Has Anyone Actually Seen A Gun "Go Off" By Itself?

No. No I haven't. However, ALL of my firearms are always unloaded until needed (at the range, CC, etc).

Not sure why the sheriff is siding with the kids. It's obvious someone was handling it when it went off.

Yes, all models have this defect. It mostly happens to some people named not me and I dont know.

I've seen it happen *once* with my own eyes, and also in my own hands. It was a friend's old Remington 700 chambered in .30-06, which had a malfunction which caused the trigger/sear mechanism to not work after loading a round into the chamber and locking the bolt. Trying to pull the trigger would not do anything, and as my friend was still holding the rifle, pointed down range, the rifle discharged by itself. I was incredulous so he handed me the rifle and told me to try myself, so I racked the bolt, chambering a new round (while pointed safely down range), tried to pull the trigger, nothing. I kept holding it on target, and sure enough, about 30 seconds later, the rifle discharged on its own.


That was the only time I've ever seen a gun 'go off' by itself.

I have known of two weapons that discharged with safety on and no one touching the trigger. However in both of the firearms they each did in fact have a defect that cause them to fire. One was a 12 Semi auto shotgun, I racked the first round into chamber and it discharged, upon examining the firing pin was actually broke in half and it slid forward just enough to bust the primer. The second was a 7mm pistol that belonged to a friend, turns out it had the wrong firing pin and when he chambered a shell it also fired. In both cases the safety were on but I have never had any knowledge of a gun just sitting there and going off unless it was a weapon that was hot as heck from shooting and the chambered shell "COOKING OFF".

I saw a couple of slamfires with the same shooter several years apart with 1911s.

One could have been finger on the trigger racking the slide or a high primer.

The other was clearing a jam and the extractor rode forward and struck the primer blowing out the side of the case. There was a big extractor dent in the primer and the bullet must have been against the barrel hood and just sort of fell on the ground.

I had a problem with my series 80 1911 after I (ahem...) put in a new grip safety where the hammer wouldn't drop and everything was locked up, and then after putting on the safety and disengaging the safety the hammer dropped to half-cock. It did this reproducibly a couple of times. The first time sent my sphincter to DEFCON1, even though the gun was pointed downrange. Watching the hammer fall on its own isn't fun, let me tell you. Thank god for half-cock and the firing pin block, although my gunsmith thinks that some grit in the series 80 levers was the problem rather than my grip safety installation.

Magically discharge just sitting there? Nope.

-J.

I have seen some really old, tired, worn out .22 single shot rifles that would qualify.

When the trigger parts get rounded off and worn down bad enough, they will fire if you think too loud.

But a modern semi auto pistol? Something that might be kept for home defense?

Sorry, not buying it.

Remington bolt rifles have a long history of doing so, yes, I've seen it happen with one of them more than once. It CAN happen with almost any gun under the right conditions. Usually if the hammer and sear have worn, or been improperly modified. Many, but not all will fire if dropped and if they land just right.

I saw an M4 cook off once wile in the Army, back in 06. I've also experienced a slam-fire with an old Yugo SKS i used to own with Winchester white box. A guns "saftey" is between your ears. Thank God the rifles in question were pointed at the ground.

Which gun has a known "production defect" like the sheriff mentions in this story??

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a number of years ago one of the Ring of Fire manufactures had a recall for that reason... I forget which gun it was though...


Found it:

BRYCO ARMS
Model Jennings Nine,
9mm LUGER caliber Semiautomatic Pistol

WARNING: These pistols may create an EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CONDITION and a POTENTIAL FOR SERIOUS INJURY by firing without pulling the trigger.

Yes.

Some years ago I was reloading .44 Magnum. During this adventure, I found that just because the powder manufacturer listed a particular load, didn't mean a load was any good. (some years later, I found many of them aren't even tested, just guesstimated) The powder was fresh and so were the primers, which worked fine with other loads.

It was long enough ago that the particular powder manufacturer and load aren't relevant. However, I was getting delayed fires or hangfires. I was observing the "3 minute rule", but after the half-dozenth hangfire I got a bit lax and just laid the pistol on the bench instead of holding it pointed downrange. A .44 Magnum Desert Eagle gets mighty heavy after three minutes...

Anyway, I laid it on the bench and, having some time to burn, bent over to pick up some empty brass. At which time the hangfire decided to do its thing, and the pistol went off. Since the muzzle was pointed downrange, the pistol went the other way, bounced off my head, and knocked my flat on my butt. You really DO see stars, just like in the cartoons...

I got shot in the head with a Desert Eagle, and all I got was a lump...

On more than one occasion I've interviewed folks involved in shootings and quite a few of them were perfectly comfortable lying to themselves about the gun "just going off". Standard procedure was to allow them the fiction -then carefully have a firearms tech check out the weapon in question... In every case there wasn't any malfunction and the weapon couldn't be made to fire without pulling the trigger... On the other side of the coin I have seen quite a few weapons on the street that were in such poor condition that just handling them was hazardous. Nothing scares me like a piece of junk iron that some fine citizen was carrying in his/her crotch area....

There was a shooter injured pretty badly at a fairly nearby club (a place with extremely strict safety protocols, by the way) just last week. His pistol discharged while holstering, injuring his leg in multiple places.

Both the shooter and several USPSA safety officers attending him at the moment of the shot all vouched that his finger was not on the trigger, and nothing was inside the trigger guard when it discharged. In that sort of practical shooting competition, the safety officer is completely one-on-one with the shooter, and usually have their eyes directly on the gun the from the moment it comes out of the holster until it goes back in.

I'm, as always, EXTREMELY incredulous about such claims. But multiple eyes-on responsible folks say that's exactly what happened, so I guess it can indeed happen.

Of course, that gun was being handled at the time, whether or not the trigger was being pulled.

Any possibility a defect in the sear can cause the gun to fire without anyone touching it?

Certainly. Very rare, but those things can happen. Good gun design usually includes some sort of failsafe mechanism so that isn't necessarily catastrophic, but any mechanical system can break.

I have seen one bubba-ized shotgun "fire itself"(not actually loaded at the time, luckily). It was a Mossberg bolt action my dad picked up for $25 or something like that. It happened when he was looking it over. 5-6 seconds after he set it down, we heard a CLICK. Turns out that it was a botched trigger job that the previous owner had done.

Seems to me that most of the situations noted above include pulling the trigger at some point prior to the discharge. I do doubt that there are incidents where a gun, left to its own devices, discharges.

"Remington bolt rifles have a long history of doing so"
While this has been widely publicized, I've owned and handled quite a number of Remington 700 rifles and the ONLY one I saw perform this trick had the trigger "adjusted" by the owner.
The Grouch Attack experienced an AD with a 700 once but finally admitted her finger had been inside the trigger guard and the tip of her glove caught between trigger and guard after she released the safety and pulled the trigger.
I've personally never seen a firearm discharge w/o some input from an external source. I've seen them fire when dropped, butt slammed, and rapped with a rubber mallet(testing the sear engagement), but never just sitting immobile. Maybe my 50 years of tinkering, amateur gunsmithing, and trading haven't allowed me a wide enough variety of experiences.

My grandfather used to talk about his dad's double barrel shotgun that they never loaded until they wanted to shoot because it would go off if you, "looked at it wrong." He said it went off one time after it had been leaning against the truck for an hour while they were working on a windmill.

vtail said:

Which gun has a known "production defect" like the sheriff mentions in this story??



http://www.news9.com/story/22435373/oklahoma-teen-dies-after-accidental-shooting

Seale says Saylor and her younger sister were handling a semi-automatic handgun that belonged to their parents. He says 1 of the girls placed the gun down on a counter and when Saylor bent down to pick up her cell phone, the gun suddenly discharged.

The sheriff says neither of the girls was handling the gun when it discharged. He says the weapon may have malfunctioned because of a production defect.

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NO...................

I used to watch a 76mm cannon from the bridge of a ship - always looked like it was doing its own thing. always weird to me that some fire control technician was shooting a gun he couldn't even see.

1. Had a 1911 once that was a series 70 I believe. Someone had done a lot of jacking around with the trigger. Sometimes when you racked the slide the hammer would come forward and 'fire' following the slide. I never shot it but I am quite certain it would have fired without touching the trigger. Sold it to an FFL friend of mine who I trusted not do resell it like that.

2. Buddy of mine blew his middle finger off with a glock 19. He swears to this day he wasn't touching the trigger. Don't know about that but he's my friend so I don't challenge him on it. He had it sewn back on and is now permanently flipping people off. He regrets having it put back on. It's more of a hindrance now than anything else.

That's all I got. My guess is it happens more often than the naysayers want to admit but not near as often as claimed. I think it is virtually impossible out of modern firearms that have not been shot out or jacked with.

If you "mess around with" a gun and leave it in an unknown state, yes, potentially it could fire. For example, if you don't solidly cock it so it's barely resting on the cocking lugs and could go either way. Not easy or common for that to happen, but doable.