Fess up -- ND & AD stories, please!

Winchester Model 70 .30-06 (post 64)-I needed to get something outta my attic so while I was up there I opened my gun case and pulled out my 06. For what ever reason I pulled the trigger and KA-BOOM! I had hunted with it the previous deer season and obviously hadn't cleared it. 155 grainer through the roof. My daughter (around 7-8 years old at the time) was at the bottom of the stairs looking up. Scared the crap outta both of us. I asked her not to tell her Mom. Little did I know she had just pulled up in the drive way and heard it. Of course she wanted to know what the noise was. I told her I dropped something. Can't remember what. But she bought it.

.25 cal. - I had taken it to the range and once again forgot to clear the weapon. I had pulled it outta my closet when I heard my daughter (9-10) coming down the hall way. I quickly stuck it in my vest/jacket pocket as she entered the bedroom asking me to go to KFC to get something for her. As I'm walking towards KFC I remembered that the gun was in my right pocked. I stuck my hand in, grabbed the trigger and a round went through hitting a nickel on the way out, blew a hole through my pocket, struck the pavement, and then the building. Fortunately it was a cold evening and almost everybody was at home/inside. There were some people driving by but their windows were up and they didn't hear it. I was shaking like a leaf as I walked through the door about 5 minutes later.

Ruger P89 9mm - At home by myself. I pulled my 9mm outta the closet and jacked a round into the chamber. I know?????? My intent was to hit the de-cock but I squeezed the trigger instead. Hole in bedroom floor! I managed to fix and cover before my wife got home. Since the last incident I check, double check, and check again to MAKE SURE everything is unloaded!

Here is another one with a XD-45 I used to own/carry. I had it on me when I went to a friends house. We were talking firearms and he asked to see the 45. I had a full clip in it but the chamber was clear. I was sitting in a chair across the room from him beside his book cabinet. No more than 6 feet between us. The cabinet was about two feet right of the chair I was sitting in. As I'm looking at the telly I hear distinct sound of a round being chambered. As I turn to him yelling its hot, its hot, KA-BLAM! Right past me and into the book cabinet. Glass all over the place. His wife (upstairs) is hysterical. He told her he was shooting a blank. Almost crapped all over myself. He is yelling..."why didn't you tell me it was hot." My response..."it wasn't until you chambered one." About a month later I traded it to him for a custom .280.
 
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Not an ND (thank God) but we were training for room clearing scenarios today and someone muzzle thumped me right behind and below my ear today. Left a knot the size of Mt Everest.
 
Aarond,

I am working on some materials for firearms instructors, and specifically on how the four rules fit into every day life. Was doublechecking my concepts about how NDs, ADs, and other unintentional discharges actually happen.

So far, nobody has posted anything at all outside the norm. The lesson is: humans make mistakes. Overlapping layers of safety help reduce or prevent tragedies when humans make mistakes. Nothing really new -- but when I am writing, I like to be sure I know what I'm talking about so I wanted to have some newer stories fresh in my mind as I discussed the safety aspects of teaching people about firearms.

The only thing worse than a near miss is a tragedy. And the only thing worse than either of those is a near miss or a tragedy that nobody learned anything from. I really do appreciate people sharing their lessons with the rest of us. It's an amazing resource for those who are paying attention.

pax
 
Not an ND (thank God) but we were training for room clearing scenarios today and someone muzzle thumped me right behind and below my ear today. Left a knot the size of Mt Everest.
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Ouch. Aren't y'all supposed to maintain separation?
 
Never had a ND/AD

I did have what I would call a "UD" or "unexpected" discharge.

I was at the range with a friend of mine. He had just purchased a Khar .45 (the polymer framed model I froget the exact name of the model)
While shooting there was an issue with the gun not resetting the trigger fully and so the trigger would pull to the rear and NOT break and discharge the firearm.

Very odd and frustrating to be sure. So while fireing I had the stated malfunction. My friend standing behind/looking over my should asked what was going on.
With the gun still aimed downrange I turned it sideway's enough to show him that I was in fact trying to discharge the pistol. I attempted to fire three full times and on the fourth the gun discharged!.
It scared the crap out of us and was a healthy reminder that gun should alway's be pointed in a safe direction.
 
I can honestly say I've never done it.. not once. Not even in two deployments, the second of which was 15 months and out on some kind of patrol with a round chambered every day, with the exception of a 72 hour refit once a month and a two week R&R..

Some I've witnessed..

The most classic: In my first deployment, our company CO assassinated a clearing barrel twice.. he had inserted a magazine into his M9 and apparently forgot he did, so when he got to the clearing barrel he racked the slide and pulled the trigger... "BANG!".. so he dropped the magazine, didn't rack the slide, and "BANG!"... then proceded to scold the rest of us that if anyone had an AD it would be an automatic Article 15. What a retard.

I've seen a handful of M240B ND's from people not charging it hard enough.. it fires open bolt, so if you load a belt all the way in, pull the handle and it doesn't lock, guess what happens?? Same thing with a MK19, just with more disastrous results..

The closest... on our very first patrol in my last deployment, we were conducting a convoy escort on our FSC out to our Battalion Outpost, I was Bravo Section Sergeant, meaning my section was in the rear of the convoy. As we were pulling out the gate of the FOB, the truck full of POG's in front of me proceeded to charge their M-2HB and apparently thought they needed to "cycle a ghost round", so they charged it and hit the butterflies.. let off a 3 round burst right over top of the guard shack.

The deadliest.. catching some rack time at BIAP in early April of '03, we heard a loud "Boom, BANG" seemingly right outside our window.. grabbed our gear and dove out the window to find cover and firing positions.. only to find out one of the Bradley's on the V Corps perimeter about 75 meters away had ND'd while changing from HE to AP rounds. Ended up firing an HE round right at two Soldiers walking a ways in front of the Brad.. killed one instantly and severely wounded the other. I never heard if he made it or not.

There were quite a few ND's into the clearing barrel and upon chambering a round while I was deployed in '07-'08. They did some investigating as to whether an M-4 could fire a primer if the same round was chambered and re-chambered repeatedly. Some platoons were changing out what magazine they used every couple of patrols, or switching the top rounds. I don't think I ever went long enough without getting into a TIC for it to happen to me LOL.
 
Here's mine and it could have been bad,,,

When I was about 12 (1963?) I inherited my deceased Father's 30-40 Krag-Jorgenson carbine.

Mom and dad left me babysitting my two younger brothers at least 3 nights a week,,,
Both of them were old school parents who raised us in "benign neglect",,,
Meaning we didn't get a lot of supervision or mentoring,,,
As long as we didn't get into trouble at school,,,
We were left to our own devices.

One night I was loading the rifle and racking the bolt hard,,,
I loved to watch the cartridges fly across the room.

I was sitting on the edge of my bed,,,
I slammed the bolt home and a round went off,,,
It blew a small hole in the inner sheetrock wall of my room.

But on the other side of the wall was what used to be a brick exterior wall,,,
Unfortunately for me my Dad had built a den onto that exterior wall,,,
The bullet didn't penetrate completely through the outer brick,,,
It did blow off the outer half like a shotgun shell in the den.

Mom had a floor to ceiling shelf on the opposite wall,,,
It was full of blue opalescence hobnail glassware,,,
There was no way I could hide all the damage.

When they came home I told them that a cartridge had fallen onto my slot car track,,,
When I turned it on and cranked the throttle the electricity ignited the round,,,
I stood right up and told this story with the bravest face I had.

Mom and Dad listened to my oh-so-tall tale and just told me to go on to bed,,,
I didn't sleep much that night worrying about my impending doom,,,
Nothing was ever said about the event again.

About 40 years later my Dad and I were sitting on his back porch idly shooting the breeze,,,
My childhood came up in conversation and I remembered that scary event,,,
I told him what had actually happened and all the circumstances of it,,,
I asked why they let me off the hook with no punishment,,,
I had often received much worse for much less.

Dad said that I was shaking like a leaf and the look on my face was sheer terror,,,
And how he and Mom both were just so happy that I hadn't shot myself or one of my brothers,,,
They figured I had learned my lesson well enough and that I would probably never repeat that mistake again.

In that one aspect they were correct,,,
I had often played with my 410 shotgun and my .22 rifle,,,
But that was the last time I ever played with any of my guns as if they were toys.

Aarond

.
 
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When I was about 10 years old someone in the apartment above us had been shot, so my mom (extremely uneducated about firearms) decided to bring out her old 38 special revolver. At the time, I had never really been around guns, so I have no idea what the model was, but I pretty quickly understood that I did not want to treat a gun like she did that night. She brought it out of her drawer completely unaware of the fact that it had been sitting there loaded for years. She didn't know how to unload it and certainly didn't know the weapons safety rules.

After a few minutes of messing around with it, she tried to open the cylinder while her finger was on the trigger and discharged the weapon. The bullet came within a couple feet of me, but it didn't hit me. It ricocheted off of the linoleum tile and into the bathroom where it embedded itself into the side of the ceramic tub. She sold the weapon after that instead of trying to learn what she was doing, but I definitely learned a healthy respect for firearms that day. She's just lucky that the bullet hit the ceramic and didn't go into the next apartment or me.

I've never had any sort of ND/AD, perhaps due in part because of this experience and a desire to not repeat it.
 
I took my son on his first squirrel hunt about 10 years ago. I purchased a single shot, break open 20 gauge w/ a cock and lock feature. I figured for a small 12 year old on cold mornings/evenings the cock and lock would be great. All he has to do is flip the safety and fire, as the hammer is already back.

So we are heading across my Uncle's farm and I tell him to load up, as doves were in season also, and there was a good chance some would fly over us or flush from the corn field as we passed by it. When I tell him this I stop to load my Mossberg with 3 shells, I finish and look back at him. He's holding the shotgun ready, but it's not cocked and locked. I ask him to hand it over and go over the firing mechanism again, cock it for him and lock it, show him how to release the safety and hand it back cocked and locked.

I turn around and start heading towards the woods and in about 4 steps a hear KABLAAMMM!

I look back and my son has a mortified look on his face...and quite frankly I think I did too, the sound of the muzzle...well I've never heard it like that before...I think it was very close to me, in my direction.

Well what happened?

When I cocked and locked the shotgun, it wasn't loaded. While I loaded my shotgun, he hadn't, but I thought he did. When I handed it back to him, it wasn't loaded, but was cocked and locked. He broke it open after I turned towards the woods to load it, when he closed it, it went off. Scared the bajeezus out of me....

I hate to think of what could of happened if I was 3 or 4 feet to the right of where I was. I told him to never tell his Mother, and I've never told anyone until now.

I wish we still had that gun so I could look at it to see why exactly it happened, maybe he had to disengage the safety to break it open, I honestly don't remember what make or model it was...

But we both shot some squirrels that day, and all said and done, we have some fine pictures of us both smiling with are bag of the day.
 
I've done this once, while clearing a Glock 30.

It was my only carry gun at the time. I took a trip to the range. The gun was locked in a safe in my work truck and was loaded. I took it out of the truck and since there were a lot of neighbors around I planned to unload it at the range instead. I was overly concerned about someone seeing with it and calling the police.

When I arrived at the range there were a lot of the people in the parking lot. So to unload it as discreetly as possible I held the gun down in the range bag, pushed the mag release, then pulled back the slide. I could see the round eject, but I couldn't see into the chamber. I pulled the trigger to clear it and it fired. Turns out I had not pushed the mag release hard enough. Fortunately, since the gun was pointed in a relatively safe direction, the entire round was contained in my range bag. I lost a few rounds of 45, and had a little cut on my head from a piece of shell case that came out of the bag.

Since then, I always manually the check the magwell and chamber after unloading a firearm- in addition to a visual check. And I'm not so concerned about someone seeing me with a firearm- I fired a gun in the parking lot of a range and not one person turned his head.
 
SVT, I have never handled the M240 (the M60 was the gun in my days in ROTC) so am not sure of correct procedure.

I've seen a handful of M240B ND's from people not charging it hard enough.. it fires open bolt, so if you load a belt all the way in, pull the handle and it doesn't lock, guess what happens?? Same thing with a MK19, just with more disastrous results..
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Isn't the procedure to cock the bolt back and then load the belt? Or possibly cock it, put safety on, load belt? So the ND you mention is the result of two mistakes in series?

It has been too many decades since I had my hands on a machine gun, of any design. But IIRC the M60 can be damaged by closing the feeder cover on a bolt that is in the forward position. Am I right? Any machine gun geezers know about the M60? :D

Bart Noir
 
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Many years ago, before I could afford my own gun, I was forced to deer hunt with a 12ga shotgun I borrowed from my dad.

It looked a lot (and functioned) like a Winchester 1911 but it wasn't. At the time, I was told it was an "Ithaca Savage", which doesn't make any sense but I didn't know any better then.

Anyway, it has a rear peep and front bead sight that I wasn't used to shooting. We were out walking and found a dead deer. Dad wanted to make sure (even though I'd "sighted" it before) that I could hit what I shot at. He told me to shoot the deer from about 50 yards away. I did, and shot it right between the eyes.

I felt pretty cocky about that and there was a large rock (boulder) right there that I put my right leg up and set the butt stock on my thigh.

Well, I still had my finger on the trigger and I set the stock down pretty hard. BOOM!

That gun kicked like a mule anyway. Let me tell you, having it go off on your thigh is not a feeling you will soon forget.
 
I've done it twice. Once was clearly a brain lapse on my part and the other is unexplained.

Made the classic mistake of dropping the magazine from an auto pistol and forgetting the one in the chamber. POP! Put a 22 through two walls in my house.

Second is beyond understanding. Loading a 1911 I chambered a round and slowly lowered the slide into battery. As it closed it discharged putting a slug into the floor. I wasn't near the trigger and the hammer didn't slip remaining in the fully cocked position.

Had the gun checked by a smith and he couldn't find anything wrong. Later I read that ammo can develop sensitized primers if loaded and unloaded repeatedly and that may be what happened.
 
Never had an AD or ND myself, came way too close once but my nasty habbit of checking the chamber 3 times before pulling the trigger paid off.

My father had an AD once; he likes to shoot woodchucks from the second story of our Barn/House conversion in Wisconsin. The bedrooms are all on the first floor btw. He was bringing his 22 up, the barrel got hung up on something and the rifle slipped out of his hands, made the mistake of grabbing for it, finger on the trigger, BANG. Thankfully the little 22 didn't make it through the floor, it would have probably missed me (sleeping in the bedroom below where he shoots from) based on the angle if it had penetrated but it never made it all the way through the wood floors, beams, etc.
 
Second is beyond understanding. Loading a 1911 I chambered a round and slowly lowered the slide into battery. As it closed it discharged putting a slug into the floor. I wasn't near the trigger and the hammer didn't slip remaining in the fully cocked position.

Had the gun checked by a smith and he couldn't find anything wrong. Later I read that ammo can develop sensitized primers if loaded and unloaded repeatedly and that may be what happened.
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One thing I've learned through all this research over the years: If a gun is going to mechanically malfunction and send a bullet out the muzzle without anyone touching the trigger, it will most likely do so at the moment you close the action. If you're going to fumble-finger a hammer drop, it will almost certainly happen while you're loading the gun, too.

For this reason, I've come to believe that the rule that tells us to keep the gun pointed in a safe direction should be reinforced with "... especially while loading it."

pax
 
When my buddy and I were about 15 or 16 years old he was over and we decided to shoot the old 12ga at the barn. The barn was ready to be torn down if it didn't blow over, so no big deal. As we walked from the house to the barn I loaded the single shot breach action gun, closed it and when I was getting ready to shoulder it, just laid my finger on the trigger, causing the gun to discharge... It fired when I still had it down by my hip and thought it was going to twist my trigger finger off.

The shot went into the ground maybe 10' in front of us so no damage done. To figure out what happened I either reloaded or just cocked and pulled on the spent shell. Sure enough, hardly a touch on the trigger was enough to drop the hammer so we put that gun away and it hasn't been shot in around 30 years now. I ran across it a couple of weeks ago when we were getting ready for an estate sale. Probably should have sold it, but it was one of dad's guns so I'll probably keep it if only for sentimental reasons.
 
Only(?!) three ND's in 60 years of shooting....

First one as a 12 year old. Cold winter day, tipped out the contents of my Model 61 Winchester tube magazine after clearing the chamber outside. Later on, inside the house, I oiled the rifle, worked the slide to clear it with my finger on the trigger and "BANG". Bullet went through an oak closet door and six of my mother's dresses. Ow!:eek:

Second was with my dad's Remington Rand 1911A1. He kept it in a shoebox in his closet, unloaded. I, being a kid, knew where it was, and one day collected it out of its shoebox and racked the slide as I snapped a shot at the fromt door. "BANG"! Turns out dad had seen a strange vehicle in the farm lane the night before and left the loaded magazine in the pistol when he put it back in the shoebox. I missed the door, BTW, but the big hole next to it reminded me to always, always check the condition of any firearm every time it is picked up.

Third time was after shooting pigeons outside the barn, I sat down on the shady farmhouse step by the well. Had the Winchester Model 97 butt on the step between my legs and decided to lower the hammer to half cock. It slipped from beneath my thumb and "BANG" lots of maple leaves came floating down. Just glad I didn't have the butt in my lap!
 
sheriff shot himself in stomach

A sheriff in our city tossed a small bag containing his Glock into his
patrol car and it discharged and he was badly injured in his abdomen.
It turns out he had a small maglight flashlight in the same bag, which had
gotten into the trigger guard and been hit when he tossed it onto
the front seat. This was a senior officer with lots of experience. He survived
but had lasting injuries from a tragic mistake.
 
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