Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Rule Three.

Unless this guy's .38 was extremely unusual, he's lying:
A Lake City man accidentally shot himself when the hammer on his firearm caught on a furniture drawer and it discharged, a deputy reported.
It is, I suppose, conceivable that it was an SAA clone with six beans in the wheel, or that it was a prewar relic and he was "putting it in the drawer" with approximately the same speed and force it would experience with a four-foot fall, but generally any time you hear the words "it went off", you may safely ask "And whose finger was on the trigger?" Because someone's was, sure as God made little green apples.

Seriously, go to a gun store or gun show and watch people's hands; Rule Three is violated constantly as fingers get drawn to triggers as though by a magnet. Don't be shy about calling people on it. It's your soft, squishy pink stuff that you don't want holed, after all.


(H/T to Unc.)

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Combination of Rule 3 and furniture aided and abetted by "speed reholstering" bs one sees at the range?

Wait a tick! I thought revolvers were "safe"? *Snicker*

Eez gon, eez not safe.

Shootin' Buddy

Jay G said...

There's a reason I don't frequent Kittery Trading Post in Maine. I've had *FAR* too many hunting rifles and shotguns pointed at me while perusing the new and used guns there.

There's also a disturbing amount of "CLICK" heard - not only are they pointing guns at me, they're pulling triggers, too...

Tam said...

"Combination of Rule 3 and furniture aided and abetted by "speed reholstering" bs one sees at the range?"

I don't think any furniture was involved at all. I think the dumbass shot himself in the hand and, rather than man up and admit his error, he concocted a tale of woe involving an innocent drawer as the culprit.

Anonymous said...

O.K., here's my "CSI: Intertubes":

Numbnuts has his trusty, rusty M10 after dryfiring at the television and wants to put it in the sock drawer.

He opens the drawer with his left hand, leaves it extended and thrusts the M10 into the drawer at 45 degree angle with pistol pointed at his arm. Hammer catches on edge of sock drawer and cocks weapon. Meeeeaaannnwhile nuts of numb has his finger on the trigger and the nice, safe revolver discharges.

*Puts on sunglasses, cue Who music a la CSI, SB stares into camera*

It socks to be him.

Shootin' Buddy

og said...

I've known a few people who shot themselves, and all "Claimed" it was accidental, but it was dumbassery in each case, except one which was intentional.

Tam said...

I just don't see how that could play out. It takes more effort than that to cock a hammer; the odds of it happening by accidental glancing contact with furniture approach nil.

Occam's razor says that, rather than coming up with all sorts of mental gymnastics, contortions, and speculations we go with "He shot himself and invented a cover story to save face and hopefully get someone else to pay for it."

Forget CSI, go with House: "Everybody lies."

BobG said...

"I just don't see how that could play out. It takes more effort than that to cock a hammer; the odds of it happening by accidental glancing contact with furniture approach nil."

I have to agree; I have yet to see a DA revolver with that light of a hammer. Also it would have to be more than just bumped, to cock it back enough for a discharge the gun would have to be slightly rotated at the same time. I call bullshit on the guy's story.

Sarah said...

Oh, of course the guy's full of crap. He's not going to say, "Yeah, I was acting stupidly and I ended up shooting myself" - not in public, anyway, and definitely not to his buddies.

Jim said...

Three or four years ago a man was shot dead on the main street of a town near here.

The shooter lived on the second floor of a welfare hotel about a hundred yards from where the vicitim fell. He was putting his Colt Python away when it fell to the floor.

It bounced up, pointed itself out the window, and, by the most amazing bad luck, went off by itself just as its aim coincided with the poor guy's head.

The shooter and the dead man didn't know one another, and the former finally wound up sentenced to a few years for something we all understood to be punishment for the stupidity of dry firing at a human being, complicated by forgetting he had loaded the gun.

Blackwing1 said...

"...fingers get drawn to triggers as though by a magnet."

Unfortunately, it's a given that a good pistol should have ergonomics that will lead your finger to naturally land on the trigger; that's as it should be. It'd be a crummy firearm that made you do contortions to reach the trigger.

It takes some training to learn to NOT let your finger go there naturally, but to instead land on the frame above the trigger.

Hence your admiration of the guy with the Windex spray bottle cleaning the display cabinets in the gun store; when not actually spraying he'd keep his finger aligned next to the spray trigger, and kept it pointed in a safe direction. THAT'S the habit we have to build into ourselves and others.

P.S.: You should see the looks/sighs I get from some gun store owners/clerks when I ask them where the "safe direction" is after I've asked permission to drop the hammer on a prospective purchase. I still don't understand why so many of them think it's a stupid question. Heck, in my own basement I usually point a freshly-cleaned and reassembled firearm at a 5-gallon water jug, even though there's no ammo in the same room.

Joanna said...

It socks to be him.

YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAH!

/got nuthin'

Sigivald said...

Yeah, the only thing I can think of where not touching the trigger causes bang would be certain guns with very iffy decockers, combined with light hammers.

And those aren't common (especially when not indicating a defective piece of hardware).

Isn't one of the surplus Euroguns supposed to be dubious around the decocker, I think?

Boyd K said...

One of the reasons I like shows here
http://washingtonarmscollectors.org
is that they offer free NRA home firearms safety classes (see here:
http://washingtonarmscollectors.org/education.htm
And I'm not just sayin' that because I'm a volunteer instructor and former board member either ;)
Please do call people on safety when you see it. If they react badly you know not to hang out (and you should want to know...) if they react well then they're teachable and could be someone you want to go shooting with.

Jay G said...

Sigivald,

IIRC, the CZ-52 might be that Euro milsurp pistol. The decocker will sometimes cause the gun to actually fire, which is why we shouldn't rely on mechanical safeties...

John A said...

He is probably lying, or at least mistaken.

But I know from personal experience that a trigger does not have to be involved in even post-WWII firearms. At a target range, shooting .22 shorts, using bolt action single-shot rifle, I sent a bullet into the dirt about fifteen feet downrange before I had even fully closed the bolt, let alone moved my finger to the trigger. Rare, well-nigh impossible, but happens.

Geodkyt said...

Reminds of teh cop (Indiana State Police?) who claimed he dropped a live 9x19mm round, it landed on the basement floor primer down, and "went off", neatly shooting a hole in the floor above. Yet mysteriously, not exploding the brass case like a hand grenade. . .

It was YEARS before it came out that Deputy Dawg was practicing his quick draw and Charlie's Angels room clearing techniques, and he squeezed one off.

Sendarius said...

Yet mysteriously, not exploding the brass case like a hand grenade. . .

I have the (minor) scars on my left hand that demonstrate just how badly an unsupported cartridge will rupture when "fired".

.40 S&W, ignited when the round dropped off the extractor claw and the primer hit the ejector, during "unload & show clear" in an IPSC match. Needless to say, I don't unload that way any more.

Will said...

I was present when a gunrange/store clerk dropped/tossed? a baggie of re-manufactured ammo onto a glass topped counter. A round detonated. I handle loose ammo much more gently after seeing that!