Worst accident you've had with a firearm.

[vwfool]

1. I've only had one ND/AD ever happened when I was about 16. Like many of you, even after more than a decade later I still can't really say exactly how it happened. Besides the use of hearing protection and safety glasses, my dad (also a High Road junky) taught me VERY VERY well about firearms. First thing I do when I pick up a gun is check to make sure it is empty. I did this long before this accident, and I still do it even if my best friend hands me a gun after I just see him check it.

Anyway long story short..I checked the cylinder on a Taurus 85 after shooting and just prior to cleaning; however, I somehow missed a round. The middle part has always had some fuzzy spots, but I put a .38 SWC through the 2 layers of drywall going into my closet, through 2 of my favorite ties, the necks of 5 of my shirts, and into the back wall of my closet. The bullet stopped as it keyholed into the first piece of drywall in the back of the closet. I thank God that it stopped there because 2 feet on the other side of that second piece of drywall (exactly in the bullets path, I checked later) was my 18 year old sister's head as she sat at her desk.

Ever since then I am damn carefull when I lower the hammer on any gun wether it is loaded or not. Don't really know why that changed right then though, the Taurus was a DAO. It didn't even have a hammer to cock and let back down. Oh well, it is a good habbit to have now anyway.

2. On a much lighter note, while I was about 10 I secretly shot my '94 Winchester-looking Daisy BB gun inside the house. I bounced off of two unknown things in the den and then struck one of a pair of very old antique lamps my mom had. It had a lot of little glass beads made into the body of the lamp; luckily all I did was knock one of those beads off of it.
Mom later sold the lamps, but to this day, she never knew. If my dad, Tascosa Kid, happens upon this thread he will probably laugh and give me a call about it as he never knew until now.

3. I still laugh at a friend of mine who use to make comments about how dumb and negligent his older brother was when he shot his and his wife's brand knew TV. Although for some reason he stopped talking about it when he shot his own TV 5 years later.

 

[Grey54956]

I had some very hot brass fall into and down my shoe once. My buddy says it was darn funny watching me put my gun down, then hop around on one foot trying to remove the shoe.

Now when I go to the range I wear socks.

 

[Sleeping Dog]

Hot brass in the tennis shoe is always fun.

My worst "bad" was M14-thumb. It was Uncle Sam's gun, and it bit me. The thumb hurt, but at least I lived long enough to see the drill sergeant smile.
Cleaning the blood out of the action was a bit of work.

Regards.

 

[grimlock]

Worst I ever got was the first time I fired a MkII, when I was about 8. Had my left thumb cocked right up behind the back and WHACK. Didn't really hurt for more than 10 minutes, but it taught me a lesson.

 

[Nathaniel Firethorn]

Shot Wolf ammo in a brand-new USP.

Rounds 1 and 2: OK.

Round 3: jammed solid.

Had the gun back from the smith three weeks later.

- pdmoderator

 

[johnster999]

I once saw an M60 blank adapter blow apart. A piece of the resulting shrapnel hit a nearby NCO's leg and went into the quadracep muscle. I was actually closer to the gun but somehow I was missed.

 

[Red_SC]

DMK said:

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.

I was going to post this exact same thing! That bolt do come back hard, don't it?

So, I'll have to post another one. When I was in probably my early teens, I walked into my bedroom and sat my cocked BB gun on my bed, the top bunk of a bunk bed. While I was preoccupied for a minute, my brother, several years younger than me, walked in, drew a nice bead on something on the sheetrock, and pulled the trigger. I walked around to the other side of the wall, the living room where Mom was entertaining company , and checked for a bullet hole. The sheetrock on that side was only buckled out slightly, so I leaned against the wall and casually pressed it back into place. We both learned a big lesson at an early age. I leaned to maintain control of the firearm, and he learned to check it first!

 

[tcsd1236]

I have never had an accident or even come close. I tend to be anal in terms of range safety.

 

[mack69]

RE:

Slide bite from my Beretta 92FS, makes a terrible bloody mess of the gun and weeks of trigger bites from my new Ruger GP100 .357 magnum. After firing, on recoil I finally figured out what was wrong. I found that when the trigger was fully engaged that the upper top front portion of the trigger had a knife like edge on it and was slicing my trigger finger between the first and second joint on every shot. About 15 minutes on the bench with a Dremel and the knife edge was gone. However I had been scared mentally as I continued to flinch every time I fired it. Finally started using a shooters glove and now love to shoot my little thunder. When I was a kid, I shot a friends 44 magnum revolver ala Dirty Harry and received about 8 stitches in the top of my head after burying the trigger in it.....mack

 

[Ed]

I put about 200 rnds through a 240 on a tank then getting down grabbed the barrel . That hurt.

 

[LASur5r]

Hooo boy!

I had just purchased a S & W 1076...supposedly the civilian model of the FBI carry weapon of choice (at the time).
It had a slide mounted decocker.
So one day I see something not right in my house, turkeys had broken the rear window to one of the bedrooms, but the alarm was set off, scaring them away, but who knows, right?
I grab the 1076 and start checking the house out, when I get my heart rate back down and I return back to the kitchen(with attached garage), I turn towards the house and proceed to decock the weapon....
KA-BOOM!!!! At the moment, I thought I ND'd the weapon, not the weapon fired itself.
Dang it! I luckily had pointed the weapon in a downward angle away from the bedrooms. No one home, remember? But still lucky that I have some safe practices.
The other thing that I lucked out on was I use Hydra-shoks, so when it hit the door frame it went down the 2 x 4 and imbedded itself in the slab, no ricochets.
After that I unload the weapon and run down to my local gun shop where I know the owner and all the die hards in the shop. I tell them the problem and they conclude that I had my finger on the trigger.....friends like these, right?
One week later, I find out that S & W is doing a recall of the 1076. I call S & W and they send me something official. A little while later, they send the 1076 back with a new follower on each magazine, and a new decocker, free no charge.
That was one of the worst ones....recently.

 

[TechBrute]

When we were out plinking on our ranch years ago, we were tossing tin cans in the creek and shooting at them as they floated by. We were shooting downward from an embankment at a pretty steep angle. My dad took a shot at a can that was close to the bank on our side and took the butt of the 12GA on the bridge of his nose. The black eye was one thing, but the fact he had a speaking engagement the next day was salt in the wound.

 

[Rebeldon]

In 1999, I had a Marlin 1894 .44 Magnum. I was sighting in the scope and I got too relaxed. The recoil caused the scope to hit me in the nose. It gave me a semi-circle cut on the right side of my nose. It bled for a couple of minutes. It took three weeks to heal, but it did not leave a scar.

Back in 2000, I had a Ruger KP97DC. It was my very first semi-auto pistol. The first time I shot it, the slide pinched the web on my left hand tore the skin. Blood was dripping off my hand like a faucet, but it healed within a week or so. It did not leave a scar.

 

[Jay Kominek]

I was practicing drawing from my holster after I got my first gun (Springfield XD9), and somehow in the middle of a draw, it slipped out of my hand. (Sweat? Beats me.) It went flying across the room, and smacked into the floor. The slide was jammed horribly about half an inch back.
I said to myself there was no way I was taking a 1 day old gun I hadn't even had a chance to shoot, to the gunsmith.
So I sat there for an hour, staring at it, pondering, wiggling it.
Then I smacked it on the table, and the slide unstuck. Wee.

 

[Boats]

I shot a 12ga shotgun for the first time when I was ten and didn't lock it into my shoulder adequately=bruised shoulder.

High thumb hold on the first "GI" 1911 I ever fired=messy web bite.

Bought a BHP and the first round fired exposed its inadequate grip tang (for me)=bloody web bite.

Third time reloading a Garand=Garand thumb.

Practiced shooting from a door frame and promptly bounced two pieces of hot brass off of the frame and into the back of my shirt, destroying my attempt to stay behind cover. Burns now ensure that the ejection port is held beyond the obstacle.

I was sharpening knives once on a card table when my Lab/Shepard mutt rolled into it and collapsed a leg. I instinctively tried to catch my open Case XX that my father had given to me on my graduation from middle school. I then hurriedly threw that knife into the drywall upon catching it deeply point first in the palm, and now one of the scales has a character hairline fracture that I have carefully glued. I will at least now never try and catch a falling handgun for the experience.

 

[shep854]

Sleeping Dog; out of curiosity, how did you manage an M14 thumb?

An M1 thumb is understandable, since you have to depress the mag follower with your thumb to close the bolt. If you're slow, or not holding the operating rod handle with the edge of your hand, the M1 will bite. The M14 is a different critter, tho.

Regarding the "Hot Brass Boogie"; I saw a good one yesterday. The dancer was shooting at a covered station, and a case bounced down his collar. Boy, did he cut a rug! He also let the gun's muzzle swing a little, too.

Fortunately, his shirt tail was out, so the case fell through. After reading on this forum, I was watching the pistol muzzle, and doing my own move while laughing. I also pointed out the muzzle sweep to him.

 

[Myself]

Had a conversation with a buisness assoiate a couple months ago.

We started talking about firearms. He told me he was at a friends house and the friend was explaining the operation of an M2. He had an AD in the kitchen!!! Went thru the kitchen and the basement concrete floor. It was a good week till his hearing returned to normal.

 

[P95Carry]

It was a good week till his hearing returned to normal.

hehe! Can I rephrase that? ''It was a BAD week .... until his hearing returned to normal!!

 

[sevenpoint62mm]

Had my left forefinger slammed in the breach of a Berretta at a gunshow when a buddy hit the slide release during a handover. Took a nice little sliver of skin with it.

 

[Dr.Rob]

My brother was moving out of thehouse with his buddy Palmer, my dad and I had just returned from a hunting trip. I had borrowed my brother's Savage 110 and since it had been hunting... there were still bullets in the magazine... he picked it up, WORKED THE ACTION without looking and fired a 165 gr sierra game king through a 200 gallon hot water tank attached to our solar system.

Luckily noone was hurt... the smoke set off the fire alarms, the noise deafened my brother and his buddy for several minutes and the wierdest thing... I was upstairs maybe 20 feet away.. and the sound didn't register to me as a gunshot... what I recall hearing was the fire alarm.

I ran downstairs and there is my brother white as a ghost shaking, yelling "who loaded my rifle?"

Well needless to say we all went over safety procedures...

I've had two cases of "hammerfollow down" with a loaded gun, in both cases it was pointed downrange in a safe direction. Both were cases of broken/worn parts.

And my worst... still can't quite figure out how I did it, managed to pull the trigger on my PA-63. BANG... right through my basement window, off the bars over the window and into a flower bed. Left me feeling like a complete idiot, as I was on my way to have a beer with a cop buddy of mine who was a member of THR and TFL.

All Guns are always loaded.
Never point them at anthing you don't intend to destroy.
Keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to fire.
Know your target and what's beyond it.

 

[gbran]

Mosin Blowup

I had an aftermarket muzzle brake on a Nagant. While at the range, it must have jarred loose. I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn and like an idiot I kept firing until the muzzle brake blew apart. It launched down range, but pieces went flying and one hit me in the right eye. And yes, I was wearing safety glasses. My injury wasn't permanant.

 

[Ex-MA Hole]

PPK = The Bite of the Walther

Besides, who needs the skin next to your thumb?

(Ok, let me be honest here- I'm not always the brightest bulb- I actually did it 2x in the same day. Did it the first time. Scared the snot out of me. Bleeding like a...well you know. Shaking in my Birkenstocks. I mean shaking. Blood everywhere. Convinced myself that it was an accident and I needed to keep shooting. Sort of the old "walk it off" sort of thing. Next shot, yes, the VERY next shot, I did it again. Then I went home.)

Now I make sure that my hand is out of the way.

 

[Okiecruffler]

I had a 20ga bolt action that was just bad news.

First time I goofed was when I was 12 and spotted some duck on the pond. I put a shell in the chamber, snuck down behind the dam, popped up and "BANG!" Duck fell dead in a cloud of green confetti. I forgot I had been rolling up the money I was saving for a new gun and hiding it in the barrel. Lesson learned to the cost of about $85.

Second time was a few years later when I loaned it to a friend. Got it back, saw it was cocked and just out of bad habit pulled the trigger to drop the firing pin. Lesson learned to the cost of new carpet and fixing the hole in the floor of my bedroom, not to mention setting out the remainder of that years hunting. First year that everyone in deer camp filled their tags.

Since then, no horrible things. Just the time I was looking at my first SKS and stuck my finger in the chamber to see what was holding the bolt back. Turns out it's that little thing sticking up that you shouldn't push down with your finger.

 

[kwelz]

I have two very embarrassing things that have happened.
The first is an ND. I am still not sure what happened. I was getting ready to leave the house and I drew my weapon to check it. I really don't remember the details. But I felt the weapon buck in my hand. THe strange thing is that I never heard the shot. My ears never rang, but I did smell the burned powder. After searching for the hole I found it going through a door. Through a wall at a slightly downward angle and then through my sword stand, thankfully missing my swords, and finally imbedding itself in the shelf that the stand was resting on.
The gun was a Beretta M9 and the round was a 147 Grain Hydrashok. No expansion, just a slightly deformed opening. Lost my faith in the 9mm round after that.
I still keep the bullet around as a reminder.

The second was much more recent. A friend and I were at the range and I had been firing .22 Rifles for about an hour. I decided to break out the fun stuff so I got out my Siaga 308. I settled in behind the scope, lines up my shot. Let out half a breath, held it then pulled the trigger. The round went downrange. The rifle being held lightly in my hands kicked back driving the scope into my glasses scratching them badly and driving them into my eye. It hurt and my glasses are messed up.

 

[outofbattery]

My worst firearm accident has been a collapsed lung . I was standing behind a friend of mine shooting a brand spanking new Bryco .32 when the fourth round caused the gun to fieldstrip itself with the slide flying 5 yards in front of him and the firing pin hitting my brother in the forehead . I was laughing so hard that one of my lungs simply gave out ! Our buddy was still standing there with a stunned look on his face with his arms in his shooting stance and you know , it even had chambered the next round !




From the "it's funny now but it still shouldn't be " files : my Mother was a 3rd shift RN and was asleep upstairs . My older brother was in the kitchen playing ( in the inappropriate but in this sense correct usage of the word ) with a Calico helical magazine carbine when he caused a negligent discharge which sent me running downstairs to check out what happened . Seeing the hole in the ceiling sent an instant "OH NO" panic in both of us and we zoomed up to our Mom's bedroom to make sure she wasn't hit . Of course our looking for the hole woke her up and , since she's Mom and is going to notice a hole in her kitchen celing at some point , were compelled to tell the truth . Our Mom , still not fully awake regardless , then uttered the phrase we still repeat to make ourselves laugh ...

" I TOLD YOU , NO MORE SHOOTING GUNS IN THE HOUSE ! "