unspellable said:
And experience 3 leads me to say we need a rule 5 about never assuming what somebody else is doing.
Yes, that's another something to watch all right!
I was also surprised at how many of the incidents involved gun owners allowing clueless folks to have access to or to handle live firearms without first making sure the newcomers understood the safety rules.
An interesting old thread semi-related to this point:
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=72328 Post #38 is spot-on and makes some good points. Range safety and firearms safety is
everyone's concern, not just the job of the range employees.
Similarly, P95Carry made a good post (#4) in this thread:
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=83880 P95 told the story of hunting with a stranger who crossed a fence with a loaded gun -- a serious hunting no-no -- and who also had his finger on the trigger while doing so. "The gun fired" as the stranger got hung up on the fence. (The rest of that thread is chock-full of serious and not-so-serious hunting accidents, mostly the result of Rule 4 violations.) Again, the immediate cause of the unintentional discharge was that the stranger broke a cardinal rule of safe hunting by crossing a fence with a loaded gun, and also by having his
finger on the trigger. But the accident probably could have been prevented by watching the newcomer more closely to be sure he was behaving in a safe manner.
From the same thread,
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=83880 Post #18. A 4 year old girl and her 8 ear old brother were alone in a room. Their dad's loaded revolver was also in the room with them. The 8 year old picked up the gun and pointed it at his sister, saying he was going to shoot her. She dared him to and he did, striking her left leg just below the kneecap. The poster made a point of observing that the 8 year old had been exposed to the gun safety rules and supposedly knew better than to do what he did. Causes:
leaving a loaded firearm where irresponsible people (children in this case) could access it.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=179008 post #9 tells the story of a 12-year-old boy who was shot by his father. The father was working on a little .22 rifle on the firing line of a basement range. The boy moved in front of the rifle just as the father closed the breech of the rifle. The father's pinky finger brushed the trigger just as he brushed the block home with his thumb, dropping the hammer. The round hit the floor and ricocheted into the child's leg. Causes:
the kid was forward of the firing line while a rifle was being handled. Also, we have another case of
people handling firearms without being aware of what other people are doing; the father didn't know the kid had moved in front of him and was thus unaware that
the muzzle was no longer pointed in a safe direction (rule 2) while he worked on the loaded rifle.
Similarly,
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=179008 post #11 tells the story of one kid running right in front of another kid while the second kid was shooting.
Don't go forward of the firing line would have prevented that one, as would
Be sure of your target (Rule 4, which properly includes everything behind the target and everything between the shooter and the target).
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=179008 Post #12 A young man got shot in the side of the knee with a rubber bullet from a 12 gauge. He was talking to a group of police officers when one of them was unloading the shotgun at the end of that officer's shift. The officer ejected all the rounds he thought he had loaded at the beginning of the shift, then closed the action and pulled the trigger with the muzzle pointed down -- but not far enough down. The rubber round had been left in the gun by a previous user and the officer had failed to check that the gun was completely empty before loading the internal magazine at the beginning of his own shift. Causes:
an empty gun (rule 1).
Unsafe direction (rule 2). No rule 3 violation because the officer did choose a specific target (the ground) -- he just wasn't a good enough shot to hit it!
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=246172 A man putting his pistol into a shoulder holster accidentally shot and killed himself while at the shooting range. The news report noted that a similar shooting, also involving a shoulder holster, had happened at the same range a few months before that event, but in that earlier case the shooter lived. Without more details it is impossible to say for sure exactly what went wrong in these two cases, but if the shoulder holster were slightly floppy, the man may have used the muzzle of the gun to bring the holster mouth out from his side, pointing the muzzle directly at the left side of his chest in the process. The other shoulder-holster possibility for a fatal mistake involves pointing the gun at the shooter's own brachial artery in the upper arm during the reholster process; however, the news reports specified a chest injury. Regardless of the specific location of the muzzle, reholstering injuries very typically happen when the shooter's finger is on the trigger while holstering. Cause:
Unsafe direction (rule 2), most probably with the shooter's
finger on trigger (rule 3).
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=119322 A two-year-old child was accidentally shot when a house guest bent down. The gun in the guest's pocket accidentally fired, striking him in the hand and the toddler in the shoulder. The gun was a derringer-type pistol. Cause:
pocket gun without a trigger-covering holster.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=246201 tells the stories of five different accidental shootings. Details on some of them are a bit spotty, and my suspicion is that one of them (the last#5) wasn't an accident but rather a suicide.
Incident #1: a 23-year-old man was cleaning his believed-to-be unloaded handgun with a Q-tip as he sat on the couch with his girlfriend beside him and friends in the room. The muzzle was resting on the man's lower pelvis and his middle finger was on the trigger. "Suddenly, it went off," the article reports, and the man later opined that, had the gun's safety been on, he would not have gotten shot.
Incident #2: a 47-year-old man was drinking with friends when he decided to show off his handgun. He handed the gun to a friend, and as the friend gave it back to him, he commented, "Don't be afraid, it's got a double safety." He then began pulling the trigger while the gun was pointed at his own body. On the fourth pull, "the gun went off," killing him.
Incident #3: a 19-year-old man accidentally shot himself while seated in a vehicle, as he readjusted the pistol in his pocket. The bullet struck him in his left pinkie and then entered and exited his left thigh.
Incident #4: A 40-year-old poacher accidentally shot himself in the stomach with a 12-gauge shotgun.
Incident #5: a 22-year-old man accidentally shot himself in the head in his home.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=63120 A 13-year-old boy shot his 7-year-old brother in the head as they played cops & robbers. The 7-year-old died from his injuries. The boys were home alone in a house without a phone, and when the shooting occurred, the older boy carried his brother next door to get help.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=73768 A woman found a shotgun under a couch while cleaning. As she tried to figure out whether the gun was loaded, she operated the slide, putting a round into the chamber. Her finger was on the trigger and "the gun went off." The round struck the 1-year-old daughter of her roommate, killing the baby.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=50659 A female security guard who worked the night shift was asleep when her otherwise unsupervised 4-year-old son shot his 3-year-old brother in the face at close range, killing him. The mother reported that her loaded gun was locked inside the family safe, and that the 4-year-old must have found the key and unlocked the safe to get the gun. She did not awaken when the gun fired; the 4-year-old woke her up some time after the shooting had happened.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=49380 A 10 year old girl was shot in the butt by her police-officer father as he was cleaning his service weapon, a .357 Sig semi-auto. He finished cleaning and the gun "discharged accidentally as he was putting it back together," according to the news reports (post #16). Causes:
ammunition in the room while cleaning, assembling, or dry-firing a gun.
An unloaded gun (rule 1) and
pointing the gun in an unsafe direction (rule 2) while handling it. Possibly a Rule 3 violation, finger on trigger; news reports weren't clear of course but also make no mention of any possible mechanical malfunctions.
***
And then there are the hunting stories.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=83880 Multiple stories, most involving hunters and Rule 4 violations.
THR, 2004
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=100370 A 12-year-old boy was killed when he was shot in the head with a shotgun by his 10-year-old cousin during a dove hunt. There were about 13 family members on the hunting trip. When a few birds flew overhead, the shooters stood up and began firing. The boy who was killed walked in front of the muzzle of his cousin's gun. Causes: youngsters hunting too close together, possibly with too little adult supervision. Rules 2 & 4 violation by the 10 year old.
THR, 2004
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=83880 Multiple stories. Post #2 A hunting guide's female client climbed into his truck without first emptying her rifle. He asked her if her rifle was empty; she replied that it was. With the rifle pointed at the ceiling of the truck, she clicked the safety off (in order to open the bolt of her Remington 700) and the gun fired, breaking the windshield of the truck. Learning points: No one was harmed because the gun was pointed in a safe direction (rule 2) when the mechanism malfunctioned. Nevertheless, you do not want to be sitting inside a closed vehicle when a rifle fires -- so empty your rifle before you get into the vehicle. And place only guarded trust in mechanical safeties.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showpost.php?p=603693&postcount=10 Two men were hunting together. They had been hunting together for many years, and had been best friends for over 30 years. The shooter heard some ruffling, looked through his rifle scope, thought he saw horns, and pulled the trigger. He hit the other man directly in the chest, killing him instantly. The two men were roughly 180 yards apart, and the man who was shot was wearing a blaze orange jacket. Rule 4 of course.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=146925 A man went to shoot a possibly-rabid raccoon in the garage of his home. The man's 2-year-old daughter darted in front of the rifle as the man was firing. The bullet struck the toddler in the head and killed her. Causes: an
unsupervised child. near a loaded gun And a Rule 4 violation, though not in the usual sense: Rule 4 includes being aware of everything that might come between you and the target, as well as what the target is and whether there is a safe backstop behind it. The child should have been kept inside the house while her father 'hunted' in the garage, since she was not old enough to know not to run in front of the rifle, and since rabid animals are very unpredictable.
Related to the above, it's long been my opinion that there is no such thing as supervising a child while
you are the one shooting. IMO, if you take a minor child to the range, your ONLY job is to keep the child from doing something dangerously foolish around the guns. You cannot fire a weapon and supervise a child at the same time. So if you take a kid to the range on a day when you want to shoot as well, bring another adult along. Or wait until the kid has been to the range enough times and knows the rules well enough that he really-and-truly can be expected to follow them with only minimal or occasional supervision.
pax
