Words, Words, Words...
We're having a big debate over the meaning of the words "accidental" and "negilgent." That's a bit like arguing how to pronounce TOMATO... You know: "you say To-MOT-o, I say say To-MAY-to"
Black's legal dictionary defines an
accident as "an unforeseeable and unexpected turn of events that causes loss in value, injury, and increased liabilities. The event is not deliberate."
Negligence (from other legal sources) is defined as "doing of something which a reasonably prudent person would not do, or the failure to do something which a reasonably prudent person would do under like circumstances."
Two key themes can be seen within these definitions: with regard to accidents, they are 1) unforeseeable, unexpected, and not deliberate; with regard to negligence, 2) reasonably prudent people aren't negligent.
These (simplified) definitions -- which are ones our legal system recognize -- suggest that many of the things being addressed in this discussion are not deliberately done, and some of them are done by otherwise reasonably prudent people.
Watching for an object that might have fallen into a holster (that could lead to an unintended discharge) is arguably not something that has been incorporated into most gun safety/training courses. It may be mentioned by the instructor, but I doubt the instructor repeatedly focuses on it before, during, or after live fire exercises.) Should he?
- Some of these problems are happening because the training we've received isn't adequate and the potential issues associated with certain types of handgun "actions" aren't understood.
- To further complicate matters, I also don't know how often these types of accident/negligent behaviors REALLY happens. While one negligent discharge is too many, the problem with ND due to stuff in a holster might be more hype than issue. (Just because we've heard on the internet that it (and other "safe-action" trigger issues) are a problem, do we KNOW it's really a problem?)
- Personally, I've seen far more negligent discharges with standard pistols than with "safe-action" pistols. I've had two, myself -- both because my hand and my brain seemingly weren't connected. (In my case, nobody was harmed, the gun was in a safe direction at the range, but I didn't mean for the gun to fire, but I fired it.)
Our goal is to avoid unintended discharges -- and how we do that is more important than describing the NATURE of the things that cause them. So... how do we do that?