Accidental discharge?

[Turtle]

Have you ever had an accidental discharge? or a negligent discharge? Or gun malfunction that resulted in an unexpected round being fired?

Seen a Lil talk about this in another thread thought it was worth talking about. I have had 1 discharge that I wasn't happy with, but it was not by accident or negligence. I just fired my last round while every one was still asleep in there tents... I failed to be considerate of others for a moment. But no one even noticed it. But I still know it was rude.

 

[Lars]

None.... The gun has only gone bang when it was supposed to. Which to date has only been on the range. I've not needed to do any shooting outside of controlled environments yet.

 

[DocGlock86]

I would say this was accidental. My first time ever shooting a gun. I think I was 11 or 12 it was a .22 pistol. Some how I was holding it towards the ground and I hit the trigger and fired. It hit a couple inches from my foot. Scared the out of me.

 

[USMC_0311]

Twice in the same week about 20 years ago.....It’s really is amazing how much wiser we get with age.
1st I was sitting in a tree stand (home made and not by me). I shifted my weight and the damn thing broke I fell 20 feet on my back. On the way down the browning semi auto went off with 2 slugs. My best guess is a limb got caught in the trigger guard. One of the rounds went through my field jacket, sweater, and nicked my t-shirt on my left side. The powder burn freaked me out but no blood. I think I peed my pants a little.

2nd 3 days later I was checking out buddies .357 revolver and I took his word for it that it was unloaded (real dumb). A round went off went through a kitchen cabinet (actually the counter top), out the house into his car. Fortunately nobody got hurt but lesson learned believe me.

 

[Indy_Guy_77]

yes, unfortunately. And there's a .355" diameter hole in my dad's kitchen window to prove it.

 

[singlestacksig]

I was hunting with an old bolt action Shotgun..
Saw a squirel , as I was bringing gun up I also slid the safety off,
Gun fired... muzzle was pointed near target.. I got wacked by gun..

I don't consider that gun usable any more..

 

[Turtle]

Never thought this would be such a funny topic... thanks for the stories!

 

[Bill of Rights]

Ok, check me on this: If there is no intention to fire the gun and the gun fires with a finger in the trigger guard, that's a negligent discharge, whether due to ignorance or indifference.

By that reckoning, I have had two. Both on the range, both aimed in a safe direction, neither with an injury. The one I had just cleaned my Walther P22 and put a mag in to drop the hammer for safe storage. I don't know if I got distracted or what, but I must have closed the slide after I inserted the full mag instead of before. I didn't have the safety on, pointed downrange and pulled the trigger to drop the hammer *BANG* !!! OK, my heart is now beating about 99,000 beats a minute....

Dropped hammers now only happen on safed guns without a live round in the chamber.

The other was with my AK. I'd carried it into the range from their workshop where I'd been working on it and I had something on my mind other than what I was doing.

Consider these two cases to serve as reminders that when loaded weapons (that's ALL of them, BTW!) are concerned, you cannot safely allow your attention to wander for a second. No how, no way. I consider myself very blessed that Col. Cooper's Four Rules prevented injuries those days.

Bearing in mind the above examples and the above posts, the only true "accidental discharge" was that of USMC_0311, where an unexpected fall occurred and it was not a finger that pulled the trigger. Sometimes, accidents are unavoidable. The rest of us have all gotten (comparatively) cheap lessons.

Blessings,
B

 

[slacker]

I had a mechanical unintended fire with my 10/22 a while ago, I have a little hole in the wall, but was able to recover the projectile.

I took apart my magazines to clean them and after putting them back together I loaded them up and started feeding them through the rifle by pulling the charging handle back and letting it slide forward (how it would when shooting) after I went through all the mags once I decided to do it one more time to make sure they were all reliable.

Loaded 10 shots in one, and on the 5th cycle in the rifle; BOOM!. It scared the living crap out of me because I was not expecting it. Let me tell you, a .22 sounds alot louder inside than it does outside, and when it happened I panicked a little because I did not know where the projectile went. I calmed down quite a bit after recovering it on the other side of my closet wall.

I have no idea how this happened, the ammo was about 4 year old winchester from walmart, I don't know what set it off, but man was I scared!

I learned my lesson though, don't play with live ammo in the house!

before I get jumped on about the safety rules, the muzzle was pointing in the safest direction possible (closet full of clothes / jackets that lead to an outside wall facing woods)

 

[mrw]

You should change 'NO' to 'NOT YET'

 

[Bill of Rights]

I had a mechanical unintended fire with my 10/22 a while ago, I have a little hole in the wall, but was able to recover the projectile.

I took apart my magazines to clean them and after putting them back together I loaded them up and started feeding them through the rifle by pulling the charging handle back and letting it slide forward (how it would when shooting) after I went through all the mags once I decided to do it one more time to make sure they were all reliable.

Loaded 10 shots in one, and on the 5th cycle in the rifle; BOOM!. It scared the living crap out of me because I was not expecting it. Let me tell you, a .22 sounds alot louder inside than it does outside, and when it happened I panicked a little because I did not know where the projectile went. I calmed down quite a bit after recovering it on the other side of my closet wall.

I have no idea how this happened, the ammo was about 4 year old winchester from walmart, I don't know what set it off, but man was I scared!

I learned my lesson though, don't play with live ammo in the house!

before I get jumped on about the safety rules, the muzzle was pointing in the safest direction possible (closet full of clothes / jackets that lead to an outside wall facing woods)

Aside from playing with live ammo in the house, the way I would guess this happened would be "slam fire". I've heard of this being possible in any autoloader, but I don't know if that's true or not.

BTW, no, I'm not cracking on you. The only way to fully chamber a round in my autoloaders is to let the slide close quickly. Good for you for pointing in safest possible direction.

Blessings,
B

 

[slacker]

yeah, i was really freaked out when it happened. I did a bunch of research online afterward, and found some info about slamfires or mechanical unintended discharges caused by burrs around the firing pin. It seems pretty rare, but I stripped the 10/22 completely (everything, trigger assembly, every part that could be separated). It took me a good 2 hours to reassemble everything, and I have put about 500 rounds through it since then, so I guess it was some sort of freak occurance.

I am just thankful that no one was hurt, and there was no perminant/expensive damage.

 

[Bubbajms]

My only issue was mechanical, with an old 4506 Smith and Wesson. To this day I'm not really sure what happened - I was teaching my brother to shoot, and I loaded five rounds of .45 into the magazine, set it down on the range bench with the handgun, and let him approach the bench. He picked up the handgun, inserted the magazine, racked the slide and then looked over at me for what to do next. He was in proper form, finger along the top of the trigger box, and *crack*! He looks downrange, then back at me, I look at him, then look at his finger - same place, but bitten by the slide, which is now forward of the firing line on the ground. Once the line was cold and we could move, I grabbed the slide and inspected everything - it all looked okay, so I took it out to the gunsmith, who checked and reassembled it. I put another 500 rounds through it with no problem. I'm guessing that my brother disassembled it and didn't put it back together properly, but I don't know for sure.. surely not one that I trust..

 

[Donnelly]

Was in the woods once when I was 14 years old with a friend the same age, and we both had BB guns. Friend had a candy cigarette in his mouth. He had a Daisy 880 and I had the weaker Red Ryder BB gun. I make the fool decision to shoot at a tree (never having seen a ricochet) and boom!, candy cigarette is now one inch from his lips. My sphincter tighened (even back then) knowing how close I came to shooting him in the face. Boy, he pounded to **** out of my arm (deservedly) when HE realized how close I came to shooting him in the face. Lesson learned. Now I'm Mr. Safety.

 

[Indy_Guy_77]

I just remembered another incident... This one involving a few factors, not all negligent.

Was out bird hunting with my step dad; we were walking an old abandoned RR line near Darlington, IN...beating the brush as we went.

He had his 12ga pump (Ithaca Deerslayer with a bird bbl on it) and I was using an OLD single-shot 16ga that you had to manually cock the hammer on. No safety on this shotgun.

It was very cold out. I had gloves on. Did I mention that the shotgun was OLD? Old enough to where the hammer didn't have any kind of texture to it any more?

We flushed a covey of quail ahead of us...and as I attempted to shoulder the shotgun AND cock the hammer at the same time, the hammer slipped out from under my gloved thumb. BOOM. Big, big BOOM.

Aimed in the general direction of my step dad. Thankfully I was a pace or two in front of him and off to his right. The angles of everything couldn't have been any better or he'd have been hit in the head/chest with a load of No. 6 shot.

When we got home, he put a cocking-assist lever on the hammer; one that he took off of his scoped Marlin 30-30.

-J-

 

[dclaarjr]

I had a mechanical discharge.

It was in Basic Training, first day on the zero range. I locked and loaded my first 3 round magazine following the commands as instructed. When I let the bolt go forward it fired all 3 rounds as if in auto.

Of course the drills freaked out and didn't want to listen. One finally grabbed the weapon and loaded another 3 round mag into it and it did the same thing.

It turned out it had a broken piece in the trigger assembly.

 

[NWI40cal]

I had a ND. We (friend, Fiancee, and me) went to the range that day and were discussing our guns that night (had his about a month and mine about 2 weeks) He started breaking his down to show me how to break down a p95. So, I pull out (as I so affectionately call it) Sally and proceed to show him how to break down mine. Didn't check for clear, and at this time I carried W/o one in. Racked the xd slide, didn't pay attention to mag, flipped the lever, dropped the slide gently (which loaded it) and pulled the trigger to drop the slide off the frame and BOOM! Through my hoodie, t shirt and tanktop which is about skin tight. Talk about close. I thought I shot myself and was in shock. No, just rattled. Once exited from my clothes, it tore through a couch cushion and hit the steel frame, stopping the bullet. Fiancee tripped, friend was in shock. Lesson learned. EDIT: gun was never pointed at either of them, Nowhere close

 

[usafshark]

ND

With a 1911 when I was young, stupid, and not well versed in the platform a former buddy told me he carried his with one in the pipe and on half cock. While performing this action the hammer slipped and launched a round that went from my hallway into the bathroom and almost killed my toilet but instead bounced off the concrete floor (thank God I lived on the bottom floor of my apartment building) and went into another wall. I literally unloaded the weapon, set it on the table and didn't touch it again until I had perused the net for two hours learning everything I could about the 1911. Scared the **** out of me.

 

[Slow Hand]

I've had two, one an ND and the other a mechanical failure.

first one i was showin off to a girlfreind in college. I was a cowboy shooter at teh time and she wanted to see me in costume. So, I got on all the gear including a Vaquero and an 1875 Remington, both in .45 Colt. I did some pistol twirling and some fast draws, cockin gthe hammer on each revolver several times, but always letting them down with my thumbs. I did one last quick draw from both holsters, cocked them and let fly on the hammers. The Ruger went Click, the Remington went BANG!

Luckily, it was pointed in a safe direction and this was in a Civil War era house that had been converted into apartments, so it had very thick, plaster walls. The rounds was a Winchester silvertip and it penetrated a few inches into the plaster and hit brick, I think and bounced along the floor. I got back into my street clothes and scooted real fast and stayed gone for a few hours!

Second time was at my brother's house. This was a mechanical failure. I had an old WWII era Walther PPK that I was fitting a set of wood grips to. The triger bar drug on the grips, so I was coating them with soot from a match and cutting on the back side to relieve them enough. I thought I had gotten it OK as it functioned ingle and double action fine several times. I locked the slide back on an empty mag and then inserted a loaded mag .32 acp Gold Dots, if I remeber right, and let the slide go forward. Again, we got a nice bang! This time it went through his garage wall, and barely missed his fishing boat parked outside! Luckily, his garage was on kind of high ground and the gun was pointed down a bit and went right into a rise in the neighbors yard. So, I'm one and one and that's plenty for me!

Doug K

 

[munky_3434]

nothing yet. luckily