Be CAREFUL folks.....wowser........

[Pablo]

http://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=308156

Quote:
So I was at the shooting range today shooting my new Colt 1991 series 80 and my new Glock 19 RTF for the first time since I got them (DEC 2010). My day was going great, not many people out. Just me and one other guy to my right on the pistol range. As the guy to my right packs his stuff up and waits for a cease fire to go get his targets another gentleman walks up to the shooting bench on my left about 3 feet fom me. He begins to unpack his three pistols as I keep shooting. I empty my mags into the paper and hear the siren for the cease fire. I lock my slide back and step back behind the line just as the guys to my right and left do. The guy to my right goes and gets his targets and the guy to my left and I post our targets. We get back and the line is called hot again so I continue shooting.

I hear the guy to my right shoot one shot and then see his gun jam. I take a quick look over and notice it is a springfield xd. Not sure at the time what caliber it is. I continue shooting and hear him fire one more shot. Then I hear him say "Oh I messed up bad". I see him holding his hand and blood going everywhere. I looked at him and asked him if it was just his hand. He said yes as I was calling 911, but my stupid phone would not dial out for some reason so I started running to the office to call. Right as I step inside my phone works and dials 911. I let the owner know and gave the dispatch all the info I could as I ran back outside to the guy who shot himself. The owners son followed me out with a ton of towels. We wrapped the towels around his hand until the paramedics got there. It took 7 minutes from the time I made the call. The man who shot himself was about 70 years old and handled it very well. He said he wished his leg was long enough to kick himself in the [censored] for being so stupid.

Come to find out his gun jammed so he banged on the muzzle with his palmto unjam it. You know what happened next. Also it was a 9mm. Anyone who says a 9mm is not enough for self defense or to take out a bad guy is crazy. The hole I saw in his hand proved it. It was ball ammo and the exit wound was as big around as a half dollar. Very messy!!!

About 20 minutes later the dallas sheriffs dept showed up and took pictures of everything. The guy was transported to baylor. The sheriffs said when the got him into the ambulance things got worse. Not really sure what that meant? They said he was transported on a code 3 whatever that means. I just hope the guy is OK. He seemed like a really nice guy. He said he was scared to call his wife because he would never hear the end of it. He still had a sense of humor after shooting himself in the hand. Needless to say he was very embarrased. I took pictures of the ground where he was and will try to post them if I can figure it out.

Any questions let me know.

Justin

 

[SZR48207]

"he banged on the muzzle with his palmto unjam it"

WHAT? What the heck does that mean?

 

[ARCOgraphite]

I've read past stats that stated most shootings with self-defense home protection handguns are a family member or the owner as an accidental shooting.

 

[LargeCarManX2]

Guns...any caliber...are very dangerous. I had a friend take a bullet to his chest when it bounced off a rock canyon. He died within a few minutes. I had another friend, whom was cleaning his pistol and it went off sending a bullet into his intestines. He made it through this ordeal, but has two operations and a couple of nasty scars to show his story.

 

[yaris0128]

^
I dont understand why people attempt to clean their weapons loaded. Way to dangerous, heard that story too many times.

 

[CivicFan]

Originally Posted By: Reddy45
"he banged on the muzzle with his palmto unjam it"

WHAT? What the heck does that mean?


Really, I am having a hard time imagining what he did.

How do you guys handle the jam? I pull the slide to eject the round.

 

[Pablo]

Originally Posted By: ARCOgraphite
I've read past stats that stated most shootings with self-defense home protection handguns are a family member or the owner as an accidental shooting.


Not really relevant.

Quote:
I had another friend, whom was cleaning his pistol and it went off...


Relevant, because of stupidity.

I have zero idea, what the guy at the range was trying to do.

I've had guns jam before. It happens. If you don't know how to clear the jam, DON'T!!!!!!!!

Not all jams will clear with just the slide. But it really depends on the gun. The MUZZLE should ALWAYS BE POINTED DOWN RANGE. IF a live round is in the chamber and other rounds are trying to feed, pull the magazine first...I will not go into further detail, because I do not consider myself expert enough on the subject for every gun.....

 

[hate2work]

Originally Posted By: Reddy45
"he banged on the muzzle with his palmto unjam it"

WHAT? What the heck does that mean?


It means he hit the end of the barrel with his palm in an attempt to unjam the gun. The end of the barrel, called the muzzle, is where the bullet comes out. Obviously a big no-no.

 

[Shagger]

Did he look into the barrel to confirm that there was a bullet in there too?

 

[expat]

I once saw some guys plinking with a .22 semi auto, I think they were trying to put a whole tube of sells in the target in one burst of rapid fire. This guy misses after three shots, and says "I messed up, I'll try again" so he slams the butt of the rifle on the ground, and pulls out the tube to put another three shells in the gun, all the time waving his head and upper body over the muzzle while he does so.

I made my retreat!

 

[Shagger]

Originally Posted By: expat
I once saw some guys plinking with a .22 semi auto, I think they were trying to put a whole tube of sells in the target in one burst of rapid fire. This guy misses after three shots, and says "I messed up, I'll try again" so he slams the butt of the rifle on the ground, and pulls out the tube to put another three shells in the gun, all the time waving his head and upper body over the muzzle while he does so.

I made my retreat!

Guns kill people who are negligent and / or stupid so I guess it's kind of a self correcting problem...

 

[millerbl00]

I hope he is ok but he had to do something wrong to get it to jam. I have a XDM and it just will not jam.

 

[dparm]

Idiot. Sucks that he had to learn that the hard way.

This is why mandatory training should be a requirement for gun ownership.

 

[PRND3L]

Originally Posted By: yaris0128
^
I dont understand why people attempt to clean their weapons loaded. Way to dangerous, heard that story too many times.


That story is also an old school euphemism for committing suicide. Families often said that to sidestep the perceived stigma of suicide.

 

[05ChevyI5]

Originally Posted By: Reddy45
"he banged on the muzzle with his palmto unjam it"

WHAT? What the heck does that mean?

If that's the case, what a real -----. He should take up golf instead!

 

[Rix]

Speaking of being careful....

My dad picked up a Rohm .22 mag revolver, so we brought it to the range to check it out with a box of fiocci ammo.
About the 3rd cylinder in, 2nd or 3rd shot, the round kinda went pop instead of bang.
And I saw no strike on the paper.
So I popped the loading gate, pushed out all the rounds and brass, popped out the cylinder, peeked into the forcing cone/barrel.... no light. Yep, squib load.
Used the cleaning rod from my AK to shove the bullet back out.
If I didn't know better, and had shot the next round, I very well might have had an old piece of junk revolver blow up in my hand.
If something doesn't seem right..... better safe than sorry.

 

[Jim 5]

Our company had an ex-NASA astronaut talk to us about saftey, and his example was the space shuttle disaster.

I can't remember what the term he used was, but it relates to a human tendency to lower standards because out of dumb luck a repeated lowering of standards hasn't caused a loss.

So when you start out, you have very high safety standards and protocols. Then you let one or two of them slip, and things tick along OK without a loss because you let those two slip. Now the safety procedure/standard becomes the original list...less two. Pretty soon you don't realize that you are running risks because you have become falsely desensitized to that risk at all.

Sooner or later, the dropping of the two safety protocols will jump up and bite you in the behind. In the case of the space shuttle, the original safety rule was that the viton 0-rings holding the components of the boost rockets together had to be replaced after every launch. A time consuming and expensive process. Due to budget cuts, this process was dropped and they ignored this procedure, through quite a few launches with no issues...so they dropped it. As we all know, that o-ring eventually failed with terrible consequences including loss of lives.

The lesson I guess is no matter how accustomed to a process one becomes, you can never lower your safety standards even if you've gotten away with doing that a few times.

I bet this poor guy cleared a jam this way a few times before. If you'd asked him, he'd know this was unsafe, but he got desensitized to safety standards to which he once adhered...because a few times it worked out.

It's a good lesson to us all when at the range, with firearms more generally, or with any device or procedure that could be deadly.

 

[bigmike]

Originally Posted By: dparm
Idiot. Sucks that he had to learn that the hard way.

This is why mandatory training should be a requirement for gun ownership.


I'm an advocate for training, but I think this guy just had a senior moment. It happens to all of us, but most of the time we don't get a half-dollar sized hole in the hand for doing it.

 

[greenaccord02]

Originally Posted By: PRND3L
Originally Posted By: yaris0128
^
I dont understand why people attempt to clean their weapons loaded. Way to dangerous, heard that story too many times.


That story is also an old school euphemism for committing suicide. Families often said that to sidestep the perceived stigma of suicide.


They still do, down here at least. I've heard of a few folks that decided to clean their guns loaded and ended up getting shot in the head.

A friend of mine was cleaning his AK, forgot he had a round chambered, and blew off his kneecap. Can't be too safe with this stuff...

 

[Drew99GT]

If you're cleaning a firearm when it's loaded, than the first thing I can think of is, you're not going to get the chamber/breach clean...

Seriously. I can not believe how stupid some people can be.

If your gun jams, pull the magazine out and lock the slide back while pointing the gun away from you. You do it everytime!