What's the dumbest thing you ever did with a gun ?

Shooting with too much heavy clothing in the winter, the gun popped up and gave me a bloody eyebrow. Now I never wear bulky jackets when shooting.

when I was about 20 I shot my fathers IH m1 garand using some ammo I bought from the range...220 grain federal.

the very first shot blew the gas cylinder and plug clean off the rifle and bent the op rod.
the barrel threads look fine but the gas cylinder lock threads are completely stripped. thankfully the receiver is fine I didnt see any signs of cracking at the heel. I need to take it to a gun smith who deals with just M1s and have it looked at and fixed. for the last 10 years Iv had it just sitting in a hard case

I've had my share of ADs and realizing that oops, it IS loaded in my early days... But I'll always remember the first time around 30 years ago I took my M1 carbine to the range. I had my thumb wrapped around the stock, right in front of my nose, and when I pulled the trigger of course my thumb slammed into my nose.

A friend who was watching me said afterwards, "I could have warned you, I suppose, but I figured you'd learn better if I let you go ahead and shoot."

Second dumbest thing? Selling that M1.

let my son to be ex wife handle it 3 feet away in a 3 foot hall and sghe missed.tis why she's the ex

After initially handing my wife a cleared and slide locked back gun to check out, I slapped the mag back in and unlocked the slidelock. THEN, I stupidly dropped the mag again and as an afterthought handed her the gun back to try the trigger. DUH, there was one in the pipe. I cautioned her to always pretend a gun is loaded and point it in a safe direction. YUP....BANG......DUMB.....DUMB......DUMB.

Well to be fair that one's mostly on her for not checking a gun that was just handed to her

Serenity said:

Well to be fair that one's mostly on her for not checking a gun that was just handed to her

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I know.....But I'll eat this one and take the blame. On a scale of 1 to 10 regarding her experience, I'll put it at 2 1/2. I learned a big-time lesson, but I did preach muzzle discipline right to the last so that was good.

Not having a powder cop die for my reloads on a Lee progressive press. Wife fired her snub nose .38 one day and the gun had a louder report than usual. The cylinder chamber was swelled by 0.002". Cost me a $150 and a one way trip to Smith and Wesson to fit a fine 1972 nickel Model 36 with a new cylinder.

Turns out the case still had some tumbling media left in the case that I was not aware of. Sold the 3-station Lee progressive, bought a 5-station Hornady LNL AP, and a powder cop die. Have caught a handful of others since then. Always check your powder levels!

let my son to be ex wife handle it 3 feet away in a 3 foot hall and sghe missed.tis why she's the ex

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did your ex wife try to shoot you?

About half way into the year 2000 a bunch of odd guns showed up in a local newspaper for sale. They were all underpriced, and I was sure it was some kind of scam. After about the 3rd week I finaily broke down and called the guy about the Thompson he had about $400 on. The guy says he just sold it. Said that they bought them for Y2k, and when the world didn't end the wife said they had to go. If I'd have called when I first saw the add, I would own a Thompson today.

I once sold a pistol.:banghead: It was a brand new AMT 44 MAG Automag that had been shot by me only 40 times. I did not reload then and wanted something I could shoot without having to pay someone else to reload for it first.

Bought a stoeger coach gun in a hurry one day. Thought it was a 20 gauge. Grabbed 16 gauge ammo, on accident. Found out 16 gauge slides down the chamber of a 12 gauge. The papaer work from the dealer (cabelas) said 20 gauge on it. But it was a 12 gauge

What's the dumbest thing you ever did with a gun?

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I may have been dumb enough to do it, but that doesn't mean I'm dumb enough to post about it.

R

Worst I ever did was to fire 22LR out of a 22WRF when I was a kid. Bore was too tight and the bullet got stuck.

Well, the family and I were in Dallas going to Six Flags the next day. Arrived at a hotel. Parked out in the parking lot. Not up very close.

We unloaded the car, carried all the stuff inside, checked in etc.

About a 1/2 hour later, we went down to the car to go eat. There on the roof was my 38 Special in its gun rug. Loaded! I had taken it out of the car and set it up there for anyone to take or some kid to kill himself with.:banghead:

I got distracted help one of the kiddos with something. Does not matter.
Most stupid thing I have ever done.

I've sold a couple through the years and have found that I've kicked myself hard for doing that -- even with the guns I thought I could do without.

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That's pretty much been the dumbest stuff I've done with guns (or not jumping on a raging deal) up until last month.

I was out shooting on some land a friend owns, as usual. I was mainly out testing my 1911A1 .45 ACP after replacing the mainspring. I decided to take a shot at a steel plate that was about 20 yards away. I thought I was standing at an angle to it, but realized later that with all the pock marks in that plate, there was no safe angle.

I could actually see the 230 grain lead ball round coming directly back at me. I remember thinking "what the ...". I realized what it was when it was probably 2 feet from my forehead. It smacked me 2" above my left eye. I was wearing eye protection, as usual. It didn't hurt too bad, I estimate it was moving at about 50 to 80 fps. It was in the air for quite a while. Made a nice bloody mess though.

My friend has since taken it down. Lesson learned.

Unfortunately I have a couple.
when i was a kid, i found out that my mothers sewing pins fit perfectly in the barrel of my pellet gun..... those things screamed out of that barrel and lots of pigeons died that day. fortunately mom was not mad because the pigeons were crapping on everything and she didnt know about me using her sewing pins.

next when i was 18 i purchased my first real gun a savage .22 that i still own. my friends and i decided to have the bright idea of trying to shoot .22 bullets off of the ground. next thing we hear is boom from the gun then an unmistakable buzz went past both of us.

when I was 24 in the navy as a corpsman, the security department invited he out to shoot guns with them. up till this point i had only fired semi auto weapons. the guy hands me an m16 and lets me know that we are instructed to dispose of the old (very old) ammunition to make room for the new stuff. Believing that there were only 3 round burst in their inventory the guy tells me to flick the safety all the way over and let her rip. well I pulled the trigger and the bullets hit the target and i froze
and didnt think "pull your finger off the trigger dumb a$$"
I almost fell on my butt till the mag finally emptied.
needless they were laughing there butts off and told me that it was obvious i needed more trigger time and handed me 2,000 rounds and 4 rifles to use. turned out to be a good good day but my arm hurt like hell the next day

I sold my Colt Official Police.

After all, who in 1984 thought that Colt would STOP making revolvers???

Doh!!!

Larry Ashcraft said:

Took a shot at a coyote in my field, without noticing it was walking in front of my neighbor's irrigation pipe, which was in use at the time.

Geyser!

He shut the pump off, and I repaired the pipe, and everyone was happy. I have great neighbors, who also think I'm a wizard with PVC. This was at least ten years ago, and the pipe is still in use. Ten inch gated pipe, if it matters.

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Larry, I have several dry hydrants that could use your attention

It was wintertime and I had my first BB gun.
I was standing about 4' from our house outside brick wall.
My hands were freezing as it was so cold out, one hand I had in my jacket pocket. With one hand, I shot the brick wall right in front of me and the BB ricocheted almost straight back and hit the end of my left thumb that was so cold it was ready to break off! That hurt really bad for a little while, looking back on it, though, I am fortunate the BB did not bounce back and hit me in the eye!

I let the hammer slip while trying to lower it on a .38 spl. Nice round hole above my mother's closet door. That was stupid, but so was cocking back the hammer in the first place.

Once also loaded a .40 cal magazine with .380 rounds. The boxes were sitting side by side on the range table. I was talking away and not paying attention. I got frustrated when the 14th cartridge kept popping out of the mag lips. Then I realized what a careless mistake I was making.

I had a beautiful model 600 Remington in .243.. a one holer. Dang, that was a good rifle.
I loaded up a bunch of 75 grainers using FFFG black powder. They worked pretty well and didn't damage the rifle of course (I cleaned it immediately after also) but I sometimes wonder what I was thinking.

when i was a kid, i found out that my mothers sewing pins fit perfectly in the barrel of my pellet gun..... those things screamed out of that barrel and lots of pigeons died that day. fortunately mom was not mad because the pigeons were crapping on everything and she didnt know about me using her sewing pins.

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I still have fun with doing that with pellet guns, always fun to see what you can shoot out of them.

Nothing major here. I did manage to fire a 9x19 round in a .40 gun without realizing. That case sure did balloon.

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How did you manage that, a 9mm falls completely through my .40 Keltec? That was how I figured out my gun was not what I thought.