"accidental discharge"- need help figuring what went wrong

[Reefinmike]

My brother accidentally shot my gun inside. Wow, that got my attention quick.

To set the stage- my brother knows very well proper gun safety(so i thought), how to load, unload and operate any firearm. He has had firearms for as long as i. Tho he doesnt own as many guns as i do and rarely goes shooting. He also knows i always keep my guns loaded(with the exception of bolt actions or striker fire, not being able to physically see the hammer scares the poop out of me. Also, i never have any little kids over and the only person that ever goes upstairs(where i keep my guns) is my brother.

Starts off, brother comes over to hang out because its 102 degrees out and way too hot to go work outside. Go upstairs because he wanted to track down my cat and play with my dog. I had my taurus tcp(380) sitting on my desk pointing left towards an exterior wall with a pile of fresh 380's i had just cast last night. As i turned my back and walked out the door, i heard a boom! For a second i had absolutely no idea what happened, next second thought maybe somehow he set off a loose primer or something? We each counted our fingers and toes and checked on the animals. I grabbed the gun and made it safe as well as my other two pistols in my night stand assuming i was going to get a knock on the door real soon.

The gun fired sitting on the desk, the bullet(fortunatly) hit one of the cast bullets laying in a pile which i didnt realize til later when my brother pointed out that the bullet keyholed in the wall. It went through the drywall, through the bat insullation, through some exterior ply. I believe after the ply is some old vertical pressboard siding type material and then vinyl siding. Im just glad it didnt go all the way through and possibly injure someone.
I really really wish i knew how it happened as the little gun has been my favorite carry gun since i got my ccw liscence two months ago. Now i dont even want to look at the thing. My brother has only seen and handled the gun once(yesterday), he asked about the safety to which i replied, no need, feel the trigger pull. He is always griping at me " why would you carry a loaded gun over to my house, here there" etc etc. Not like a "get that baby and cop killing heatseeking destroyer out of my house" but more like he doesnt understand why i carry 24/7 to which i tell him that if i didnt, the one time id need it, i wouldnt have it.

From what i was able to gather from him which was expectedly very foggy because of the big boom, was that he hadnt even picked the gun up, he was about to with his thumb on the backstrap and stupidly put his finger on the trigger. He said without 100% certainty that he had just barely touched the trigger. What i believe happened is he probably thought he had his finger on the trigger gaurd and squeezed as he picked it up. The trigger on the tcp is very hard to accidentally pull. Even if the hammer was somehow snagged back by something near the breaking point, there is a very long trigger pull before the hammer is released. Maybe he had a dumb lapse in judgement and thought it wasnt loaded as there was an extra empty mag sitting right next to it.

Im just a little freaked out that a gun i had trusted all this time went off by supposedly just barely touching the trigger. I only carry guns that i am absolutely positive that you really have to mean to pull the trigger for it to go off. I dont like safeties. Ill only carry a double action only or double action first shot, sa after. Up until thursday, the gun has operated 100% with the exception of it locking back with one in the mag a couple times. Two things happened thursday- i had two light strikes(1st ones on 500+reloads) which i believe i can attribute to to tight of a taper crimp and improper seating depth(just got calipers). And then i had an issue where something must have gritted up the slide losk and kept it firmly up.

What are your thoughts. Is some mechanical failure of the tcp design possible to allow the hammer to drop(either from its resting position or do the full swing) by simply touching the trigger? Also, the casing i found(federal hydrashok) seems to have a fairly light strike

 

[beatledog7]

My thoughts are the same as what others' thoughts will be. Your gun is fine; your brother pulled the trigger.

 

[Hootus]

I don't have a TCP but I have a LCP which also has an incredibly long and heavy trigger pull. The trigger IS the safety; there is no way it will go off without a sincere effort to make it do so.

IMO your brother is embarrassed to admit to you that he messed up and this is not an accidental discharged but rather a negligent discharge. If you want to, you can spend the next hour or so trying to duplicate the accident he described 1,000 times or more trying to duplicate it. My money would bet that you cannot do it. I know that there is absolutely no way in the universe that my LCP can have an accidental discharge by someone merely "barely touching the trigger".

Just my extry peso's opinion (maybe all that is worth)

 

[jmorris]

Yep, keep your bugger hook off the bang button and all is good.

 

[floorit76]

Take him out for a few drinks (Jager). I'm sure the story will change by the end of the night.

 

[Reefinmike]

Yes, i believe what you guys are saying, but i dont want to believe that someone who knows guns would just pull the trigger. The only thing i could possibly see maybe being an issue- the tcp has an issue, well not really anything until some turd posted how to do it on youtube. If you are shooting it and do not fully release the trigger, trying to shoot the next shot will not pull the hammer back, but release it from its resting place, hitting the firing pin, but not striking a primer. I did test this at the range months ago. Possible that touching the trigger somehow released the hammer from its resting spot? It was a fairly light strike on the casing found, but not very light

 

[floorit76]

You told him "feel the trigger". Maybe he thought that you meant it's unloaded, pull the trigger.

 

[Reefinmike]

No, that was yesterday when he first saw the gun i was carrying it. I of course released the mag and emptied the chamber and made triple sure before handing him the gun, then had him check himself. I would never hand anyone a loaded gun of mine(except at the range) let alone tell them to touch the trigger

 

[floorit76]

Where was the gun when you made it into the room?

 

[Reefinmike]

It shot back about four and a half feet on the floor. First thing i remember screaming was where is it! Brother kept pointing at the bullet hole. Finally found the gun and cleared it. Kinda surprised how quickly my instincts kicked in. The dog was quivering for an hour. The cat sitting under the desk, right under the gun seemed unphased lol

 

[floorit76]

Lends creedance to his story. Unless he chucked it. If it had been right where you left it I would be most suspicious.

 

[Reefinmike]

Well, of course. I wouldnt think hed try to hide an accident. Its just that i refuse to believe it went off by simply touching the trigger

 

[beatledog7]

People instinctively try to deflect blame. Your brother is a member of the people group.

 

[Tony_the_tiger]

In my experience there is no such thing as an accidental discharge, if they exist they are extremely rare. This scenario could be more accurately described as a negligent discharge. I've personally experienced a negligent discharge and, as surprising and shameful and ego-smashing as it might be, the only course of action is to fess up. Your firearm did not shoot itself, and your brother should not be randomly grabbing guns on your table, and if you are not carrying you should keep it out of reach of other people who may accidentally or through negligence put a hole through something more vital than your insulation. Lessons learned, count your blessings, recognize the issue and improve firearms safety and protocol in your home.

 

[Black Knight]

I am tempted to say that he inadvertantly pulled the trigger. With that said if you feel there is an issue with the gun take it to a competant gunsmith that you trust and have it examined. Guns are machines made by people and every now and then a faulty one does get through quality control. Just glad no one was hurt. I have heard it said that the longer you handle guns the closer you get to that unintentional discharge or something very similar.

 

[Onward Allusion]

If it was a pistol with a fully tensioned striker, I might have believed that it went boom all by itself. However, the TCP is like a P-32 or P3AT. It requires a hammer reset and a complete pull of the trigger to fire...

 

[rcmodel]

+1

A TCP can only fire when pulling the trigger cocks the hammer and releases it.

Your brother pulled the trigger all the way through the long hard trigger pull somehow.

rc

 

[Reefinmike]

I know my safe gun storage routine could use a bit of work. At night, ill usually throw my carry gun(tcp) in the night stand and put my 357 on the night stand just in case. In the morning, ill put away the magnum, and holster the tcp. I only had it sitting out on my desk because i was loading up some 380s, and took it out to check the fit of some new loads in the barrel. Then i reloaded it and left it there. Like i said, im 99% sure it was simple stupidity, i just cant believe he would pull a trigger, especially because he knows mine are always loaded and he knows basic gun safety. Im just terrified that his story was correct, and one day itll go boom and remove my manhood.

 

[Reefinmike]

Onward- what if, if if if- somehow the hammer dropped from its resting position and hit hard enough to set it off? As i said, it was a lighter strike on the primer, however the dimple may have been pushed back out since he obviously wasnt gripping it and "limp wristed" it

 

[rcmodel]

It can't go boom by itself because it is never cocked when it is loaded until you pull the trigger which cocks it.

Your brother wouldn't be the first person to have an ND and have no idea how or why they pulled the trigger.

If he knew, he wouldn't have had one.

BTW: Reefinmike, there wasn't any of the Reefin going on was there??

rc

 

[Reloadron]

Take the pistol out and fire it as a mere formality. Does the pistol fire fine? I suspect it will. Guns, especially newer design guns do not shoot by themselves. My guess is this little pistol had help from your brother to manage a discharge. Regardless of what your brother may say or claim or remember that is my story and I am sticking to it.

On another note, I knew a guy who put a .380 round right through his new Dillon powder scale. He thought the chamber was empty. On the bright side it was in a basement, he and the dog were fine (just scared) and while Dillion is likely still laughing, they sent him a new scale.

Ron

 

[Reefinmike]

Rc- no lol, my main line of work is aquarium maintenance, particularly reef aquariums

 

[BullfrogKen]

The gun did not go off by itself.


He pulled the trigger. Better people than your brother have done it as well.

 

[SaxonPig]

Question: Are you in the habit of chambering and unloading the same round over and over as you load and then clear the pistol? I once had a 45 1911 go bang for no apparent reason. The smith said that the primer can become sensitive from being loaded and the slide dropped repeatedly to the point where the slightest bump can make it fire.

 

[788Ham]

This is easy to figure out! Take it out to the range, go through the same sequence you and he did, set the pistol up just like before, before it went boom. See if it does it again..... bet it won't! Bro squeezed the trigger, put the blame where it belongs, keep firearms outta kids hands!