Another victim of an "unloaded" firearm

Easy, gentlemen.

No rules with prevent all accidents. Only wisdom does that.

Expecting another rule, don't carry a chambered round, to do it is just as silly as thinking the rules we already have will "protect" people.

The rules, or more rules, don't protect people. FOLLOWING them protects people. Adding more doesn't make them easier to follow.
 
No rules (will?) prevent all accidents. Only wisdom does that.
Click to expand...

All the rules in the world won't help if the user hasn't the wisdom to follow them.

Show me a case where The Four Rules were followed and an accident still happened that injured someone or even did damage to property. Unpossible.
 
jimpeel said:
This is always sad. I ALWAYS warn those I teach firearms handling that there is an order to the universe of automatic firearms. Drop the magazine THEN jack the slide. The reverse order can, and likely will, kill you or someone around you.

The other rule is never point a firearm at anything you are not willing and ready to destroy -- even if it is "empty."

SOURCE
Click to expand...

I was always taught the opposite... rack slide then drop mag .... if u rack the slide on an empty mag it will lock the slide. Then drop the mag ...

If you rack the slide and it doesn't stay locked back .... IT IS LOADED!!!!

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
 
That's definitely backwards.

If the gun is loaded and you rack the slide, of course it's still loaded. Are you going to keep racking the slide through the whole magazine?

Drop the magazine, rack the slide. You know there CAN'T be more than the one round in the gun. Racking the slide now, you see and hear and possibly catch the only round that could POSSIBLY be in the gun.

Rack the slide again and manually engage the slide lock. It should be impossible for any rounds to remain. Still, you visually and tactilely (pinky) verify empty chamber.

You have now TRIPLE verified an empty gun, which you continue to treat as if it's loaded.

Racking on a magazine is a bad habit for a few reasons, not the least of which is that not all guns lock back on an empty magazine.
 
Quote. Brian Pfleuger
Staff


Join Date: June 25, 2008
Location: Central, Southern NY, USA
Posts: 11,710 That's definitely backwards.

If the gun is loaded and you rack the slide, of course it's still loaded. Are you going to keep racking the slide through the whole magazine?

Drop the magazine, rack the slide. You know there CAN'T be more than the one round in the gun. Racking the slide now, you see and hear and possibly catch the only round that could POSSIBLY be in the gun.

Rack the slide again and manually engage the slide lock. It should be impossible for any rounds to remain. Still, you visually and tactilely (pinky) verify empty chamber.

You have now TRIPLE verified an empty gun, which you continue to treat as if it's loaded.

Racking on a magazine is a bad habit for a few reasons, not the least of which is that not all guns lock back on an empty magazine.





Just goes to show that even people that have being shooting for years can get it wrong. Even if they think they know all the safety rules sort of what i was trying to say.
 
There is also another possibility.

For whatever reason, the individual may have committed suicide.

Perhaps in his own mind, there were things he could not or thought he could not endure.

He may have convinced himself that doing such a thing was really not suicide but an unfortunate accident.

I have difficulty wondering why a sane person would do such a thing. Perhaps there are other things in the mix that we are not being told and there may be some events in the background of this person such as failed or failing personal relationships or changes in medical condition or medications that affected his judgement.

We may never know. People have been known to commit suicide by cop. This may have been a variation on that.

It may very well have been a tragic accident by someone doing something incredibly stupid. We may never know.
 
manta49 said:
With all due respect you are showing your naivety if you think you can make rules and expect people to follow them. In your world their would be no accidents because there are rules and of course everyone will follow them.
Click to expand...
But we make rules and expect people to follow them all the time.

Are you old enough to drive a car? Automobiles typically range in weight from about 2,000 pounds (one ton) to upwards of 4,000 pounds (two tons). They travel at speeds of 60 to 80 miles per hour (100 to 130 km/hr) in comparatively close proximity to one another. Except on limited access highways, it's quite common for two such vehicles to be approaching one another nearly head-on at a combined rate of speed of perhaps 200 km/hr.

A collision would be devastating. What (mostly) prevents collisions? A stripe painted down the center of the pavement, and a rule that says "Stay on your side of the stripe." Every driver (and every passenger, for that matter) expects other drivers to comply with that rule, and they literally put their lives in the hands of every other driver on the road. Am I being excessively naive to expect other drivers to follow the rules of the road?

If we didn't expect other drivers to follow the rules of the road, we would all be walking ... or cowering in our flats. Dead is dead. Dying as a result of a head-on collision is no less dead than dying of a negligent firearm discharge.
 
geetarman= You have once again given us all a new angle to look at (Thanks ). All of us are implying he was a Idiot, There is a lot of credability to your thought,One that i would have never thought of. I guess more than one perspective is always nice.
 
Quote Aguila Blanca. If we didn't expect other drivers to follow the rules of the road, we would all be walking ... or cowering in our flats. Dead is dead. Dying as a result of a head-on collision is no less dead than dying of a negligent firearm discharge.

There are rules for most things but its naive to think because rules are there that people will follow them. Driving that you used for a example, drink driving speeding how many of us have not broke the speed limit. Even with the driving rules 32,788 died on the roads in America in 2010. When driving you take precautions to minimise the chances of a accident not speeding not drinking etc. That doesn't mean you are not going to be negligent and cause a accident. We also take precautions when handling firearms we can still be negligent and cause a negligent discharge.
The ones that come on and say it wouldn't happen to them and the people that it happens to are idiots should think it could happen to them. There but for the grace of God, go I.

I am not arrogant enough to think i follow all the rules and something like that couldn't happen to me. The ones that do are the ones to worry about.
 
Last edited:
Quote. noelf2 Why have them then? And what is "ect."

I will let you work that one out for yourself. The ect is a spelling mistake. Good to see the spelling police are alive and well.
 
manta49 said:
There are rules for most things but its naive to think because rules are there that people will follow them. Driving that you used for a example, drink driving speeding how many of us have not broke the speed limit. Even with the driving rules 32,788 died on the roads in America in 2010. When driving you take precautions to minimise the chances of a accident not speeding not drinking etc. That doesn't mean you are not going to be negligent and cause a accident. We also take precautions when handling firearms we can still be negligent and cause a negligent discharge.
The ones that come on and say it wouldn't happen to them and the people that it happens to are idiots should think it could happen to them. There but for the grace of God, go I.
Click to expand...
Now I think you are arguing against your own previous position.

The protagonist in the news report who shot himself in the head violated ALL FOUR of the basic rules of firearms safety. I don't think it's naive to think that someone who is SO careless and negligent in his actions would quickly find some way to remove himself from the gene pool, even if he stored his pistol with an unloaded chamber.
 
I don't think it's naive to think that someone who is SO careless and negligent in his actions would quickly find some way to remove himself from the gene pool, even if he stored his pistol with an unloaded chamber.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

The man was quite young, but we may not know the whole story.

A few years before I retired, I had a recurrence of cluster headaches.

If you have never had them, you are very fortunate. If you have had them, you know what I am talking about. It is considered by many health professionals as some of the most intense pain felt by man. It comes on so suddenly, that within a minute of the first inkling something is not right, you are in the middle of a full blown attack. It will last for hours and then. . .within a minute or so it is completely gone.

Prevention is the best treatment as there is no analgesic to cut the pain. Perhaps you could be rendered unconscious.

I was prescibed a combination of Xanax and Percocet. That prescription had some interaction with medication for high blood pressure.

I started having very strange dreams and to cut to the chase, I ended up in my computer room with a G21 that I knew to be loaded and pointed at me.

I was wondering what it would be like to end it all.

To this day, I do not know why I did NOT follow through.

I went back to the doctor and told him of the strange dreams and he changed my medication and the attacks of cluster headaches went away and they have not come back.

I have never told this story to another human outside of my doctor.

I am perfectly normal and I am a very happy person. . .but I am saying again, let's don't be too hard on that young man.

Yes, he violated some very basic rules of gun handling and he is dead. We don't really know what caused him to do that.

When you get right down to it, cemeteries are full of people who just had a really bad ending doing some of the same goofy things we did as kids.

I don't want to be harsh to him or his family. I could have been there.
 
There are some pistols (semi-auto) that dropping the mags and racking the slide wont clear the firearm. For example, my Beretta 3032. It has no extractor. Or, it could be broken.

Here is my 'unwritten' 5th rule. After you have absolutely possibly ensured the gun is unloaded: point it in a safe direction and pull the trigger.

I even do it on my rimfires. Why? Because if the firing pin were to break [ never has for me], its cheap compared to medical or funeral costs.
 
My first ND was with a Jennings .22 caliber pistol. I removed the magazine and racked the slide three times to make sure it was "empty".
I then pulled the trigger to release the firing pin and BANG!
I shot a hole through the nice lazy boy and missed the cat by inches!
My extractor was broken so it never stripped the round from the barrel.
I learned my lesson and have been ND free until last month but that is a different post!
 
k_dawg said:
There are some pistols (semi-auto) that dropping the mags and racking the slide wont clear the firearm. For example, my Beretta 3032. It has no extractor. Or, it could be broken.

Here is my 'unwritten' 5th rule. After you have absolutely possibly ensured the gun is unloaded: point it in a safe direction and pull the trigger.
Click to expand...

David White said:
My first ND was with a Jennings .22 caliber pistol. I removed the magazine and racked the slide three times to make sure it was "empty".
I then pulled the trigger to release the firing pin and BANG!
I shot a hole through the nice lazy boy and missed the cat by inches!
My extractor was broken so it never stripped the round from the barrel.
Click to expand...

That's why virtually all training includes BOTH a visual and tactile chamber check.
I can still remember that admonition in my Hunter's Safety Course... "A safety is a mechanical device which CAN fail!"
It's not just safeties. All mechanical devices can fail.

Mechanical, visual AND tactile chamber check.
 
The advice given buy most on this forum is carry with a round in the chamber. Without knowing the abilities of the people they are advising. You get the usual stupid comments a unloaded gun is a paper weight ect.
Did he really need to have the round in the chamber. Carry with a round in the chamber but don't be surprised when things like this happen.
Click to expand...

If someone can't follow either "Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction" and "Always keep your finger off the trigger until you're ready to shoot", I can't imagine that another rule, saying "Don't carry with a round chambered" is going to help.

This is a guy who failed to follow two very instinctive rules by putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. you really think he would follow a rule saying never chamber a round? You could have a rule saying "All barrels should be permanently plugged with lead", and he could have screwed it up.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. It sounds callous, but I mean it. I only feel sorry for his parents. I would never want to be in that situation. That's why I hammer the rules into my kids.
 
manta49 said:
There are rules for most things but its naive to think because rules are there that people will follow them.
Click to expand...

Quote. noelf2 Why have them then? And what is "ect."

I will let you work that one out for yourself. The ect is a spelling mistake. Good to see the spelling police are alive and well.
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like you can't work it out for yourself.. ::rolleyes:

Anyway, there are no rules about having one in the tube (at least in my neck of the woods). There are "best practices", however, regarding carrying that way. Breaking rules is a bad thing, and shouldn't be generally accepted. Breaking tenets of best practice is a personal choice, and it would be naive to expect people to follow them, or even know about them. Oh, and your use of "ect." is not a mistake (e.g. a "typographical error"). You use it in almost every post you make, so it is better described as a lack of abbreviatory prowess. :cool:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top