Who's had a 'negligent discharge'??

[Kleanbore]

What a a wonderful compilation for publicity this is.

 

[HC_Jack]

Never so far. To be fair, I rarely find time to go shooting so that gives me fewer opportunities for mistakes and less time to get complacent. I’ve been looking at getting my carry permit and minimizing the possibility of a negligent discharge is top on my priority list as I get set up.

 

[3Crows]

Yeah, it was a Glock. I wanted to stow it away in the provided box. I had (so I thought) cleared the weapon and then needed to decock it. BAM! Shot a hole through the flat screen and into the wall. No damage other than a new flat screen and some drywall spackle compound. Perhaps I had become too careless but I really like chamber loaded windows and indicators as a result. I still cannot believe it but the flat screen did have a hole in it, and it still played! Sorta. It was embarrassing even if my wife had never known of it and it will NEVER happen again as I have re-tripled my gun safety procedures, chamber flags, counting ammo in and out, visual verification and separation of guns and magazines and going outside and pointing the weapon at the ground in a safe place and direction to decock. I got away with being careless once, I cannot count on that again, never again.

 

[Ed Ames]

If you squeeze a trigger when you didn't intend to fire, that is a negligent discharge.

By that standard, dry firing would count as negligent discharging. It’s clearly not that simple.

You are correct that negligence can be prevented, but there are areas where you are perhaps misunderstanding the meanings of the words. First, negligent and accidental are not mutually exclusive. Saying a thing is an accident doesn’t exclude negligence, and saying it’s negligent doesn’t exclude accidents. A thing can be either or both.

You are also wrong about accidents not being preventable. Why do you think there are so many accident prevention campaigns including workplace, traffic, shooting, boating, aviation, et cetera? There are plenty of preventable, non-negligent accidents.

Here’s the main issue: You are trying to say that absolutely anything that could be prevented but isn’t is negligence, but negligence involves setting a reasonable threshold. If you don’t meet this threshold and something bad happens, that’s negligence. If you meet this threshold and something bad happens, that’s not negligence. Either way, the bad thing can be an accident or intentional.

Let’s say you are driving down the road and a deer jumps out in front of you. It lands on your windshield and badness ensues. That’s an accident. But there are dozens of ways it could have been prevented: high fences, elevated roadways, extermination of all wild deer, et cetera. They aren’t reasonable, but they would work. If you leave out “reasonable” then every time a motorist strikes a deer that is negligence. In reality, we use a threshold. If a deer just stands in the middle of the road and you run into it, that could be negligence because you should have been able to see and stop for a stationary object. If a deer jumps out of the forest alongside the road and lands on your windshield, that’s not negligence because there were no reasonable steps that could have been taken to prevent the outcome.

Believe it or not there are scenarios where you can observe the 4 rules and still have a negligent discharge, just as there are scenarios where you can mess up on the 4 rules accidentally.

 

[John#2]

Not trying to put anybody on report here but who has had one? What were the circumstances?..Seems a good discussion point, considering some of the other threads...

Maybe forty years ago. .22 semi-auto held one-handed by my side slipped as I stood there. I caught it. The bullet missed my foot by at least an inch.

Lesson learned. Nothing remotely close since then. Young and stupid.

 

[Jammersix]

Ed, you'd flunk.

 

[Ed Ames]

Ed, you'd flunk.

Nah, when it comes to training, I don’t settle.

 

[Demi-human]

A good carpenter

...is one who doesn’t do it anymore, but still has his fingers.

Same for those who make and use explosives.

Saying it can never happen to me means I have quit and will never shoot again, thus it will never happen to me. (Where is some wood to knock on? I am a carpenter with ten still!)

Especially given some of the examples here. It would seem that an ND means anything from not hitting the bullseye to being at fault for a slam fire.
I wonder if such absolutions would be applied surgeons? Each case has an ultimate Horrible Outcome with gradients before it. Is leaving a hemostat inside the abdomen, worse or the same as cutting one millimeter to far and needing an extra stitch?


Who would want to wear the “Black Mark” of any sort and be ostracized from their fellow enthusiasts? More so when they have learned a valuable lesson.
I guess a scarlet letter for those who don’t learn should be justly earned in their community.

Which is my, though not the OP, ultimate hope in this thread, not to blacken everyone’s eye. Just show all the facets of the stone. Every stone has a flaw.

The truth is neither god nor bad, it just is.
This thing happens, this is how. Avoid it.

A contentious subject for sure.

(I think I conflated two similar threads.
I think this works here as well.)

 

[Pete D.]

Not trying to put anybody on report here but who has had one? What were the circumstances?..Seems a good discussion point, considering some of the other threads...

I had one at the Trap range. It was a slow evening. I was shooting with a friend...only two of us. I was on station 3 and i was leading off. I put a shell in the chamber, snapped the old BT-99 shut. I had my finger inside the trigger guard....something that I “never” do. As I started to mount the gun, it went off. Blew a hole in the grass about four feet in front of me.

 

[Russell13]

In my 30 plus years of shooting(man I’m getting old) I haven’t had one that I can remember. I’m a big believer in gun safety and almost all of my shoot has been range shooting. I have had a few hang fires in my day. Had one a few weeks ago with my cap and ball revolver. Pulled the trigger and almost 1 second later the gun went off. I have always been taught when you pull the trigger if the gun doesn’t go off keep it on target and wait a few seconds before clearing it.

 

[.308 Norma]

In my 30 plus years of shooting(man I’m getting old)

Hardly.
I'm 72, and been around guns and shooting my whole life. What's more, the negligent discharge that I had and wrote about earlier in this thread happened almost 60 years ago.
Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying you're due a negligent discharge sooner or later. You're not. Not unless you're in the habit of practicing negligence - which you obviously are not. IMO, anyone who thinks a negligent discharge is inevitable if someone is around guns long enough, is practicing negligence. And they're not doing much for promoting gun ownership either.

 

[Reloadron]

Well .308 Norma has me by a few years. While I have been spared a negligent or accidental discharge nobody is immune. I have been around two very up close and personal. The first when I was with a now deceased shooting friend and buddy, considerably younger than myself. He wanted to show me a new 32 ACP he had bought. He open the safe, grabs the gun and pulled the trigger. Bang and he killed his new Dillon Scale and scared the hell out of me. I told him to send the scale back to Dillon but he was afraid they would laugh. I told him a week later and he just didn't want to send the scale back. I told him fine, give me the scale and I'll send it back using my name. What do I care if a bunch of people at Dillon have a laugh saying "look, some idiot in Ohio blew away his scale". I have pride but a free scale is a free scale. That was maybe 25 years ago and he finally sent the scale back to Dillon and sure as God made little green apples got a brand new scale.

Another incident was more serious. A range I shoot at (indoor) has a side isolated used by members and police training. One Saturday morning early I am in there taking with my friend who was working there. A small group of cadets exited the range, filed around me and into a classroom. Then came the bang followed by dead silence. Emery yelled "you guys alright in there" and I had one of those sinking feelings. Then the instructor went off full ballistic mode on someone. Here, a guy in the back had a discharge and the bullet traveled up between heads passed through a wall and lodged in an office behind the classroom. Thank God nobody's head stopped the bullet.

My wife's cousin lives in the Phoenix, AZ. area. Her husband retired from Luke AFB. Apparently he was doing something with his 10/22 and bang! Round passed through a wall and killing his wife's prize antique mirror. That could have went better for him but after so many years of marriage the marriage endured but he is no longer allowed to even hold a gun in the house.

Again, I won't say I never had one because I am Mr. Safety Conscious, maybe because I have been lucky.

Ron

 

[Old Dog]

Hardly.
I'm 72, and been around guns and shooting my whole life. What's more, the negligent discharge that I had and wrote about earlier in this thread happened almost 60 years ago.
Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying you're due a negligent discharge sooner or later. You're not. Not unless you're in the habit of practicing negligence - which you obviously are not. IMO, anyone who thinks a negligent discharge is inevitable if someone is around guns long enough, is practicing negligence. And they're not doing much for promoting gun ownership either.

Please don't take this the wrong way, and I am not saying this disrespectfully, but there's a difference being around guns and shooting your whole life, and being around guns and shooting on a daily basis as part of one's occupation for one's whole (adult) life. I know plenty of very, very experienced folks who do not "practice negligence" but have suffered negligent discharges.

When you are, for example, loading up and leaving the base or station house every morning, and coming back every evening (or at the end of a stress-filled double shift or three days or a week out in the field (with your butt**** puckered for hours at a time) and then unloading ... I'm sorry, it's just a far cry from the hobbyist shooter/citizen gun owner who has the luxury of time and only goes out packing or shooting when he/she chooses to with the biggest stress of the day finding a good parking spot or choosing an entree from a menu.

By no means am I making excuses for anyone's negligent discharge. But the occurrence of NDs is a reality that cannot be dismissed as something that happens only to those who are somehow less attentive, less smart, less OCD, less practiced, less experienced than some of you seem to be portraying yourselves as.

 

[orionengnr]

I think I've told this story before, but they say confession is good for the soul, so...
Long before Al Gore created the internet, before Colonel Cooper created the Four Rules, even before God created Colonel Cooper...
Okay, maybe not quite that long ago, but long before I ever heard of the Four Rules.

Call it 1984 or so. I had an HK P7 PSP that I liked very much. I kept it loaded and in my bedroom. Lived in a two-story apartment.

One evening, for some unknown reason, standing next to my bed, I pulled it out, pointed it at about a 45 degree downward angle and put a hole in the drywall just above my bed (exterior wall of a brick building, so it did not exit the building). I just stood there in shock for about a minute, considering just how stupid that really was and how it could have been so much worse.

Knock on wood, never repeated that folly. Some years later, heard of Colonel Cooper, learned the Four Rules and internalized them. That makes it a bit less likely to do it again.

As an aside, several years ago I was in line waiting to get into a local gun show. Made it through the outer set of doors, from there it becomes a mass of humanity either branching to the right (buy a ticket) or to the left (get your gun inspected and ty-wrapped before buying a ticket. I was paying for my ticket. Suddenly, very close behind me there was a "BANG". Everything got really quiet for a few seconds. Don't know who did it, but fortunately nobody was injured. Again, could have been so much worse.

 

[HOWARD J]

I had one many years ago when I enjoyed too much drinking----sitting in the TV room with my old buddy K98K
i pulled the trigger & guess what--the safety was off--the bullet went thru the wall -thru a large padded chair in the living room--thru the closet door at the front entrance--hit the mirror & came back thru the door --went thru the outside wall & went ?---good old hardball.
lucky I was alone & started a cover-up immediately.

 

[trekker73]

I have. To me its bad but no worse than having a car accident. Did it hit anyone, is everyone in one peice, are there any legal ramifications? Okay, life goes on. I was in the army and saw plenty. Its not about just your professionalism and training. If you are pressured, fatigued, or distracted enough , the likelihood increases. Even special forces guys have ND's. If they can, so can anyone.

 

[Riomouse911]

I had a Crossman 357 CO2 revolver many years ago, about JR high-early high school age (13-14 ish)
One day I wasn’t paying attention to well and decided to test how much CO2 was left in the cartridge by pointing the gun at my palm and firing it.
I apparently had one pellet left in the 6-shot “clip” that held them, which naturally lodged in the center of my left palm.

I pulled the pellet out with tweezers, along with a Wadcutter-shaped cylindrical chunk of flesh the pellet cut out of my skin. There’s a little numb scar left from this brilliant move.
I have had this little reminder of how doing dumb things can be painful ever since, and have yet to repeat it.



Its at the intersection of the vertical line and the two that come in from the sides forming a V. I have no idea what the two other oval scars near it are from.

Stay smart...and stay safe.

 

[Riomouse911]

That’s cherry picking a small part of the common definition of accident.

Accident, noun:

1) an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.

2) an event that happens by chance or that is without apparent or deliberate cause.

Your definition is only the part I made yellow, but as you can see there is a lot left out if you just look at the yellow text.

Negligence has both a common and a legal definition.

Common: failure to take proper care in doing something.

Legal: failure to use reasonable care, resulting in damage or injury to another.

In the common definition we see the word “proper” which is a subjective judgment. You can refer to anything, including intentionally shooting a chosen target, as negligent if your personal idea of “proper care” is strict enough. For example someone could believe that shooting edible objects as targets for fun is not proper care of food and so everyone who shoots melons and pop bottles is by that standard negligent. They aren’t wrong, they just have different values.

Many of the stories posted here meet the common definition of negligence, as long as “proper care” is defined as following all four rules at all times. That doesn’t mean they aren’t accidents as well.

As for the legal definition of negligence, a few of the stories posted here meet that definition, but it isn’t the majority.

Whenever you have ambiguous words that can have different meanings, and “negligent” with its combination of a common subjective definition and a legal definition that has a specific meaning certainly qualifies as ambiguous when used in an online forum post, there is wisdom in thinking carefully before using that word. There are alternatives such as “unintentional” or “accidental” that are less prone to being twisted to an unintended meaning.

^ We’ve all been down this lecture road before.

 

[Old Dog]

Eh, I reiterate -- I grow weary of the sanctimonious, self-righteous, holier-than-thou folks who claim they've never had a "negligent discharge" (and never will) in their twenty to sixty years of being around firearms and shooting ...

It can -- and will -- happen to anyone. I bear personal witness and testimony to this. And I have spent my entire adult life (since 1975) amongst law enforcement and military personnel who have more experience with firearms than all the citizen hobbyists hereabouts put together.

The first step is acceptance ... As Riomouse says:

^ We’ve all been down this lecture road before.

 

[Jammersix]

With all respect, don't count either military or law enforcement as any kind of firearm experts. Isolated individuals may be experts, but it certainly isn't because of those particular occupations.

Teaching, the only time I wore a vest was with cops. Don't even get me started about the infantry.

P.S. Two. One at the range, I cleared, pointed the weapon downrange and dry fired, and the damn thing went off. Took a weapon out of the safe, cleared it, dry fired it, and it went off again. Both happened within a week of each other, and I sat down and went through my clearing routine, found an instructor, and re-designed my drill to prevent it from happening again. Both were complete negligence on my part.

 

[Jammersix]

^ We’ve all been down this lecture road before.

It's sort of a windmill for him, isn't it?

 

[Riomouse911]

I work in an office with nearly 300 attorneys, some are true wordsmiths. Others? Not so much.
Some folks may want to play fit-the-narrative by flexing semantics all day long, I don’t have the time nor the patience to dither about with it... again.

Stay safe.

 

[Old Dog]

With all respect, don't count either military or law enforcement as any kind of firearm experts.

I hardly would -- I spent the latter half of my military career as a small arms instructor, almost all of my law enforcement career as an academy and in-service firearms instructor. That was NOT my point (that they are experts) -- my point was, again, that those whose occupations necessitate a great deal of time spent carrying and shooting are more prone to the "oops" moments than the hobbyist citizen firearms enthusiast who only takes out his/her firearms and/or shoots them under no time pressure and doesn't handle them every day. Okay?

 

[Kleanbore]

here's a difference being around guns and shooting your whole life, and being around guns and shooting on a daily basis as part of one's occupation for one's whole (adult) life....

When you are, for example, loading up and leaving the base or station house every morning, and coming back every evening (or at the end of a stress-filled double shift or three days or a week out in the field ... for hours at a time) and then unloading.. ..

Yes, it certainly stands to reason that more risk exposure will likely result in more occurrences.

 

[Ironicaintit]

I’ve said things I wish I hadn’t,
I’ve done things I wish I didn’t.

and I’ve had a negligent discharge.

trying to set the hammer down on a 1911 with one hand... hammer just got away from me. It didn’t work and am I’m wiser since.
good thing I was still following the other 3 rules!