Usage of the term "accidental discharge" by Public Officials...

[ninjarealist]

The purpose of this thread is not to discuss the socio-political ramifications of police shootings. There is a plethora of better forums and threads in which to discuss that subject.

However, there is one aspect of recent police shootings in the news that has troubled me on a purely firearms safety level and this is the usage of the term "accidental discharge" in public statements.

Police and litigators both have a tough job to do and concern for how their opinions might affect public awareness about firearms is understandably not a priority (for police officers especially). I'm not trying to be overly-judgemental of law enforcement, because there are clearly mitigating circumstances that prevent them from devoting more time to word choices. With that being said, I think the way Law Enforcement spokesmen talk about these shootings may have a negative effect on public understanding of firearms safety.

Specifically, what has caused me to think about this is the recent case of Akai Gurley. Again, the many socio-political issues at play in this case are completely irrelevant to this forum, so I'm not even going to mention them. I'm also not going to provide links to specific articles because, due to the politically-charged nature of this incident, I don't want to potentially use sources that give people an incentivize to politicize the issue. However, what is very relevant to this forum is the language that public officials have used to describe this shooting.

Bill Bratton, DA Kenneth Thompson and Officer Ed Mullins (an NYPD spokesman) have all referred to the incident as an "accidental shooting" and, even worse in my opinion, an "accidental discharge". Even official police statements on the shooting, which all acknowledge that Officer Liang had his finger on the trigger when the gun went off, classify the shooting as an accidental discharge".

I personally find it completely inappropriate to describe this incident as an "accidental discharge". To my mind, if a gun goes off as a result of the trigger being pulled, the discharge is not accidental. Could the decision to pull the trigger be described as an accident? Arguably. But the discharge itself was no "accident".

Again, this is, in some ways, a semantical/linguistic argument. But, at the same time, I think most of us can probably agree that the term accident does currently have a connotation of "faultlessness". And I think most of us would also agree that if someone pulls the trigger on a gun that is unlocked, with a round chambered and ready-to-fire, it's not an accident when that gun does exactly what it's designed to do. I think it would be more correct to call that negligence. And if a negligent discharge results in maiming or death, that's also negligence of basic gun safety rules.

What worries me about this is that I think the next logical extension of labeling these incidents "accidental discharges" is to blame the guns themselves. I mean, what is an uninformed non-gun owner supposed to think when they hear public officials labeling these types of incidents as accidents? Because if someone thinks the operator is blameless when a tool functions as designed, then who are they going to blame? God? Random Chance? The victim?

Or will people simply use this as another excuse to scapegoat guns?

 

[jmr40]

I completely disagree with you. The term "negligent discharge" is way overused, especially on internet gun forums. I see it the exact same way as an automobile crash. There is almost always someone "at fault" in an automobile accident, but it is always referred to as an accident. Unless it is proven to be deliberate, then it becomes much more serious. The person at fault is still responsible for any injuries or damage. But for it to rise to the level of negligence the person at fault had to be doing something that they knew, or should have known could cause the accident. Only a tiny fraction of car crashes rise to the level of negligence. The same is true of firearms accidents.

Not seeing a stop sign and running through it and causing an accident is not negligence. Being drunk, and not seeing a stop sign is negligence. Speeding and other dangerous driving habits is negligence. Misjudging the distance and speed of oncoming traffic before making a turn is simply an accident. You are still responsible for your damage either way. If negligence can be proven you will likely go to jail

The same criteria should, and does apply to firearms from a legal sense. If someone accidentally touches a trigger and the gun discharges it is an accident as long as there are no other contributing factors. A person who is using a gun in a dangerous manner in the belief that it is unloaded, points it at someone and the gun fires, it is negligent. Same as using weapons under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

One of my concerns is that over time if words are used in certain ways the words meaning changes. Right now the word negligence infers that the person did something wrong knowingly. An accident is an unintended event. If we continue to use the term negligent discharge when it is actually an accidental discharge are we inferring that we are being negligent just by owning firearms? Many anti's already believe so. Why make their jobs easier.

 

[4thPoint]

Although many times used synonymously, they are not the same. Accident's aren't always preventable but negligence always is.

The wind may blow over a flower pot on a shelf and make it crash on your head, that's an accident. The wind blowing over a flower pot on the wall that's resting on a rickety, rotting, unstable shelf is negligent as the shelf could have been repaired.

Saying something was accidental rather than admitting negligence is done to minimize responsibility.

 

[Kreyzhorse]

Simply put, negligence is an apt term and especially so in the NY shooting. There will be a lawsuit and the term accidental is simply being used in an effort to control public opinion and the police do not want to admit to negligence as it will be used against them in the lawsuit.

 

[Evan Thomas]

Specifically, what has caused me to think about this is the recent case of Akai Gurley. Again, the many socio-political issues at play in this case are completely irrelevant to this forum, so I'm not even going to mention them. I'm also not going to provide links to specific articles because, due to the politically-charged nature of this incident, I don't want to potentially use sources that give people an incentivize to politicize the issue. However, what is very relevant to this forum is the language that public officials have used to describe this shooting.

Given that Officer Liang has been indicted on charges of "second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, second-degree assault and two counts of official misconduct..." I think the only person still calling it an accidental shooting will be his defense attorney.

Right now the word negligence infers that the person did something wrong knowingly.

Actually, that's not the case. Negligence is defined in law as "failure to exercise the care toward others which a reasonable or prudent person would do in the circumstances, or taking action which such a reasonable person would not." There's nothing about doing so knowingly; in fact, the essence of negligence is that it's accidental as opposed to deliberate; in the latter case, it would be an "intentional tort" or a crime.

Let's not rehash the whole "negligent discharge vs. accidental discharge" debate here. That one has been done to death, and it's not relevant to this discussion.

 

[44 AMP]

I think most of us can probably agree that the term accident does currently have a connotation of "faultlessness".

I'll have to be one of those that disagree with that. or, more precisely, I will agree with accident having that connotation, but that the truth is, someone is always at fault.

I've been trained, and done root cause analysis of industrial accidents. There are two kinds of "faults". Those done during (actually involved in) the accident, and those that were done at some time earlier that created the conditions for the accident to occur.

And legal definitions can be quite different that the common usage of the terms.

An "accident" is an unplanned event with an undesirable result. It is what happens. Negligent in the dictionary says "extremely careless or casual". That can be a reason why an accident happens. And while there is always someone at some degree of fault, not all the fault is negligence.

If a shot is not planned to be fired, and does, it is an accident. It is correct to call it an accident. It is still correct to call it an accident when you know it was caused by negligence. The reason it happens doesn't change what it is. It's still an accident.

Not seeing a stop sign and running through it and causing an accident is not negligence.

Not sure I can fully agree with this one. Not seeing the stop sign could be negligence, I think that is arguable.

Being drunk, and not seeing a stop sign is negligence. Speeding and other dangerous driving habits is negligence.

Agree. Drunk driving is negligence.

Misjudging the distance and speed of oncoming traffic before making a turn is simply an accident

.
Agree. you were not negligent in exercising due diligence, you looked, and you judged, and you acted, in that order. You just happened to be wrong.

You can be wrong and make errors without being negligent. But being negligent increases hugely the odds of being wrong and making errors.

Sometimes, its a tough call, and very dependent on the specific situation and the individuals involved. I will say this, in common usage, as I understand it, if you put your finger on the trigger of a loaded gun, NOT intending to shoot at that moment, you are negligent. IF/when the gun goes off, it is an accident. Caused by negligence, sure, but still an accident.

 

[wmg1299]

I personally feel that a lot of public relations nightmares and costly litigation could be avoided by calling accidental/negligent discharges by the most honest name possible. That name is "Mistake". "Accidental" implies that the gun was at fault, and "Negligent" implies some underlying dangerous intent by the shooter. No one ever wants to admit that they made a mistake, and in many cases a stupid mistake. Mistakes can be some of the best teaching tools God ever gave to the human race, and a great deal can be learned from the mistakes of others.

When we learn from mistakes, we all benefit. Unfortunately, we have to be willing to admit a mistake to benefit from it. When law enforcement issues a short statement about an accidental discharge, with no further comment, it breeds mistrust from the public or reinforces the ridiculous notion that guns are magical death machines that cannot be controlled and must be eliminated from society. Police need to admit whatever happened, acknowledge that it caused negative effects, and do everything in their power to ensure that the same mistake is not repeated by others.

 

[Skans]

If a gun goes off and the person holding the gun didn't intend it to fire, how is that not an accident? IMHO, it's an accidental discharge; i.e. non-intended. Whether it was due to negligence, stupidity, something beyond the person's control, or manufacture defect, its still an accident. That's how I see it.

 

[2ndsojourn]

I think the term 'accidental discharge' is candy coating 'negligent discharge'. I agree with Skans that a negligent discharge is an accident, but it's still negligence nonetheless.

Knowledgeable folks in the gun community know that modern guns (at least duty-type handguns) don't fire unless the trigger is pulled, and are more apt to use the term negligent discharge, than a typical jury member who is probably unfamiliar with firearms, who would probably swayed to believe that the term 'accidental discharge' implies less fault on the police officer and more on the gun. So the PD and the officer's attorney will repeatedly use the term accidental discharge to sway the jury, and in turn "scapegoat the guns".

 

[Double Naught Spy]

If a gun goes off and the person holding the gun didn't intend it to fire, how is that not an accident? IMHO, it's an accidental discharge; i.e. non-intended. Whether it was due to negligence, stupidity, something beyond the person's control, or manufacture defect, its still an accident. That's how I see it.

The problem here is the use of two different meanings when referencing the word "accident" relative to discharges and fault, one of which refers to a discharge that was not intentional (no fault assigned) and one where the discharge was not due to direct human cause, i.e., a mechanical fault not the result of somebody pulling the trigger.

Far too many people discount their own responsibility or the responsibility of others by calling something an "accident" when it was actually an act of negligence. "Accident" just sounds so much better, as if nobody was a fault, when describing how somebody screwed. So we have two different distinctions of "accidental discharge" when there is no fault of the human and "negligent discharge" when there is.

However, if folks want to debate the use of the term accident relative to the term negligent and discount all such discharges as being "accidents" because they were unintentional, maybe we should do like my insurance company and make a distinction between "at fault accidents" and "not at fault accidents," the former being your proverbial negligent discharge and the latter being a mechanical problem. So we could have "at fault accidental discharges" and "not at fault accidental discharges."

 

[Evan Thomas]

We're straying from the topic here. The OP's question refers to the use of the term "accidental discharge" by public officials, not to whether it's "more correct" to call an unintentional discharge accidental or negligent. As I wrote in my post above, the latter is off-topic.

It strikes me that in a case in which a jury will have to decide whether he acted negligently in the legal sense, it would be prejudicial for anyone involved in the case to refer to the gun's firing as a "negligent discharge." This means that our linguistic niceties about this distinction are irrelevant: no one's going to call it that anyway.

It seems to me, too, that the outcome for at least some of the charges will turn on whether it can be proven that Officer Liang fired his gun intentionally, at a perceived threat, but I doubt that his attorneys will argue that the gun went off by itself. They may well want to say that he fired it accidentally, however.

 

[KyJim]

Public officials (and the media) probably use the term "accidental discharge" because they want to be cautious and not slander or libel a person by referring to a discharge as "negligent" or "reckless" until there has been some sort of official determination. That's especially true if the person who discharged the firearm is a police officer where the term negligent or reckless can have potential negative career ramifications.

So, instead, public officials and others use the term "accidental" discharge because it is both a correct dictionary description of an unplanned event and it avoids potential legal issues.

 

[F14Scott]

In the navy, we called the event that happened a "mishap," not an "accident," as the word "accident" has a connotation of unintentional or happenstance action without blame.

All events have causal factors. Did the trigger get pulled? Did an internal part fail, allowing the hammer to fall? Was the muzzle pointed in a safe direction? Etc... Such determinations of cause will almost always determine that a firearm mishap was either deliberate, negligent, or both.

I agree that saying someone "accidentally" shot someone does a disservice to the public, reinforcing the idea that things just happen, irrespective of human intervention. Similarly, I dislike it when newscasters phrase a car wreck as, "The vehicle crashed into the ditch." No, the driver crashed the vehicle into a ditch.

 

[BlueTrain]

I don't think it makes much sense to try to define "accidental discharge" out of existence. True, some guns will go off without the trigger being touched, and a car can be in an accident sitting in the owner's driveway with no one in the car. Both have happened to me.