupervised teenagers, a pound of Unique, and a paper-punch full of chads is a recipe for disaster!

Fivetwoseven...haven't taken any pictures yet. I'm still in a bit of shock...LOL. I'll take one and post it. Stay tuned

Hello friends and neighbors // Some funny and not so funny tales here but all worth reading.

I guess my S&W Model 586 mishap ranks right up there in the "dumb" catagory.

I had set up a cross draw holster on my backpack belt and decided to practice my draw.

I had recently put on some Hogue rubber grips and had apparently gotten some oil on the grips during the last cleaning. Well ... the front sight snagged on the nylon holster the grips slipped right out of my hand and there was my .357 laying in the dirt 7 feet away. All due to my mistakes.

My S&W 586 had freckles and holster wear already but no one "likes" to throw their firearm 7 feet away onto the dirt. I am glad it was not rock or concrete!

The second time shooting my Saiga, I put a paper plate up on a tree as a target. I was very impressed, since I've heard that the AK variants are not very accurate, but I was putting almost all of my lead on target. after my third box of ammo into the tree I heard a strange "snap crash crunch crunch crack."...

I am very pleased with the ballistics of my Saiga. I am also pleased with how well the carport that was behind me was able to withstand a tree falling on it.

Kayak:

Your story reminds me of a really cool picture I saw in an ancient book on guns (old Arco book?).
I forgot who it was - perhaps US Military or reps from Dole Farms, but there was a VERY effective demonstration of the efficacy of the Maxim Gun (and by extension, US Firepower, too) - the Hawaiians and Americans were arrayed around a jaggedly downed tree with the weapon somewhere in the foreground, too.
If I could find that Pic, I'd send it to the Mythbusters, since they spent an episode trying to do the same thing with a variety of weapons.

Just got a stack of gun rags from a friend, and read something that caught my immediate attention...

About nine months ago I had a friend's 600 Nitro Express double on me, and my left shoulder hasn't been the same since. - Craig Boddington

Click to expand...

P. A. I. N.

I foolishly tried to decock a 1911. I made a nice big hole in my apartment wall. No one heard it. I still have ringing in my left ear. I patched up the holes and painted it so they never knew.

I found the spent JHP with sheet rock still in the unexpanded round and drilled a hole through the side. It's on my keychain as a constant reminder of how stupid I was.

did this when i was a kid checking trap lines before school in the winter.

I had checked several traps and had some nice muskrats and a beaver and was lugging them around to the next set of traps. well i had my stevens model 25 slung over my shoulder with the barrel pointed down. i went to lean over to reset a trap and the safety must have gotten pushed back and the trigger pulled just enough by the zipper for the hood on my jacket and the gun went off and the bullet put a hole in my waders and grazed my rear end and landed at the foot of my waders. the hot bullet made me do everything to get out of them waders and ended up throwing everything off and basically taking a skinny dip in ice cold water in the missouri river in November (was a warm winter were some areas still had barely open or lightly iced over water.... anyway, ended up with a ruined set of waders, a flesh wound on my rear end, near hypothermia and a case of frost bite on all my lower body.

some good did come from the incident. my dad bought me an old H&R 922 revolver for christmas and I ended up carrying that around and never had another incident. i still have the revovler today, but got rid of the stevens after a couple of other incidents with the safety not working for other folks.

I purchased one---then two---then three---etc---etc----etc---etc---etc &
on & on & on....................................................

I once introduced my Mossberg 590 to a screwdriver; the screwdriver won. The result? A refinishing (receiver).

well dont know if i wanted to admit this but here goes. I had bought a 44 lever action here this spring and worked up a load with it off of the revolver data. I was going to be getting a redhawk from a friend. Got the revelover here about a month ago. loaded up 10 rounds off of what i load for my 44 lever and of course dont check the numbers because I already did the checks right? well long story short my rounds were 2gr over max for revolvers, but the redhawk seems fine and is still tight. Double check all reloads.

When I was in my early 20's I was even dumber then than I am now, I know it's hard to believe but it's true. Anyway, I was pretty heavy in the sauce one night and I tried to shoot a coon out of a tree with my new 450 Marlin, Busted my face up pretty bad and didn't do the shoulder any favors either. That was one of the first indications I needed to quit drinking.

Other than that, shooting my brothers 454 Casull one handed. The only other person I ever saw do it wound up with a busted blood vessel in his hand.



You can treat crazy, but you can't fix stupid.

I've shared this one a few times...

but I will do so again in the hopes that someone else will learn from my mistake.


http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=297815

ETA: Seem to recall reading about a Darwin Award for a guy who blew his junk off with a shotgun. He and the wife were playing some kind of kinky game involving the shotgun and he told her to put it on his uh... private parts and pull the trigger. Wouldn't ya know? It was loaded. BIG oops right there.