Negligent Discharge after 40 yrs

Wyatt Earp had one . . .

According to history channel, Wyatt Earp left a hammer cocked over a loaded cylinder. He sat down and leaned his chair back and his gun fell out of the holster and discharged shooting a hole through his coat, but not him. I think this was relatively early in his life.

Life is good.
Prof Young
 
Wyoredman said:
As I pulled it from the safe, I noticed the mag was installed. I don't know why I did it, but instead of removing the mag first before checking the action, I reversed the order. I cycled the action, nothing ejected, so I removed the mag and pulled the trigger. CRACK!
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Don't beat yourself up, this is an easy mistake to make and I have almost done it too. In unloading a gun you drop the magazine first, and then cycle the action to empty the chamber. If tired or distracted it is not hard to reverse this procedure and cycle the action first and then drop the magazine. In both cases the magazine is out and you ejected a round from the chamber, so your brain registers that the gun must be empty.

But there is a third step that will prevent the BANG, and that is to open the action again and look inside the chamber. Again if tired or distracted, or in poor lighting, one may skip step three, or substitute a trigger pull for the visual inspection. Afterall, you KNOW the gun is empty - you just removed all of the rounds!

The key is to learn from the mistake. As I start to unload my guns I have trained myself to to say firmly to myself "magazine first, magazine first". And I never skip the visual chamber inspection - it is a three step procedure. Finger stays off the trigger, period!
 
Tom,
Yep! Exactly! Magazine first, Action second. AND VISUAL!

Well i fixed the hole in the sheet rock, left the slug in the wood of the window header. I showed the Mrs. and my daughter, explained how I think it happened and used it as a teaching moment for the family. Mrs. Redman was a bit spooked, but not upset.

Thanks for the reassurances from everyone here that they are going to be more careful because of my blunder! I promise you I will be!!:o

Enjoy your summer!

Wyoredman.
 
I've never had an ND myself but I have witness a few of my fellow officers have have one. A couple of them were rather humorous albeit potentially quite dangerous situations.

I have had a NHS.

One night while getting off duty and while seated in my patrol car I reached over and gripped the shotgun barrel positioned in the vertical shotgun rack to gather my gear and pull myself up. Forgot I had just hit the shotgun rack release button. I proceeded to yank the shotgun barrel hard up against my forehead- almost knocking myself out! Man it hurt. I thought I might have given myself a concussion in addition to the large lump that soon formed on my head. That's right. I had a Negligent Head Strike!
 
Shotgun barrel against my own forehead? No officer. You shouldn't have. Worse thing can happen. Way worse.

Thank you for your service. I for one stand right behind the blue thin line.

-TL

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk
 
I've learned to place yellow tape on all chambered semi-auto weapons in my home, usually on slide near backstrap. My 12 gauge has tape covering bolt. Most are in a safe and unloaded and no magazines in them. The yellow tape tells me for sure that they are HOT, have a loaded mag and ready to go in case I need a loaded weapon asap. When you get my age, it is hard to remember everything. My other semi-autos all have slides or their bolts pulled back. I feel your pain. I had similar happen to me 4 decades ago. My wife and I came up with the yellow tape plan. Don't beat yourself up. You didn't carelessly aim it at anyone.
 
In April, a young man I mentored was shot accidentally. He died in May. I have never had a second's animosity toward the friend who shot him, but I could not understand how an intelligent person could shoot a gun accidentally.

Then last week, it happened to me twice. I couldn't believe it. I don't know if the first one counts, because I was having a problem with a gun, and I was pointing it in a safe direction in case I touched the trigger accidentally while I fixed it, but the second one was definitely negligent. I was pointing the gun in a safe direction in case I made a mistake, but my utility cart was in front of the gun when it fired, so it was a safe but stupid direction. It amazes me that I was smart enough to avoid shooting toward people but dumb enough to risk shooting my cart.

Hope I can go another 45 years without another incident.
 
I lighter news, my great uncle shot himself off a toilet in the courthouse in Breathitt County, Kentucky. He was carrying some kind of cheap Italian gun. It fell out of his pants and shot him in the leg.

Does anyone here remember a time when you could carry in a courthouse?
 
I am feeling like a complete fool today. I hope sharing my tale will help me feel a little better, but I doubt it.
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20 days have no passed.
In that time, no fewer than 1000 people have done something far stupider, so, if you haven't already, quit beating up on yourself.

One nice thing about being the Mayor of Stupidville is - it's a very temporary position ;).
 
I had 2 early on when I was young, arrogant, and careless.

My first was similar to your. I was looking for the mag, which I stupidly had inserted into the gun. I was going to do some dry fire practice. I should have noticed the weight difference or pressed the mag release just in case but I was inexperienced. Good thing I had it pointed in a safe direction when it went off. I never made that type of mistake again. I had the gun loaded with Glaser safety slugs so it broke apart in the dry wall.

My second negligent discharge occurred due to arrogance. I knew the 4 rules of gun safety, but figured I had enough "experience" to have my finger on the trigger. My Sig P229 had a 12 lb. double action pull which I thought was more than enough to prevent an unintentional trigger pull. I heard some noise in my backyard and went to check it out. I heard a loud pop (probably a car back firing) and that 12 pound trigger felt like a 2 pound trigger. I did have the gun pointed a the low ready so it just bounced of floor and broke apart. I had the gun loaded with Mag Safe rounds so less chance of ricochet or over penetration.

It has been 20 years since and I am glad no one was injured by my negligence. I believe that is why the 4 rules of gun safety are so important. While the violation of just one rule can be dangerous, it usually takes 2 for it to be very bad. You did not treat the gun as loaded, but you did have it pointed in a safe direction. Don't beat yourself up too bad. Just chalk it up as a learning experience and I'm sure you will be much more vigilant.
 
1. Don't feel like the Lone Ranger. Here are some SOPs I have adopted:
1. I have snap caps for those 15 or so firearms I handle the most often. I have them in everything from 22LR to 45-70. Those firearms are ALWAYS stored with a snap cap.
3. For dry fire practice in my SA semiauto pistols I use a magazine of the opposite color. A blue steel pistol gets a stainless magazine, a stainless pistol gets a blue one.
4. I have enough different 22 rifles that before a range session I get acquainted with, their loading and UNloading.
5. I check my firearms at the end of a range session AND when I get home.
6. I practice speed loading my revolvers with blaze orange practice rounds.
 
Thanks for posting this. I think the lesson for all of us is that no matter how diligent we think we are, all of us can make an error at some time. I keep both of my carry handguns loaded, and generally in a Desantis pocket holster. They stay in the holster in my small safe in my dresser and go right into my pocket, still in the holster. One is a semi, one is a revolver and in both cases all it would take is a trigger pull to fire the gun. But both triggers are covered by the holster so I really do not overly worry about a negligent discharge.

That said, I have other guns in my safe that unloaded, i.e., no magazine is in the gun, but the magazines are fully loaded. I keep each handgun in a zippered case so that the unloaded gun and the full magazines stay together and would be ready for use by just slipping the mag into the gun itself. Even knowing that the gun is unloaded, if I remove it for cleaning or any other reason, I always cycle the slide to make sure that there is no round in the chamber.

I also keep a loaded 12 gauge on the wall of my closet in a ShotLok holder, bolted to the wall. The gun cannot be fired while in the ShotLok but if I open the ShotLok the gun is ready for use. I am super extra careful with this long gun since it can be months and months without it being touched, so if ever I have an accident, I guess it is most likely to be with this gun. But as my SHTF home defense gun, I would not want to first have to load the 00 buck into the gun at the last moment, and prefer to have it loaded and ready.
 
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