Negligent Discharge

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The reason I don't keep a round chambered while at my house is because I have two toddlers whom I have already started teaching to not touch. I always either have the gun holstered or in the safe(when not in my workroom with the door locked) but I'd rather not take the risk while at home with them.(different story in public)

@mainsail
I get what you are saying but I don't like to deal in absolutes. (if I say it won't it will if I say it will it won't) I agree with you and I just wanted to share so others remembered to not get complacent and with just paying attention it is completely preventable. That is why it is a negligent discharge.

Thanks for the feedback/support

The workroom is on the opposite end of the house from where the children/wife were with me facing the opposite direction.(always when dealing with any firearm in there for very obvious reasons now.)
 
Thanks for sharing. I have not had one and with proper attention paid I hope to never experience one, be it caused by myself or anyone around me. Are you going to patch the hole or leave it for a reminder / conversation piece?
 
A (sometimes) former coworker who retired from the company in the late 80's decided to clean his .357 or .44, whichever. He lived by the golf course near Pt. Clear, just down from Fairhope AL. He had a second wife and young child.

After shooting himself somewhere in the abdomen he lived for about two days in the hospital.
 
There is a reason people say that you should never have live ammunition in the same room when you are dry firing.

I might also suggest that sometimes having a round chambered and sometimes not is sub-optimal, at best.

This also illustrates why people say that muzzle discipline/safe direction is the golden rule. If you follow that one you won't have a tragedy if everything else goes to **** and you fire the gun when you shouldn't.
 
After clearing the gun go to a different room to dryfire. NEVER have live ammo in the same room with a gun you are practicing with or working on. And memorize and follow the four rules.
 
^^^ I put the ammo right out where I'm doing my dry-fire practice. If I know where they are, then I also know where they are not. Use the cartridges as targets.
 
To second what some others have said, from a guy who handles firearms every day and has never popped one off in the laundry room:

1) In general, the "sometimes chambered, sometimes not" approach is more complicated than it has to be. If it is a defensive gun, my rule would be, if the gun is not either being fired at the range, being cleaned, or being dryfired, it is loaded and chambered, period. That way, you know what the status is: loaded. If you think it is loaded, you are more likely to treat it as such.

2) I dryfire all the time, but would never do so with a loaded mag in close proximity. Either putting the mags completely out of your work space, or better yet, emptying the mags out while you dryfire would give another measure of safety that would make it virtually impossible to chamber a round while dryfiring.
 
Just a point. You had an "accidental discharge", not a "negligent discharge". Too many shooters use the terms incorrectly and it will end up hurting us if we don't get our act together.

If you look up the definition of negligence it means you deliberately did something you knew, or should have known, was dangerous and your acts could have resulted in the injury or death of yourself or others.

If you are making every attempt, as you did, to handle your guns properly and had a brain fart and did somehing wrong, as you did. It is still an accident. That does not excuse the act. You are still responsible, and it was still preventable, but from a legal perspective the difference is huge.

Had you been drinking when this happened it would have been negligent because you would have been knowingly doing something dangerous. If you were using a gun that you knew was defective and discharged, it would have been negligence. Had a manufacturer sold you a gun they knew was a defective design, they would have been negligent. If you were playing with the gun, pointing it at other people even though you "thought" it was unloaded, it would have been negligent.

If we continue to use the term "negligent" instead of "accidential" then the implied meaning is that the very act of owning a gun is dangerous and any unintentinal firing of a gun is negligent. This is the very message gun control advocates are pushing. In their minds there is no such thing as an accidential diacharge. The very fact that you own a gun is a dangerous act that you knowingly made. There are negligent discharges, but they almost aways result in someone being arrested. As they should be. But this was a prevenable accident, not negligence
 
It happens more than anyone will admit. My friend and my stepfather have both had one. My turn could by today. Life is not perfect, don't beat yourself up too bad.
 
The only one I have ever had ended with me having to dig a piece of bullet out of my leg, you become a little more careful after that & you don`t climb over a fence with a rifle in your hand ever again..............Good thing you weren`t hurt bad.
 
Can't say I've never had an accidental discharge, never had one inside though. I wasn't the greatest decision maker when I was young.

I don't keep ammo anywhere near a gun if I'm working on it, cleaning it, or dry firing. When ammo and gun do come together for whatever reason I tend to talk to myself. I do the same thing when reloading. I think it helps focus your concentration even more on the task at hand. Nothing wrong with talking to yourself either, as long as you don't answer back.
 
I check and recheck a gun before pulling the trigger or messing with a gun inside the house. This kind of thing happens when something distracts or causes you to shift away from your normal behavior pattern. It is best to simply check period, but I'm not perfect by any means.

I have had an accidental discharge; actually two. The first was with a 22 semi-auto rifle when I chambered a round manually in my teens. It went off. After than occasion, I never chambered a round in any gun unless I know exactly where the muzzle is pointed. The second was more serious and I basically shot a patio door glass out of the apartment that I was renting. I obviously did not check to see if the gun was loaded. That was not good, but nobody was hurt. I was pretty embarrassed about that. But I learned a very serious lesson. This happened like 20 years ago, but I remember it like yesterday.
 
I try to put my ammo in another room from where I am dry firing a gun far away to try to avoid accidents. Good that your gun was pointed in a safe direction if all else failed you didn't hurt anyone.
 
it hit a small metal clasp on an old guitar case I was aiming at before going through the wall.
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In the 20 years that I've been teaching pistol classes and running matches I've witnessed about a dozen ND's. The funny thing about it is that EVERY one of them was a perfect shot! If you just know the gun isn't going to go off, you have perfect sight picture and there's no flinch or anticipation. Gives real meaning to the term "Surprise Trigger Break"!

I haven't had a ND yet, but I always know that I'm just about to. I've personally found that it is impossible to do too many press checks, but it is very easy to do one less than was needed.
 
Thanks for sharing your story. It can happen to anyone and that is why the basic safety rules should be followed without fail. Your story is just an example of that. Most would never admit it. I know of one officer that was playing with his new backup late at night and from his front seat fired a round through his front windshield. He then called it in as an unknown subject firing at him. LOL! He had a hard time explaining why the glass was on the hood of his still parked vehicle and no bullet hole in him or in the interior of his vehicle. The accidental discharge didn't cost him his job but his lying did.
 
A lot depends on what perspective you choose to have on this issue.

There is a level of procedure and caution that will prevent NDs. It may involve behavior that you find silly, pointless, embarrassing, whatever, but there is a line we can cross which will eliminate NDs. (Which is why the right word is ‘negligent’ and not ‘accidental’)

We should all cross that line and refuse to have the attitude that an ND is normal or in any sense acceptable.

One recommended procedure has already been mentioned–for dry fire practice remove all ammunition from the room. I have also seen the recommendation to speak out loud the status of the weapon after you’ve cleared it or loaded it.

I personally never trust my memory regarding the state of a weapon, so I check a ‘ridiculous’ number of times during dry fire practice.
 
Snag: Then I must be in trouble because I usually do answer back. Sometime's with a pretty 'snarky' remark lol.
 
Mainsail said:
^^^ I put the ammo right out where I'm doing my dry-fire practice. If I know where they are, then I also know where they are not. Use the cartridges as targets.
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And you can count the number of rounds in the magazine and you KNOW that every round of live ammunition is accounted for in that magazine?

Sounds like a good way to increase the likelihood of doing what the OP did, to me.
 
Closest I came was starting to pull the trigger to clean a 45, and deciding to take one more look see, sure enough there was a round in it. I got sidetracked during the cleaning process. But I caught myself, it's entirelly possible to do, and many who have done it will never admit to it.
Dosen't make you a bad person, lol. My step daughter always says that, "but I'm a good person". i tell her no one cares.
 
i will post pics when i got mine i almost shot my wife through the tv into the dresser down the back side of the mirror glass all over the bed!!!!
after it was all over if one was to track the round if the morror had not deflected the round momma was shot in the back... glad you and the family are ok!!!! lesson taught better than a lesson bought
 
I have definitely learned something from this. Thanks for all the input. I think I'm gonna leave the hole as a reminder.I've also kept the casing thus far. I think it might make a nice necklace as a constant reminder.
 
Warp said:
And you can count the number of rounds in the magazine and you KNOW that every round of live ammunition is accounted for in that magazine?

Sounds like a good way to increase the likelihood of doing what the OP did, to me.
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If I were to dry fire one of the autos, I would have one full magazine and one stray round.

Like I said, check the gun to make sure it's unloaded, then you check EVERY time it leaves your hand for even a moment. When I'm in the gun store the clerk will check the gun and hand it to me- if he didn't hand me the gun with the action open, I'll check it again. This is what I teach others. It may be excessive, but I belong to the group that believes an ND is UNACCEPTABLE and entirely preventable.
 
Mainsail said:
If I were to dry fire one of the autos, I would have one full magazine and one stray round.

Like I said, check the gun to make sure it's unloaded, then you check EVERY time it leaves your hand for even a moment. When I'm in the gun store the clerk will check the gun and hand it to me- if he didn't hand me the gun with the action open, I'll check it again. This is what I teach others. It may be excessive, but I belong to the group that believes an ND is UNACCEPTABLE and entirely preventable.
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That's good, but to me it sounded like you were saying that you relied on seeing the loaded magazine and therefore you knew that the chamber was empty and you could pull the trigger without getting a bag...and that sounds very dangerous
 
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