"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
Quote from: Socalfmf on August 01, 2013, 05:08:14 PMthere is not such thing as an accidental discharge..samGuys have been apologizing to their lady friends for this for generations.
there is not such thing as an accidental discharge..sam
So if I were to tell you guys that I had a 20 gauge pump shot gun that would on occasion discharge with a shell in the chamber when you pulled the "pump release mechanism" you would call me a liar, or mistaken, or an irresponsible gun handler? Here's the story and I'm sure some of you "city slickers" will get a kick out of it, and the things that we do to entertain ourselves out in the woods.It was the summer after high school graduation and there were many days my buddies would congregate at my house and we'd hang out and stay relatively out of trouble. There was a merry gang of crows that would eat all the pecans from our tree down by the dairy barn and my dad told me if we could kill one and hang it up in the tree then the crows wouldn't come around anymore. Well, one day a crow is taunting us about 50 yards from the house in the tree line that surrounded the farm. I thought this would be my best chance at murdering the leader of this notorious crow gang (we'll call him Al Crowpone) and I don't know how many of you have tried to kill a crow, but it's not easy. They are beyond smart for an animal and they know what guns look like and it's almost like they can read minds. I've seen them before within shooting range and then procured a gun and even when hiding the gun they somehow know there is one around and they're gone. They are very good at taunting you and playing with your emotions so getting a good opportunity to make an example out of this thing was very rare so I needed to take advantage. I got the shotgun from the closet and I stayed in the house to load the gun so I wouldn't be seen by Al. The shotgun had a plug in it to keep the amount of shells to the legal limit but I had taken it out at times so I wasn't sure if was in or out so I immediately put a shell in the chamber to make room for the most shells possible. I was very distracted by keeping an eye on Al while loading and lost track of how many shells I had in the gun so I was going to take the shell from the chamber and just start over. Pump shotguns have a pump release trigger that's usually located right behind the trigger guard, towards the butt stock of the gun, and when you pull that release trigger it allows you to eject the chambered shell. So I was facing the back door and looking out the window to make sure Al was still unaware that he was about to meet his untimely demise but I remember the feeling to this day of using my right index finger and sliding it down the outside of the trigger guard till I got to the pump release then I pulled the trigger with no appendages near the actual trigger of the gun, and the damn thing went off inside the house and blew a hole in the back door. My friends weren't paying much attention to me, I think they were playing Madden or something and so the blast scared the pooh out of all of us. So I'm trying to get my wits about me and get my head right and I look outside and Al is still sitting in the tree at this point but with a 3" hole in the back door I figured I'd done enough damage for the day and I opened the door and Al then flew directly over the top of me, within about 30 feet. I'm pretty sure he was laughing at me but needless to say, he got away and is probably still alive to this day. Trying to explain that this gun just went off to my dad was probably about the same as trying to convince all of you that the gun just "went off" and that I probably pulled the trigger instead of the pump release but I know what happened and it's still etched in my brain the feeling and my actions right when the gun went off. It took about a year but I was finally vindicated in the botched Al Crowpone hit when my dad came home from a dove hunt one afternoon. I knew something was off when he hopped out of the truck with his boots in his hands. He walks up to me and drops the boots on the ground and says that he apologized for not believing me about the gun misfire. He had done the exact same thing and then he showed me the side of his Red Wing boot that the bullet grazed when he pulled the pump release to eject the shell in the chamber. Had the barrel been pointed a half inch to the left it would have taken off his pinky toe and no telling what else. That night we spent about an hour trying to get the gun to misfire again and we had probably tried about 200 times, in a controlled environment of course, when finally, it did it again. I think my dad was still uncertain that both of us hadn't accidentally pulled the trigger until he finally got it to misfire that night. The gun went to a gunsmith that week and from what I remember he found no reason for the gun to misfire and just like everyone else reading this thought that we were crazy and the gun was not at fault and the owner is. I've put more rounds through a shotgun and rifle than just about anyone I know and when it comes to gun safety, I'm as anal about that as I am my job so carelessness has never been a problem when I have a gun in my hands. Even at 18 years old I had already had many years under my belt with guns and gun safety. Quite frankly, my dad had taught me to be afraid of guns and to this day I still am. I handle them as if they will all misfire at any given time because I've seen it done twice. That shotgun is still sitting in a closet at my parents house, halfway disassembled and has never been fired since we got it back from the gunsmith. I doubt I'll ever shoot it again, and it's a very nice gun that is worth some decent money but I'll never sell it until someone can get in there and find out why it malfunctioned and fix it properly. I'm sure that 99.9% of gun misfires are operator error, nobody can convince me otherwise but because of my experience I know that there is always a very slight chance that one will go off completely by accident.
This thread can easily get a whole ball of wax going, but so far everyone has been nice, so I ain't about to rock the boat, buuuttt I'm itching to poke at some ribs here LOL Darryl
yeah, but Cheney shot a lawyer(I think) and it should always be open season on those.
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Topic: Death of a Pallet (Read 5447 times)
