SEAL kills self, thinking gun unloaded

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Amazing what trying to impress a female can lead an (assumed) otherwise sane, clear-headed, should-be-a-weapons-expert to do...
A serious tragedy and loss for his family, friends and country.
 
Merged a duplicate thread on the subject here. Sorry for any confusion.

We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
 
I suspect that this may have been intentional on his part. People in distress have been known to do irrational things when trying to end thier life...such as having an audience.
 
By no means an empirical study, not all that wide ranging, in my experience special operations folks, atleast the younger ones I interacted with, seem to have this attitude of invincibility down pretty pat. This is not to bash, I myself use to think that no Taliban fighter intent on meeting Allah was going to get the best of me. It was goes with being 21 and hyped up on America choose.

Furthermore, my Father, whos was a carreer Air Force NCO, and was a PJ before anyone thought of wearing a red beret, said that some of the most foolish things he saw in his thirty plus year carreer were some stunts pulled by various commandoes.

This should serve as a reminder to all that none of us are infallible and to allways adhere to the four always rules.
 
I suspect that this may have been intentional on his part. People in distress have been known to do irrational things when trying to end thier life...such as having an audience.
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Interesting thought...that anything unusual/irrational is a sign of wanting to end one's life. That might make sense if the guy had expressed any sentiments about wanting to end his life, but thus far, no such information has materialized. Sometimes, people do stupid things. Check that. A lot of times people do stupid things and sometimes people get hurt as a result.

There may be all sort of factors leading up to doing stupid things that have nothing to do with being suicidal. It seems that over the past 10 years or so, we have had several threads on folks with NDs where most didn't result in death, but many of which did result in injuries and the person just wasn't fully on board with what he was doing including several that occurred as part of demonstrations or showing off. Sometimes it is the person with the gun getting hurt (the classic incident of "I am the only one here professional enough ..." or the NRA instructor who shot a student in a CCW class in Florida back in 2010.
 
Double Naught Spy

Sometimes, people do stupid things.
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DNS, scoff if you like, but I have known at least 3 people that killed themselves that had never made mention of there desire to end thier life to anyone. It does happen just as it does happen that people do stupid things and die.
 
Human error.

People kill themselves everyday and also take other people with them in the process sometimes.

His bad example will save alot of head strong young guns in the future I have no doubt-as long as someone tells what he did to himself to them.

Just sad,really.

Even if he recovers,he'll likely be permanently severely brain damaged and that could have all been avoided if he left the gun locked up at home when he decided to go out drinking.
 
He probably doesn't even know he's dead and by his own hand. Prolly stuck in some limbo. He needs prayers from any and everybody to get him through to the other side. I bet
 
I'm sorry to hear that he died. I'll keep his family in my prayers.

May the rest of us remember what happens when one mixes alcohol/drugs with firearms... the potential for disaster.

Glad to be free of alcohol myself 7052 days now, one day at a time
 
DNS, scoff if you like, but I have known at least 3 people that killed themselves that had never made mention of there desire to end thier life to anyone. It does happen just as it does happen that people do stupid things and die.
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Yes, folks sometimes commit suicide without letting others know first. However, they do leave behind evidence that it was suicide and hence how it is determined that their deaths are by suicide. So I don't follow your logic that the SEAL's death might be suicide when there was no such information preceding the event about being suicidal, none from at the time of the event, and no evidence at the scene after the event to indicate suicide.
 
I had to deal with a suicide on the range once. The person who did it had shot several times before. He was polite, affable, and sought constructive criticism. There was nothing to indicate that he was suicidal.

That is, until he put the gun to his head when nobody was watching. He left a nonsensical note, and to this day, I have no idea what led him to take his own life.

Suicide is a tragic thing, and a permanent solution to what is almost always a temporary problem. Thing is, there's no way I can put myself in that man's shoes, and I've no way of knowing what demons he was struggling with.

Mocking such a person is in terrible taste.
 
Rule #5 of gun safety should be do not handle your guns if you are drunk.
If a navy SEAL can make the mistake, any of us if drunk enough could.


@Tom: Sometimes people just break, something snaps and they are never the same. Some of those people kill themselves some don't. It can be a death of someone close, an illness, a job loss or just for no reason at all. I am sure every one of us knows someone who seems to just have changed permanantly over night.
 
However, they do leave behind evidence that it was suicide and hence how it is determined that their deaths are by suicide.
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He left evidence...he had a witness that saw him put the gun to his head and pull the trigger.

Two of the three people that I know that have committed suicide did not follow the usual protocol. One of them even left his son's 10 birthday party under the guise of picking up some needed products, but instead drove to the family river place about 70 miles away and shot himself in the head. Not one bit of evidence has ever been found that would have ever made anyone think that this was on his mind.

Look, this is a tragedy for everyone involved whether accidental or intentional. My only point was that sometimes things are not the way they seem in these cases...I have learned that first hand.
 
If a navy SEAL can make the mistake, any of us if drunk enough could.
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According to the article, he had just completed SEAL training, and he didn't have any operational experience.

I'm sure there's a lot of firearms training involved, but there's only so much you can learn in a year. I don't think SEAL training qualifies someone as a gun safety expert.
 
I can tell you that if things became so desperate for me... finances, loneliness, poor health, general loathing of society today, whatever... that I killed myself it would most definitely look like an accident. There's no reason to leave behind anyone with ANY guilt. Besides that, why give the crooked insurance companies a reason to not pay out?
 
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