Hankdatank --- I feel your pain!
A few months ago I was out with my fiancee. We got home, I went to The Safe, and took out my XD-9. I try not to store anything with a spring under compression, sooooo --- seeing that the striker indicator was out, I went to "clear" it. Ahem.
My normal routine with things going IN to the safe and OUT of the safe is the same: check for no mag, point in safe direction, cycle action, visually verify no round present, lower hammer/release striker/de-cock. I've been doing this for a long time. Everything gets checked going in and coming out.
Except for that time.
Put a niner through the floor. (Private home, full cement basement. JHP must have gone vertically down into a stud --- it vanished into the carpet.)
WHERE was my brain that night? Well, since I KNEW that the thing wasn't chambered, the rest of the process leaked out of my head. Oh, yeah --- Rule Number One.
BELIEVE ME --- no matter what you know or what anyone tells you, even if you've just disassembled the thing down to the pins --- it is ALWAYS loaded. Thank the heavens for the rest of the Rules. No one hurt, nothing visibly damaged.
Thirty years of safe handling. And, in a zillionth of a second, that "perfect" record --- pfffft!
On the plus side --- I think I'm sharper now than ever. But it took weeks before I could watch myself shaving again.
Unbelievably, my Incredibly Wonderful Lady came in, asked what happened --- and then crawled around on the floor until she found the case! We talked about the whole thing for days. She said I looked like I'd been convicted of something. And I had. I can think of things that could have made me feel worse --- like slipping up on those Other Rules. Her trust in me hasn't changed. Incredible.
I keep that case on my dresser. I am never going to forget it --- but I've stopped obsessing over it. It just pops into my head every time I handle a firearm --- which is a good thing, I trhink.
I talked with the guys at the range about it. After some yakking, turns out it's fairly hard to find anyone who hasn't done something --- let's call it "vacuum-headed" --- at some time. One guy shot his car once, someone else holed the roof. (That's form two ex-cops, BTW.) And this post might get a lot of "Me? Never's," and that's a good thing.
Deb's OK, your wife's OK, you're OK, I'm OK.
I'd like to think that we're safer now than a lot of folks who've never had the "joy" of getting a warning instead of a ticket ...
PS
Read a story online about a guy who was an instructor, was showing his girlfriend safety procedure, could have SWORN he'd loaded Snap Caps --- then put one through the back wall and into the woods. If you look, you can find the story. It was an individual web upload, not a post. It was a confession. He has a profound appreciation for the "Safe Direction" part, too.
