I'm doing this thread partially by suggestion but also for the obvious awareness reason.
I had mentioned earlier that I'm doing a documentary about shooting accidents and am currently in the research phase. I Do think this was misread as an indication of per-conception where in fact the (currently on hold) research still to be done is stuff surrounding a solution to the problem and tying up a few loose ends.
The second misconception, which seams to happen more often then not is forum members putting words in my mouth that claim the exact opposite of my actual statements. In this particular case, claiming that I think the Glock is a bad gun because I dislike the trigger and find the take-down to be an invitation for shooting accidents (which we'll get in to a little later) even though I went out of my way to say it's a good gun despite these issues, one of which should be obvious to everyone is a matter of personal preference.
Anyway, that's really just the debate that brought up the thinking of this thread and IS NOT the topic.
The real topic I want to cover is shooting accidents.
TBH, my shooting accident documentary is on hold, awaiting the starting of a whole series about proving people we were taught to believe were heroes were bad guys, vice versa, which I am sure some of you would much rather me finish first (since one is set on proving Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant) but in an episode I have planned about hollow points, I will be doing most of the closing video stuff, so both will probably come out around the same time.
The description of the documentary about shooting accidents SOUNDS like it may be politically motivated but in reality, it's purpose is very pure and straightforward. It's strictly about education for the purpose of prevention of shooting accidents. Nothing more or less.
As this is still months away and some people have called me on the matter, I'll give you this thread as a look in to what this is all about.
First, I DO want to stress that the rate of shooting accidents in the USA is going down and has been for decades. Gun safety is getting better, not worse both in firearm design as well as user responsibility.
None the less, an old saying that often holds true is that there are only those who have had accidental discharges and those who will.
While FATAL shooting accidents tend to be mostly limited to drug addicts, drunks and generally impulsive types, we DO see a huge portion of NON FATAL accidents being caused by shooting hobbyists. Exactly how many is hard to determine since, by their very nature, non-fatal shooting accidents, especially those that do not result in serious injury tend to go unreported. But there have been private and independent surveys done over the years and in every case I have studied, the results were very consistent that the rate of accidental discharges among gun hobbyists in particular is extremely high.
There is on very good thing here though. Most of the cases reviewed involve individual testimony by the person who had the accident themselves. This is typically because their accident involved observation of at least SOME of the rules of gun safety which resulted in little or no harm and therefor no reason for the case to be reported prior to the survey or interview.
One good example is one I witnessed in person. It involved a .50AE Desert Eagle. The gun owner at the time broke all of the rules of gun safety except 1. He had the gun pointed in a safe direction. Because of this, no one was injured and there was no reason to report it. In fact, I am talking about it now for the first time almost exactly a decade after it happened.
One of the problems is that not everyone is so lucky. What really peaked my interest in this matter (as well as the issue regarding the Glock) was when a friend of mine, a 30 year gun enthusiast and one of the most knowledgeable people I know when it comes to firearms shot himself while cleaning his gun.
That is not to say that I blamed his gun. Rather, that it occurred to me that this is not the first time a veteran gun hobbyist or professional user had shot themselves in a shooting accident. It then occurred to me that most of the non-fatal shooting accidents that resulted in injury that I know of were caused by people who are genuinely responsible gun owners who have had gun safety drilled in to them.
So the question became, what is it that causes people who know better to have a bad moment and discharge their firearm accidentally? The reason I took interest in this is because the evidence suggested there's a flaw in gun safety education that is going completely unnoticed and maybe even ignored, though in this case, I think it's mostly just an unnoticed problem.
This is really a left brain VS right brain thing. Left brain attitude is, "Follow the rules of gun safety and you'll be fine." It should be obvious but the problem here is that human beings are not robots. No one is perfect, we all make mistakes and get caught off guard. Declaring that simply knowing the rules of gun safety and making a vigilant effort to follow them is the final answer to the problem with gun safety is an invitation for trouble.
So, where does that leave us? Well, we must then examine what leads us to those moments of imperfection when we're caught off guard and study what happens in the mind of the shooter leading up to a shooting accident.
While I was unfortunately limited mostly to the study of body language, expressions and circumstances in shooting accidents by experts and professionals caught on tape (that DEA agent shooting himself in the foot during a gun safety class for instance), I WAS able to get some first hand accounts from individuals who had shooting accidents. The accounts matched up perfectly with the indications in almost every piece of video footage I examined.
It comes down to the way the conscious and subconscious mind work and most importantly, the relationship between the two. While many people, particularly religious folks like to deny this sort of thing exists, scam artiest and pick pockets depend on this mind limitation. For instance, pick pockets often catch their victim when they are giving their full attention to a person or subject matter and handling commotion at the same time. While dealing with these factors, soft bumps and nudges are often dealt with by the subconscious. As result, you may FEEL the pick pocket going for your belongings, but your conscious mind makes no notice of it.
In a show of his own, the British celebrity Derren Brown demonstrated an even more extreme manipulation of the subconscious and criminal usage of it by asking people for directions on the street with very confusing talk and gestures and then very casually asking for their wallets, which the victims unknowingly handed over.
The problem is that the mind can only handle a few separate tasks consciously. Once the conscious mind has reached it's limit, other active tasks are transferred to the subconscious. These tend to be causal tasks that are ingrained in muscle memory that take little brain power to accomplish. But perhaps the most scary thing about this transition is that, by the very nature of subconscious it's self, always happens without the individual even being aware that of it.
Shooting accidents often happen to gun people when they're very nervous or involved in deep conversation or conversation with multiple people, all of which are tasks that can quickly fill up your conscious mind and leave your subconscious dealing with gun safety without you even knowing it.
One of the most common things I have seen or heard testimony to, which is also my concern with the Glock is the accident resulting from the individual following all the correct safety protocols out of sequence.
The Glock actually has my favorite take-down system. I love the simplicity and reliability. The reason I have issues with it in the Glock is because it's a great take-down system for hammer fire guns. Striker fire guns however require the pulling of the trigger to disengage it. In terms of sheer mechanics, there's nothing particularly wrong with it. Clear the weapon and then follow procedure. The issue is that, because disassembling the gun requires the trigger to be pulled one way or another, following proper safety and disassemble protocol OUT OF SEQUENCE with the Glock or similar actions can have dire consequences as where with guns such as the Beretta, the risk is still there but; without needing to pull the trigger at any point during take-down, is reduced and able to handle SOME (not all) mistakes without going off accidentally.
This is NOT to say that the Glock is necessarily at fault or that the Glock is a highly accident prone gun (though I would say that in some ways, it's more vulnerable then other guns) or that linking the take-down to a decocking mechanism is somehow going to fix the overall problem.
As everyone here should and probably does know, gun safety is the soul responsibility of the shooter. I personally view the mechanical safeties in guns as last hopes when the shooter fails.
TBH, I have yet to come up with any text book solution to the problem, other then simply making people aware of this potential danger. Simply being aware can help one avoid these issues.
Now that I have become aware of it, I have made an effort to halt social activity at all times when clearing a weapon. My experience is that responsible gun owners respect you if you ask for a moment of peace and quiet so you can give soul attention to clearing and making safe your firearm, and when around people who know little about guns, they tend to show the same respect out of caution. Is this an end-all answer to the problem? Absolutely not. I can only say that awareness of the danger and practicing such policy has made me feel allot safer and more confident against being caught off-guard.
Sometimes the safest road to drive down is the most dangerously paved. Keeping your guard up at all times, complimented by awareness of the potential dangers of lowering it can save you allot of hardship and tragedy.
That said, the matter is still being researched.
Be safe.
I had mentioned earlier that I'm doing a documentary about shooting accidents and am currently in the research phase. I Do think this was misread as an indication of per-conception where in fact the (currently on hold) research still to be done is stuff surrounding a solution to the problem and tying up a few loose ends.
The second misconception, which seams to happen more often then not is forum members putting words in my mouth that claim the exact opposite of my actual statements. In this particular case, claiming that I think the Glock is a bad gun because I dislike the trigger and find the take-down to be an invitation for shooting accidents (which we'll get in to a little later) even though I went out of my way to say it's a good gun despite these issues, one of which should be obvious to everyone is a matter of personal preference.
Anyway, that's really just the debate that brought up the thinking of this thread and IS NOT the topic.
The real topic I want to cover is shooting accidents.
TBH, my shooting accident documentary is on hold, awaiting the starting of a whole series about proving people we were taught to believe were heroes were bad guys, vice versa, which I am sure some of you would much rather me finish first (since one is set on proving Abraham Lincoln was a tyrant) but in an episode I have planned about hollow points, I will be doing most of the closing video stuff, so both will probably come out around the same time.
The description of the documentary about shooting accidents SOUNDS like it may be politically motivated but in reality, it's purpose is very pure and straightforward. It's strictly about education for the purpose of prevention of shooting accidents. Nothing more or less.
As this is still months away and some people have called me on the matter, I'll give you this thread as a look in to what this is all about.
First, I DO want to stress that the rate of shooting accidents in the USA is going down and has been for decades. Gun safety is getting better, not worse both in firearm design as well as user responsibility.
None the less, an old saying that often holds true is that there are only those who have had accidental discharges and those who will.
While FATAL shooting accidents tend to be mostly limited to drug addicts, drunks and generally impulsive types, we DO see a huge portion of NON FATAL accidents being caused by shooting hobbyists. Exactly how many is hard to determine since, by their very nature, non-fatal shooting accidents, especially those that do not result in serious injury tend to go unreported. But there have been private and independent surveys done over the years and in every case I have studied, the results were very consistent that the rate of accidental discharges among gun hobbyists in particular is extremely high.
There is on very good thing here though. Most of the cases reviewed involve individual testimony by the person who had the accident themselves. This is typically because their accident involved observation of at least SOME of the rules of gun safety which resulted in little or no harm and therefor no reason for the case to be reported prior to the survey or interview.
One good example is one I witnessed in person. It involved a .50AE Desert Eagle. The gun owner at the time broke all of the rules of gun safety except 1. He had the gun pointed in a safe direction. Because of this, no one was injured and there was no reason to report it. In fact, I am talking about it now for the first time almost exactly a decade after it happened.
One of the problems is that not everyone is so lucky. What really peaked my interest in this matter (as well as the issue regarding the Glock) was when a friend of mine, a 30 year gun enthusiast and one of the most knowledgeable people I know when it comes to firearms shot himself while cleaning his gun.
That is not to say that I blamed his gun. Rather, that it occurred to me that this is not the first time a veteran gun hobbyist or professional user had shot themselves in a shooting accident. It then occurred to me that most of the non-fatal shooting accidents that resulted in injury that I know of were caused by people who are genuinely responsible gun owners who have had gun safety drilled in to them.
So the question became, what is it that causes people who know better to have a bad moment and discharge their firearm accidentally? The reason I took interest in this is because the evidence suggested there's a flaw in gun safety education that is going completely unnoticed and maybe even ignored, though in this case, I think it's mostly just an unnoticed problem.
This is really a left brain VS right brain thing. Left brain attitude is, "Follow the rules of gun safety and you'll be fine." It should be obvious but the problem here is that human beings are not robots. No one is perfect, we all make mistakes and get caught off guard. Declaring that simply knowing the rules of gun safety and making a vigilant effort to follow them is the final answer to the problem with gun safety is an invitation for trouble.
So, where does that leave us? Well, we must then examine what leads us to those moments of imperfection when we're caught off guard and study what happens in the mind of the shooter leading up to a shooting accident.
While I was unfortunately limited mostly to the study of body language, expressions and circumstances in shooting accidents by experts and professionals caught on tape (that DEA agent shooting himself in the foot during a gun safety class for instance), I WAS able to get some first hand accounts from individuals who had shooting accidents. The accounts matched up perfectly with the indications in almost every piece of video footage I examined.
It comes down to the way the conscious and subconscious mind work and most importantly, the relationship between the two. While many people, particularly religious folks like to deny this sort of thing exists, scam artiest and pick pockets depend on this mind limitation. For instance, pick pockets often catch their victim when they are giving their full attention to a person or subject matter and handling commotion at the same time. While dealing with these factors, soft bumps and nudges are often dealt with by the subconscious. As result, you may FEEL the pick pocket going for your belongings, but your conscious mind makes no notice of it.
In a show of his own, the British celebrity Derren Brown demonstrated an even more extreme manipulation of the subconscious and criminal usage of it by asking people for directions on the street with very confusing talk and gestures and then very casually asking for their wallets, which the victims unknowingly handed over.
The problem is that the mind can only handle a few separate tasks consciously. Once the conscious mind has reached it's limit, other active tasks are transferred to the subconscious. These tend to be causal tasks that are ingrained in muscle memory that take little brain power to accomplish. But perhaps the most scary thing about this transition is that, by the very nature of subconscious it's self, always happens without the individual even being aware that of it.
Shooting accidents often happen to gun people when they're very nervous or involved in deep conversation or conversation with multiple people, all of which are tasks that can quickly fill up your conscious mind and leave your subconscious dealing with gun safety without you even knowing it.
One of the most common things I have seen or heard testimony to, which is also my concern with the Glock is the accident resulting from the individual following all the correct safety protocols out of sequence.
The Glock actually has my favorite take-down system. I love the simplicity and reliability. The reason I have issues with it in the Glock is because it's a great take-down system for hammer fire guns. Striker fire guns however require the pulling of the trigger to disengage it. In terms of sheer mechanics, there's nothing particularly wrong with it. Clear the weapon and then follow procedure. The issue is that, because disassembling the gun requires the trigger to be pulled one way or another, following proper safety and disassemble protocol OUT OF SEQUENCE with the Glock or similar actions can have dire consequences as where with guns such as the Beretta, the risk is still there but; without needing to pull the trigger at any point during take-down, is reduced and able to handle SOME (not all) mistakes without going off accidentally.
This is NOT to say that the Glock is necessarily at fault or that the Glock is a highly accident prone gun (though I would say that in some ways, it's more vulnerable then other guns) or that linking the take-down to a decocking mechanism is somehow going to fix the overall problem.
As everyone here should and probably does know, gun safety is the soul responsibility of the shooter. I personally view the mechanical safeties in guns as last hopes when the shooter fails.
TBH, I have yet to come up with any text book solution to the problem, other then simply making people aware of this potential danger. Simply being aware can help one avoid these issues.
Now that I have become aware of it, I have made an effort to halt social activity at all times when clearing a weapon. My experience is that responsible gun owners respect you if you ask for a moment of peace and quiet so you can give soul attention to clearing and making safe your firearm, and when around people who know little about guns, they tend to show the same respect out of caution. Is this an end-all answer to the problem? Absolutely not. I can only say that awareness of the danger and practicing such policy has made me feel allot safer and more confident against being caught off-guard.
Sometimes the safest road to drive down is the most dangerously paved. Keeping your guard up at all times, complimented by awareness of the potential dangers of lowering it can save you allot of hardship and tragedy.
That said, the matter is still being researched.
Be safe.
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