HammerBite
Member
Geez, guys. Who cares if it was accidental or negligent or accidentally negligent? The point is that it was a stupid thing to do!
Bad AD today..not me. kinda explicit.
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jakemccoy
Member
Beatnik wrote:
good point
good point
RobMoore
Member
Besides following the basic safety rules, another good way to avoid ADs when taking your Glocks apart is to always take them "off-cock" when you're done shooting them. I always pull the trigger on an empty chamber in a safe direction when I'm done at the range or getting ready to put it away after cleaning. Not literally "hammer down, holster", but same thing.
HammerBite
Member
1911Tuner . . .
Please check your PM.
Thanks.
Please check your PM.
Thanks.
Ed Ames
Member
Never claimed to be a lawyer... but I'm not sure why it matters in this context.
Manslaughter would only play out if you knowingly did something that could cause death. E.g. "I was just trying to scare him, it wasn't loaded, but it killed Davie!"
Negligence would play out if you failed to exercise reasonable dilligence (whatever the result). E.g. "I wanted to fire my gun in my apartment, I loaded up really light loads and I figured a box of newspaper would stop the bullet, but I didn't test my theory in a safe environment before I tried it and the bullet went through the newspaper, through the wall, and killed the neighbor's cat."
Of course any unintentional discharge which results in harm will be examined for negligence but there is no guarantee that negligence will be found, and if it is found there is no guarantee that the operator will be the one who was negligent.
Without a true examination of the facts it is foolish to jump to the "negligence" theory.
Manslaughter would only play out if you knowingly did something that could cause death. E.g. "I was just trying to scare him, it wasn't loaded, but it killed Davie!"
Negligence would play out if you failed to exercise reasonable dilligence (whatever the result). E.g. "I wanted to fire my gun in my apartment, I loaded up really light loads and I figured a box of newspaper would stop the bullet, but I didn't test my theory in a safe environment before I tried it and the bullet went through the newspaper, through the wall, and killed the neighbor's cat."
Of course any unintentional discharge which results in harm will be examined for negligence but there is no guarantee that negligence will be found, and if it is found there is no guarantee that the operator will be the one who was negligent.
Without a true examination of the facts it is foolish to jump to the "negligence" theory.
jakemccoy
Member
Ed wrote:
Please stop talking.
Please stop talking.
Ed Ames
Member
Ummm... Jake... it has nothing to do with the Internet. Voluntary manslaughter requires intent. Criminal negligence doesn't require intent but it does require willfull or gross negligence. Not just "I didn't pay attention."
Not sure why I should stop talking.
Not sure why you keep posting one thing like "Internet law" and then editing it to be completely different.
Having a frustrating day?
Not sure why I should stop talking.
Not sure why you keep posting one thing like "Internet law" and then editing it to be completely different.
Having a frustrating day?
Mainsail
Member
I disagree. The statement ‘every gun is always loaded’, is actually the dumbed down version of ‘treat every firearm as though it were loaded until you confirm otherwise’. If every gun is always loaded and then you dry fire or clean it, you are violating the rule. If you are mentoring someone and they observe that you preach ‘every gun is always loaded’ but then dry fire or clean it, then you are teaching that the rules are moot.Beatnik said:
gunsmith
member
I had one close call with my glock
and had a nd with a revolver.
Both times I was pointing in a safe direction, even guns that I visually check
get pointed in a safe direction. Heck. Every gun I handle gets pointed in a safe direction.
With the Glock I thought I had cleared the chamber and dropped the mag, I didn't drop the mag all the way and put one in the chamber.
So I was about to pull the trigger (pointed it at ceiling) when I realized my girl friend at the time would lord it over me for years if I shot a hole in the ceiling.
So I checked!! yup!!! it was loaded.
I posted the experience here but cant find it.
and had a nd with a revolver.
Both times I was pointing in a safe direction, even guns that I visually check
get pointed in a safe direction. Heck. Every gun I handle gets pointed in a safe direction.
With the Glock I thought I had cleared the chamber and dropped the mag, I didn't drop the mag all the way and put one in the chamber.
So I was about to pull the trigger (pointed it at ceiling) when I realized my girl friend at the time would lord it over me for years if I shot a hole in the ceiling.
So I checked!! yup!!! it was loaded.
I posted the experience here but cant find it.
Beatnik
Member
Ed, for the record, I generally agree with what you're saying.
But when I look at what we have to go on, I see a guy who was cleaning a gun which he owned, a gun which requires a trigger pull to disassemble, and he blew his hand off.
You're right, that's not much to go on - but I'm comfortable with calling that negligence with that much info. I believe that reasonable diligence starts with pointing it away from yourself!
But when I look at what we have to go on, I see a guy who was cleaning a gun which he owned, a gun which requires a trigger pull to disassemble, and he blew his hand off.
You're right, that's not much to go on - but I'm comfortable with calling that negligence with that much info. I believe that reasonable diligence starts with pointing it away from yourself!
jakemccoy
Member
Mainsail wrote:
I see your point, but I disagree.
"Every gun is always loaded" is a fantastic, elegant rule. Yes, you do violate the rule if you dry fire. That's the point!
Violating a rule is EXTREMELY serious. However, violating a Safety Rule is sometimes unavoidable. If you decide to violate a Safety Rule, you must take the violation extremely seriously and with much thought. When you dry fire, you must understand that you ARE violating a Safety Rule and NEVER forget that. You SHOULD feel like you are taking a walk on the dark side. You SHOULD feel uncomfortable the whole time. You SHOULD be on BRIGHT RED ALERT not to violate more than one Safety Rule while you're dry firing. Be COMPLETELY AWARE the whole time. Indeed, you must break more than one rule to cause injury.
I see your point, but I disagree.
"Every gun is always loaded" is a fantastic, elegant rule. Yes, you do violate the rule if you dry fire. That's the point!
Violating a rule is EXTREMELY serious. However, violating a Safety Rule is sometimes unavoidable. If you decide to violate a Safety Rule, you must take the violation extremely seriously and with much thought. When you dry fire, you must understand that you ARE violating a Safety Rule and NEVER forget that. You SHOULD feel like you are taking a walk on the dark side. You SHOULD feel uncomfortable the whole time. You SHOULD be on BRIGHT RED ALERT not to violate more than one Safety Rule while you're dry firing. Be COMPLETELY AWARE the whole time. Indeed, you must break more than one rule to cause injury.
BobbyQuickdraw
Member
In stripping the Glock your hand should never go in front of the barrel. There is even a picture in the owners manual of how to do it - read the manual at least once!
Remove mag, work slide, check chamber, verify empty. Aim in safe direction, pull trigger. Grasp the gun+slide with the web of the hand against the dovetail, wrapping fingers up and over the slide. Pull slide back about 1/4 of an inch. With other hand from underneath the gun, pull down the tabs on both sides of the frame. Allow the slide to travel forward, give a little push if necessary. Carefully remove slide off of frame. Carefully remove recoil spring. Remove barrel. Begin cleaning. You should be able to do it safely and completely with your eyes closed its so easy. You could even check the weapon for safety eyes closed (though obviously not recommend). Once the mag is out and slide locked back, a finger in the action can tell you if a bullet is where it shouldn't be.
All that said, I'm not a super tightwad about the rules. I can't be. I work in Hollywood and we use real guns on certain sets for close ups and certain shots. Those guns get manhandled, pointed at people, and have fingers on triggers. Of course, they are tightly controlled and verified empty before the armorer will let them move from his station, and any blank rounds are under lock and key. There is never a need for a live round on set (we'll use deactivated rounds).
Remove mag, work slide, check chamber, verify empty. Aim in safe direction, pull trigger. Grasp the gun+slide with the web of the hand against the dovetail, wrapping fingers up and over the slide. Pull slide back about 1/4 of an inch. With other hand from underneath the gun, pull down the tabs on both sides of the frame. Allow the slide to travel forward, give a little push if necessary. Carefully remove slide off of frame. Carefully remove recoil spring. Remove barrel. Begin cleaning. You should be able to do it safely and completely with your eyes closed its so easy. You could even check the weapon for safety eyes closed (though obviously not recommend). Once the mag is out and slide locked back, a finger in the action can tell you if a bullet is where it shouldn't be.
All that said, I'm not a super tightwad about the rules. I can't be. I work in Hollywood and we use real guns on certain sets for close ups and certain shots. Those guns get manhandled, pointed at people, and have fingers on triggers. Of course, they are tightly controlled and verified empty before the armorer will let them move from his station, and any blank rounds are under lock and key. There is never a need for a live round on set (we'll use deactivated rounds).
sailortoo
Member
Ad/nd
Wow! 112 posts so far, that help me confirm why I'm still a stick-in-the-mud revolver guy. Really interesting to watch the give and take between bottom feeders. Not meant in a pajoritive way, just plain interesting.
sailortoo
Wow! 112 posts so far, that help me confirm why I'm still a stick-in-the-mud revolver guy. Really interesting to watch the give and take between bottom feeders. Not meant in a pajoritive way, just plain interesting.
sailortoo
jakemccoy
Member
sailortoo wrote:
Hello my fellow bottom feeder,
I think you mean “pejorative.” I don’t mean that in a pedantic way. It’s just interesting that someone would take an intellectually superior position and then use a word that doesn’t exist.
Regards,
Jake McCoy
Hello my fellow bottom feeder,
I think you mean “pejorative.” I don’t mean that in a pedantic way. It’s just interesting that someone would take an intellectually superior position and then use a word that doesn’t exist.
Regards,
Jake McCoy
Ed Ames
Member
Yeah, I was having a tough time keeping a straight face about calling that anything but negligent.
However, we really don't know the whole story. I haven't lived long but I've lived long enough to realize that people screw up in extraordinary ways even when they are trying their best not to. Even if it was in every way a negligent discharge... negligent design of the gun, negligent handling, negligent construction, negligent training... I'm still not sure it helps either the training/safety cause or the general gun ownership cause to jump to the term negligent.Going back to the NTSB, they use the term "accident" to describe incidents until they have been categorized. The incidents range range from random (bird strikes) to negligent (improper preflight planning/insufficient fuel for planned flight/etc) to human failures (pilot's inability to recover from a bounced landing/failure to control aircraft during taxi) which are not negligence so much as a lack of skill or physical ability to meet the challenge you are faced with. Once all of the facts are known the cause may be deemed negligence... but that is the cause of the accident. They don't say "this is no longer an accident, it's now negligence, we need to store it in a separate database."
In the case of aviation accidents it is common to see something like this:
Cause: Unidentified complete electrical system failure.
Additional factors: Pilot's failure to lower the landing gear before emergency landing.
In that case the root cause *and* the human failure are both identified. That makes sense to a lot of people. That's also something more people come in contact with because it's basically the same for car accidents. You have an accident. What was the accident? You hit a light pole. What caused the accident? Negligence/driving too fast for conditions... or Inability to control the vehicle after sudden tire deflation.
Why would we break with the broader convention when discussing unintentional discharges? They are accidents. The cause may be negligence or mechanical failure but they are accidents.
Just a thought.
Oh, and jake, why are you constantly re-editing that spelling correction to be nastier and nastier?
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Mainsail
Member
jakemccoy said:
I see your point to a degree. Every stop sign is meant to be stopped at (sorry, poor grammar). In the neighborhood I grew up in there was a main road and several small cul-de-sacs that branched off on one side or the other. Each cul-de-sac had a stop sign at the main road. The city, in an effort to slow down the traffic on the main road, put up a stop sign on the main road at one of the middlish cul-de-sacs. As time passed, people began to just slow down, look, and then pass the stop sign without stopping. Later, we began to notice people were pretty much running all the stop signs. That’s human nature; people viewed the stop sign on the main road as being pointless and began to question the integrity of all the stop signs.
If it’s a rule that’s not going to be followed, it’s not going to be followed at the wrong time.
gbran
Member
It's perfectly safe to dry fire a centerfire handgun. I do it all the time with my Glocks for cleaning and practice. You just have to keep it pointed in a safe direction and keep other parts of your body out of the line of fire.
jakemccoy
Member
Hi Ed,
You need to re-read the original post. There are plenty of facts to indicate this incident lands squarely within the negligence camp...
If we stop right there, we already have enough facts to make a strong case for negligence. You are selectively omitting facts and presenting scenarios that are inconsistent with the case at hand. Your scenarios are interesting. However, I would suggest starting another thread to discuss them.
Regards,
Jake McCoy
You need to re-read the original post. There are plenty of facts to indicate this incident lands squarely within the negligence camp...
If we stop right there, we already have enough facts to make a strong case for negligence. You are selectively omitting facts and presenting scenarios that are inconsistent with the case at hand. Your scenarios are interesting. However, I would suggest starting another thread to discuss them.
Regards,
Jake McCoy
jakemccoy
Member
The distinction between accident and negligence is absolutely important. An accident is unintentional and unavoidable. Negligence is unintentional but avoidable through proper training.
Ed Ames
Member
Jake... No offense to the original poster but that's hearsay.
It may be an exact report of facts, it may be a blend of facts and interpretation by the poster (or by the poster and the glocker), it may contain some truth and other errors or excuses introduced by the hand-perforator to cover something really stupid (I said it before but "glock twirling" would go beyond negligence in my book) and it may even be a complete fabrication made to cover for a child or significant other.
None of that really matters and I am in no way trying to say that the original poster wasn't accurately describing events as he understood them (or even events as they happened... he's far closer to the situation than I am) but we don't really have facts or evidence.
Unfortunately, people who have just dealt with high stress situations have a nasty habit of second guessing themselves. They forget what really happened and latch onto mistakes they made that may have caused it. It's entirely possible that he did check the gun the way some people in this thread suggested (repeatedly pulling the slide back) but since it didn't work he must have "forgotten". Words change around.
We know it was an accident in the conventional sense (same way we'd talk about airplane accidents). We have one scenario that paints it as negligent. We have no real facts.
None of which really matters to my point of course. Shrug.
It may be an exact report of facts, it may be a blend of facts and interpretation by the poster (or by the poster and the glocker), it may contain some truth and other errors or excuses introduced by the hand-perforator to cover something really stupid (I said it before but "glock twirling" would go beyond negligence in my book) and it may even be a complete fabrication made to cover for a child or significant other.
None of that really matters and I am in no way trying to say that the original poster wasn't accurately describing events as he understood them (or even events as they happened... he's far closer to the situation than I am) but we don't really have facts or evidence.
Unfortunately, people who have just dealt with high stress situations have a nasty habit of second guessing themselves. They forget what really happened and latch onto mistakes they made that may have caused it. It's entirely possible that he did check the gun the way some people in this thread suggested (repeatedly pulling the slide back) but since it didn't work he must have "forgotten". Words change around.
We know it was an accident in the conventional sense (same way we'd talk about airplane accidents). We have one scenario that paints it as negligent. We have no real facts.
None of which really matters to my point of course. Shrug.
ArfinGreebly
Moderator Emeritus
gunsmith
Your [post=3332326]post was #6[/post] in the "[thread=272715]THR Saved My Life[/thread]" thread.
The search was "glock clean" constrained to member "gunsmith" -- you never used the word "discharge" in your post.
Your [post=3332326]post was #6[/post] in the "[thread=272715]THR Saved My Life[/thread]" thread.
The search was "glock clean" constrained to member "gunsmith" -- you never used the word "discharge" in your post.
SAWBONES
Member
Agreed. Anyone who goes "bang" while "cleaning" a gun is an unfortunate dumbass.
Anyone who goes "bang" while pointing the gun at parts of himself while "cleaning" said gun is an egregious dumbass.
Blaming the machine's design wholly misses the point. Anyone who cannot learn how his own gun operates and how to handle it safely simply shouldn't have one. Period. He probably shouldn't operate other types of machinery, nor drive, nor breed either.
Unfortunate story, and some will say "there but for the grace of God go all of us", but it's really not so; if accidents like these were truly unavoidable or due to firearm design faults, those who know guns and handle guns routinely would all be injured or dead.
jakemccoy
Member
Ed wrote:
Damn near the whole original post is hearsay. It doesn't matter. It's just a fact pattern for discussion. We're not in a court of law here. We assume the presented statements of the fact pattern are true in order to have an organized discussion where everybody's on the same page. Once again...
We assume that's true in order to have an organized discussion. From those facts, we already have enough facts to make a strong case for negligence.
Anyway, your pseudo-lawyer analyses are getting out of hand. This is a serious topic. Since you aren't a lawyer, don't throw around legal terms when you clearly don't know how to use them properly.
Damn near the whole original post is hearsay. It doesn't matter. It's just a fact pattern for discussion. We're not in a court of law here. We assume the presented statements of the fact pattern are true in order to have an organized discussion where everybody's on the same page. Once again...
We assume that's true in order to have an organized discussion. From those facts, we already have enough facts to make a strong case for negligence.
Anyway, your pseudo-lawyer analyses are getting out of hand. This is a serious topic. Since you aren't a lawyer, don't throw around legal terms when you clearly don't know how to use them properly.
Ed Ames
Member
Jake, if it bugs you you can say what you want and be happy. Let me say what I want. If you think I'm wrong just laugh at me behind my back and move on.
You can call it a pattern of facts but the reality is that it's just a post on the 'net... it describes REAL events though. Not a hypothetical. Real. People are judging REAL events based on a post on the 'net. I say it's just what someone said and not necessarily what happened. What happened is that someone has a hole in their hands and they reported a few things that may or may not be true.
You are free to disagree... but if you think your disagreement must be expressed by stifling me you've got some social issues to work out.
You can call it a pattern of facts but the reality is that it's just a post on the 'net... it describes REAL events though. Not a hypothetical. Real. People are judging REAL events based on a post on the 'net. I say it's just what someone said and not necessarily what happened. What happened is that someone has a hole in their hands and they reported a few things that may or may not be true.
You are free to disagree... but if you think your disagreement must be expressed by stifling me you've got some social issues to work out.
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