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AD's/ND's happen. The more you are around guns, the more you will come to understand this. You will hear more stories of it happening and you will talk to more people that it happened to, and every person will tell you the same thing: They made a mistake, they thought the gun was unloaded. AD's happen when you least expect it and when you swear you KNOW the gun is safe and unloaded. Then the gun goes BOOM and you get to find out if the thing you were pointing at was important or not.
Accidental/Negligible, it doesn't matter unless all you care about is who to blame afterwards. The gun still went off and a bullet just ripped into something.
When I was in the Air Force one of my good friends was a Class 3 dealer and had lots of cool guns. He drilled into me the rule: Never point a gun at anything you don't want to destroy. Being the logical person I am, I thought this rule was rather silly. I mean, if I take a revolver, and verify it is empty, that revolver is nothing more than a hammer/paperweight. I can point it at my head and pull the trigger all day long. Logic wins. But he still drilled the rule into me. One day I was handling a brand new unloaded Steyr AUG he had just received, and I was holding it while talking to him when his wife came into the house and walked into the room the AUG was pointing at. My friend cut me off mid-sentence and asked me to please not point the AUG at his wife. Of course I immediately pointed it in a safe direction, but it ticked me off that he was so anal. We both knew the AUG was unloaded, but still he drilled that rule into me: Never point a gun at something you don't want to destroy, even if you are 100% sure it isn't loaded.
A few years later I was driving across the country and had stopped to stay overnight at a friend's house. We were both into guns and excitedly showed off our firearms to each other. I had a new shotgun I was very fond of and he had just got a new .45 pistol he was in love with. Of course we unloaded everything and triple checked that each firearm was safe, and it was. Our conversation ran right into dinner so we sat down and started eating. I was still marveling at my friends .45 while we were at the table. I sat it down next to me and as we ate my friend's wife asked about the difference between single and double action. I picked up the unloaded pistol I had just sat down to show her. I knew for a fact this gun was unloaded and totally safe. My thought process literally went like this: Should I point it at (A) my friend's wife, (B) my friend's dog, (C) my friend's big screen TV, or (D) at a blank spot high up on the wall.
"This is a double-action," I said, "see how when I pull the trigger the hammer comes back?" BOOM!!!
My friend uses that .45 as his home defense gun, and he likes to keep it loaded with a round in the chamber. Somewhere in the very short period of time between when I sat the pistol down on the table next to me, and when I picked it up again, I hadn't seen him pick it up and load it back to the way he stores it.
The bullet went through the wall near the ceiling, into my friend's bedroom, through the ceiling, into the attic, through the plywood roof, ricocheted off the underside of a roof tile (it cracked the tile), and lodged itself somewhere in the edge of the attic.
I could have killed his wife!!! The thought actually went through my head that it was perfectly safe to point it at her. I also could have killed his dog or his TV, had it not been for Rule #1. It was a little later, after the adrenaline wore off, that I realized that always pointing every gun in a safe direction, even when you are 100% sure it isn't loaded, that is for practice so you will automatically do it when you make a mistake.
The other reason Rule #1 is so important is because it is the easiest rule to teach to other people, especially non-gun people. All of these complex rules like:
- Check the chamber every time you pick up a gun.
- Never pull the trigger unless you are outside in an igloo at night time wearing night vision goggles.
- Never pull the trigger in the same room as ammo or magazines or spandex.
Some of these are good rules to follow but they require gun experience, understanding, practice and diligence. You cannot effectively teach them to an an 8 year old, or a non-gun person, and they are also sometimes impractical.
Most important though, when a mistake it made and a gun fires unintendedly, these rules by themselves will not protect people because they do not require the gun be pointed in a safe direction.
Rule #1. Never point a gun at anything you don't want to destroy. This rule had been so drilled into me that I don't even think about it anymore, I just do it, even if I am 100% sure the gun was unloaded.
I hope the people who read this will learn from my mistake and experience, and see how this rule probably prevented me from killing someone or some thing.
-Grant
PS. My wife still does not know this story and I would really prefer to keep it that way for another 10 or 20 years. So if you know me please to not bring it up or ask me about it when she is around. Thanks.
Accidental/Negligible, it doesn't matter unless all you care about is who to blame afterwards. The gun still went off and a bullet just ripped into something.
When I was in the Air Force one of my good friends was a Class 3 dealer and had lots of cool guns. He drilled into me the rule: Never point a gun at anything you don't want to destroy. Being the logical person I am, I thought this rule was rather silly. I mean, if I take a revolver, and verify it is empty, that revolver is nothing more than a hammer/paperweight. I can point it at my head and pull the trigger all day long. Logic wins. But he still drilled the rule into me. One day I was handling a brand new unloaded Steyr AUG he had just received, and I was holding it while talking to him when his wife came into the house and walked into the room the AUG was pointing at. My friend cut me off mid-sentence and asked me to please not point the AUG at his wife. Of course I immediately pointed it in a safe direction, but it ticked me off that he was so anal. We both knew the AUG was unloaded, but still he drilled that rule into me: Never point a gun at something you don't want to destroy, even if you are 100% sure it isn't loaded.
A few years later I was driving across the country and had stopped to stay overnight at a friend's house. We were both into guns and excitedly showed off our firearms to each other. I had a new shotgun I was very fond of and he had just got a new .45 pistol he was in love with. Of course we unloaded everything and triple checked that each firearm was safe, and it was. Our conversation ran right into dinner so we sat down and started eating. I was still marveling at my friends .45 while we were at the table. I sat it down next to me and as we ate my friend's wife asked about the difference between single and double action. I picked up the unloaded pistol I had just sat down to show her. I knew for a fact this gun was unloaded and totally safe. My thought process literally went like this: Should I point it at (A) my friend's wife, (B) my friend's dog, (C) my friend's big screen TV, or (D) at a blank spot high up on the wall.
"This is a double-action," I said, "see how when I pull the trigger the hammer comes back?" BOOM!!!
My friend uses that .45 as his home defense gun, and he likes to keep it loaded with a round in the chamber. Somewhere in the very short period of time between when I sat the pistol down on the table next to me, and when I picked it up again, I hadn't seen him pick it up and load it back to the way he stores it.
The bullet went through the wall near the ceiling, into my friend's bedroom, through the ceiling, into the attic, through the plywood roof, ricocheted off the underside of a roof tile (it cracked the tile), and lodged itself somewhere in the edge of the attic.
I could have killed his wife!!! The thought actually went through my head that it was perfectly safe to point it at her. I also could have killed his dog or his TV, had it not been for Rule #1. It was a little later, after the adrenaline wore off, that I realized that always pointing every gun in a safe direction, even when you are 100% sure it isn't loaded, that is for practice so you will automatically do it when you make a mistake.
The other reason Rule #1 is so important is because it is the easiest rule to teach to other people, especially non-gun people. All of these complex rules like:
- Check the chamber every time you pick up a gun.
- Never pull the trigger unless you are outside in an igloo at night time wearing night vision goggles.
- Never pull the trigger in the same room as ammo or magazines or spandex.
Some of these are good rules to follow but they require gun experience, understanding, practice and diligence. You cannot effectively teach them to an an 8 year old, or a non-gun person, and they are also sometimes impractical.
Most important though, when a mistake it made and a gun fires unintendedly, these rules by themselves will not protect people because they do not require the gun be pointed in a safe direction.
Rule #1. Never point a gun at anything you don't want to destroy. This rule had been so drilled into me that I don't even think about it anymore, I just do it, even if I am 100% sure the gun was unloaded.
I hope the people who read this will learn from my mistake and experience, and see how this rule probably prevented me from killing someone or some thing.
-Grant
PS. My wife still does not know this story and I would really prefer to keep it that way for another 10 or 20 years. So if you know me please to not bring it up or ask me about it when she is around. Thanks.
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lol!
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