Dumbest thing you have done, the confessional has re-opened

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While installing a new grip on an AR the safety fell out. Reinstalled it then spent the next 20 minutes trying to figure out why the safety was hanging when moved towards fire. Perhaps it had something to do with the safety hanging on the grip edge that was too thick... I was pretty embarrassed when that occured to me.

I also nearly took out a frame with photos and an invitation from my wedding with a 1911 plunger I lost my grip on :)
 
I guess it is 10 years old... sorry I didn't notice that before posting. Perhaps this is how I honor Oleg Volk and his great website!
 
My friend and I were shooting my New at the time Remington 870. He was shooting something else.
He was throwing some clays for me, and I thought I had shot my last shot. I ran the pump one last time, thinking I was just ejecting the last shell. We went back to some lawn chairs we had set up, I sat in the one on the right (as if you were sitting in them) and laid my shotgun across my lap pointing right at my friend to my left. Safety off.

I realized it was pointing right at him, and I said "hmmm, maybe I should double check this thing before I hold it like this."

So... I lifted the gun with my right hand, and pointed it straight up in the air, and pulled the trigger.... Bang!
(That's not really the way to check a gun, if I were to check it, I would have worked the action and ejected the live shell from the chamber)

I'm sure I was bright red, and my heart sank to my stomach. I apologized to my friend and we both agreed he would have been dead had the gun still been pointing at him and somehow gone off.

There were alot of things I did that were wrong.

1... didnt check the gun after I was done firing in our "range area"
2... pointed the gun at my friend, even though it was laying across my lap, supposedly empty.
3... didnt put the safety on.
4... shot up in the air rather than into a safe backstop, (granted it was just #8 bird shot)

Anyway.... These are all separate levels of safety. You have these multipul levels in case one of them goes wrong or is "forgotten". Luckily for us, my last safety (common sense of not pulling the trigger while the gun was pointed at my friend) worked... BUT, that was my LAST safety. And the fact that it was one safety away from disaster was enough to leave a lasting impression.
 
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Would it make more sense to start a new thread? The stories are pretty priceless and timeless. It makes no sense to me that guys will post on an old thread whining about why others are posting on an old thread?!?!?
 
The earlier mentioned cherry bomb incident reminded me of a dumb thing I did many years ago. It was 1969, I was in the Army stationed on the island of Okinawa. There were about 4 couples of us that lived off base in the same apartment building that that had a flat roof. It was all concrete. The roof had plastic drain pipes that dropped straight down to the ground. So we were up there to celebrate the Fourth of July. Our wives had come over from the states a few months previous. We were grilling burgers and eating stuff and drinking beer, etc. I don't remember all the details but at some point we noticed that one of those plastic drain pipes was plugged up and for whatever reason we wanted to unplug it. We had cherry bombs, they sold them year round over there. I got the bright idea to drop the cherry bomb down the drain pipe to open it up. Okinawa is one one the most densely populated areas in the world. We were on the top of a the second floor. There were other small houses all around us. Right below us was a small yard where a lady had just hung out her laundry that she had probably washed by hand. When the cherry bomb went off the pipe exploded like a bomb and blew filthy mud and dog feces all over her clean laundry. It was bad.
 
dumbest thing I ever did...

Well, it started about 10 years ago (coincidentally, probably right around the same time this thread was started). I had amassed a respectable collection of guns - probably over two dozen handguns and a few long guns as well. Then I started dating a particular young lady. Now, she was not necessarily against guns, per se. Rather, she recognized the value and saw opportunity. She would occasionally call me up and - using her not inconsiderable powers of persuasion - prevail upon me to sell a gun or two to help her out with whatever her financial problem of the month happened to be. This continued for over a year. Despite this, I was even dumb enough to marry her. Within the first two years of the marriage, I had traded a decent and valuable collection of firearms that had brought me great joy for a woman who was already at that point was well into the second of her numerous affairs.

It took me 4 more years to dig myself out of that mess and return to my first passion. I have regained my sanity and started my collection again (albeit slowly due to the bad economy).

Never again.
 
Well, it started about 10 years ago (coincidentally, probably right around the same time this thread was started). I had amassed a respectable collection of guns - probably over two dozen handguns and a few long guns as well. Then I started dating a particular young lady. Now, she was not necessarily against guns, per se. Rather, she recognized the value and saw opportunity. She would occasionally call me up and - using her not inconsiderable powers of persuasion - prevail upon me to sell a gun or two to help her out with whatever her financial problem of the month happened to be. This continued for over a year. Despite this, I was even dumb enough to marry her. Within the first two years of the marriage, I had traded a decent and valuable collection of firearms that had brought me great joy for a woman who was already at that point was well into the second of her numerous affairs.
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Wow. I think you would win the prize if so many of us hadn't done the same thing in our lives. You've listed reason #214 why guns are better than women.
 
Had BB gun wars with the neighbors kids.

We used playdoh to make the bullets and yes
we were shooting in the house. :rolleyes:
 
I have reached an age where I remember things with perfect clarity, that never actually happened. I also tend to tell stories about A that are really about B.

The dumbness follows naturally.
 
I don't have anything that would fit well here from my OWN experience, but a good friend's older brother was cleaning his 44 magnum (I was NOT there and don't know the whole story). He was probably 19 or 20 at the time. He blew a hole in his father's brand new 30+ inch proton monitor television set. Right in the middle of the viewing CRT. When I saw the television a few days later for the first time after the incident, there was this hole with surprisingly minimal spidering of the dark glass on this very expensive and now ruined piece of home theater equipment. This was over 26 years ago.
 
May not have been the dumbest but were stupid. Me and a friend were playing in a vacant lot, maybe 10 or so. Found an ant pile and decided it needed to be blown up. My friend had some firecrackers, so in they go, little ones not cherry bombs, everything was fine until the grass next to the nest caught fire. Did I mention it had a been a hot dry summer. We got it stomped out before it had reached more than 10 square feet or so, but it was a close thing. Second was playing with my new boomerang I made in shop class, fiberglass reinforced and really strong. Yard was too small so went to nearby large vacant lot to make bigger throws. Going good until the last one, the boomerang sailed back over my head across the street bounced of the roof of a car and right through a window. I of course made a run for it. Thought I was in the clear until Dad came to my room holding a really cracked up boomerang.
 
Would playing paint ball on a cold blustery Indian February morning count. No protective gear. Who would have thunk that paint would freeze. Them dad blasted balls would not bust. Needless to say I got popped in the face with one. Must be what a deer slug feels like.
 
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