Embarassing Firearms Stories

[cmstuard]

On a busy range I had a G26 go full auto on me after putting in a ghost trigger connector. Little sumb**ch was hard to hold on too.

 

[Kirk Freeman]

Summer of 1989. Shot a Glock spring over a customer's head at Galyan's.

Working Galyan's gun counter during undergrad (Pike Plaza). Customer wanted to look at Glock M17. Customer wants to know how to strip it. I show him.

I then re-assembled the Glock and, in the middle of my labors, shot recoil spring over customer's head. Spring hit fishing rods stacked above fishing lures and plastic worms. My boss found it wedged in the Uncle Josh pork bait a few days later.

I was "Glockman!" to my co-workers for about a month. Department head thought it was funny, store manager was less than pleased (I still remember that "meeting" in his office).

 

[Captain Morgan]

My great aunt's boyfriend had an old .22lr that he was giving me. He pulled it out of the closet, walked over to the bed, pushed it up against the pillow and pulled the trigger. He then said, gotta make sure it's not loaded. I was 16 at the time and just stared at him in disbelief. He lived in a multi-unit apartment and was in his 80's. I'm just glad it wasn't loaded. Wish I had kept that old rifle, it was fun to shoot.

 

[reesez]

Not me but I think this fits here:

is that hugh laurie?

 

[Nayls47]

There is NO way I'm going to divulge the stupid I've done.

 

[johntheplinker]

The first time I ever held an AK I expected it to have a LRBHO. I instead hung the bolt up on the disconnector. I jumped about three feet once the bolt decided to slam home.

I do this quite often with mine to let air circulate while I'm loading mags, changing targets, etc. Well, one time I went to pick it up and had the pad of my middle finger in the ejection port. Ouch.
Also got a couple of dents in the ceiling of the man cave just about the diameter of a Mosin bayonet.

 

[Tinner666]

Many moons ago, some friends and I were shooting shotguns and rifles from the hip. Our shooting wasn't too shbby, but I decided to act the idiot and fired the 12ga. one handed.
I fired and just sank to the ground and kinda rolled over, They all thought I had managed to shoot myself because I couldn't even speak for about two minutes.
I had let the butt get too close to my body and it slammed into my hipbone. Taught me not to do stupid things again, and it taught me the value of hitting an opponent in a bone as opposed to just soft tissue. My CCW instructor also pointed out that general groin area hits will usually drop the BG real fast. Everything in that area is 'tender'.

 

[Mackey]

This will not stay up here long ... too painful


see

 

[ArcadiaGP]

This will not stay up here long ... too painful


see

Watched last night. Hilarious :P

 

[Zoub]

YOUR TURN.

Over the years I sold every Saiga I ever owned for 2.5x to 3.5x what I paid for them. I am embarrassed for the people who bought them.

 

[BRILEY]

This wasn't in the beginning, and wasn't necessarily embarrassing, however it just goes to show that there's always new things to learn when it comes to firearms...

I purchased a Ruger SR22 (great little plinker), it came with the grip installed for a person with smaller hands, given the fact that I'm 6'2" 206lbs I don't have very small hands, so I needed to swap grips out, I figured this would be easy (plus, men don't need no stinkin' instructions) so I sat down in my garage for 25 minutes attempting to remove the grip, no luck... I figured; I must be missing something so I grabbed the manual that came with the Ruger and read the instructions, a few minutes later (after reading in great detail) I tried again, this time since I knew what I was doing (or so I thought) I would be done in no time, well, after an additional 30 minutes, and my hands now having blisters and almost bleeding; still no luck!

I decided to get online and figure out what I was doing wrong, it turns out that there wasn't much info out there on the topic, and at the time not one single YouTube video on the subject, in the end it seems that Ruger did NOT do a very good job of explaining the process, after figuring it out I was able to remove the grip with two fingers and my thumb and VERY little effort! I didn't want others to go through the same frustration so I went ahead and made a YouTube video, I've gotten a lot of thanks you messages from fellow gun owners on that video.

 

[LtScott14]

Have to add to the 1911A "loose flying recoil plug" story. My son and I were home alone, and I was cleaning my Springfield Arms 1911A in the newly painted kitchen.
As I was depressing the plug, and attempting to turn the collet, it happened.

Shot the plug across the room, and hit the wall enough to dent and mar the paint. Tried to wipe the gunoil off the wall, now an ugly streak. Filled the dent, and found the touch up paint and feathered in the damage. Looked great.

Wifey showed up, and remarked how the kitchen still smelled like fresh paint, and Hoppes. Sorry hon, let's go out for pizza. While sitting, she handed me back the plug, was on the counter. "Lose something?" Thank you dear."

Son cheesed on me, she knew it all by the time pizza hit the table. My boy.

 

[Nemick]

I managed to get a perfect circle cut around my right eye the first time I fired a rifle. The cut was from the scope of course. Hard way to learn a lesson though. I guess it was an "assault scope".

 

[jmdavis984]

The first time I fired a revolver from a rest I put my hand in the typical semi-auto pistol location and got a nice black mark as a reward. I thought my gun blew up until I realized what I had done. Lucky for me it was a 22LR.

 

[Tombs]

I'll start

Back when I got my first firearm, it had a safety/decocker lever. Being my first gun, I was terrified to decock... because I felt like maybe it would fail and the hammer would hit the firing pin.

I went into my room, covered it up with the pillow, and.... *CLICK!*... it decocked. A stupid fear for a new gun owner... but an embarassing fear none-the-less.

Haha, decockers just make a handgun so much more fun to mess with. Especially if you give them some attention when doing a trigger job, and wind up with a supernaturally smooth decocker.

Worst for me was trying to learn how to properly hold a 357 magnum L frame revolver. I'd been used to shooting some powerful revolvers, but they'd all had very hand filling grips. Most my revolver shooting has been on a 454 casull, yet that 357 magnum was literally drawing blood every single shot.

Then I learned about properly tucking my thumbs... God I felt stupid.

 

[fnl388w]

My most embarrassing moment was when an experiencd rifle instructor allowed me to shoot his Sig P210 (yes, a real p210). I had experience with multiple hand guns of all brands and thought I new my stuff...

After shooting a full clip, I turn to see if he is still behind me watching, and he is missing.

I was shooting at the Atterbury shooting range and at the cease fire, all guns are cleared and mags removed. So I go to drop the mag, but cannot find the mag release! The range officer comes up and demands it be cleared. I told him I did not know how, so he proceeded to look for himself. He could not figure it out either! Finally, the owner comes back laughing at us both. The mags on the p210's are not held in with a button, but with a clip/lever on the butt of the gun. Both the range officer and I were the laughing stock of range the rest of the day.

I don't care that I looked like and idiot, I shot a Sig P210!!!!

 

[Excalibur]

I think my first embarrassing story is mistaking called a clip a mag when I was holding a bolt action rifle's stripper clip.

Another embarrassing story was when I first put my 1911 back together...SOMEHOW I forgot to put the recoil spring back inside.

 

[Colinb913]

I never knew about the little "tab" in the loading chamber of a 870. So I wanted to unload the tube, and didn't want to rack the slide five or six times. So what do I do? Start to unscrew the cap at the end of the tube.

Get the cap unscrewed, and start to push on the inner stopper, get it pushed in, give it a turn, and start to ease it back out. The second that thing got free of the tube, It nailed my index finger, and it hurt so bad I slammed the barrel of the gun into my forehead. It was rough. Don't worry, the chamber was unloaded, just had rounds in the tube.

Never ever want to do that again.

Another pretty good one, I have about four mosin-nagant bayonet size holes in the living room ceiling of our apartment, thankfully my fiance has yet to see them. I need to patch those pretty soon...

 

[mj.elder]

My room mate last year (I swear this isn't one of those stories that is actually about me) was cleaning his new LCP he just picked up. We took it to the range earlier that day and he was playing with it when we got back and fondling it as we all do with a new gun. Well I was watching tv and he happened to have a loaded mag next to the gun. He was racking the gun and playing with the trigger pull. It was getting late and we were both about to turn in. he grabbed the mag, put it in and set it in its case. A few mintues later he wasnt paying attention, picked it up, racked it (how he didnt notice or feel the round go in still puzzles me) pointed it in a safe direction - this safe direction being right at our 42 inch lcd flatscreen - and pulled the trigger. BANG! put a hollowpoint straight through the screen. it did it's job, hit the screen, expanded, hit the back of the tv casing and ricoched forward without ever leaving the tv (though there was another crack where you could see the ricochet was stopped by the screen). No one was hurt and surprisingly none of our neighbors called the police, but we were out a very nice tv that he had to replace. This mistake has never and probably will never be made again. The thing I'm most thankful for is that he was pointing it in a safe direction and that no one was hurt.

Here's a picture for those interested. The left hole is the entry point and the cracked area on the right is where the ricochet stopped.