Unintentional discharge story

J

JohnKSa

Administrator
A TFL member PMed me this story and asked me to post it for him for others to learn from. I don't have any further details other than what is below. Names have been changed at the TFL member's request.

Abe decided to go visit Bob. During the visit the subject of guns came up. Bob said that he wanted to show a new gun he purchased to Abe since Abe has more experience with firearms and Bob wanted to know if his purchase was a good deal.

Bob's new pistol turns out to be a Davis Company P-380 purchased for less than $100. The gun is empty. There is one mag.

Abe explained that the gun looks ok, but says it's an off brand. He asks if Bob has fired it to test the function. Abe later found out that Davis Co went bankrupt (and for good reason) but at the time neither was aware of that fact.

The two are standing facing each other while Charles (another of Bob's friends) is in the living room watching them. Abe took the gun, racked the slide back twice to clear the chamber. He dryfired a few times, racking the slide each time. Abe then took a full magazine, put it inside the gun, and racked the slide. When he released the slide the gun slamfired. All three present agree that Abe's finger was NOT on the trigger.

Abe was exercising muzzle control when the gun fired so the gun was not pointed at anyone. The slug traveled through 2 interior walls, and hit concrete. It was not recovered in spite of a careful search.

Abe and Bob both reported that their ears rang for a few weeks at least.

Examination of the pistol showed that the gun had misfed the next shot which was fortunate. It's possible that the pistol would have gone full auto if it hadn't jammed.

Lessons learned:

Follow safety rules ALWAYS.
Avoid poor quality guns from disreputable manufacturers.​
 
wow, i suppose the best thing you could do would be to load it outside for the first time, somewhere you can shoot it.
i never thought about a gun failing in that way before.


:eek:
 
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Confirmation that, despite naysayers, there truly is such a thing as an accidental discharge. . . . Unless you count buying or even touching a Davis as being negligent. :D

Seriously, it should reinforce the need to follow the four rules. There is redundancy there for a reason.
 
Thank goodness for following all four rules, all the time. Good story.

(Oh, and to the guy who wrote the story: why the secrecy? You did not do a single thing wrong, regardless of which person you were in that account. No misbehavior, just a mechanical malfunction that caused no damage because everyone involved followed the rules. Kudos to you for getting it right.)

Huh. Just this morning I saw another post on TFL that made me want to bop the poster upside the head with a clue bat. This person opined that he could safely point his firearm at unidentified people, or use the integrated light as a search beacon while moving through his home, because he keeps his finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard. This story puts the lie to that stupid notion, for sure!

pax
 
Stories like these have put me in the habit of checking to see that the firing pin is not protruding before chambering a round in any semi auto. I don't know if it really provides any additional level of safety but I figure it sure can't hurt!
 
Glad to hear that everything ended up OK; I like the military's version of the cardinal rule best: "Do not point your weapon at anything which you do not intend to destroy". Kinda puts everything into perspective a little better than "Do not point......you do not intend to shoot"

I sometimes wonder if these kinda things come about by degenerate attempts to create full automatic fire, or perhaps improper home gunsmithing. I've heard more than one story about JB Welding firing pins in milsurp rifles and such to produce such an effect.
 
Oftentimes adhering to just one of the four rules is enough to prevent bloodshed, when the tolerances-both human and mechanical-get together and the gun goes BANG when it ain't supposed to.

Kudos on the excellent muzzle discipline. Hammer & Anvil time for the Davis.

(Unloaded and checked three times first, of course.)
 
one of the rules is never enough. all 4 must be respected at all times, clearly given by this example.
not sure if the 4th rule could have been followed, except to not load up in the house, cause you don't know its about to slamfire so you don't know whats beyond the walls it went through.
That would be a beer wanting experience.
thanks for the story
 
A similar situation occurred to two guys I know. In the kitchen one guy was showing the other his new .380 . The gun discharged into the kitchen wall. I don't know the particulars of why it happened. I know that the gun holder made a remark that muzzle control saved their a$$es.
 
Well, for once it is a good thing that those Davis pieces of garbage jam a lot. A friend of mine had one, and could not get through a full mag without a jam. I never touched that thing. He took it home one night, laid it on the garage floor, and hit it with a 5 pound hammer. He still has it, and we still laugh at it. It is no longer dangerous.
 
Not trying to hijack this thread, but this story hits too close to home. I had bought a used Remington 700 in .17 Rem for what I thought was a good price. My wife and I went out to a river bank to shoot it and the first shot went off just as planned, closed the bolt, aimed, sqeezed the trigger, boom. But as i chambered the second round the rifle went off in my hands (yes all the while continuing firearm safety). WTH?!?! I pulled the bolt out, emptied the rifle and went to checking it out. Nothing seemed to be wrong with it, but to an 18 year old it never does, I guess. I put the bolt back in, chambered another round and boom, round went off just as I closed the bolt (yeah I know before you say anything, I shouldnt have reloaded it).

So I take it back to the place where I bought it. The guy who sold it to me was a close family friend of my wife's and they have been doing business with them for years. Well, he starts looking at the rifle and closed the bolt and it 'dropped the hammer' again. He pulls the bolt out and sure enough he points out the sear, and man, was it ROUNDED off. I dont know if the guy before me had filed it down for a smoother trigger pull, or if it just was used alot, but it was dangerous.

Well, he buys the rifle back from me, but a couple of weeks later he gives me a call and asks me to come back to the store. When I get there he walks to the back room and brings out a NIB Remington 700BDL Custom Deluxe .17 Rem. I tell him that I cant pay for it now, and he just shakes his head and hands it to me, telling me that its on the house (of course after filling out the paperwork). :eek: I was shocked... That showed alot of integrity on his part and he kept my business after that until i moved. But the point I was trying to get to was just because it was made by a reputable manufacturer dont rule out the possibility that there could be something wrong with it. No, I dont condone buying POS's and trusting then to do their job, but dont rule out that well made firearms can be POS's too.
 
My only ad story (and I'm 66 years old so I must be pretty lucky given the stories of ads I've heard over the years): In the late sixties I was visiting a fellow college student (Gary) in the evening at his trailer where he lived with his wife outside of Warrensburg, Missouri, when a mutual friend (Vern) arrived to return a Ruger Number 1, chambered in .22-250 that he had borrowed earlier to hunt woodchucks with. After Vern left, Gary pulled the trigger of the rifle to relieve the firing pin tension before storing it and the rifle discharged. Any ad is going to sound inordinately loud because the report of the shot is unanticipated but, believe me, if you think a .380 sounds loud, try firing a .22-250 in close, confined quarters without wearing hearing protection to see (hear) how loud a rifle chambered in this caliber sounds.

In the shocked aftermath of an ad, one's first instinct is to check one's body parts to determine if they've been shot or not and the second impulse is to see where the errant round traveled. In this case, the bullet went through a range in the trailer and zipped through the trailer wall to the great outdoors and caused no further damage.

As the smoke cleared, I was quick to lay the blame for this unfortunate incident on Vern. How could anybody be so stupid and unsafe as to return a borrowed rifle loaded? But Gary "manned up" and conceded that it was his and his obligation alone to determine the safety status of any firearm which he had not previously ascertained to be safe. And he's right , of course. What "saved the day" was Gary following the number one safety rule: always have a gun pointed in a safe direction, no matter what.

But I still think Vern was the dumbest and most irresponsible of the two. My ears rang for a month. :mad:

(I know this is a handgun forum but I thought the ad element makes it contextually more ubiquitous).
 
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I witnessed an AD once...

When i was young and single another deputy comes over to my house as we are going to go hit the bars. I tell him to hang tight while i go take a shower. While in the shower he tells me a third deputy informed him i had recently bought a new CC pistol. I tell him its in the top drawer of my dresser if he wants to check it out but be careful, its loaded. Not more than 11 seconds after berating me for advising him to be mindful of a loaded pistol (how dumb do you think i am? Dont you know who you're talking to?) I hear the shot go off. The bullet lodged into the concrete slab of the floor and i was able to pull it up after cuttung a slit in the carpet. Worst of all he had drawn a bead on my Xbox and blew a hole right through it. So dont trust your buddy just because he's trained and familiar with firearms. No, he never bought me a new Xbox, oh well its a dirty habit anyway.
 
Stories like these have put me in the habit of checking to see that the firing pin is not protruding before chambering a round in any semi auto. I don't know if it really provides any additional level of safety but I figure it sure can't hurt!
Click to expand...

It certainly can't hurt, but in most semiautos a protruding firing pin will prevent a round loading from the magazine. The round will stop on the firing pin as it slides up the breech face. I don't know if the Davis uses controlled feed, but I suspect hammer follow to be the culprit here.
 
Stories like these have put me in the habit of checking to see that the firing pin is not protruding before chambering a round in any semi auto.
Click to expand...
Glocks and pistols with similar operating systems may leave the firing pin protruding after a dryfire. Cycling the slide during the chambering process will retract the firing pin.
 
The Davis looks outwardly similar to many of the pot-metal sub-caliber pocket pistols out there. I'll tell you that I've never handled a Davis, so I don't know for sure. But I've handled and stripped enough of the others to know that the firing pin design is VERY EASY to get turned around on re-assembly. It's not exactly obvious which way that SOB goes back in to the channel.

I believe that disassembling, then re-assembling improperly could make such an AD/ND happen.

Doesn't make it any less negligent or accidental... could have been stripped and re-assembled by the previous owner, but I believe it's possible.

I think these little cheap guns take more heat than they actually deserve. They do deserve some of it... I don't think they deserve all of it.
 
dgludwig and DeadCoyote -- I believe these stories to be negligent discharges rather than accidental discharges. True accidental discharges are pretty unusual but do happen as the first post indicates.
 
That story reminds me of the summer that I was working as a camp counselor. I was in charge of the indoor rifle range. The camp had four .22 rimfire bolt action target rifles.

In the process of checking the equipment before the campers go to use the range I found that the first rifle worked well and the sights were on. The second rifle fired as I closed the bolt! Fortunately, I had the barrel pointed at the back stop. That faulty rifle was taken to a gunsmith.
 
This is one reason I prefer revolvers. I am curious though. The OP indicated the gun was dry fired several times. The slide was racked and the trigger pulled. This seems to me to indicate the gun functioned correctly. Bad assumption it seems.

What is it about the auto feed guns that allows a slam fire, when a manual rack works just fine?

If it is a stuck firing pin, can that be seen on visual examination ?
 
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