AD or ND - a poll for everyone

[Stormfeather]

Accidental Discharge - When a firearm mechanically fails thru no fault of the person holding it and discharges a round.

Negligent Discharge - When a jackass pulls the trigger and the gun goes boom and he/she didnt mean for it to.

[POLICESTATE]

If you made the mistake it's a ND.
If it was a mechanical failure of the gun then it's an AD.

Bear in mind that real AD's are very rare, most unintended discharges are simply negligent that could have been avoided if people were paying proper attention to their gun.

Even mechanical failures can be considered negligence if the weapon was kept in poor condition or used when obviously faulty.

[wjc]

Negligent.

There are no accidents if you keep your wits about you.

[jumbopanda]

AD= mechanical failure

ND= you somehow pulled the trigger

[Ron-Solo]

Anytime the gun goes off when not intended, it is an accidental discharge.

Broken down in that category are those caused by negligence and those caused by mechanical issues.

It is silly to play word games. Either way, the danger is the same.

[jumbopanda]

Anytime the gun goes off when not intended, it is an accidental discharge.

Broken down in that category are those caused by negligence and those caused by mechanical issues.

It is silly to play word games. Either way, the danger is the same.

Good point.

[skosh69]

There are no accidents in regards to to firearms, only stupidity and negligence!

[chickenfried]

Is every okay with the term "car accidents" or do we need to change that too?

[snubbyfan]

A couple of decades ago a person I worked with had a side by side double barrel shotgun. He loaded it, closed it with his finger off the triggers and BLAM it went off. Accidental? No, the firing pins were so gunked up they didn't retract from the last time he shot it. His firearm was neglected and that's what caused it to discharge.

[GM_77]

People seem to be in 2 camps here. Some like the word "accident" while others, myself included, call them negligent.

Accident implies that the discharge was (for all intents and purposes) unavoidable.

Negligent implies that the person failed to act properly, resulting in the discharge.

My view is very hard line - in all my years of shooting and being around firearms, never once has one "gone off" all on its own.

Where do you stand?

I've seen two ND's. I've heard of three AD's, all had to do with a primer falling out of a 5.56 and hitting the trigger group in a AR-15 type weapon.

[GW]

There is no such things as an accidental discharge. Plain and simple. If the gun goes off on it's own due to assembly or modifications, then it was negligence on the part of the builder.

Guns do not go off by accident. If you believe they do then you might as well believe in bogey monsters.

Well said.
If that gun goes off unintentionally, someone was negligent.
End of story.

[Cali-Shooter]

99% of time it is negligent discharge. Guaranteed.

It's only an accident if the gun had mechanical failure causing the weapon to fire. Triggers don't pull themselves, and that sure as hell isn't an accident when pulled. Negligence, yes.

[call-in]

Anytime the gun goes off when not intended, it is an accidental discharge.

Broken down in that category are those caused by negligence and those caused by mechanical issues.

It is silly to play word games. Either way, the danger is the same.

I used to think AD is a hardware issue and ND is a software issue but I your this assertion the best and will be adopting it.

[A-J]

Is every okay with the term "car accidents" or do we need to change that too?

Speaking for myself, no, I am not all OK with that. Because 99.99999% of traffic collisions are preventable by one or both parties. I can't think of a whole lot of scenarios where a collision is "unavoidable" beyond full blown mechanical failures or "acts of god."