A question of terms...

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44 AMP

Staff
A recent discussion involving the terms "accidental discharge" (AD) and "negligent discharge" (ND), prompted me to realize that many don't view these terms the same way. I think we ought to get on the same page, and if you disagree with my definitions, please explain why.

Accidental Discharge: The unintended discharge of a firearm, due to malfunction of the firearm.

Negligent Discharge: The unintended discharge of a firearm, due to operator error.

We have, for many years, called all unintended discharges of firearms "accidental", because they are, after all, accidents. The term negligent discharge is useful, because it goes further, describing the root cause of the accident, allowing an instant determination of at least some of the factors involved, when the term is properly applied.

Now, I feel that it is correctly applied when looking at the precise moment the firearm discharged, only. Not going further back in time to the contributing factors, as the majority of accidents do include some degree of negligence in their origination.

Some examples of my reasoning...
Placing a loaded gun on/in the car. Car moves, gun thumps, bang! Now, while putting the loaded gun in the car was negligent of safety rules, since there was no one actully touching the gun when it fired, I would consider it an accidental discharge.

Holstering the gun with finger on the trigger (or inside the triggerguard)..bang! This one, I would consider negligent discharge.

Slamfire..round discharges when slide closes, finger not on trigger. Accidental. (malfunction)

Gun fires when safety is taken OFF. Accidental. (malfunction)

Now, it gets a bit confusing for some instances, because the user is virtually certain to swear (and honestly believe) that they didn't touch the trigger. Sometimes they are correct. Sometimes they aren't.

When there isn't any doubt it was human error, then negligent discharge is a valid term. Otherwise AD will do.

Thoughts?
 
I would venture out on a limb and say, that 95%+ of all unintended discharges are of the negligent variety. I am a firm believer that ALMOST all modern firearms made in the last 15+ years, especially semi-autos with the addition of firing pin safeties/blocks, accidental discharges are rare and few and far between.
 
From the OP
A recent discussion involving the terms "accidental discharge" (AD) and "negligent discharge" (ND), prompted me to realize that many don't view these terms the same way. I think we ought to get on the same page, and if you disagree with my definitions, please explain why.
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I agree with your whole post.

And then there are those that will argue the it was negligent not to have cleaned and inspected the weapon and if the shooter had done so... the slamfire would not have happened or the gun would not have fired when the safety was put in the off position.
 
For the most part, I'm in agreement with you. To call an unintentional discharge "accidental" is to shift blame away from the operator, and to make the incident seem less grave than it might be.

While there are some truly accidental discharges, as you pointed out, the vast majority of those I've seen were negligent. In almost every case, the operator needed to be taught just how dangerous a bit of carelessness could be.

So, barring evidence of mechanical malfunction, negligent discharge is the correct way of describing it.
 
Mostly sounds good. All NDs are ADs, but not all ADs are NDs. I generally prefer the more general "AD" describing someone else’s discharge. I think it’s better when the person that discharged decides for himself that the "D" was also an "N"... just avoids all the defensiveness and anger stuff.
IMO, very rarely ADs can also happen with nothing wrong with the firearm... along the lines of "act of God" like the insurance companies say or where someone else is to blame (in a struggle or some such)

Driving off and gun goes bang - IMO, if the driver put it there, negligent. If not, it gets into a gray area.
 
44 AMP said:
Accidental Discharge: The unintended discharge of a firearm, due to malfunction of the firearm.

Negligent Discharge: The unintended discharge of a firearm, due to operator error.

We have, for many years, called all unintended discharges of firearms "accidental", ...
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I agree with your definitions. However, I do not agree with the portion of your post that I highlighted. I don't believe I have ever referred to a negligent discharge as an "accident." "Unintended," yes. "Accidental," no.
 
Not all ND's are necessarily AD's. Someone can discharge a firearm intentionally but negligently.
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Well, yeah, I was trying to stay on topic (within the set of A) BUT (mods are probably cringing now:D) I would suggest that If you wanna bring in Intentional set ... Since Accidental and Intentional are mutually exclusive ... to avoid confusion one might designate "ND" as "DD" (dishonorable)

So, there’s the "ID" set and 4 or more subsets ... :D
real life use/ target practice
DDs - wrong guy gets hurt/ range rule infraction
HDs - Stop assailant / bullseye
UDs - a miss
MedDs - a miss, but you have a valid excuse.

Really, though, I agree that "Unintentional" is better nomenclature than "Accidental", but common use comes into play.
 
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I also agree. However, I tend to prefer the general term "unintentional discharge." Once that's established, on a case-by-case basis we can look at the more specific cause of the unintentional discharge. It most commonly is some form of operator error, e. g., pressing the trigger, failure to properly clear, not properly verifying status, etc.

So the root cause of an unintentional discharge is very likely to be some type of operator error, carelessness, failure to follow proper procedures, or something similar. But to me "negligence" is a very specific legal term with a specific meaning. So I prefer not to confuse negligence in the strict legal sense with "negligence" in the common, everyday sense of careless, dumb, brain dead, or sloppy.
 
I think it’s better when the person that discharged decides for himself that the "D" was also an "N"... just avoids all the defensiveness and anger stuff.
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Oh, heck no. When someone's done something careless leading to endangerment or injury, they don't get their feelings respected. I've dealt with a few of those over the years. The offender needs to learn right now, and in no uncertain terms, that the fault was theirs and that it must never be allowed to happen again.
 
Mainly I meant in the context of this board, rather than in person . . . When you hear the story later and they’re insisting it was an accident. A lot of times when you jump on ‘em they go poof or flame-out. You can’t reason with ‘em after that.
 
Do we now need to refer to a car crash as a "Traffic Negligence" because most are indeed due to operator error or inattention?

There is a lot of effort spent on amateur night semantics that might better be applied to avoiding unintentional discharges by whatever name.
 
For the most part, I'm in agreement with you. To call an unintentional discharge "accidental" is to shift blame away from the operator, and to make the incident seem less grave than it might be.
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Tom Servo pretty much hit it on the head.

While I was in the military, we had a few "accidental" discharges. When I pointed out there was no accident, the rules were not followed and it should be called negligent discharge, I was told it sounded to harsh. People just got way to comfortable with what they were doing and did not clear the weapon properly.

I remember only two incidents in the air force that I would called accidental, both on the firing range. One was an M16 that went full auto when we were firing single shots. The selector lever fell off of the gun and it fired when the trigger was pulled and then released. The other was the M60 Machine gun. I was shooting and the leaf spring that held the trigger assembly on came off. (Now there is a rush! A fully automatic gun with a two hundred round belt and no way to stop the dang thing. The red hats running the qualifications said they were impressed that I did not soil myself.)
 
Accidental Discharge: The unintended discharge of a firearm, due to malfunction of the firearm.
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If the firearm malfunctions it is not an accident. It is negligence on the part of either the manufacturer or the guns owner for not properly maintaining their gun.

By legal standards, if you make every effort to be safe, and still have an accident, it is an accident. Whether it is with a gun, car or anything else. That does not mean you are not accountable. An AD may lead to criminal charges, but rarely does.

From a legal standpoint negligence is when you are doing something that you know, or should have known, could be dangerous and it leads to an accident. A ND will almost always mean you will be arrested.

If you are hunting and are making every effort to do everything safe and you drop you gun and it discharges it is an AD from the law's perspective.

If you are drinking and handling a gun and drop it and it discharges you have a ND from the law's perspective.

If you purposely aim your gun directly at someone and it discharges you are guilty of a criminal act whether you intentionally fired the gun or not.

Just because you have an accident, that does not mean it was unpreventable. Almost all are.
 
The whole thing is a silly argument. The very definition of the word "accident" means something done unintentionally without planning in advance. :roll eyes:
Therefore, any discharge of a firearm not done intentionally is an accidental discharge.

Now that is not to say the "accident" cannot be the result of "negligence." The word "accident" does not imply blame in any certain direction. Much like a car "accident" there us usually an operator error as the cause but the word itself is still fitting and appropriate, regardless of operator or mechanical error.

The only thing calling an "accidental" discharge a "negligent" discharge is going to do is help anti-gun groups and lawyers another scary buzzword to use in their campaigns.
 
The only thing calling an "accidental" discharge a "negligent" discharge is going to do is help anti-gun groups and lawyers another scary buzzword to use in their campaigns.
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No, it's a form of self-policiing, and it's been standard practice to refer to negligent discharges as such since the 1990's at least.

Anyone who doesn't feel that way hasn't had to testify in court or render first aid to a person who got injured from one.
 
Tom Servo said:
No, it's a form of self-policiing, and it's been standard practice to refer to negligent discharges as such since the 1990's at least.
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Self-policing is exactly right. It seems to me that the choice of "negligent" discharge to describe these events is a precise use of language, one that draws both on ordinary usage, and on the specialist (legal) usage, to good effect.

To elaborate on Tom's point about "self-policing," what underlies this use is that there is a community standard, a set of accepted rules, for safe gun handling. It doesn't matter whether you think there are four, or ten, or whatever -- the point is that there are explicit rules agreed on by the vast majority of responsible gun owners.

A negligent discharge is one in which one or more of those rules were broken. Calling such a discharge negligent, regardless of whether anyone was actually harmed, emphasizes its seriousness, that it is never acceptable: such events are always a violation of standards we, as a community, regard as important.

Otherwise we could just call them "Oopsies." :cool:
 
It's not semantics. Anyone negligent in firearms usage hurts us. I can draw a bright line between negligence and accidental.
 
I agree that most unintended discharge are probably of the "negligent" variety, although I do make allowances for mechanical failures where a reasonable & competent cleaning/inspection wouldn't have revealed the impending failure.

That being said, I also think there are "negligent discharges" and then there are "NEGLIGENT DISCHARGES". Think of the difference between flinching in the middle of your trigger pull while at the range and sending a round into the target a half-second earlier than planned, compared to twirling a loaded gun on your finger and shooting yourself in the foot.
 
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