Cop shoots self by mistake

thump rrr said:
In other words poor training led to this ND and not the Serpa holster.
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I suppose one could call it poor training. IMHO it's a perfect example of muscle memory at work, and it's why I choose not to alternate platforms in my carry rotation. I switch between a couple of 1911s, but I stay with the 1911 platform and the same type of holster so the manual of arms is always the same.

In fact (again, IMHO), the purpose of training is precisely that -- to train your muscles to always do the same thing, even when you're not consciously thinking about it (such as when you're behind the curve). I think Tex Grubner's mistake was changing both firearm and holster right in the middle of a practice session. Really, I think it was probably a mistake to even be practicing with two such different platforms.

gyvel said:
Maybe I'm extremely fortunate living where I do, but after watching Tex shoot himself in the leg, it makes me wonder if there really are areas in the U.S. where it is necessary to do the "Marshall Dillon Dodge City quick draw."
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Unfortunately, there are many places in the U.S. where it might be necessary.
 
He was using a Tibetan holster?
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Does it matter? Did spelling it wrong make the result different?

In other words poor training led to this ND and not the Serpa holster.
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Pretty much. Part of that training was relying on, or expecting something from a safety device, that ended up in a problem.

I have been using a Serpa for 4 years with 2 different DA/SA pistols and I have never even come close to shooting myself or anyone else.
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The Serpas have gained an internet reputation, not unlike the Glocks. If used properly, and the release kept clean, they seem to work fine. The problem is, like most other things, lack of user experience/understanding.



Actually, in the scenario I described -- the application of 6 lb of pressure to each trigger -- all three triggers would be activated.
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True, "eventually".

In the scenario you described, the Glock still has a bit of an edge, as it has to be direct pressure to the trigger tab, to release the trigger, and you have to take up the slack, cocking the gun, before the 6# comes into play. The other guns would already be "cocked", and that 6 pounds of pressure on the trigger is instantly applied, and doesnt have to be direct to cause it to release. A lateral pressure, from say a holster strap, etc, can cause them to release.

The manual safeties I've seen addressed in this thread -- safety lock, decocker, and DA trigger (the latter two combined in the case of the SIG) -- are all guaranteed to provide a safer design than the safetiless Glock. The safety lock, when properly used, requires the handler to make two errors before causing an ND. The decocker safely puts a SIG into condition 2, su o that the handler is provided with much more feedback -- in the form of a much heavier trigger and greater pull length -- informing him that he is making an error before an ND results.
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"are all guaranteed"? Nothing is guaranteed. If it were true, we wouldnt be having this discussion.

"when properly used" applies to anything. Youre making the assumption that everyone uses everything "properly" every single time, which we know is an impossibility.

"informing him that he is making an error before an ND results"
Assuming that the safeties hes expecting to be in place, are in actually in place. What happens when they are not?

Having additional safeties on the gun (or gear for that matter) isnt a guarantee that the gun will be safer. Relying on, and expecting it to be so, simply because they are there, is just asking for trouble. The user always has to be the final and ultimate safety.

Maybe I'm extremely fortunate living where I do, but after watching Tex shoot himself in the leg, it makes me wonder if there really are areas in the U.S. where it is necessary to do the "Marshall Dillon Dodge City quick draw."
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I would think it would depend on what was going on in the moment. Where you live really means nothing.

If youre practiced and proficent, the gun just appears without thought, and speed is just a function of repetitive practice.

Whats scary is, how many people carrying a gun dont practice at all, let alone regularly?

I suppose one could call it poor training. IMHO it's a perfect example of muscle memory at work, and it's why I choose not to alternate platforms in my carry rotation. I switch between a couple of 1911s, but I stay with the 1911 platform and the same type of holster so the manual of arms is always the same.
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I agree. Im always amazed when I hear people saying they change up the gun they carry, and where they carry it, as the mood/attire suits.
 
I choose not to alternate platforms in my carry rotation. I switch between a couple of 1911s, but I stay with the 1911 platform and the same type of holster so the manual of arms is always the same.
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Winner!!

One's choice of platform is a matter of preference (informed or not), and one's preference is not debatable (except for fun). But, once one picks a platform for carry, one is wise to stick with it or at least with sidearms with the same manual of arms.

Design safety is, however, legitimately debatable. The bottom line is Tex Grebner is a bigger fool than the DEA agent, Lee Paige. Lee only had to make one handling mistake to cause his ND, while Tex had to make two.
 
Lee only had to make one handling mistake to cause his ND, while Tex had to make two.
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So which one was safer?

Its always going to come back to the user. The number of safeties the gun might have, means nothing.
 
When I picture this officer pursuing on foot, then holstering... he probably had his finger in the trigger guard when he slammed it into holster. He probably has a hole in his leg and a sore trigger finger...

I carry an XDM compact. To be honest, I am not comfortable with the idea of carrying cocked with a round in the chamber. I trust myself, but too much can go wrong. I practice drawing from IWB, chambering a round, and firing, Israeli style :) If I end up in a situation that I truly need to use my firearm, I am more worried about HAVING a firearm, not the 0.5 sec difference between chambered and not. Personal decision, playing the odds.
 
In fairness we don't know that he pulled the trigger. It may have been something in or around the holster that got in the trigger guard and led to the discharge. It may well have been his own finger, I'm just saying we don't have enough details to say it was definitely him. Even were it something else, it was still negligence to not clear the holster before reholstering.
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This is TRUE. Still not heard the cause & it is easy to point fingers & place blame on the person, holster, firearm or whatever but in this case the facts are not known.

I do know there was a high speed chase & the newspaper said: the officer "tried" to place his firearm back into his holster. So maybe it wasn't the holster at all.

We all know the firearm, which isn't revealed in the article, didn't fire on its own. Something cause the striker/firing pin/hammer to move forward. What? We simple don't know at this point.

Lesson for me. Be careful when holstering or "trying" to holster my firearm. And I will add: Any firearm.
 
There are no bad guns, there are no bad holsters.

There are however defective guns and holsters. But alone they don't create problems.

Problems don't show up until the human element is injected.

If you have a defective gun get it fixed or replaced. If you have a defective holster get it replaced.

If you get into car knowing it has bad brakes, and crash, its not the car's truck, its yours.

The same with guns and holsters. Its a poor man who blames his equipment for his screw up.

How long does it take to examine a holster to see if its defective or worn enough that it collapses enough that part of it could get into the trigger guard allowing the worn part to pull the trigger? I'll tell you, just about as long as it takes to tell the zipper on your pants is defect and wont zip up.

The same with the gun. Inspect it. Wipe it down, look it over making sure every thing works. Its part of getting dressed in the morning.

As to the Serpa holster. That holster doesn't cause your finger to engage the trigger, the shooter does that. I'm made a couple videos using the Serpa. If the trigger (pointing) finger is extended as it should be, it lays along the holster, and when drawing slides over the release and as the gun comes out of the holster, the finger falls to where its suppose to be, either under the cylinder of a revolver or along the slide of a pistol. That's the way the holster was designed. If you "poke" the release with your finger, and as the gun slides out your finger could end up in the trigger guard. So if something goes wrong its your fault not the holster.

As too re-holstering. Its not always possible to look as you re-holster. Its nice if you can but its not always possible. In my 20 years in LE many times I had to re-holster my service revolver with out the advantage of looking down.

It happens, any street cop knows this. What we can to is inspect our gear to make sure its not effective and allows re-holstering without anything interfering with the trigger.

I was in LE before plastic holsters came about. We had leather. I was first issued a border patrol type holster. I made it a far as the house before I tossed in in a box and procured a Hoyt Break Front. This holster is spring loaded, with the metal covered by heavy leather. It was designed for you to start the bottom of the trigger guard at the top of the breaking front of the holster, the spring spreads allowing the gun to be inserted without any part of the holster getting into the trigger guard. Its easy and natural to re-holster safely and without looking.

Even still I examined the holster each time I suited up for work. I bought the holster used in 1974, carried it tell I retired, and still use it today in action pistol matches when I use a revolver.

Sad part is they don't make them any more, but still good holsters still can be found. Soft leather holsters could lead to problems and I personally don't like them.

But it the shooter that's the weak link, not the gun, not the holster. THE SHOOTER.

As I said, there is no accidental discharges, there are only stupid discharges. We have Four Simple Rules for gun safety, if they are followed, there will be no discharges that result in someone getting hurt or property being destroyed.

Guns can become defective. I had a Bulls Eye Centerfire Pistol, a Colt 38 Super converted to a 38 Spl. WC gun. If was defective. Sometimes it would double or tripper, or even go full auto emptying the 5 round clip. But when it did, the shot group worked its way to the top of the target, I was intending to shoot that target anyway, so it hurt nothing but my score. Couldn't fix the gun, I could get it where it wouldn't cycle at all or it would go full auto. I trashed the pistol.

Again, its a sorry man who blames his equipment on his own failures. Don't believe me, how many pistols/revolvers have you heard that went off while setting in the gun safe without human intervention. It don't happen.
 
I practice drawing from IWB, chambering a round, and firing, Israeli style If I end up in a situation that I truly need to use my firearm, I am more worried about HAVING a firearm, not the 0.5 sec difference between chambered and not. Personal decision, playing the odds.
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It's your call how you carry and you have to decide what's best for you. I would only ask you to consider the possibility that your other arm may be occupied (holding off an attacker, carrying a child, injured, etc.). In that case, just make sure you have a method to chamber that round, such as off a belt or your holster.
 
First I would like to say I despise the term negligent discharge! Primarily it has bad legal connotations and ramifications tied to it. Don't believe me check out your states criminal statutes and there is a legal definition of negligent. I typically use the terminology accidental discharge or unintentional discharge. Accidental discharge is used to refer to when there are out side forces involved i.e. thumb break strap enters the trigger guard during reholstering or there is a mechanical problem with the gun i.e. a stuck firing pin/ striker that detonates a round as the slide is being cycled.

Next unintentional discharge which can be cause by a few different things like balance disruption, startle effect and inter limb inter action. Which most, but not all of the time, this type of discharge can be avoided by keeping the finger strait along the receiver. There are some other point I will try to come back and address later I'm running short on time.

Several people talked about the officer's lack of training. Most Departments are grossly under funded for training. Let me put somethings in prospective. I know of a very large police agency that in a typical year the minimum required training rounds fired will be between 300 and 600. Now with that little trading the agency is providing the officers should be doing training on their own, right. But let's say you are an officer that works graves and your shift is 2000-0600 hours with Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday off. You typically get held over on your shift between 1-3 hours every day. Then you throw in a couple days of court appearance which they hope to god is not on their work day so they might have the opportunity to get at least a couple hour nap and an hour or two with the family before returning to work. A schedule like this quickly eats away at valuable free time.

Looking at the holster..Ok remember most of you are looking at this from strictly from the perspective of hey I'm a CCW person if I'm getting my gun out there is no rush to put it away which for the most part is very true. But for LE a situation can quickly change from one of being a high risk situation where they need their gun out to one that has now deesculated to a fist fight. Now they need to quickly holster and secure the gun.

Any way rant over for now, I'm out of time.
 
First I would like to say I despise the term negligent discharge!
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I'll go the reverse and say that I dislike the term accidental discharge. It's negligence on the part of the user that often causes the problem. I'd argue it carries connotations because it should. To me saying accidental or unintentional removes some of the burden from the end user, when the end user should be acutely aware of that burden.

But for LE a situation can quickly change from one of being a high risk situation where they need their gun out to one that has now deesculated to a fist fight. Now they need to quickly holster and secure the gun.
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I'm not sure how this would only apply to LE, but not a civilian. I think it could possibly go both ways. I'm also trying to imagine a situation where a police officer is being assaulted with their pistol out and now needs to holster so they can engage in a fist fight. A police officer being assaulted by an adversary without a pistol can justifiably use deadly force. We had a recent example of this with the Michael Brown incident. I can't see an officer willing surrendering the upper hand. Maybe if his concern was loss of the pistol in the fight? I do see them needing to holster to detain a suspect.

I will agree with you 100% with officers and training. In every course I've taken there were current and former police officers. Some from response units, some patrolmen. Without an exception all of them paid for that training and the ammo for that training out of their own pockets and on their own time. I would eat lunch with them and all of them told me that unless they sought training on their own their department gave them no additional training. This could just be my area, but police departments are like fire departments in that people like to have them but can be stingy about actually funding them.
 
In fairness we don't know that he pulled the trigger. It may have been something in or around the holster that got in the trigger guard and led to the discharge. It may well have been his own finger, I'm just saying we don't have enough details to say it was definitely him. Even were it something else, it was still negligence to not clear the holster before reholstering.
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The way I see it, there's no difference. The firearm that he had control of, had the trigger pulled while he was pointing it at himself. That is fact. Whether it was his finger or a stick or piece of clothing it makes no difference; see below.

I'll go the reverse and say that I dislike the term accidental discharge. It's negligence on the part of the user that often causes the problem. I'd argue it carries connotations because it should. To me saying accidental or unintentional removes some of the burden from the end user, when the end user should be acutely aware of that burden.
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This I totally agree with. There is no such thing as accidental discharges, only negligent discharges. This essentially proves my point above.
 
TunnelRat said:
I'll go the reverse and say that I dislike the term accidental discharge. It's negligence on the part of the user that often causes the problem. I'd argue it carries connotations because it should. To me saying accidental or unintentional removes some of the burden from the end user, when the end user should be acutely aware of that burden.
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I'm with you 100% on this. I will add that I think there is indeed such a thing as an accidental discharge, but they are almost never the kind of situation we talk about.

For example, I think double-tapping a light trigger at the range qualifies as accidental; the gun is pointed safely and correctly at the target, the user intended to fire, but made an error finding the reset. Other than that, the only truly accidental discharge scenarios I can think of all depend on mechanical failure.
 
The way I see it, there's no difference. The firearm that he had control of, had the trigger pulled while he was pointing it at himself. That is fact. Whether it was his finger or a stick or piece of clothing it makes no difference; see below.
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The only reason I brought it up was because in your post you said "he pulled the trigger". I'm not arguing that it isn't negligent to point your own pistol at yourself. It is. I was just clarifying that we don't know that exact detail.

Other than that, the only truly accidental discharge scenarios I can think of all depend on mechanical failure.
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To me that is the only true accidental discharge, a mechanical failure.
 
http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/t/broken-glass-top-wall-cemented-concrete-61368410.jpg

Draw your gun, run 30 yards with your pistol drawn to a 6 foot wall like this, then jump it. Under fire. Realize you can only grip the leading edge and you have to clear it by at least 4 inches if you don't want to get cut.
If any of you can clear that wall one handed or look down and holster your weapon while running without causing more issues than holstering blindly, I'd really like to see the video.

No, I didn't just pull this example out of thin air.
 
Yea I'm pretty sure we can pull extreme examples from many places. So if I get you right, you plan to scale a 6 ft wall with glass on top while under fire? Good luck, even with looking at your holster.

I also don't remember saying there are never any exceptions to the rule. My general practice may be to look at my holster, but I'm not a programmed robot. If I'm in that situation you outlined I better be able to improvise.
 
Common? No. Does it occur? In some circumstances, it may.
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Lets say in this case, did they have any reason to think the person was armed and if no why have the firearm out of the holster. The reason i ask is as i posted earlier, is because i have never scene the police doing it here after a car chase. They must do things differently in America.
 
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