I do have to question at this point how many folks here have done any sort of Honor Guard or Honor Battery work.
I automatically assumed that most of us haven't (I sure haven't).
While of course an ND like that will have its consequences ... and bad ones at that, something like that isn't exactly news.
It might not be new news, but it has bad consequences (or rather commentary) here for the same reasons that it has bad consequences for the people involved.
The procedures involved in the *highly* ritualized ceremonies are by far not the safest, hence we use blanks that are very, very clearly marked, or look nothing like a real bullet.
Your organization did, but maybe some others don't. Who knows? Some actors have been killed by NDs right on the movie set (e.g. Brandon Lee), which should have been quite free of bullets (but were not). I've also read about several cases (among many more) about cops who mistakenly shot one another with their pistols that clearly did not look like the ones loaded with simunitions, but there you go....
The guy "fiddling with his rifle" before may have been adjusting any hand for uniformity purposes. (Imagine for a second having to have your arm at the same angle as the guy to your right.) He may or may not have done *anything* with his firing hand. Sorry if I keep pounding this, but calling stuff like this the guys fault for "fiddling with his rifle" is akin to saying it's unsafe to move at an IDPA shoot with a loaded weapon.
I wasn't drawing any conclusions from that, just pointing out something that looked suspicious, whether it was actually related or not (I wouldn't know but maybe somebody could figure it out). My guess was and still is that the rifle malfunctioned in some way, and I was looking for some additional evidence for it.
And by the way, was that rifle pointed right at the other guy's head, and if it was, then is it standard procedure in these drills for a loaded rifle (albeit loaded with blanks, but those can still be dangerous) to be pointed at somebody
while charging the bolt? Trigger discipline isn't the only rule of safety, after all.
There is some funky techniques involved in Honor Guard duties. And some of those (gasp) do not really coincide with ye sacred ruleth of ye venerableth and ultimate authoratitheth NRA.
I can understand bending the rules for the sake of presentation, but come on!
On a bit of an unrelated note that is some odd manual of arms for an Honor Guard shoot! Straight Up? Really? Odd. But hey, when in Rome ...
I guess not all such organizations do everything the same way.