JTHunter.. it's easy to say, and to read, but not so easy to accept.
At my aunts request tonight, I removed all of the firearms from their house. I hit the floor tonight when I figured out which one was missing from his collection of 20+ weapons. The gun this happened with yesterday, was one I sold to him back in 2007. I called my cousin and asked where it was, and he told me it was the one the deputies took.
My uncle had a few stiff drinks after getting home from work. He was moving the weapon while my aunt was making dinner (raw meat for tacos was still on the stove in a pan when we went there tonight). He was moving the weapon, lost his balance, stumbled backwards, and when he reached out to catch himself, the gun twisted on the edge of the kitchen counter upwards, and went off.
What I saw there tonight, when we went there to clean, agrees 100% with my aunts story. It was a freak accident.
Four of the weapons I moved out tonight were loaded, all cylinders were loaded on three revolvers, and one semi-auto S&W 9mm had a hot pipe. The other 17 weapons I removed were unloaded and either in his cabinet, or in cases, unloaded.
The realist in me knows it could have happened with any of them, but I'm just at a total f'n loss that it was with one of the handguns I'd sold to him.
He wasn't careless with firearms, his finger never went to the trigger unless he was on target, and he was always very conscious about muzzle direction. Never thought that those might not matter if you're falling, automatic reflex kicks in you don't have any control over what happens with your hands.
Which is why I wrote what I did originally. Alcohol and guns don't mix. You can still obey all four rules and have an accident.
Anyway, I have a lot of thinking to do, and maybe some sleep. When I was a little kid, I didn't think bad about guns over what happened; my father chose to do what he did, and it wasn't the gun's fault. But this wasn't anyone's decision, it was just an intoxicated clumsy man moving a weapon from point A to point B, and losing his balance. The gun I sold him, with ammo he'd made himself.