Accidental discharge!

Status
Not open for further replies.
To add my .02 to a lot of good comments:

I think it comes down to being too comfortable doing repetitive tasks. Every check should be as thorough as the first.
 
Its really nothing to be too ashamed about, it happens to the best of us, even if you think it can't happen to you because you always treat all your guns as if theyre loaded. A friend of mine had one a few years ago when a decocker on a used PPK failed after he had just bought it, he took the gun back to the store and they found out it was damaged, needless to say they had it repaired for him at no charge. Having an AD doesnt mean you had to be doing anything reckless, sometimes it just happens.
 
I've had the same happen to me with my revolver (round staying in the cylinder... not an AD/ND).

I don't have a CCH permit, so I open carry. I was getting ready to enter the city limits where open carry is prohibited, so I stopped in a parking lot to unload my revolver. I unlatched the cylinder, and dumped the cartridges in my hand and put them in my jacket pocket. I then put my revolver into it's case in my console.

Leaving the city I went to load up, unlatched the cylinder, and there was a cartridge still in there! Lesson learned; always press the ejector rod unloading the revolver, count cartridges, and verify cylinder is clear.
 
Well...

I never had an AD/ND, but I did have a slamfire with a AR-7 after firing a whole brick of ammo (500 rounds). The action was filthy and the firing pin was full of crud. I always kept the muzzle pointed downrange so it just blasted one off into the dirt about 30 feet away.:uhoh:
 
I'm on the neglect bandwagon with this one. You cannot get comfortable ever with a firearm. They are always loaded.
 
...there will be a lot of people jumping on saying it's not an accident, it's negligent. By their definition their are no accidents in the world, because everything was forseeable if you only looked for the right things.
Click to expand...

Not at all. Alhtough in this case is is negligence, there are accidents. It's impossible to foresee internal parts breaking causing a serious malfunction and injury/death even when the shooter follows all of the rules.

Complacency is the culprit.
Click to expand...

Complacency and/or distraction are the culprit.
 
At least my dad is not so stupid as to dry fire at objects (like the TV
Click to expand...

What is stupid about dry-firing at the TV is that the TV is not a safe backstop. It won't necessarily stop a bullet.
Click to expand...

A firearms instructor once told me that TVs were good for dry firing practice for that very reason. It turns out that my only ND was into a TV. (Yea, I was young and stupid and didn't follow the rules).

Well, in my case, at least, that 13" TV stopped a .223 round.
 
History Prof ~

Some TVs will stop a bullet, if they're hit in the right spot.

Others won't.

Unless you're willing to take a TV identical to yours out to the range to test whether that particular brand of television in that particular size will stop a bullet of the caliber you shoot at the distance from which you would shoot it if it were in your living room, it's a bad idea to dryfire at your TV.

Better?

(Hmmm, thought of a few other considersiderations, not part of my original post but still relevant I think:

1) the TV is, by nature, distracting. Unless you leave it off and tape a target to the front of it, it's going to encourage you not to pay as much attention to the firearm and its safe handling as you ought.

2) Ricochet potential. Lotsa curvy metallic surfaces in & on a TV.)

pax
 
Oh, trust me Pax, I wasn't arguing with you.:) In fact, I was quite suprised that it DID stop the round. The point that the instructor in question was making was that the TV would slow the round considerably - and that the TV wasn't worth saving in the first place.:D

the TV is, by nature, distracting. Unless you leave it off and tape a target to the front of it, it's going to encourage you not to pay as much attention to the firearm and its safe handling as you ought.
Click to expand...
Yup. That is EXACTLY what happened when I was young and stoopid.:eek:
 
What is stupid about dry-firing at the TV is that the TV is not a safe backstop.
Click to expand...

Generally true, but if it's a 115 grain 9mm +P Golden Saber coming out of a 5" barrel and making contact with a 32" panasonic flatscreen, then there are worse backstops out there. Don't ask me how I know.

Also, regarding ricochet potential, we were picking pieces of the metal jacket out of the carpet and walls for weeks afterwards.
 
AD's all over the place

I have never had an AD. I hope I never do.

I was in Desert Storm on firewatch late one night. Anyone that ever wore their helmet with a slung rifle knows how often the flash suppresor sneaks up under the back lip of the helmet. Pain in the arse.

We were locked and loaded, safety's on. Well, I get relieved and unsling the rifle to clear and find the safety latch had gotten bumped on my gear and was sitting on FIRE. And I was L&L. I felt the chill that goes up the back in those kind of situations. I had a barrel poking in my helmet periodically throughout the night and was on FIRE. Gulp.

And then another Marine buddy took a 9mm in the hand when someone cleaning their pistol had their AD.

And a sarge buddy visited me in my apartment after I got out and he was showing me his S&W revolver. Thumb slipped on the hammer and he blew out my patio door.

Man- I have been around a lot of flying lead.
 
He's getting a little old to be fiddling with guns. His ND might not be due to senility but older folk are going to be much more prone to forgetting to check this and that, and as he ages he will run much higher risks of more NDs. When my grandfather was 69 he was using a chop saw he'd used for decades and was a little forgetful of safety procedures and managed to chop off 4 fingers in one split second.

Old age and dangerous machines do not go well together.
 
With revolvers I always eject, check, spin the cylinder (watch while spinning), check again. If something's in there, I'm going to notice it somewhere in that drill.
 
I don't dry fire. Except after a thorough cleaning, and then there's no question if there's a round in the chamber. Back when I did dry fire my Mark IV a lot, I used snap-caps. Since you have to load those, there's not much chance of a ND either.
 
It's an ND, not an AD. Indeed it's a classic ND. The attention is focused on some technical problem and BANG. He could have done much worse than point up.
 
I am glad to hear that no one were hurt. I also think that is was very brave of your dad to tell you, he really does sound like a stand-up guy.

A few of the replies do bother me, mainly this one:
Everyone will have an accidental discharge eventually.
Click to expand...

With all due respect, I totally disagree. First of all, there is no such thing as an AD. There are only NDs. Second, everyone who handles firearms has the responsibility to make darn sure that they do not have a ND, ever.

With regard to the revolver "issue" i.e. leaving the last round in by accident. It should be a none issue if the operator unloads the weapon correctly. Release the cylinder, push it all the way out, turn the weapon upside down, push the ejector rod all the way down, then look at the cylinder, and count the rounds in your hand. Put them down someplace, count them again, then take the gun to another room to clean/dryfire/pet/whatever you are planning to do with it. If this is done each and every time, that type of ND will never happen.
 
For many years I eschewed snap caps as potentially dangerous items that could lull you into a sense of false security.

I bought two snap caps last year for my 8mm mauser and m91/30 sniper.

One night as I was playing with my rifle I caught myself pulling the trigger and dry-firing at the wall. Originally I had started firing at the ground, but then my aim just kept creeping up...

I have since decided that while I will keep the snap cap so that I can dry fire my m39 and build up my left forearm muscles, I will never again dry fire at anything but a two foot thick tree stump that I have in my back yard.
 
I've only had one AD/ND in my life. I was fourteen and screwing around with my pellet gun and shot my mom's brand new flooring. Put a .177 dent in the floor. For some reason that accident has stayed with me all these years. Funny, how wome things stick in your mind.
 
I had my only ND when I was 9 with a pellet pistol, wall stopped the pellet. It is easier to have an ND than prevent one but negligent discharges are not accidents and are not unavoidable.

At a minimum before dry firing I remove the magazine, work the slide three times, look, and feel in the chamber and finally dry fire with the weapon pointed in a safe direction.

I only dry fire in a safe direction in a room with no live ammunition, 40 feet behind target is a 6 foot high 10 inch thick cement wall.
 
Everyone will have an accidental discharge eventually.
Click to expand...

And every diver gets the bends eventually.
And every pilot crashes at least one airplane eventually.
And every cook serves up a poison mushroom eventually...

:confused:

If you think it's only an "inevitable matter of time" until every single gun owner has a ND, maybe the antis have a point about gun ownership being too dangerous for the masses.

I disagree.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

P
  • Locked
How Unintentional Discharges Happen
2 3
Replies
67
Views
6K
teknical
T
S
  • Locked
Accidental Discharge (Graphic Pics)
2 3 4 5
Replies
103
Views
8K
seuss
S
longdayjake
  • Locked
Accidental Discharge while driving?
2
Replies
37
Views
2K
Aguila Blanca
A
P
  • Locked
Fear of guns?
2
Replies
29
Views
2K
Mr White
M
E
  • Locked
His first time with a .44
Replies
17
Views
975
jkingrph
J
Back
Top