Worst accident you've had with a firearm.

[TechBrute]

I've been pretty lucky as far as accidents go. Granted, good handling goes a long way to contributing to being "lucky."

The worst accident I've had with a gun was a .22LR slamfire. I was chambering a round into my MkII and it slamfired down range. Upon inspection, there's a little spring that holds the firing pin rearward that had broken. It had taken more than 10 years and 50K rounds, but it was broken, nonetheless.

It really taught me a lesson about doing a detailed strip and throrough inspection on a somewhat regular basis. Also makes me think twice every time I chamber a round when I'm not at the range...

The only other accident I've had was a broken hoster that sent my gun sliding down the aisle at Albertson's. Really gets some interesting looks when you're in CA. Taught me not to buy junk holsters, that's for sure...

So what's the worst accident that you (or a "friend") have had with a firearm?

 

[ny32182]

I broke the end of a Q-tip off in the bolt of my AR. Had to go all the way to the store, buy a pack of paper clips, straighten one out, and push the Q-tip end out.

 

[JohnKSa]

Had a Ljungman bolt close unexpectedly. The gas tube ate a significant hunk of my favorite thumb. Quite painful.

 

[DMK]

One time I had the bolt not close fully on an SKS after I loaded it and let it fly home. I had sighted the rifle, pulled the trigger and it didn't fire. For some reason, to this day I don't know what I was thinking, I smacked the bolt home with my palm. It was one of those moments where you realize you did something really, really dumb just a split second before something bad happens. This of course fired the round. The rifle was pointed downrange, but the bolt came back and split my palm open. That reminded me for a few weeks that I did something really dumb because I wasn't paying full attention to what I was doing, but by the grace of God it didn't result in anything seriously bad.

 

[Hatchett]

I was once looking at a OU shotgun in a gunstore, opened it up to get a look inside, and accidentally dropped the muzzle through the glass counter. Embarassing, but a negligent opening isn't as bad as a negligent discharge, I suppose.

 

[mfree]

I was checking something in this little zipper case (really an old 386mini laptop case) that I had two of my pistols in after a range session. I had both with the actiosn locked back and magazines out, as I usually do, with the CZ75 wrapped in an old cotton Tshirt strip and the walther P22 in it's own little case.

I forgot to zip it closed.

Then I picked it up and off the side of the wash machine.

The walther hit the floor, but it was in a closed padded case. The CZ.... well, I had enough time to think "It's action is open, it's weak" and stick my bare foot under it.

*ow*. that's a hefty gun, what with landing butt-first. Lovely bruise... and an unharmed gun.

I'm getting a REAL range bag very soon

 

[Dionysusigma]

Stovepipe from an M44... nothing else, thank god.

 

[444]

I leaned a .22 rifle against my truck. The wind blew it over. The stock was all screwed up. Took me a couple years to work up the nerve to fix it.

 

[TechBrute]

Well, I wasn't thinking of injuries when I started the thread, but since we're heading that direction...

I was shooting a Desert Eagle .50AE and when I finished a mag and set the gun down, I looked down and noticed my middle finger was bleeding. To this day, I have no idea how I got the cut, as the .50AE was beating me so bad my hands were numb.

A minor injury: I was shooting .223 prone from cover and the brass was bouncing back and landing on my arm. I was toughing it out, but later I notice that I had 12 2-inch long burns on my arm.

The .45ACP that stuck between my temple and my eyepro was no fun, either.

 

[jdege]

I shot myself in the head, once

I shot myself in the head, once, during a fire-and-maneuver exercise when I was in the Army.

We were doing leap-frog by fire teams, and I did a three-to-five second rush, going down behind a tree. The muzzle of my M16 hit the tree, my finger was on the trigger, so my weapon discharged.

The MILES gear registered it as a kill, so I was out of the exercise.


I've been much more careful with my trigger finger, since.

 

[bobs1066]

Slipped climbing up the front slope of an M60A1 (rain & mud on both tank & boots) & whacked my knee a good one.

 

[Third_Rail]

I had a really, really, really, REALLY scary (for my neighbor) experience with a Star .45 compact pistol.

I loaded the mag with 5 rounds (range rules), inserted it, chambered a round, slow fired 5 rounds (over 10 seconds, I consider that slow firing) and the slide didn't lock back so I pulled the trigger again to decock it. My neighbor thought that I was pulling the trigger on the FIFTH round, on a loaded chamber, when I was pulling it on an empty chamber.

So after decocking it, I dropped the mag out, took my finger out of the guard, and turned toward him.... but I forgot to point the gun in a safe direction. He thought he was about to get shot by a hang fire.

Since then, I've been REALLY careful about muzzle direction, to the point of waking up at night from a nightmare where it really was a hang fire.

If or when I do have a ND or AD, you can be damn sure that it'll be in a safe direction.

 

[P95Carry]

Had a Ljungman bolt close unexpectedly.

Similar John - similar. In my case ... Hakim ... and favorite thumb nail ... black for quite some time (like 5 months! ).



My worst I think ... (and heck .. in retrospect, could have been very serious) .... was when helping a buddy on some construction .... chimney repair. We had staging put up and it was pretty safe working up there but .. well, I had my ol' Spanish 12G O/U up there - loaded .. ready for crows, pigeons etc ... had already bagged one earlier.

Hmmm ... he kicked it off my mistake .. it fell some 20 or more feet - hit ground and fired - BOTH barrels. Sheesh .... no one around thank heaven .. this was on a farm. Stock got a crack and one barrel was deformed. Gun was duly mended, in as much as I machined a drift to get damaged barrel back to round ... and stock? Well .. to this day (approx 20 years on) that ol' mess of a gun still has a split in the stock! Still shoots OK tho!

Damn .. we were lucky I can say!

 

[GunnySkox]

Didn't happen to me, but a funny story, nonetheless.

Hokay, my brother's friend Hugh was shooting reloads through his AR-15 at the public rifle range, and on one round, it didn't fire when he pulled the trigger, so he set the rifle down on its side, and halfway through turning to complain about it, got punched in the gut by an AR scorned. Bloody hangfires.

My worse one was when I was still using a "wall" of stuff to keep my violently-chucked brass (damned Mini-14 Ranch!) from banging other folks in the dome; one bounced off the wall, hit my rifle case (the soft kind, I use it as sort of a mat to lay my elbows on), rolled down the nylon, and promply got STUCK to my arm. I screeched like a schoolgirl and flailed my arm until it came unstuck, which resulted in the guy next to me giving me a weird look.
Hey, don't laugh, let's see you not yelp when a piece of burning-hot metal sticks to your flesh.


~Slam_Fire

 

[hso]

Disassembling an SKS should be done with the bolt foward and not locked back!

If not the spring comes rocketing back striking whatever's in it's path... like lower lips:banghead:

Luckily "all" I got out of it was a cut lip, no busted teeth, and an object lession.

 

[krusty311]

I had a ND when I was 14 with my dad's 22lr S&W autoloader and missed my forearm by 6 or 7 inches.The most horrible experience in my life.Since then I've been a safety nazi to the highest degree.

 

[aguyindallas]

Well, since I have not been shooting as much as most of us here, I guess I am just lucky to not have had any issues. Like techbrute, I had a little holster incident where my gun slid down my pant leg, but I was in my own store with no customers in the shop, so it was fine.

 

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

I've been lucky, smart, or careful so far. At least, that's what I figure. Never had an incident aside from a sliver of brass in my chin from a reload in an Uzi that failed to fully feed.

I have been present for a couple of incidents perpetrated by my little brother, however. When he was about 9 or 10, our grandfather took up out to shoot his bolt-action 20 gauge. My brother, being a little short in the arms, promptly stuck the butt under his arm insead of in the 'pocket', and snatched up a handfull of trigger. When it went off, it harelipped him, he screamed, dropped the shotgun and hauled it back to the lakehouse making like an air raid siren the whole way. Only harm was a little cut on his lip, no tooth damage (he was missing his deciduous teeth anyway) and a bellache from the bananna pudding Grandma made for him as a consolation.

When he was in high school and I was home from college we were out at the farm to hunt doves; I had loaned him a ragged Sportsman 48 (pre-1100 Remington) that I'd recieved as repayment for bailing my roommate out of an Arkansas drunk tank late one night. While loading it (while sitting in the car) he ND'd a load of #8's through the passenger side floorboard of my Ford. Pretty much ruined my trip at that point, as he had to be taken back home to change his drawers, but at least he missed his feet. A piece of 3/4 inch plywood and a couple of shop rags took care of the floor and were still in place when I sold the car. I used to see it around town occasionally with a red rag flapping in the breeze under the car.

Regards,
Rabbit.

 

[Plinkerton]

A couple days ago, I was standing to the right of my friend, when he was about to shoot his .45 SA TRP. Since we were the only two at the range, I was having fun trying to catch the brass, as it ejected. Before I started my "fun", I watched him fire a couple shots. The first empty ejected out where it should have, but the second one nailed me right in the forehead.

It startled me more than anything, but it hurt more than I expected. Those things are kinda heavy. Left a little mark, that lasted a couple days. He was laughing his a$$ off at me... I guess rightly so...

 

[Delmar]

Back when I was really green with 1911's, I "backward cleared", meaning I cycled the slide and then dropped the mag.
Pulled the trigger and it went bang just like I told it to.
Muzzle wasn't covering anything of importance.

You can forget every weapon handling rule but that one, and you will and should be embarrassed. Forget that one and it might be the last time you ever handle a firearm.

 

[38SnubFan]

A very LOUD lesson!

The worst (and only) accident I've ever had was an accidental discharge indoors (and I don't mean an indoor range, either). I just thank God no one was around when it happened!

I had gone out to the range for a practice session with my carry gun, an EAA Windicator .38 Spl. 2" bbl. revolver. As I always do, I reached for the cleaning kit as soon as I came home and stripped down the gun and cleaned it. After cleaning and installing a couple home-made cardboard "washers" for the grip-set screw to keep it from over-traveling after tightening and causing the mainspring guide to "hang up" and cause cylinder binding (Yes, I'm ordering a new grip to take permanent care of this problem), I proceeded to reload and re-holster my weapon.

I loaded 6 rounds of Hornady Custom 158-gr. JHP/XTP into the chambers when the gun slipped. It seemed that some lubricating oil got back on my hands from handling a thoroughly cleaned and oiled gun. I quickly reached for the gun to keep it from slamming into my kitchen floor. When I grabbed it with both hands, the cylinder shut with my left hand, with my left ring finger in the trigger guard. The webbing of my right hand caught the hammer and pulled it back to "cocked position". Before I even realized what I did, my left ring finger pulled the hammer to full rear, thus dropping the hammer into sear engagement. I ended up with a very loud BANG! , immediately followed by my ears ringing, my heart in my throat, and the thought of "oh sh*t, what did I just destroy?" :banghead:

I immediately unloaded my weapon and reholstered. After my ears stopped ringing about 30 seconds later, I looked around my kitchen window screen and walls, expecting to find a nice-sized hole in something, possibly an appliance. I then found a small hole in the face of one of the cabinet drawers. I opened the cabinet to find a nice chunk of waferboard taken out of the back of the drawer face, "wood" fragments all over the inside of the drawer, with a small dent in the backing and my spent bullet, still hot, laying inside.

I then washed and dried my hands again, and used a dry cloth to pick up the excess residue from my gun. After re-gaining my composure (still a little miffed from the new decoration to my kitchen cabinetry! ) I checked the gun for proper function, reloaded, reholstered, and left to pick up my girlfriend from work. When I went outside to my car, my neighbor and friend, Scott, said, "Did you see those kids who threw firecrackers in the dumpster? They also shot off a gun right before that!" I told him, "Yeah, it woke me up! I thought shots had been fired." Some local teen pranksters actually had set off fireworks in our dumpster at the same time the AD occured. Talk about good timing! I'll leave Scott to believe his version of the story.

Upon picking up my girlfriend from work, I told her about the bad news to our kitchen. She was just glad I didn't get hurt and the cops didn't get called out on me. I showed her the damage to the cabinet and the bullet that partially expanded in the kitchen cabinet. She was quite suprised when she got the idea of what a HP can do to a human being, and laughed when I said, "Now my landlord will actually have to get off his a** and fix something around this building when I move out!" He probably won't fix that hole anyway.

I've learned two things from this accident:

1. Make sure your hands and your gun are dry and "slippery stuff" free before handling or loading them.

2. If for some reason the gun should fall from your grasp, let it fall! It may require adjustment or repair afterwards, but at least the firing pin safety will do its job and not fire because YOU grabbed the gun improperly being more worried about it hitting the floor.

3. If I ever need to fire a round indoors in a self-defense situation, I'm now (unfortunately) fully aware of just how loud it's going to be.


The spent bullet and empty cartridge sit on the corner of my kitchen counter as a reminder, as my girlfriend will laugh every time she sees it to remind me of my really stupid moment! I hope this post educates and saves the rest of you from such an embarassing situation such as this.

Sincerely,
MW

 

[Plinkerton]

Wait... you're telling that story as a true story?

You seriously caught the gun, and managed to accidentally cock the hammer, and pull the trigger?

Unless I'm incredibly dense, and missing the hints you're dropping to let us all know that you are making this up, this has got to be a one in a billion (or more) accident.

AND some firecrackers went off at the same time?!?!?!?!?!?

I'm speechless...

 

[Zach S]

I once caught a kimber heading for the floor and managed to put a hole in a speakerbox.

The MILES gear registered it as a kill, so I was out of the exercise.

I'm assuming the MILES gear is the really expensive lasertag?

 

[Brian Williams]

oops :banghead:

 

[shep854]

At the time, I was a moderately experienced 1911 shooter/carrier.

Anyway, I had just pulled up at work, and was going to lower the hammer on my Commander, before I left it in my car for the day.

Being a very safety-conscious person, I mentally reviewed the steps: muzzle in safe direction; firm grasp to depress grip safety; control hammer with thumb; release thumb safety; squeeze trigger and slowly lower hammer. OK, check. Review complete; got it.

Muzzle safe, grasp firmly, squeeze trigger, release safety...

I had to buy a new tire.

For a while, I was almost too scared of the gun to even touch it.