Unsafe firearm incidents.

A

AL45

New member
We all like to talk about our successes in hunting and shooting, but nobody likes to talk about their failures in firearm safety. But perhaps we can spare someone of injury or worse by telling a story of an unsafe firearm experience we have had. Several years ago, my youngest son and I were traveling a dirt road looking for a prairie dog town. We spotted one on the passenger side and I stopped the truck, climbed out the window, rested across the top of the cab and fired. As soon as the gun went off, a horrible thought entered my mind. What if my son had also climbed out his window and raised his head above the cab? He would have been directly in front of my line of fire. To this day, my heart sinks every time I think of that.
 
Last time I went clay shooting, my girlfriend (who after 9months of dating is still new and getting her feet wet in the gun world) was reloading my Rem Model 11 and while inserting a round into the tube had an ND. Thankfully the gun was pointed down range but she had the gun inverted and cradled in her right arm and it could've easily come out of her control.
 
Clear you weapon

If you put in enough time on this Great Adventure, you will have such incidents. The last one I had, was when I took a handgun, over to a friend's house to show it to him. He was looking to buy one like mine and just wanted to handle one. I pulled the gun out of the rug, maintained muzzle control and cleared the weapon in front of him. A live round fell out onto the floor. Both of our eye got as big as saucers. ..... :eek:


Be Safe !!!
 
This one is a little different. A co-worker hadn't been able to get a deer yet and as I already had six in the freezer plus sore feet wasn't all that anxious to go out into the field again. Yes, I still had an unfilled tag. Well, I told him to show up at 0530 and I'd take him to where we got ours but would just sit in the truck and snooze.
First odff, he shows up almost two hours late and brings a buddy along. Then,as he's speeding we get stopped by the highway patrol. Turns out his buddy was a highway patrolman so proffesional courtesy and we're on our way. Now we get to the road I want to go up and I'm in the middle, by co-worker is driving and his buddy is riding shotgun. I'm about half asleep and just barely looking out the window when I tell my buddy to stop the truck. here's a whole herd of deer walking right down to the road. Well him nd his buddy bail out and I slowly grg myself from the truck and stick one round ito my rifle. Their guns were already loads and my co-worker drops his deer, I drop mine and the HP tag along gut shoots his deer. I manage to get another round into my rifle and am tracking the gut shot deer when that dumb arse highway cop steps right in front of me. I probably have maybe two ounces left before my .270 goes off and all I see in my scope is that idiot's blonde hair. :eek: To this day I have no idea how I was able to release my finger from that trigger and keep from shooting him in the head. It's been probably 40 years since that happened and I still get the shakes telling about it. I'm thinking that I gave that guy the worst chewing out he ever got in his life. To make it even worse, because of my feet I stayed behind and gutted the two deer while they looked for the gut shot one. They never found it. :( Dunno if I could have racked it down and I am sorry I didn't try.
Paul B.
 
I guess I was around 13-14 years old but had shot a shotgun quite a bit. A friend of my dad's was in the trap house throwing clays for me. My dad was behind me. In between shots I rested my shotgun on my thigh with the barrel pointing upward at about 45 degrees I guess.

Unfortunately when I placed the stock on my thigh I had my finger on the trigger and the safe off. Fired a shot in the air. Needless to say my dad was upset with me. Scared my dad's friend. He thought I'd shot myself.

Three things got hammered home. Keep the gun pointed down range (which I did), keep your finger off the trigger till time to shoot, and put the safety on after you shoot.
 
I was probably 12 or 13 and hunting pheasants with two buddies in a field that had some standing corn. We got tired after hours of walking the fence rows, and sat down to rest. I leaned my (loaded) .410 shotgun against a dried stalk of corn. A few minutes later, one of my buddies stretched his legs out to get more comfortable, and hit the cornstalk, which knocked the shotgun to the ground, which discharged when it hit the ground. Luckily, providentially, the muzzle happened to be pointed away from the three of us. It could have easily been a tragedy.
I learned a lot that day.
 
glh17 said:
I guess I was around 13-14 years old but had shot a shotgun quite a bit. A friend of my dad's was in the trap house throwing clays for me. My dad was behind me. In between shots I rested my shotgun on my thigh with the barrel pointing upward at about 45 degrees I guess.

Unfortunately when I placed the stock on my thigh I had my finger on the trigger and the safe off. Fired a shot in the air. Needless to say my dad was upset with me. Scared my dad's friend. He thought I'd shot myself.

Three things got hammered home. Keep the gun pointed down range (which I did), keep your finger off the trigger till time to shoot, and put the safety on after you shoot.
Click to expand...

I did the exact same thing once. There's a 4th thing that LITERALLY gets hammered home.... DO NOT fire a 12ga on your thigh. :eek: Ow.
 
When I was a teenager a good friend had this old single shot 20 gauge shotgun. The thing just would not fire and we were screwing around with it in his room. We had handed the gun back and forth a couple of times and I have no idea how we missed the fact that it was loaded. Anyway, he was flicking away on the hammer, sort of pulling it back and letting it go. I am not sure if he had his finger on the trigger or not but the gun "went off" (as everyone likes to say in these situations). There was a hole in the floor just in front of my feet. I guess this speaks to our age at the time and that invincible feeling one has as a teenager, but our worries were not that one of us could have been killed, we were much more worried about what his dad was going to say and what my dad was going to say once he found out about it.
 
I'm embarrassed to say I had one when I was about 12 or 13. I was pheasant hunting with my dad and our dog (a Great Dane who was great at sniffing them out & scaring them up!). My shotgun was (and I still have it) a Win 1897. It was cold and I had gloves on, and one of the seams along one of the fingers was opened up and a loop of string caught on the bang switch. :eek:
Fortunately, the gun was pointed down and away from my dad and the dog. Lesson learned -- I'm still extra careful over 40 years later.
 
The only thing close to an unsafe incident I've experienced in the 30+ years I've been shooting guns is as follows:

I was sighting in a new scope on my 30-06 I use for hunting - as much as I could at the indoor range I was at. I was done for the day, brought the target back in from down range (on a wire); decided to double-check my rifle, which I thought was unloaded and uncocked, by pulling the trigger - gun loosly held at waste level, but muzzle still downrange....BLAM! The blast completely destroyed the cardboard backing that was just in front of my muzzle - I discovered just how muzzle blast a 30-06 has at close range.:eek:
 
A friend of mine's dad was a big time bird and rabbit hunter who had some very expensive dogs. He'd just bought or traded for a some beagle hounds to rabbit hunt with. He paid somewhere between 500-1000 dollars a piece for these dogs. This was in the mid-60s.

The first time he took them out my friend, who was about 14 or 15 at the time, shot one of the dogs thinking it was a rabbit. I don't think he went rabbit hunting for a while after that. Not a gun accident but accident nonetheless.
 
I have yet to have an AD or an ND. My dad has had both.

The last incident was quiet a while ago. He is no longer allowed to fool with any firearms if he's tired. The incidents in question never hit anything important, because even tired he maintains a safe direction.

I tend to be pretty anal, but I'm not so great about being on public ranges or around other people in a casual shooting envornment. I'm not so great around new people or in new places, period, but adding firearms to the mix does make my ditsy nervous crap more dangorous, which I know but doesn't help, just because it makes me more nervous. :o
 
Sometime in the late 40s a couple of years before I was born my dad had a safety accident. One of his friends had just gotten a new 22 rifle. He'd taken it out for the first time that day. This guy was new to guns.

My dad and mom and a few others went over to this guy's house that night for dinner. After dinner they were sitting around the living room and the guy asked my dad if he'd show him how to clean the gun. Now my dad knew alot about guns. Been around them all his life and served in the infantry in WWII.

His friend went to the bedroom and got the gun. Brought it into the living room and told my dad it wasn't loaded. My dad made a mistake and took his word for it. My dad was holding the gun inadvertently pointed at one of the ladies in the room. There were six or eight people in the room. She told him to not point it her way. He said something like, "it's alright Clifford unloaded it", pointed the gun toward the ceiling and pulled the trigger. Well, it wasn't unloaded. There was a round in the chamber and he put a hole in ceiling. Mother said he started shaking and broke out in a sweat. He was "extremely" safety conscience after that incident.
 
I'll admit to one ND that was absolutely my fauly. I'd picked up a very well tuned up S&W Combat Masterpiece .38 Spl. and I was in the garage dry firing it to get used to the vey light single action trigger pull. The phone rings and i eloaded the gun with a speedloader, ran upstairs and it was my very hot girl friend. SHe called to tell me her parents were going out to dinner with friends and come on over. She also very graphically told me what she had planned and it was gonna be a very fine evening. After were hung up I wnt back downstairs and my head was not here it was supposed to be. I completely forgot I'd loaded that gun, cocked the hammer and took a bead on a sparrow that was sitting on the back yard fence. End result was a hole in the window and feathers floating down. Got my head screwed back on in one hell of a hurry. That was a very very long time ago ( I was 20 and I'm 75 now) and I've double and triple checked ever gun I planned to dry fire ever since.
Paul B.
 
I've never done anything of the sort, I'm triple careful, literally. However, I've prevented at least two could be tragedies and find I constantly have to push muzzles away from my body when speaking to people at the range I go to. Pay attention... Geez.

In one instance a friend actually pointed a gun at me, a shotgun I was sure was loaded. When I saw it I grabbed the muzzle and pushed it to the side, my friend, thinking I was being silly pulled the trigger and shot a round of 20GA birdshot into the ground about an inch to my left! He was white for. Good half hour and couldn't stop apologizing. For my part, he received a punch to the gut and a very stern speech. I shook for hours after that one, I've never been so scared or so angry. It's the only time I've hit someone in anger. Needless to say I do not shoot with him any ore and don't really hang out with him anymore, just way too weird to even see him. The range is simy not a place to screw around... :(

The other time a different friend was holding a Mosin by the top of the barrel, well he put it down and leaned it against his chest; with the muzzle pointing directly at his jaw. I swiftly removed the gun and said " dude, that's loaded!" He said "no it is not!" And took it back and pulled the bolt back, ejecting a steel cases Tula round. Scary
 
After 40+ years I had my first last year.

We were shooting at a gravel pit. My niece's husband had a self-built AK. I had never fired one before and am not familiar with them. He was having a problem keeping the dust cover from coming off, so he just took it off. He ask me if I wanted to fire it, and I said sure.

He handed my the rifle and I pointed it at the ground and down range to flip the big safety lever off. When I did it discharged without my finger on the trigger. Startled the hell out of me.

He came over and tried to explain what happened, but I carefully handed the rifle to him to clear it and sort it out.

It has perma-soured me on that design because of the ND.
 
A couple of years ago a friend wanted to show me his old .45. He handed it to me and I asked if it was loaded. He says no he is safe. I pull the slide to clear it anyway and out pops a round.

And this was in a room full of people too.

I hope he really is saf-er now after that mess.
 
AL45 said:
What if my son had also climbed out his window and raised his head above the cab? He would have been directly in front of my line of fire. To this day, my heart sinks every time I think of that.
Click to expand...
So you're not actually asking about unsafe firearms, as the title of the thread implies, you're really asking about unsafe shooting.
 
Back in the late 80's, I bought a korean war re import m1 garand, it had a NM barrel, and op rod, and sights. (I got lucky on that one) i cleaned it, re assembled it, put it on safe.

then wanted to see if the handloads i had on hand would chamber in the rifle as they were loaded for my bolt gun and had only been neck sized.

I stepped outside, pointed it at the ground, then I loaded a enbloc clip, made sure it was on safe, inserted the clip, and dropped the op-rod, and BANG, it went off.

I stopped, ejected the enbloc clip, and checked it over, empty it would not fire when it was loaded, but using primed cases only, when a round was chambered and on safe, it would fire, on fire, it would chamber the round normally.

A trip to the local gunsmith cured the issue, but i never did really trust the rifle after that.

A year or 2 later, it found a new home.

ian
 
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